Technique Tuesday March 31: Big Cats!

Today, a Few Tips On Drawing Big Cats
Courtesy Of  TamberElla

Technique Tuesday March 24: Setting the Mood

Today, the Art of Setting the Mood. Courtesy of TamberElla and Carey Jolliffe

Backstage Pass March: Alakotila

Here's Your Pass! Slip Behind The Curtain Today And Meet

Alakotila

So Alakotila, Tell Us About Yourself? 

I’ve been making webcomics on and off since 2003, but university stalled my first webcomic. I picked up with a new comic in 2011 and have been going strong since! I have a degree in Fashion Design, which might explain my interest in character costuming… I find all kinds of clothing fun and soothing to draw, and lately I find the same joy in drawing landscapes.

Main Projects:

Spidersilk: spidersilkcomic.com

Sunlit Silence: https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/sunlit-silence/list?title_no=213703

Patreon: patreon.com/alakotila
This includes early updates and exclusive content, for example, monthly short stories or sketches.

Fell Swoop — recently completed: https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/fell-swoop/list?title_no=129950

Hobbies, obsessions, and guilty pleasures: 

Courtesy Of  Yaoyao Ma Van As

Well, a lot of my work is personal work so I will have to include drawing here! But also, I enjoy dance, playing games, being outside, and hugging my cat. Taking a walk in the woods always really inspires me to get to work on illustrations and comics. Somehow it all feeds back into comics!

Early Experience and telling stories:

My mother read a lot of comics. Archie Comics, Casper, Wendy, Hot Stuff — things like that. Comics in newspapers and magazines, too. It very quickly just seemed like a normal way to consume stories and as a way for me to express my own. One of my first comics was meant to help me overcome my fear of the flu shot, but… didn’t really work… Still, I kept making stories of all kinds.

I was introduced to manga as a junior high school student. Comics like Ranma 1/2 and Peach Girl were formative. A friend introduced me to webcomics in my late teens, which was also eye-opening, and after nearly a year of him swearing up and down it would be great and that I should launch my own, I did. While that story eventually petered out, what I learned from it went into Spidersilk, which is still going strong!

I also enjoy writing (prose), but I think I love comics a little bit more. I love drawing my characters. I love working out the panels, the pacing, angles to best tell their stories… I just love everything about making comics.

What Media Do You Use To Produce Your Work?

Right now I’m using Clip Studio Paint (CSP) and an Intuos Pro tablet to create everything. Spidersilk is my first digital comic, and had I switched pretty much out of necessity (late 2011), but I’m really happy with how I’ve grown as a digital artist. I use Clip Studio, Photoshop, and InDesign to prepare PDFs for print. I also keep a sketchbook, of course, to throw random notes, scripts, and scribbles into as I’m thinking about particular storylines or just need to work out costumes.

Can You Tell Us About Your Typical Working Day?

I try to look at weeks instead of days since I have so many jobs that pop up one day a week, three days a week, etc. My time is pretty much split evenly between personal comic work (preparing for print, making new content, etc); freelance work; and a day job. When there’s not a ton of snow on the ground I try to get out and hike once a week as well. Other than that, I make sure to take time off and play games, read things, watch things… It’s important to recharge!

What Do You Find Most Difficult In Your Work? 

Marketing! There is a lot of advice out there (i.e. “you must table at cons”) and it just takes time to sort out what works for you, your work, and your situation (finances, health, location, etc)… and what doesn’t. I’ve gotten better at it over the years, but it still often feels like yelling into a void.

Can You Tell Us About Your Script Process? 

It’s very different comic to comic.

Fell Swoop was a stand-alone I wanted to complete in a certain amount of time, so I hammered most of it out early on with the help of a friend who is skilled at story development editing. There are some deviations from the script near the end, but I like to leave room for those kinds of changes to happen in my work — sometimes things just don’t really click until I’m pencilling, no matter which comic I am working on.

Spidersilk also has a script, but the nature of longer webcomics means my writing is always getting better, and I am always nudging things around, removing/ adding chapters, and editing as I go. I edit things out when I realize it was lazy writing, or just unnecessary, and in some cases, insensitive. I edit pretty heavily the next four or five chapters, or more if it’s a continuous arc, and then smooth out the remaining chapters when I hit chapter breaks. It’s not the same script I completed seven or so years ago, but the ending is pretty much unchanged. I know where it goes, just the journey has changed a bit… for the better.

Sunlit Silence is my latest, launched just over half of a year ago. It’s a little meandering, a bit of flying by the seat of my pants. It’s a gentle, soft exploration adventure comic, so I think that suits it. It does have a script, but it’s not nearly as strict as my other comics.

What Sort Of Buffer Do You Like To Keep? 

