The half-assed comics manifestoe
This is mainly for me. You can read it if you want. It somewhat lengthy, but it was written with a purpose from start to finish.
I came home from Yasumi Con, and I want to get this comic shit started really bad.
For a long time, i've been toying with the idea of doing something serious about comics. Many doubts and fears have stopped me. As time moved on, i've become more and more in love with the comic medium, and more and more frustrated by the lack of people who really look at comics the way I do...
I attended a Webcomics Panel at this Yasumi Con. Maybe it was the fact Clanbob couldn't make it. Maybe it was the fact that there was barely an audience at the webcomic panel. Maybe it was the fact that most of the presenters didn't really know what to talk about. All I know was that I just felt bored and disheartened.
There was a guy who was a writer for a webcomic Empty Life, a girl who was a pretty good artist, and another girl who was just there. There was no set idea of what to say(like last year), and I was thumbing through Parasyte Volume 11(a comic I acquired earlier) while I heard them talk about advertising your webcomic through IRC. I was getting annoyed, as the #1 reason for me going to Yasumi Con was for the webcomic panel, so I asked questions. Many questions. I was called the "guy who saved the show" and they asked for my name. When they ran out of stuff to say, they asked me to ask a question.
I don't think I was that great, but I think I did help them from talking about nothing forever. And that's what frustrated me.
There's so much to talk about with comics. You could have huge panels just on the effect of using different panel shapes and sizes to show a scene, effects used to manipulate time, an alternative to stereotypical speech and thought bubbles, and so on. All they talked about was promoting your comic strip and making sure to put it out when you wanted. I tried to ask some subtle questions to make them discuss something different, but I didn't work too well.
I'm not blaming them. There was only one person there who really did comics, and it was writing for a comic strip. The other person was primarily an artist who happened to have a webcomic who updates it when she remembers she has a webcomic. Comics are mainly a fun hobby to them. Its mainly in the specifically comic book conventions that you would find serious talk on comics. And I won't go to this for some time.
I started a comic book club in high school. I probably won't start one in college. I don't want to be part of a group of people who don't take comics for as much as I do. It would be time better spent working on projects of my own, unless I came up with a really effective strategy.
Its still really fucking sad. In film, books, and art, you have so much people who are serious to their craft and work on perfecting their skills and make livings with what they do. In comics, its probably a handful. I can only think of a handful of people who really take the comics medium seriously, and do new things with comics and create the trends that everyone else follows. There's plenty of people who are good artist and writers who make comics(???? and Parasyte respectively(sorry, I prefer comics with good plot to good art)), but they don't really use the comic medium to express their ideas in a way that would be hard to replicate on another medium.
So I came home from Yasumi Con, and I want to start this comic shit really bad. Extremely bad. I'm not worried about being able to finish the things. I know I will. I'm just writing this so I can always look at it and know why I want to make comics, and get fired up to work on more comics. To be honest, every time I read any comic, no matter how bad or good, I want to. But this is just one more thing. This is my half-assed comic manifestoe. Make new shit. Make good shit. Explore different possibilities, and come out with great comics. And spread the word of comics.
Peace out!
I came home from Yasumi Con, and I want to get this comic shit started really bad.
For a long time, i've been toying with the idea of doing something serious about comics. Many doubts and fears have stopped me. As time moved on, i've become more and more in love with the comic medium, and more and more frustrated by the lack of people who really look at comics the way I do...
I attended a Webcomics Panel at this Yasumi Con. Maybe it was the fact Clanbob couldn't make it. Maybe it was the fact that there was barely an audience at the webcomic panel. Maybe it was the fact that most of the presenters didn't really know what to talk about. All I know was that I just felt bored and disheartened.
There was a guy who was a writer for a webcomic Empty Life, a girl who was a pretty good artist, and another girl who was just there. There was no set idea of what to say(like last year), and I was thumbing through Parasyte Volume 11(a comic I acquired earlier) while I heard them talk about advertising your webcomic through IRC. I was getting annoyed, as the #1 reason for me going to Yasumi Con was for the webcomic panel, so I asked questions. Many questions. I was called the "guy who saved the show" and they asked for my name. When they ran out of stuff to say, they asked me to ask a question.
I don't think I was that great, but I think I did help them from talking about nothing forever. And that's what frustrated me.
There's so much to talk about with comics. You could have huge panels just on the effect of using different panel shapes and sizes to show a scene, effects used to manipulate time, an alternative to stereotypical speech and thought bubbles, and so on. All they talked about was promoting your comic strip and making sure to put it out when you wanted. I tried to ask some subtle questions to make them discuss something different, but I didn't work too well.
I'm not blaming them. There was only one person there who really did comics, and it was writing for a comic strip. The other person was primarily an artist who happened to have a webcomic who updates it when she remembers she has a webcomic. Comics are mainly a fun hobby to them. Its mainly in the specifically comic book conventions that you would find serious talk on comics. And I won't go to this for some time.
I started a comic book club in high school. I probably won't start one in college. I don't want to be part of a group of people who don't take comics for as much as I do. It would be time better spent working on projects of my own, unless I came up with a really effective strategy.
Its still really fucking sad. In film, books, and art, you have so much people who are serious to their craft and work on perfecting their skills and make livings with what they do. In comics, its probably a handful. I can only think of a handful of people who really take the comics medium seriously, and do new things with comics and create the trends that everyone else follows. There's plenty of people who are good artist and writers who make comics(???? and Parasyte respectively(sorry, I prefer comics with good plot to good art)), but they don't really use the comic medium to express their ideas in a way that would be hard to replicate on another medium.
So I came home from Yasumi Con, and I want to start this comic shit really bad. Extremely bad. I'm not worried about being able to finish the things. I know I will. I'm just writing this so I can always look at it and know why I want to make comics, and get fired up to work on more comics. To be honest, every time I read any comic, no matter how bad or good, I want to. But this is just one more thing. This is my half-assed comic manifestoe. Make new shit. Make good shit. Explore different possibilities, and come out with great comics. And spread the word of comics.
Peace out!