Webcomics and my inspirations
Still recovering from a fantastic weekend at the first Hugo House Writing Conference, Finding Your Readers in the 21st Century. My talk went great, with great audience participation and questions afterwards. A bunch of things came up during and after the presentation that I didn’t have time to fully address, so I thought I’d mention a few here.
For one, how does one draw a web-comic? Well, I use a Wacom Intuos4 Small Pen Tablet
with Photoshop. I didn’t have the benefit of a teacher or guide when I started, but now there is one that I highly recommend: The DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics
.Artistically, my first, best inspiration was the late great Will Eisner. Although I loved his work in The Spirit
but it was his Contract with God Trilogy
that really got to me. Fantastic writer, fantastic artist and he could tell a deep resonate story with some funny squiggles.Many great graphic novels have come after this early genius. BTW, I got asked this a bit afterwards so if you're looking for a comic to give to non-comic people, I've had a lot of success sharing Persepolis
or Craig Thompson's Blankets
. Speaking of Craig Thompson's work, don't miss his gorgeous travelogue, Carnet De Voyage
. For younger readers, check out Girl Genius
.So how does one adapt a gritty crime drama in a webcomic? My inspirations there were none other than the work of Frank Miller’s gritty take on super heroes, especially Batman: Year One
and Daredevil: Born Again
.My other inspiration, Greg Rucka, who started out writing mysteries
but then graduated to mystery comics, like Whiteout
and his homage to the old spy show, Sandbaggers - Queen & Country
. BTW, I highly recommend Greg Rucka's take on Batwoman
.How do I write with a female lead? Well, after reading Terry Moore'sStrangers In Paradise
, I was inspired. So much so that I have an original drawing of Katchoo in my upstairs hallway.I know my artwork leaves something to be desired. If I had 3 wishes, one of them would be able to draw like Andi Watson. I find his stuff to be brilliant pieces of simple beauty. My favorites of his are Geisha
, Dumped
and Princess At Midnight.That’s all for now, but I’ve got a few more inspirations and recommended reading posts somewhere in my head waiting to be typed out.
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News and stuff
Lo, I have been busy. I have lots of good excuses why Chapter 20 isn’t done yet. Honest.
First, I’m putting my talk together for Hugo House’s first writing conference, Finding Your Readers in the 21st Century. I’ll speaking on Saturday, May 22nd on “Publishing on the Web” with Rebecca Agiewich. For those of you who don’t know, Rebecca Agiewich had a fantastic blog called the Breakup Babe that she successfully turned into a novel. I got to meet her the other week to plan our session and her tale was quite interesting. Ironically, she was one of the bloggers I used to read back in 2002 when I was first creating the Heidi character.
Second, I just re-drew the first scene of Heidi book one. I got tired of my worst art being the first thing people saw when they were introduced to Heidi. In time, I think I will slowly re-illustrate most of book one, polishing some of the words along the way. Shoutout to @hypatiadotca for spotting my typo. I manually redid the text instead of copying it from the originals, so at least one mistake was made. As always, if you spot typos, drop me an email or a tweet and let me know.
Lastly, I am actually working on Chapter 20. It’s about half illustrated in roughs and should be done soon.
First, I’m putting my talk together for Hugo House’s first writing conference, Finding Your Readers in the 21st Century. I’ll speaking on Saturday, May 22nd on “Publishing on the Web” with Rebecca Agiewich. For those of you who don’t know, Rebecca Agiewich had a fantastic blog called the Breakup Babe that she successfully turned into a novel. I got to meet her the other week to plan our session and her tale was quite interesting. Ironically, she was one of the bloggers I used to read back in 2002 when I was first creating the Heidi character.
Second, I just re-drew the first scene of Heidi book one. I got tired of my worst art being the first thing people saw when they were introduced to Heidi. In time, I think I will slowly re-illustrate most of book one, polishing some of the words along the way. Shoutout to @hypatiadotca for spotting my typo. I manually redid the text instead of copying it from the originals, so at least one mistake was made. As always, if you spot typos, drop me an email or a tweet and let me know.
Lastly, I am actually working on Chapter 20. It’s about half illustrated in roughs and should be done soon.