Juliet and Dave, Year 11

Here's a drawing of Juliet and Dave from last year. What's that thing on Juliet's hand? I don't even remember why I put that there. This drawing is starting to look a bit strange to me. I've been drawing these characters on and off for 11 years now, so you think I'd know how to draw them properly. Dave's helmet looks good, though. I tried to get an army jumper like his from Aussie Disposals, but even the large size didn't seem to fit.

Music Video: World Famous Supreme Team Show - "Operaa House" (1991)

Hey, remember this?

I know it's a low-res image, but seeing this on a large screen was incredible, a standout pop-cultural image from the early nineties. (They're all people in coloured costumes, if you can't tell.) It's from a 1991 video by World Famous Supreme Team Show, headed by Malcolm McLaren, who died earlier this month. It was also used in a British Airways commercial. Track down said video and marvel at it, even if you don't like opera/hip-hop fusion.

Music Video: Korn - "Twisted Transistor" (2005)

Last post was about a song I like that was let down by its video; this one is about a song I'm not all that keen on but which has an amazing video. Basically, the four members of Korn are played by rappers Lil' Jon, Xzibit, Snoop Dogg and David Banner. You can tell they had a good time making it, and play their roles really well. In one scene when David's face gets cut during a video shoot, manager Little Sterling Assoff says "He's the only good looking guy in my band, mate!" You get to see the real Korn at the end posing as record label execs, writing off the rappers' efforts.

I haven't included a link to the video – get on Youtube and find it yourself. What am I, your mum?

Day Of Comics

Today I attended a day of panel discussions at the Wheeler Centre, as part of their 'Day Of Comics' at the 3-day event Drawing Out, Drawing In. Here are the main points I learned in each of the five one-hour sessions.

1. Origin Stories: The status of graphic novels is gradually rising in the public consciousness. The literary journal McSweeney's recently published some comics, and there was huge publicity for Nicki Greenberg's The Great Gatsby adaptation. When it was asked what determines if a graphic novel is cool, one reply was film adaptations – there is an assumption that real success only comes when a graphic novel is made into a film and is therefore validated. It's also easy because since the film is based on a comic, the storyboards are already done. Sin City is an example of a successful one, as the film kept the comic's aesthetic. When the graphic novel's creators are involved, the film works because the source material is referred to, and is intended to warrant multiple viewings.

2. Comics Saved The World: Leading graphic novellist Shaun Tan said "My background is as a painter. I'm not gonna save anybody with a landscape, so I'm not gonna do it with a picture book or graphic novel, either." He also said that he only ever wrote one book for children. "It was called The Playground, it got remaindered as soon as it came out. It was about undead kids who play on playgrounds at night. Well, no one else is using them!"

When The Age cartoonist Andrew Weldon said that political cartoons only last for a day, longtime graphic novellist Bruce Mutard said, "If you're gonna invest 2-3 years of your life in a great big fat-arse graphic novel, you want it to last more than a day." He also said "You have to have your own world view. You feed aspects of yourself, even contrary aspects, into your various characters. It helps you humanize the characters and it touches other people."

Cartoonist and publisher Bernard Caleo said it was great that hardly anyone reads graphic novels because it means that their authors are free to do whatever they want with them. "They're under the radar, but not subversive, because it sounds like a political intention," said Shaun Tan. Andrew Weldon said he used to revel in shock value early on, like for his book title I'm Sorry Little Man, I Thought You Were A Hand Puppet. "It's just on this side of the line," he said. Bernard pointed out the words at the end of one of Andrew's cartoons, which were "May as well give it a go. Why not? Can't hurt." Andrew replied, "That's sort of like my entire ethos."

The subject of graphic storytelling in schools was touched on. A Year 11 teacher said he got his students to lead a discussion about Art Spiegelman's Maus. Bernard ended the panel by saying "Please thank Jesus Christ, Karl Marx, and Albert Einstein, and I've been your host Adolf Hitler!" because pictures of those same four people had been shown on the projection screen by mistake.

3. That's Not A Graphic Novel: Oslo Davis, who does the Overheard strip in The Sunday Age was in this one, as was 'Chewie' Chan, who did awesome storyboards for the films Superman Returns and Happy Feet. When someone asked if anything they've drawn is too personal to show, Andrew Weldon replied "Yeah, but why are we gonna tell you now?"

4. Publish Or Perish: If you're running an online comic, you have to show that you have a huge archive, and present a complete body of work. New Zealander cartoonist Dylan Horrocks said "There are no 'must's or 'should's when it comes to art. If it works for you, it works." Bernard Caleo asked "What are comics good for? There's so much bloody art in the world, we're drowning in art!"

5. The Future Of The Graphic Novel: There was a lot of joking around in this one because we were meant to imagine it was the year 2050 (kind of funny, since we will all be dead by then) and predict coming trends, as well as poking fun at all the stuff that was popular in 2010. I've been using the term 'graphic novel' as it seems to be the one most people use. 'Comic' has connotations of being funny and for a younger audience, so others prefer to say 'hybrid novel' or 'sequential art'. I prefer 'image dominated stories incorporating text in a style imitating that of ancient Egyptian etchings' myself. Anyway, Erica Wagner, publisher at Allen & Unwin, said that she thinks people reluctant to read graphic novels vs. people who aren't, is like the whole PC vs. Mac thing. Which are you, fanboy?