I have never really been good at this, mainly because of how long it used to take me to do a single page. My free time was barely enough for it. Somewhere in the last year and a half or two I have become much quicker — I think this is from my work on Fell Swoop — as such, I have been building a buffer for Spidersilk and it feels pretty good.

What Question Do You Wish People Would Stop Asking?

I can’t think of anything specific at the moment…

What Would You Go Back And Tell Yourself If You Could? 

Yes, take that advice to make a short story first. Learn from it, and make another. And another.

I would also say to focus more on learning and experimenting (within reason! A comic needs to be consistent in ways) and less on perfection. If you approach a comic thinking about how much you are going to learn rather than trying to make every page perfect, you will grow so much, stress less, and may hit nearly perfect more than you expected.

Don’t wait until you feel you’re ready to draw comics in general or a specific kind of comic, or you will never be ready. Yes, prepare, but at some point jump in… You learn as you go!

What Message Do You Hope Your Readers Take Away From Your Work? 

I think all of my work deals with caring for other people and the environment, but I think I could be a bit more clear in stating that now that I think about it…

It’s also important to me to include a majority LGBTQA+ cast. I hope it is comforting for queer and/or trans readers to see worlds like this, with heroes and adventure and mystery and magic, full of characters they might identify with. And for those who are not LGBTQA+, I hope my work can offer looks at these characters outside of what we struggle with in reality — we are more than our pain. I also hope they will enjoy the ride, too.

When someone tells me my work helped them get through something tough, helped them understand themselves better, or that an illustration feels like a hug, I just feel so grateful that the energy I’m putting into my work is coming through. I have focused on making warm, comforting work in the past couple of years, and I’m glad to see it received that way. If it helps someone else along the way, that’s wonderful!

What Keeps You Telling Your Story? 

Something that I do to pace myself on long stories is add another project. Having a smaller project I run alongside it helps me keep the energy up for it. I also take breaks between chapters now, where I fiddle around with the script and do some concept art and get excited for the next chapter. The last break was particularly fun because I got to draw a lot of the Spidersilk crew in fancy ball costumes!

I learn from all those projects and bound from item to item with renewed energy and new skills. Spidersilk has been a constant, but I have finished several smaller-scale projects alongside it, from an ebook, to games, to coloring books, to another comic. On the one hand, I wonder if Spidersilk would get done faster if I focused solely on it, but the truth is I know I’d burn out. What keeps it going is this variety.

Now that it’s been going for so long, knowing there are people waiting for this story and love the characters gives me a lot of energy — that also helps me keep moving forward on this long story!

Technique Tuesday March 17: Fabric Draping

Today, Draping Fabric With the Etherington Brothers

Sunday Revue March 15: Is'nana the Were-Spider

Stuck At Home? No Trouble!

Take A Journey Into The Fantastic With

Reaching back into African legend to tell a powerful story, this series revolves around Is'nana, the oddest of Anansi's brood of trickster children. When Anansi fails to come home to the Mother Kingdom of the Animal People, it is Is'nana who chooses to go searching for his beloved and infuriating father. The adventures and the horrors he finds along the way are laid out in these tales. 

(please note: screen captures were used in this review. The blurriness of the art is the fault of my system, not the artists. Their work is beautiful in original)

This work is the creation of a team: 

Written & Created by Greg Anderson Elysée

Art by Walter Ostlie & Lee Milewski

Letters by Joshua Cozine

Cover by Walt Msonza Barna

It can be found at this link.

The Rating

A powerful and emotionally complex exploration of a different kind of hero. 

The Raves

This story is a wonderful contemporary take on ancient legend, following in the tradition of Sandman and other works of Gamian's. But in place of the wistful and beautiful danger inherent in most of Gamian's pieces, this has the laughing and deadly playfulness of Anansi Boys. There's a touch of horror.

A good bit of blood and gore, a bit of terror.

 And yet, in the heart of it all, there is a majestic sense of power. A focus on the power of familial love. A great sense of fun. And an amazing depth of compassion. Throughout his adventures, Is'nana shows the strength of his soul in his compassion and his care for all creatures, even those who meant him harm. He is the quintessential warrior: out to protect, not to do violence.

But he is most definitely Anansi's son, and his clever, tricksome nature is a constant delight. He's a little gentler and more polite than his dad, but he's exactly as witty. His cheerful banter leavens a story that easily could have been a true horror. And it is wonderful to read.

The art seamlessly shifts between styles, keeping the bone-deep authenticity of the legends while drawing on everything from Golden Age pulp to, at one very weird point, Picasso-esque surrealism to create the shifting boundary between a spirit realm and what we generally call the real world. It's a powerful art style, loose without being sloppy and clever in its use of color and line as well as negative space.

 This is what Spiderman could have been if it hadn't stuck with an emo white kid. These stories draw on old sources, and in it they gain a depth that nothing from the Big Two can ever quite match. 

