Scott McCloud's Blog, page 34
March 22, 2010
That Hand on Your Shoulder
Interesting article by Joe McCulloch at Comics Comics regarding the scarcity of old-fashioned thought balloons in todays genre comics and elsewhere (via The Beat).
McCulloch pulls out a few examples of legitimate uses for the bulgy Edsel of comics iconography like Mazzucchelli's picto-bubbles in Asterios Polyp, but he's most enthusiastic for its streamlined descendent, the caption-style interior narration—especially the floating word bursts found in some manga.
McCulloch does a good job of...
March 19, 2010
Random Friday Stuff
Item #1
Item #2
Uh-oh! Trevor Dodge is very kind, but this is the kind of thing that always gets me into trouble.
Item #3
Still haven't gotten any word from Comic-Con regarding our hotel choices, so I assume there will be no choices. Hm. Guess we're keeping our just-in-case reservations again this year at full price.
Item #4
Perhaps I should just link to a Kate Beaton comic every time I do a miscellaneous Friday post.
Item #5
Can anyone recommend a brand of ice tray that doesn't...
March 18, 2010
On Your Mark… Get Set…
Comic-Con Hotels go on sale at today (Thursday) at 9:00 am sharp.
They've added both rooms and an expanded list of hotels this year. If all goes well, there should be plenty of rooms available for as much as 20 minutes until every one of them is sold out.
Read up on this year's protocol (it's a bit different this time), give it a try, and then let me know if you succeeded. I'm genuinely curious.
For reference, here's some video from last year's hotel reservation rush.
March 17, 2010
Palate Cleanser
While I'm happy to let Pixton and Bitstrips continue to trade stories of comics-making software tools in yesterday's mammoth comments thread, let's invite a hand drawn comic by the great John Porcellino into our hearts for a moment to restore a little balance to the universe.
Visit John's long running King-Cat Comics site for more information on a small press legend and his sublime hand-tooled words and pictures.
March 16, 2010
How Do We Feel This Morning?
Want to draw comics for a living? Watch the video here three times in a row then come back.
How do we feel? Hmm?
Now…want to WRITE comics for a living? Watch. Any difference?
Seasoned vets can make fun of some of the oddball qualities of Clive and Daina Goodinson's labor of love, but in its current incarnation, Pixton is pretty close to what a lot of young newbies have been asking for for years (I know, I get the emails!) and there's clearly a lot of thoughtful design work going on under the...
March 15, 2010
So Many Toys
Screwed around a bit with Harmony last night after work; a spare but fun online sketching tool that's part of the ongoing Chrome Experiments series.
Ever since the sublime original KidPix, I've liked art tools that ditched the obvious analog metaphors (paintbucket, eyedropper, pencil), but kept the idea of limited control that makes traditional picture-making so unpredictable.
Drawing with tools like "fur" and "ribbon" are like taking a dog for a walk. You may have a route picked out, but...
March 12, 2010
Friday Odds and Ends
Okay one more cool music video (via Lori M) playing with one of my favorite topics (as seen in UC chapter 5).
Nawlz returns with "Season 2: Real Werld Information Breakdown."
Bravest Kid in America. (Imagine going to school the next morning? She did it.)
Also note sidebar: Italy in April, London in May, and South Bend in 12 days. And when not traveling: 11 hours a day, 7 days a week on the book—and loving it.
Back to work!
March 11, 2010
Art Compressed
As long as I'm linking to music videos this week, here's another great one (via Jenn Manley Lee) that plunges into art history. Good excuse to link to Jenn's amazing Dicebox while we're at it.
I've been thinking about art history a lot this year as I tunnel through my art-related graphic novel. As dorky and low-rent as most of the tableaus in the video are, it's surprising to me how much power several of them have; producing almost a shock of recognition. (This is something Michel Gondry
March 10, 2010
Where Your Eyes Don't Go
The esteemed Mr. Manley sends word of a cool game by producer and director Tyler Glaiel and artist Jon Schubbe called Closure.
It's a spare independent flash game now being developed for other formats which plays with some of the ideas I talk about in Chapter 3 of UC to great effect.
It's really cool so I decided to link to it—and then realized that I already had an email from Tyler Glaiel telling me about the game over a year ago.
*Sigh*
I am so behind on my email.
Anyway, check it out!
March 9, 2010
Rube Goldberg was a Real Guy!
Ivy and I love both of the new OK Go videos for "This Too Shall Pass" (check out the marching band one also) but I'm especially fond of the Rube Goldberg machine version because I remember making stuff like this as a kid.
It's been almost a century since the real-life Rube Goldberg started creating his ingenious cartoon machines on America's funny pages, but his place in pop culture is as secure as ever.
Everybody sends out ripples in life, but some are more pronounced than others. I think...
