Entry 21- Distorted Echofeedback
Before I begin this one, should mention this going to be a bit of ranting about stuff. Seems that, it must be the time of the year when people begin to chop down on things. Seems like I see that a lot right now, and like usual it makes me a feel a little bad, but it also gets me to thinking. So I'm gonna take the time to sort of field some of the things I've been seeing. Its more for me, but ya know-- its not just my soapbox, so you can comment and say how you feel about the things here too. Feel free to disagree with whats in this entry, as much as you want-- as I'm sure there's a lot here to disagree on. I tend to many times be the minority in how I feel about things. To make it easier to navigate I'll be adding LJ cuts to the diffrent sections, that I've put into here and hopefully you can skip to the parts you want to read about. As I know that I have my hands in a lot of pies and not everyone who reads this stuff wants to read about everything I'll be mentioning here.. not to mention its probably gonna be sort of long. so yeah on with the show.
Now reading over the press release there are some elements that really seemed a little out of place for me. The way it is worded they are not only coming down on peer to peer downloading of full albums, but also there was a lot about passing along single mp3's to friends. I suppose one could say this is wrong, from a legal standpoint. There are a great number of free mp3's that are totally legal and available for download, from many of the independent music labels (not just synthpop labels like 9thwave, and ADD but labels like victory records and fat as well) and I do think that if your going to give someone a track to check out a band if its available give them one of these mp3's. However there are many bands out there who don't have this available. And I am an advocate of telling people about the bands I think rock, and will toss a single mp3 to the way of people, to give a listen if I feel its thier cup of tea. Really this sort of advertising of a band, is quite common. Not to unlike the mixed cassettes that we all use to make as kids to show some friends the music one is into that we assume they will like. Illegal yes... but this form of trading I feel is not taking away from the music or the labels. If someone likes the mp3 thats given they will most likely buy the album.
This whole mp3 debate (for the nth time) has been discussed on the Slothdog forums for about a week, and it seems to be really going nowhere. And I realize that the press release was mainly to field how the labels who joined the group feel in regards to them. And in may ways I can understand this. The labels and the musicians want to make music and be able to pay rent. Heck I'd love to do that some day. And the downloading of full albums is really not cool. I've spoken to people about this before-- when the mp3 debate comes up. But a lot of people seem to think that if they can get it for free why don't they? And this in itself is kinda annoying.
For major labels if you download the new Britney album or something I'm sure that its not going to even scratch the surface of thier gross, but smaller labels will feel it. When albums are only selling a few hundred units, and fifty or more people download this album instead of buying it-- well the revenue to the labels is heavily crippled... to the point some albums are not even getting back the production costs. This really sucks.
So What I'm saying here is that my thoughts on mp3's are a great tool for advertisement. But if you like a small indie band, buy the album... now if you had the cd stolen or something I can see downloading the album for a backup on CD-R I've done this before. But Support your favorite bands. If you don't they will disappear.
Now I'm pretty sure a lot of people here, have heard me shout about this before. from conversations to other webcomic artists, to quite mimicking manga artists fully and try to pull some of yourself into the cartooning, the infamous "Rob Leifield" rants, about how its a stylized form and its nice to see something a little diffrent. Lately there's been a big shift on forums and journal posts talking about how they don't like this or that because they don't look right. I've heard people turned off from stuff like Monster and Planetes because they sway from that BESM style. And in american comics, I hear so much about people really hating the work of people like Bruce Timms, Rob Leifield, Jae Lee, Ashley Woods,David Mack, etc because they sway from convention. And where all stylized art is not my cup of tea. I'm way happier seeing someone working on a style that is thier own instead of drawing from a template from how things are supposed to look.
It comes down a lot to how most people see things however. Visual concepts are composed of icons. You see a pair of eyes and you know this looks like its visual vocabulary. You see a body and this is what its supposed to look like. Now many times we find an example that we feel is the most pretty, or at least the most pure version of this. Usually it comes down to what we see on tv and in media. This is also why we are plagued with young girls wanting to be thin and have big boobs, cause thats what people iconize the female anatomy after and find the most strict icon of this as the most pleasurable to the naked eye. The same thing is found in the icons of art.
When you sit down to read an american comic from Marvel or Dc, you have certain expectation from the comic. Usually this relies on big muscles, square jaws and very clean painted lines. When you read a manga you expect symerical body shapes, big eyes, small mouths and crazy hair. So when something deviates from the norm, sometimes its pleasing to you. it might have thicker lines that are easier to digest or it might have an interesting colouring pattern.. more lifelike what ever.. however sometimes this artwork tends to be jarring with the chartureing or the thinner lines, or the pen work as apposed to brushing or whatever.
