John Ralston, an artist from Kansas, is blogging a year of his life in comic strip form. It's a great concept and I like what he's done so far. It's a true slice-of-life webcomic. Each strip captures tiny moments from his day - trying to fix frozen pipes, taking the dog for a walk in the snow, or playing guitar for his cats. It's hand-drawn and inked, which gives the strip an accessible, everyday quality. When there's humor, it's self-deprecating or found in the small things.
For the most part, the strip has been down-to-earth and good-natured, but on rare occasions, Ralston has adopted a harsher tone, like in his February 19th strip titled "Webcomic Product". If you didn't follow the link, here's the text...
Panel 1: Hey, look it me! I'm an inernet cartoonist! I have a webcomic!
Panel 2: You know what? This would be even easier if I just made one drawing and pasted it over and over.
Panel 3: It would be even easier just to type this. Why the hell not? Everyone likes to read a font that's easy on the eye, and since this is just a comic strip, it doesn't matter anyway, right?
Panel 4: I really fucking hate it when people make comics like this.
It's a scathing attack by an artist railing against what he sees as webcomic cheating. And the views he expresses are likely shared by a majority of cartoonists and serious webcomic artists.
Because of the nature of my create-a-thing-a-day project, his remarks affected me deeply. They cut right to the heart of the insecurities I have about my strip. His rant made me wonder if I've been cheating or if others would accuse me of cheating.
It raised a number of questions for me, but I want to try to address three in particular:- Am I cheating if I illustrate my strip with photographs instead of drawings?
- Am I cheating if I reuse a photograph?
- Am I cheating if I use a program like Comic Life to create my strip?
1. While it's easier to produce a photograph than a drawing, I would argue that photography isn't cheating, but only if one avoids mindless pointing and shooting. If one takes the time to construct the model, adjust the set and characters for each shot, adjust the lighting, and consider different camera angles, then photography is just as good as drawing.
2. Reusing a photograph due to laziness - being unwilling to rebuild a model, change the pose of a figure, or think creatively about a shot - is cheating, but I would say reusing a photograph purposely for a particular effect isn't cheating. Overall, I've tried to use a different photograph for each panel. I've slipped up two or three times, but on the whole, I try to avoid reusing photos whenever I can.
3. With Comic Life, anybody can make a webcomic. It's true. Even I can do it. And when anybody can make a comic strip, the world is going to see a flood of bad comic strips (along with a handful of good ones if it's lucky).
Comic Life removes the barrier that previously prevented the proliferation of bad webcomics. It has done for comics what digital cameras did for photography and blogs did for writing. It means there's a lot more bad stuff to sift through to find the good stuff. At the same time, though, just because one uses Comic Life doesn't mean it's cheating or the resulting comic strip is automatically bad.
To me, the program is an inexpensive formatting tool that helps me with panels and speech bubbles, but that's pretty much it. I still have to work hard to create the content. The program gives me more time to work on that, which I suppose some would consider cheating. Then again, serious webcomic artists have likely invested in drawing tablets and Adobe Photoshop where they can use handy templates, layers, and preset actions.
The Ralston phrase that stands out most in my mind is "this is just a comic strip, it doesn't matter anyway". Comic strips have an inherent informality about them. It's part of their appeal. But while a comic strip or webcomic should be light reading for the audience, it shouldn't be treated lightly by the creator.
As with anything worth creating, craftsmanship matters. For a webcomic, that means focusing on writing (whether it be story lines or punch lines) and illustrating (whether it be drawings or photographs). And while I can't prevent others from accusing me of cheating, I can try my best to set high standards and attempt to meet them with each comic strip I create.
4 Comments
Interesting...
I mean, I'm pretty diehard on this. I draw everything by hand (including lettering), even if the same cell appears twice, I re-draw it. Sure it takes time, but all of my strips exist as real objects in the real world and leaving them half-finished with a note to 'photocopy last frame' would be wrong.
That said, I don't demand such zeal from other webcomics. So long as what you do works, you should have no shame in doing it.
Bad webcomics are bad because they are, not because of how they are drawn/lettered.
Hi, David. Thanks for your kind and thoughtful words about my little comic.
I don't know if "cheating" is the word I'd use to describe the feelings I was trying to get across in that comic. I use Photoshop to color my comics, and I clean them and re-order them extensively on the computer, so I'm not opposed to using technology to improve something, or to make the creation of a thing easier.
My objection is mostly aesthetic. I find the regularity and perfection of typed comic book fonts phony-looking; I associate them with comics that are mostly about words--comics that have pictures just to trick the reading into not realizing that they're reading some guy's rant about Taco Bell.
If you pick up a contemporary comic book, it's virtually impossible to find one where the lettering has been done by hand. Marvel and DC do this because it's cheaper, I'm sure. People do it in their webcomics because they have to crank out product that they're not getting paid for, and--I'll bet--they hate doing the lettering, just like I hate doing it.
That's the same reason many webcomic artists use clip art, or draw a couple of panels and then just copy and paste their way through their comic, day after day.
It looks to me like you think carefully in composing the photographed panels for your comic. I don't know if you can draw, but if you can, I encourage you to make the same comic twice--once where you've drawn and lettered every single panel (especially if each panel is identical), and one where the panels are pasted in and lettered on Comic Life. You'll be able to see the difference, even though the difference is subtle. Christ, do I sound old!
Yes, writing it out cramps your hand, and yes, the damn balloons are a pain in the ass to draw (you'll note the variety of word balloon styles in my own comic, where I've attempted to find ways around this) but in the end, the look of the entire page matters as much as each panel does. And hand-lettered, hand-drawn word balloons add to that look in a way that a "comic book font" does not.
Adam:
"... my strips exist as real objects in the real world and leaving them half-finished... would be wrong."
I think this speaks to the integrity of the art you're creating. If the copy-and-paste webcomic artists were to think of and treat their strips as real objects in the real world, instead of clip art with words, and if they had any pride in what they were creating, I'm guessing they would be more inclined to change their ways.
John:
I think I understand what you're saying. You object to those who sugarcoat their words with clip art so readers will swallow them and you object to those who sacrifice the integrity of their artwork (by copying and pasting panels) or their own personal touches (by using impeccable, yet impersonal fonts) in order to produce their "art" faster or cheaper. In either case, the art takes a backseat to some other motive.
Perhaps cheating isn't the right word, but it seems like cheating to me - either by cheating the audience by deceiving them and giving them a partially recycled product ("This strip contains 50% reused material") or by cheating the artist by draining the uniqueness from his or her artwork.
As you've seen, I'm taking your suggestion and creating a strip using both methods. My first effort is awful, but I didn't want to claim I understood your point without actually going through the process and doing the work.
There is something about drawing and lettering each panel that brings one closer to the art. In turn, it allows the reader a greater connection with the artist. When comic book or webcomic artists type or copy-and-paste, they create a gap or a layer of artificiality and weaken the connection. Instead of feeling a connection with the artist, the reader feels like he or she is connecting with a machine.
I agree heartily with Adam York above that the real-world physical object is important. Comics are something that I can do anywhere, any time, as long as I have a pen or pencil and some paper. The idea that I would need a program to do them is distressing to me, especially since my computer died last night and I find myself suddenly without Photoshop. I've become so dependent!
I'm looking forward to seeing the end results of your experiment!