Bearmageddon

Well I just need to blanket-thank all the kind responses to my last blog.  The comments here, the e-mails I received.  Thanks so much.

Check this out.  Nicole, a fan of the comic, sent me this great picture she drew…

 

Hopefully whatever mad science is making these bears transform is not reading this blog and getting any ideas.

How about a Q&A?  This question comes from Dylan:

I am currently working on getting about 20-25 pages of a comic done before I release it on the web.  Since this is my first serious dive into full-fledged sequential art, I’ve discovered that I’m pretty much improving and learning something new with every page.  This is great and all, but I’m afraid that slight inconsistencies and changes with the “look” of each character will be distracting.  I’m doing all of the art by hand, no computers, but do you think it would be worthwhile to go back and edit the early pages in Photoshop to make everything really clean and consistent?  Because, like Bearmageddon, I’d like to eventually publish the work as a graphic novel.  Thanks for your time, and thanks for giving us the beautiful art in Bearmageddon!

I swear I have some memory of answering this already, but I went through the backlog and couldn’t find it.  It’s possible I read it, imagined the answer, but never actually typed it.  That is about where my brain has been lately.

I think it is just about inevitable that, on your first book, your character and style will evolve throughout the book.  The only way you can really avoid it to some extent is to draw your main characters at every angle and facial expression you can.  Fill a sketch book with practice.  But still, something happens when you draw a comic… drawing a comic really works out the kinks in your style and your skills because it takes you out of the mindset of drawing a cool picture and puts you into a new mindset of telling stories.  In this new mindset, you start drawing things you simply wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.  You put your character in the middle of a certain situation and suddenly realize you did not design his/her face to look disgusted or ashamed.  You simply hadn’t thought about what that would look like until you got to that point in the comic, and now they just look weird.

On top of that, your style will evolve.  Some people get their style fast, some slow.  But most people  I know, if they draw a lot of comics, they find their style, but you can see it evolving in their early work.  Just go back to the beginning of Penny Arcade or Questionable Content and watch how the art finds itself.  Even Calvin & Hobbes.  You read the early strips and Watterson had not yet found the style he later established.

So I tell you that not to discourage you, but to say… it happened to Watterson, and look at him.  It happened to me big time on my first self-written graphic novel the Weevil, and I had drawn a couple hundred pages before that.  It took me really long because for a long time I could not decided if I wanted to draw realistic Jim Lee style comics, or cartoony Doug TenNapel style comics.  I wanted the prestige of the Jim Lee technical mastery, but I wanted the fluidity and fun of TenNapel.  When I did Chumble Spuzz, I went cartoony because I wanted to just get it done, and realized my comfort and my style were much more in that arena, so I stuck there, but when opportune moments arise, I still work on my more technical/realistic style.  As you can see, my two sides are coming out in Bearmageddon… I chose to make the world more cartoony and the bears more real.  I don’t know exactly why I did that except that on paper (or screen anyway) I find it very appealing.

When  I drew the Weevil, which was 100 pages, my art had really changed over the course of the book.  I HATED the first 20 or so pages.  I asked Doug T if I should go back and redraw or edit some of those panels and he said “nah.  Just get on to your next book”.  But, being the stubborn perfectionist I am, I went back and redrew a bunch of stuff.  If I could do it all again, I would not have wasted my time.  Doug, as usual, was right.  So, I can tell you, as Doug told me, no… just git’er done.  But if you will lose sleep over it, fine, edit only the stuff that REALLY gets under your skin… but don’t let it turn into a viscous cycle where you just keep changing and fixing and redrawing and the book never gets done. Over-working is deadly in all forms of art, and usually no one notices it but you.

Hopefully some of that helps.  I know, for your first graphic novel you really want to feel like it is perfect before you print it, but no one I know who publishes comics on a regular basis thinks what they did was perfect.  Artists who get work done and pump out new books simply look forward to the next project because they know they will get better and get another chance at hitting the mark.  Don’t just be passionate about the book you are working on right now.  Be passionate about all the books you will do once you get that sucker done!

Have a question?  Send it to me (see where it says CONTACT up there?).  Also, some of you have been very complementary of my blogs.  I started a personal Tumblr blog called Art & Morality.  It is going to be a general blog about just… stuff I think about, and those things often fall into one of the two categories.  So if you are interested to read more of this kind of rambling that is not strictly related to Bearmageddon, Axe Cop or drawing comics, check it out.

Also, thanks to everyone who has donated!  Please, if you are reading this and enjoy this comic, take a second to share it on Facebook or Twitter or something.  My ad revenue has been way down the last week, I’m not sure why.  The traffic has been lower but not proportionally by any means.  All shares are highly appreciated.

Hey don’t forget to come see me at Long Beach Comic Con this weekend!  Thanks for reading, see you next week!

 

Ethan