So in case your wondering "stylized artwork" is artwork that is changed or breaks from convention. Many artists develop this early on with changes to things they are drawing that they tend to like better and makes more sense to them. Now every artist has thier little quirks. No one sees the world like everyone else. There are of course people that clone someone elses art. But most people have thier identifying marks. Usually it starts out small and evolves into thier "style".
Many times artists will continue to deviate from the look of how real things exist. they begin to draw out of thier mind.. ya know how they imagine things to look verses how they really do look. And in my mind comics should come from the imagination. I don't really want to read a comic or see a piece of art that looks like a photograph. Nor do I want to want to read three comics that look the same. I think that comics for the most part are evolving past the templates. If you look at Manga, more and more artists are going past the big eye small mouth and relying on thier own minds to create something that falls away from the stereotypical japanese cartoonist. Like with manga american comics are starting to do so too. usually when you would see something heavily stylized it was from an indie comic, but since the coming of image, more and more unique and not so kirby-isque styles have come to the bench. to me to evolve as an artform, art has to break convention
.
Course many readers who are use to convention and like it don't really like the change. Personally I could careless if the noses are none existant, or if the torsos are elongated. I would rather see some tripped out Rob Liefield or David Mack work any day than seeing an Alan Davis Clone. I love being able to look at a Jae lee cover in a mass of muscle bound square jawed Spiegel drawings.
Okay enough of my ranting. Writing that much on those things... more than I was planning is enough for me. Guess I'll have to do another of these when I get in the mood again. Plus I really should continue packing. I'm about halfway there now. yay! Its gonna be really wierd to go back to ohio. Not really looking forward to it. but I need to go visit the family cause they are important to me. So it'll be the last time in a while.
I been sketching a lot again lately. taking apart the human body trying to find a good understanding of motion. you'll probably notice in the next few strips of Decypher (after the filler thingy) that I'm playing with some bizare poses again. Also there's a lot of wierd antomy changes. Its all the fault of me doing some new body studies. I'm having a lot of fun with it though. The human body is one of those great objects that always have so much new stuff to learn. finding how everything connects together is always quite a lot of fun. Guess I just like seeing how things are the sum of thier parts or something-- why I love robots so much.
I've also been playing around with a3 paper and drawing with an 0.3 mechanical pencil. it really is giving a lot more room to work on line width and add extra detail and things. I'm still getting a feel for the smaller lead though. But I'm really liking it.
The new Son 'restless moment' is coming along great after some headracking compiling as I realized I built some of the loops wrong. I'm hopefully gonna have the full synth done really soon. Green Arrow: Kingdoms (yeah I'm still working on it) is now up to 1300 words.. this one is gonna be really long. i'm dreading the spell and grammar checking of this mammoth.
Oh right and if you haven't see the decypher update yet, I made a new wallpaper. I think it turned out neat. its based on one of my favorite panels. and because I haven't been presenting any art stuff lately here I added the picture to this update.
I could be doing something productive.
Now reading over the press release there are some elements that really seemed a little out of place for me. The way it is worded they are not only coming down on peer to peer downloading of full albums, but also there was a lot about passing along single mp3's to friends. I suppose one could say this is wrong, from a legal standpoint. There are a great number of free mp3's that are totally legal and available for download, from many of the independent music labels (not just synthpop labels like 9thwave, and ADD but labels like victory records and fat as well) and I do think that if your going to give someone a track to check out a band if its available give them one of these mp3's. However there are many bands out there who don't have this available. And I am an advocate of telling people about the bands I think rock, and will toss a single mp3 to the way of people, to give a listen if I feel its thier cup of tea. Really this sort of advertising of a band, is quite common. Not to unlike the mixed cassettes that we all use to make as kids to show some friends the music one is into that we assume they will like. Illegal yes... but this form of trading I feel is not taking away from the music or the labels. If someone likes the mp3 thats given they will most likely buy the album.
This whole mp3 debate (for the nth time) has been discussed on the Slothdog forums for about a week, and it seems to be really going nowhere. And I realize that the press release was mainly to field how the labels who joined the group feel in regards to them. And in may ways I can understand this. The labels and the musicians want to make music and be able to pay rent. Heck I'd love to do that some day. And the downloading of full albums is really not cool. I've spoken to people about this before-- when the mp3 debate comes up. But a lot of people seem to think that if they can get it for free why don't they? And this in itself is kinda annoying.
For major labels if you download the new Britney album or something I'm sure that its not going to even scratch the surface of thier gross, but smaller labels will feel it. When albums are only selling a few hundred units, and fifty or more people download this album instead of buying it-- well the revenue to the labels is heavily crippled... to the point some albums are not even getting back the production costs. This really sucks.
So What I'm saying here is that my thoughts on mp3's are a great tool for advertisement. But if you like a small indie band, buy the album... now if you had the cd stolen or something I can see downloading the album for a backup on CD-R I've done this before. But Support your favorite bands. If you don't they will disappear.