It also allows for the best mythology in-jokes between characters like Papa Legba and Anansi. 

Most of all, it repeatedly and effectively showed the power of love between friends, between family, and between people in a community. It's a story that reminds us a hero can be compassionate, and caring, without losing anything. In the case of Is'nana, his compassion is one of his strengths. And can I say how refreshing it is to see a loving and supportive family in a comic? Many thanks to the creators for skipping the Tragic Back Story (TM) and going with something much better: a father and son who love each other even when they get on one another's nerves.

The Razzes

My only comment is that I'd like to see a little more work in the animals showcased in the work. The human-animal hybrids have a lively and vibrant look to them, but a lot of the true animal forms look a little static and stiff. Slightly larger speech bubbles might have been nice as well; there was a lot of enlarging pages on Comixology.

The Revue

A powerful and wonderful contemporary take on ancient myth. If you're at home, this is well worth a read! 

Monthly Matinee March: The Necessity Of Another Side

Come One, Come All, Come See The Show!

Today, Today The Redoutable , The Renowned Yasmine Pirouz Graces The Stage With A Few Words On Seeing From Another Perspective.

What is the necessity of considering women’s perspectives, as men share their perspectives about women in creating comics for other men and boys? About two months ago, a couple of things happened in synchronicity, leading me to ask this question.

First, in digging through my stores of dozens of comic books (so I could find my copy of The Walking Dead to give to a dear friend of mine, as I am NOT a zombie fan where he is)— my friend influenced me to actually take some time to read through all the comics in my possession that I had not read before.

Not my Cardcaptor Sakura, Ranma ½, and Steven Universe, nor my Runaways and my Squirrel Girl, but namely the ones my brother had previously given me from HIS stores. So I made stacks of "neat" piles in my room, and pulled out a random selection of single paperback issues that just so happened be from each of the past 4 decades of the 80s, 90s, 2000s, and 2010s--- i.e. within contemporary adult male readers’ age groups today.

And I started to read the following issues:

Hercules: Prince of Power #1(March 1983)

Cage: A Hero for Hire Who’s Working Overtime Volume 1 #2 (May 1992)

The Adventures of Superman #11 (June 1993)

StormWatch #3 (July 1993)

Gambit Volume 1 #4 (March 1994)

Black Panther: Black and White #54 (April 2003)

Constantine: The New 52 #13 (June 2014)

Most notably, all of these comics share certain attributes in common:

1. They are action-hero comics whose target audiences are straight school-aged boys to young adult men;

2. All of them are written and drawn by men, with women making up, on average, one member of the overall production team as either a colorist or editor (i.e. women did not have a role in creating the narrative portion of these stories), and;

3. They are all published by the three largest (and thus most influential) comic publishers in the United States: DC, Marvel, and Image Comics.

And then, while in the process of reading these issues over the next couple of days, I equally saw a very… interesting… live stream video that appeared at the top of my list of YouTube video recommendations: "What Do Women Look For In A Man?" This is very important, but I'll get to why in a sec.

Each of these comic issues features women in very distinct, and dare I say predictable ways... sadly, surprising to me for how little they change over the years up to this most recent decade.

If you haven't already, NOW is where I suggest you look at my video above, as it describes in depth just how these comics portray women overall.

... Seen the video? Cool!!! Please read on.

Yet, beyond the "well-known" kinds of portrayals of women in media for men… where for instance, in ALL of these comics, the only subject women talk about are other men (none of these past the Bechdel test), or where diversity in identity only becomes more prominent in the most recent issues...

...it's the aspect of what men show that they want from women, over the course of these issues' timeline, that I see is exceptionally intriguing--- both what is overtly portrayed, and what is subtly portrayed. Interestingly, each comic shows an aspect of women, traditionally feminine ideals, and/or community and empathy that somehow highlight a LACK that the main male characters see in themselves. The male characters want these traits, and/or rely upon them to survive, even IN the limited and objectifying scopes that women are portrayed.

In Hercules, Tyne Pryntess, Hercules's main love interest in the story, is described as “an empath… beings who can sense emotions, that sort of thing”, and she shocks Hercules at how easily she can calm his violent wild horses when he parks them at her customs check. At the end of the issue, Hercules turns to her in repentance, wanting her help and affection despite chasing after a different woman right in front of her.

In Cage, teenage boy Troop describes how the feminine aspect of community (versus the traditionally strong masculine aspect of “going it alone”) helped his role model rapper M.C. Large shift from street villain to respectable artist with a channel for his anger... and indeed influenced him positively as well--- noting that "there's only so much you can take alone.”

