Still ness beginning

When I first found Crimson Dark web comic I wasn’t sure, whether it would be any good. It wasn’t until the beginning of chapter two that I really got into Crimson Dark and started enjoying the web comic.

As I was reading through the comic I did feel like it was pretty derivative of Firefly, this was pretty off putting to begin with but I decided to persevere Eventually I was won over by the dialogue and characters. I started to care about the fates of the characters.

I find the setting of the story, his world building is interesting he has taken a fairly standard science fiction premise and added some interesting touches. I also like that he has made an effort to think about and rationalise the science behind the space ships and world.

Computer generated art seems to suits science fiction I wonder though whether this is because the convention of Science fiction TV is to use CGI for all visual effects and any ’space’ shots. The art does look slick and the space ships look great yet I do find the people look a little stiff and the characters hair doesn’t look right, I suspect though that these issues come with working with CGI. In the end these are minor niggles.

Its also interesting to see David C Simon’s art making process it looks just as hard as making comics the old fashioned way, so I certainly congratulate him on his effort in making the art.

In the end I am impressed, Crimson Dark has managed to transcend my expectations and be rather good.

BLDGBLOG is a blog about architecture. I remember first finding the blog because it had a post about science fiction and architecture naturally I was very interested.

It was a really exciting moment for me because I had found a place a blog that felt like an antidote to my architecture experience in the industry.

Architecture set free of the narrow views and minds of the mainstream of architecture. To pursue new ideas, explore the periphery and to look outside of architecture.

Best of all the writing is engaging and interesting and unlike most Architectural publications this blog has plenty of images and links to more.

The month of August has been a great month for this website with a nice increase in the traffic visiting the site. So I just want to say thank everyone who has been visiting the site over the past month.

A special thanks also to everyone who has left comments on my website over the past month as well, it’s appreciated.

If you want to contact me I would love to hear from you. Send me an email to: info[at]drawingsilence[dot]com

Lines and Colors is a blog by Charley Parker of Argon Zark! Fame it is one of my favourite art sites on the internet. It is a great blog to find out about new artists you never new you liked. He posts on a wide variety of different visual art that he likes. To quote the website:

lines and colors is a blog about drawing, sketching, painting, comics, cartoons, webcomics, illustration, digital art, concept art, gallery art, artist tools and techniques, motion graphics, animation, sci-fi and fantasy illustration, paleo art, storyboards, matte painting, 3d graphics and anything else I find visually interesting. If it has lines and/or colors, it’s fair game.

What sets this blog apart form various link blogs out on the web is the love and effort he puts into his posts. This isn’t a post with a link and a small comment about how cool it is. These are posts with long pieces of writing detailing almost everything you could want to know about the subject and why he likes the art or artist.

Best of all at the end of the post there is a exhaustive list of links where you can find images and more information about the art or artist. It means you don’t have to trawl the web looking for art he has done it for you.

So if you are interested in all sorts of different visual art styles there is very likely something to interest you on his site.

The ten doctors by Rich Morris is a doctor who fan webcomic about all ten doctors in a combined adventure. I have been really enjoying this comic, it is surprisingly good.

The comic does require some knowledge of the doctor who universe since it does have pretty much everything from the series in it you could possibly think of.

What impresses me the most about this comic is the characterisation. All of the doctors, companions and various characters all have constant and accurate characterisation. The dialogue is excellent particularly in capturing each of the different doctors various traits. The story does however rely on the audience’s knowledge of the universe for much of the characterisation of the villans though.

For the first thirty pages the story is easy to follow, but when all the main characters go of in different directions to try and find out what is going on the story becomes quiet fractured with only a couple of pages being devoted at a time to each of the different situations.

The story does run the risk of collapsing under the weight of all of the doctors, supporting cast and every major villain in doctor who history. This criticism has been made before at this strip. At the moment I feel the story is just hanging together, we will have to wait and see.

I wounder if the webcomic form is exacerbating this tendency. The story is easier to follow reading in one big chuck rather than in as a webcomic update schedule.

I am interested in the format he has chosen to tell the story in. The page layout is very tight with a2×4 panel layout for every page. The dialogue takes precedence in each panel over the art like in EC comics. This means it tends to be a wordy comic similar in feel to golden age American comics.

The opposite of the cinematic or wide screen comics like The Authority which is popular at the moment in superhero comics.. The question that has formed in my mind is why? The complex nature of the story has a lot to do with this. I think also that the webcomic medium is another reason for this, wanting to give the reader as much comics goodness per post as is possible in the format.

I don’t know if this is the intention but it seems that the page layout has evolved as the story has progressed. Each page has a beginning middle and cliffhanger creating a serial type format for the comic. Which I find interesting because I suspect for long form comics this might suit the requirements of the webcomic audience rather than having to wait for a long form comic page three times a week which out of context may be hard to read.

Anyway if you like Doctor Who go read the comic. I’m looking forward to what happens next.

What’s in a link?

I thought I would start with webcomics. garfield minus garfield is an amazing frightening beautiful

comic. I really feel for Jon trapping the the world he is with no escape.

What I find interesting is the fact that in my head I read each comic twice. Once without Garfield and once with Garfield mentally substituting him in. this gives each comic interesting interpretations like May 16 I know that this is a comic about Garfield landing on Jon. Yet it could also be a frightening comic about the existential terror of facing each new day.

For those who need more, there is the Garfield strip generator and nothing Garfield found via the visual linguist blog.

The Garfield strip generator leaves me with a new appreciation of the Garfield comic strip. The formal simplicity of this strip is beautiful.

The art is so refined it ceases to be realistic representation it transforms into pure abstract symbols. Because of this every panel has a simple cohesive form. It then doesn’t matter where each panel comes from because each will be made of the same library of symbols repeated.