Now I'm pretty sure a lot of people here, have heard me shout about this before. from conversations to other webcomic artists, to quite mimicking manga artists fully and try to pull some of yourself into the cartooning, the infamous "Rob Leifield" rants, about how its a stylized form and its nice to see something a little diffrent. Lately there's been a big shift on forums and journal posts talking about how they don't like this or that because they don't look right. I've heard people turned off from stuff like Monster and Planetes because they sway from that BESM style. And in american comics, I hear so much about people really hating the work of people like Bruce Timms, Rob Leifield, Jae Lee, Ashley Woods,David Mack, etc because they sway from convention. And where all stylized art is not my cup of tea. I'm way happier seeing someone working on a style that is thier own instead of drawing from a template from how things are supposed to look.
It comes down a lot to how most people see things however. Visual concepts are composed of icons. You see a pair of eyes and you know this looks like its visual vocabulary. You see a body and this is what its supposed to look like. Now many times we find an example that we feel is the most pretty, or at least the most pure version of this. Usually it comes down to what we see on tv and in media. This is also why we are plagued with young girls wanting to be thin and have big boobs, cause thats what people iconize the female anatomy after and find the most strict icon of this as the most pleasurable to the naked eye. The same thing is found in the icons of art.
When you sit down to read an american comic from Marvel or Dc, you have certain expectation from the comic. Usually this relies on big muscles, square jaws and very clean painted lines. When you read a manga you expect symerical body shapes, big eyes, small mouths and crazy hair. So when something deviates from the norm, sometimes its pleasing to you. it might have thicker lines that are easier to digest or it might have an interesting colouring pattern.. more lifelike what ever.. however sometimes this artwork tends to be jarring with the chartureing or the thinner lines, or the pen work as apposed to brushing or whatever.
So in case your wondering "stylized artwork" is artwork that is changed or breaks from convention. Many artists develop this early on with changes to things they are drawing that they tend to like better and makes more sense to them. Now every artist has thier little quirks. No one sees the world like everyone else. There are of course people that clone someone elses art. But most people have thier identifying marks. Usually it starts out small and evolves into thier "style".
Many times artists will continue to deviate from the look of how real things exist. they begin to draw out of thier mind.. ya know how they imagine things to look verses how they really do look. And in my mind comics should come from the imagination. I don't really want to read a comic or see a piece of art that looks like a photograph. Nor do I want to want to read three comics that look the same. I think that comics for the most part are evolving past the templates. If you look at Manga, more and more artists are going past the big eye small mouth and relying on thier own minds to create something that falls away from the stereotypical japanese cartoonist. Like with manga american comics are starting to do so too. usually when you would see something heavily stylized it was from an indie comic, but since the coming of image, more and more unique and not so kirby-isque styles have come to the bench. to me to evolve as an artform, art has to break convention
.
Course many readers who are use to convention and like it don't really like the change. Personally I could careless if the noses are none existant, or if the torsos are elongated. I would rather see some tripped out Rob Liefield or David Mack work any day than seeing an Alan Davis Clone. I love being able to look at a Jae lee cover in a mass of muscle bound square jawed Spiegel drawings.
Okay enough of my ranting. Writing that much on those things... more than I was planning is enough for me. Guess I'll have to do another of these when I get in the mood again. Plus I really should continue packing. I'm about halfway there now. yay! Its gonna be really wierd to go back to ohio. Not really looking forward to it. but I need to go visit the family cause they are important to me. So it'll be the last time in a while.
I been sketching a lot again lately. taking apart the human body trying to find a good understanding of motion. you'll probably notice in the next few strips of Decypher (after the filler thingy) that I'm playing with some bizare poses again. Also there's a lot of wierd antomy changes. Its all the fault of me doing some new body studies. I'm having a lot of fun with it though. The human body is one of those great objects that always have so much new stuff to learn. finding how everything connects together is always quite a lot of fun. Guess I just like seeing how things are the sum of thier parts or something-- why I love robots so much.
I've also been playing around with a3 paper and drawing with an 0.3 mechanical pencil. it really is giving a lot more room to work on line width and add extra detail and things. I'm still getting a feel for the smaller lead though. But I'm really liking it.
The new Son 'restless moment' is coming along great after some headracking compiling as I realized I built some of the loops wrong. I'm hopefully gonna have the full synth done really soon. Green Arrow: Kingdoms (yeah I'm still working on it) is now up to 1300 words.. this one is gonna be really long. i'm dreading the spell and grammar checking of this mammoth.
Oh right and if you haven't see the decypher update yet, I made a new wallpaper. I think it turned out neat. its based on one of my favorite panels. and because I haven't been presenting any art stuff lately here I added the picture to this update.
I could be doing something productive.