Cartoon by Dan Piraro

This is one of those cartoons that has been circulating on the internet along with several other single-panels of the same theme. I like this one not for the joke but for the way Piraro has drawn the city buildings in the background.

ROFL

Luckily I was waiting at a traffic light so I could get this shot:

Because there's just something about seeing $500 per year personalized licence plates on a clapped-out Nissan Pintara being driven by a P-plater along Warrigal Rd in Oakleigh that makes you wanna ROFL.

Storefront Bigscreen

While I was on holiday in Malaysia a few months ago, I noticed something unusual. Every evening, a crowd of twenty or so men would gather around the entrance of an electrical store near the hotel where I was staying and watch TV. There were at least ten TVs at the front of that store, all tuned to different channels. It took a few days of passing by these guys before I realized it was the TV showing American wrestling that they were staring at.

Of course, the TV set in question wasn't all that big, which gave me an idea.

Wouldn't it be great if, to cater to this group of idlers, the store owner wired up several TV sets in grid formation to make one large mega-screen? In case this might be hard to visualize, I took 13 seconds to do a quick Photoshop hashout:

As you can see, the TVs are in a 4x3 grid for a 4:3 ratio, but it could be anything you like. Except 1.33:1, obviously.

Street Maya

A good way to improve realism in character design is to observe real people, and if you can get away with sketching people in the street, then do it. I spent a while seeing the locals in the Queen St Mall during a trip to Brisbane in April 2009.

The drawing of Maya here is based on this girl I saw loitering in the entrance to JB Hi-Fi one evening. I had never seen anyone in Melbourne dressed like that, so it stands out to me – as a mere tourist – as a uniquely Brisbane look.

Antiques Roadshow - Modem

This valuable antique is a 28k modem, given regular use in the days of dial-up internet but in near mint condition. Back in 2000, it took about 10 minutes to download an mp3 file. By contrast, it took 1 hour, 14 minutes to load a 3 minute video on Youtube this morning via 'broadband'. Perhaps the state government could use its surplus cash to improve our mediocre broadband network (and hospitals), instead of blowing it all on lame car races.

Just a thought.

More Juliet

Juliet Prime III

Even though it's crawling along at snail's pace, writing for the third Juliet Prime graphic novel – also titled Juliet Prime like the first two – is progressing. One of the plot points that will be featured in this story, and which was never mentioned in the first two comics, is that Juliet and Dave are time-travellers who jumped forward 800 years from the year 1199. (This is why Juliet uses a knife instead of a gun, because she's never seen guns before.)

Don't ask me how they got a time machine. This is cyberpunkscifidrama, and I'll find a way to work it into the story.

Here is a piece of art I did for the 10th anniversary of Prime in April 2009. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that the backdrop is once again Heffernan Lane in Melbourne. (See my post about Erica from two days ago.) It's one of the more photogenic inner city alleyways, with the rear entrances of restaurants, old-fangled architecture, and dumpsters awaiting collection. I recommend you drop by and see it if you ever come to Melbourne.

Note that it may not look as enticing as the below image.

Airbury Panels – Bear Joke

I was a bit annoyed the other day when a talkback caller on some naff AM radio show described a certain TV personality as a 'genius'. How can you be called a genius just by reading corny jokes off an autocue? Then I read about some overrated fashion model also being labelled a 'genius'. I guess it takes a sky-high IQ to stand around in front of a camera looking drugged. Well, if everyone's bandying the word 'genius' around at the drop of a hat, then I may as well too.

This is genius:

If you don't know what that is, tough. Now, here's another finished panel from an upcoming Airbury Academy story for 2010, titled Cologne.

This actually refers to a real-life story, where a teddy bear kept getting stuffed into the bag of a guy in my graphic design class, who later took revenge by writing a fake love letter and putting it into the bag of the person he thought was responsible (and who actually wasn't, as it turned out). Here we see Jezebel seeing the bear for the first time.

This joke probably wouldn't have worked with any other character. Jezebel then writes her fake love letter, even saying "When will you learn" as she writes it, as the guy in my class did. In the whole series so far none of her schemes have ever worked out, so I let her have this small one. This isn't one of the best drawings of Jezebel, so I'll show you more of her later.

Airbury Panels – Erica

A couple of raw panels from 2009's Volume II of my graphic novel series, Airbury Academy, featuring Erica in all her green-haired glory. The one above is from the opening story titled The Search For Room 200. Here Erica shows Psyche, who has somehow never seen a coin before, how to use one to operate a vending machine. In the final version, the speech balloons cover up some of the detail. (Yes, the blue packets at the top say 'Toasted Spleen'.)

Below is a panel from the sixth and final story Evenfall, showing the four main characters in the abandoned building, which uses photos of an actual wall for a good deal of the backdrops. If you live in Melbourne, you can see this wall for yourself. It's in Heffernan Lane near the city centre, and as far as I know, the sprayed-on 'Commit No Nuisance' is still there.

I began working on the Airbury series in November 2006 using some of the characters I had already created. Over time, Erica went from being a ridiculously minor character to one of the main ones (which is why she features in the header of this blog). As a comparison, I thought I'd also post the very first drawing of Erica – a pencil sketch from 2004.