Its the points of difference in each panel which then creates the story. Jon, Garfield and the horizontal line near the bottom of the panel are all recurring symbols in each panel.

Thanks to Dick for showing Garfield minus Garfield one day.

I often wonder what motivates people to add/favourite/blogroll sites to their own site, the real reasons, the deep down reasons other than, I dunno it was a cool site.

So I thought since this is a new site as I add links I might as well do a post describing why I have added this site to my links. These posts won’t really be negative I am hardly going to favourite sites I don’t like am I.

I want to be better! To say that is not enough any more. I am finding making comics really tough at the moment, productivity, motivation and being positive are all things I am struggling with and everything feels like it is taking forever. I could keep going but I am not.

I raise this because I have found a website a while ago which I have gone back to today and found it a rewarding experience. Its called Make Comics Forever!! it is a shame that the blog hasn’t been updated in awhile. All the same looking through the archives has been a usefully experience. Its nice to be reminded that I am not alone and there are people out there who want to really push themselves to improve their comic making being. So I am going to share it with you all. (who are you anyway?)

I liked this ten step programme here continuing on from that post this post what works had this gem which I haven’t been following

2. Act from a place of INSPIRATION, NOT GUILT. Guilt can be a motivator, but not a very constructive one. Guilt feeds guilt, and in the end, it can incapacitate you.

This post had a link to a great comic about making comics by Chris Ware and Seth moderated by Ivan Brunetti. It is interesting to see what schedule they keep and how they think about ’style’

The Schedule this post is awesome. It really struck a cord with me. I am definitely trying out this idea

Start with the largest block of WORK. Then have the shortest BREAK. Then, as the day progresses, DECREASE the size of the WORK blocks and INCREASE the size of the BREAKS.

he goes on to list different permutations of the idea. There is a sequel to the post where the author posts his results of his experimentation.

finally via Make Comics Forever i found this editorial about making comics from Dave Sim

Anyway its all worth having a look through.

Back to making comics.

I don’t really know anything about webcomics If you don’t as well you might find this history of webcomics interesting.

Part one is here and part two here. The articles are in a round table formate with people discussing the importance of each of the key webcomics mentioned in this history of webcomics. The articles are old now from late 2005, I still found them relevant giving a good background to webcomics and to see where they have come from.

And New Zealand artist Roger Langridge gets a mention as well.

I have been tweaking the comics archive.

This really fucked me off. 5pm on Sunday June first I realised I had comics to post and that I had somewhere to be at 6pm so I am posting my comics as usual and then the categories in wordpress go all funny mucking up my website. Now I had things to do places to go so I could only address this issue on Monday afternoon. Turns out my database got corrupted, maybe from a plugin or maybe user error, damn computers really piss me of. I am really lucky that last week i found out that as well as backing up your website you should back up your database as well. If i hadn’t backed up my database last Monday I would have been well and truly fucked! This does mean all the blog posts and updating I did last week is gone.

I don’t know how much of that I am going to fix.

From next week the update schedule for comics will be Monday Wednesday Friday.

This is not something I am especially happy with nor is it something I planned for. When I launched this comic I had 34 Days worth of comics that is over six weeks. I planned on using the reserve to give me time to improve my comics making skill so that I could make 5 comics pages in a week. That hasn’t happened I have been sick and since then I have had some difficulties in comics production, both these factors have seen my reserve been swallowed up without any other results I had planned.

So

From Monday May 26 this comic will update Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

I have updated the about page. the main piece is added is the list of all my published mini comics.

Well I have finished the look of the site for the moment

Thank you first to wordpress and comicpress for giving me a solution to start posting comics to the Internets. Also thanks to all the people at the comic press forums who kindly give their knowledge to beginners starting out with webcomics.

This website would not be possible without the following people: Aaron, Dave, Claire, Garth, Jo, Lawrence, Ned, Nic, Richard and Robyn. I thank you for all your help and support. In fact I can’t really thank you all enough.

Well I am pretty much over being sick. As you can see on the website I have managed to fix the posting issue I was having. Onwards to future changes.

Currently I am Sick. This is why the site is still a bit buggy I haven’t had a chance to get to work on it

I decided to launch this webcomic as part of Comics Weekend so I am having an exhibition ‘Triple Threat’ leading up to the weekend. Tonight is the exhibition party and the? comics weekend opening party at the Comics Shop Graphic.

SEE THE PRESS RELEASE BELOW

Exhibition, comics launch and the FRIDAY NIGHT LAUNCH OF NZ COMIX WEEKEND!

– ————
The Triple Threat exhibition showcases the work of three young kiwi comics creators.

It combines the launch of Claire Harris? (True Lives, True Detective) newest comic Chicks with Knives, the first outing of DRAW?s (The Tangled Garden , Delve, Clutter) brand new webcomic, Drawing Silence, and the release of the latest issue of Robyn E. Kenealy?s Roddy?s Film Companion. Triple Threat includes an exhibition of new original artworks on display throughout the week from Monday 14th, culminating with Friday’s launch and closing party. A selection of New Zealand ?s finest comics from a variety of other artists will be available for sale also.

The exhibition will run at Graphic comic shop, 106 Cuba Street, from Monday 14th until Saturday 19th April.

The launch party and the opening for the NZ Comix Festival will be held on the evening of Friday 18th from 5:30pm until 7:30pm. Drinks, nibbles and comics!

Hello Internets and welcome to a new webcomic by Draw. I will be updating Monday to Friday every week. Also over the next few weeks the website will be in a state of change as I put more information up and alter the look and design of the website to get it looking how I want it to look. Of to the future I go.