In Stormhawks, the male hero Winter notes that “one man can make all the difference” in trying to fight the attacking villain…but can only break free from his shackles when his two female teammates Diva and Fahrenheit release and power him up. He begs them not to stop. And in spite of Gambit proclaiming that as a thief, he can never have loyalties, love, or a dream of matrimony, the titular issue ends describing him as still “searching for the love he can never have.”

In Superman, as Jonathan Kent searches for the soul of Clark in the afterlife, he powers through amnesia, memories of war, and demons while he is alone, where it’s only with the help of the powerful female cosmic being Kismet and her intuitive knowledge that Kent heads in the right direction and remembers that he is indeed looking for his lost adoptive son.

And in Black Panther and Constantine alike, both of the female leads act as catalysts for the titular heroes to rise above their shame AROUND how they have treated women… either by accepting responsibility for the child they’ve fathered by their girlfriend (Black Panther) no matter the reluctance, or to literally “be a better person”, via a magic spell Zatana casts on Constantine.

So yes, from a negative standpoint, where there are no other women included in the creative process of describing women in these comics, I see that in this small yet relevant sample, men have written and drawn women as narrow vehicles for the main male characters to grapple with their emotions at best, and as sex objects at worst. But at the same time, I see that each of these men writes equally about how the male characters rely upon women and traditional aspects of femininity to help them out of their painful circumstances. And indeed, in all of the comics where relationships show up as a theme, all of the male heroes profess a desire TO connect with the main women in each comic.

Bringing me to the YouTube video I mention above: “What Do Women Look For In A Man?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCzKM1GjAM8

I’ll tell you right now, everyone, that while I could not stomach watching this entire video BECAUSE of the one-sided (and frankly incorrect) statements I saw these men making, you are more than welcome to watch the whole thing and inform me if there’s some important stuff that I missed. Personally, I didn’t see that this platform is where I could make the biggest difference in trying to change anybody’s mind about anything.

Just the same, I did dare to participate in the live chat, where you can see my comments @ 25:59- 28:45, to point out the obvious I couldn’t ignore:

That if this group of men wants a more comprehensive idea of what women want from men, in order TO connect with them, they’d do well to actually include women in their conversation--- for everyone to hear each other. And then two commenters made remarks to me that confuse me to this day:

Commenter one: “Fishermen don't listen to fish talk about how to catch fish”…

Me: “I think that’s a shame, because fish could tell you what they actually go for.”

Commenter two: “Would you tell a cannibal how to catch and eat you?”

Me: “If you’re saying that getting eaten by a cannibal is how women should view men going after them, then I think that’s problematic for everyone involved.”

And then I left. The greatest irony to me in all of this is this contradiction--- where in this instance, straight cisgender men are describing how they want to connect with women in kind, but from a perspective that does not directly ask other women what they have to say for themselves. Only… assumes, and judges.

Hence the primary reason I see that it is a necessity for men to include women in the process of making comics featuring women for other men and boys, is not only to teach future generations of men how to see other women, but equally, to achieve the connection with women that they tend to want themselves. BY understanding and listening to them, instead of considering and portraying women in such ways that no real woman would behave, want to be seen, or treated. Where we form our ideas of each other is through media and the stories we hear, after all--- and with comics as a VERY popular media source these days, it seems to me this is a great place to start.

Which… THANKFUL disclaimer: I see that there exists a wider scope of men creating comics today with more realistic portrayals of women as people, and of realistic people overall existing in varieties of ability, gender, sexuality, race, class, etc--- such AS a few of my favorites written by straight, white cisgender men that I highly recommend:

Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddell (www.gunnerkrigg.com)

Problem Child by Brian Ellis (www.problemchildcomic.com)

Seconds by Bryan Lee O'Malley (not a webcomic but a graphic novel detailing a young female chef’s desire to have career autonomy before attaching herself to anyone else, and the choices she makes in grappling with this.)

While these comics are not geared specifically to men and boys as an audience, and are not mainstream-published, they still are an absolute positive in the discourse that IS shifting in how men view women. And for their independent channels, each author works with other women and/or draws feedback from online communities that are HIGHLY diverse in their viewpoints.

When we can shift overall and feature women's perspectives in mainstream comics specifically for men and boys as well, I think, is where we’ll start to see greater connection return for everybody. And I’m happy to do my part as a fellow storyteller to help usher this empathy along the way.

To check out  two-sided comic that is for all genders ages 12 and up, about linking relationships between elemental people a "feminine" fantasy world, and artists in the more “masculine” real world we live in, go to www.toruslink.com and start with Volume 1. And check out my video series “Torus Link: Linking Sides” @ www.youtube.com/toruslink, to see how empathetic parallels indeed exist between us all in real life.

Technique Tuesday March 10: Fantasy Character Design Tip

Today, Tips On Designing Non-Human Character Ears, Courtesy Of Foof