Is it time to blog already? Where does the week go? Let’s discuss.

We were playing Telestrations at game night last Tuesday (think a mix of the telephone game and Win, Lose or Draw) and somebody commented that they thought I drew well (hilarious when you look at how quickly the game requires you to sketch anything) which got me talking about my art. It’s not something I typically talk to strangers unless it comes up naturally in conversation (“What are your hobbies?” and the like). I talked a bit about the process I go through to draw and it was all very positive and reaffirming. Good stuff.

Talking about the process got me thinking about the process and different ideas came to mind as I was drawing this week. It’s been a while since I’ve talked about drawing (I think) so I thought I’d talk about it a bit.

In an interview for the Peanuts movie, one of the animators related a story of how Charles Schulz went to Bill Melendez to say he didn’t like some of the animation cels because they looked bad. Melendez replied, “Okay. Then show me how you would draw it.” Schulz said, “Well, I wouldn’t draw them in that position,” and a light went off in his head. He understood. The in-betweens might look weird, but they were necessary to get from point A to point B. This story came to mind as I was drawing a panel which showed Cyran in the full-face view. It looked off. This was weird to me because when I first started it seemed I could only draw my characters  in the full-face view. As time went on, I started using and refining a three-quarters view which seems to have become my standard to the point where it’s the way I’m most comfortable drawing everybody.

The view I use for the faces affects how I will stage a scene. How I stage the scene affects how I draw the faces, or more particularly, the eyes. If a character is looking ahead, I’ll use a dot for the eyes. But if they’re talking to a character who’s beside them in a panel,  the dot doesn’t work so I’ll draw something that looks like an apostrophe. If the character is looking at someone taller, it’s a normal apostrophe. The orientation matters or else it might make it look like he’s rolling his eyes instead of looking up. If the character is looking at someone shorter, it’s an upside-down apostrophe.

Lately, I’ve been trying to change things up a bit. Drawing two characters side by side, panel after panel, gets a little boring, not to mention tedious. It’s hard to resist the temptation to copy panels when there’s no action from panel to panel. The more characters in the scene, the greater the temptation. By trying different character layouts, I keep things more interesting to draw, but since I use these layouts so infrequently, they really stand out.

A big change that’s coming is that I’ve switched from a portrait to landscape when laying out my panels. It started with me wanting to draw a four panel strip with the third panel being large but not the fourth, which isn’t possible in the portrait view. I tried laying the page on its side for the strip and it worked. At first it was only going to be for the one strip, but I thought it might look weird so I tried keeping the landscape orientation for a few strips to find out that I actually like it better that way because the panels feel bigger. You’ll start seeing the new pages next Thursday.

A whole blog post just about drawing comics? It hardly seems possible, yet here we are at the end and I’ve stayed on topic the whole time. Nice, but that’s all for now. I’ll probably be back to talking about board games next week. Until then, have a good seven and we’ll do this all again next Monday. Carja V.

Hello there. It’s blog time so yeah.

So yesterday, I started sneezing like crazy. This is not all that unusual. I just sneeze a lot. However, combined with my VERY runny nose, it quickly became apparent to me that I’ve caught a cold. I feel like it’s been a while since I caught one. On Friday, one of my coworkers asked me if I was catching a cold and I assured her my sneezing was just due to allergies. Now I think she was being prophetic. So really, Karine, this is all your fault. You won’t be reading this, but yeah, I blame you. 😉 I spent last night coughing in fits. If I lie down, it’s much worse, so I’ve been trying to sleep while sitting, which isn’t a winning proposition. I’m feeling kinda wiped.

La Crique O Jeux started up last Tuesday and I got to play one of my new games, Parade, as well as Five Tribes, which is a game I’ve been wanting to try for a while now. I enjoyed both.

Parade is a card game with an Alice in Wonderland theme. The goal is to have the lowest score at the end of the game. You play cards, numbered 0 to 10 in six different colours into the parade and count a number of cards from the end of the line equal to the number you just played. Those cards are safe. You look at the unprotected cards and have to take all the cards that are equal to or lower than the card you just played AS WELL AS all cards that are of the same colour as the card you just played. The last thing is, if at the end of the game, you have the most cards of a given colour, those cards are only worth 1 point each instead of their printed value. So the strategy is to avoid picking up cards as much as you can with the idea that if you have to pick some up, you might as well have the most of that colour so that it hurts less. The final round begins when one player has acquired at least one card in each of the six colours. After the final round, you choose two cards from your hand to add to your tableau and discard the other two. Again, you’re trying to see if you can get the most cards in a colour OR deny a majority to another player so that they’ll have to count the printed numbers on their cards. I played again with my mom on Friday, and outside of the introductory games where we were figuring out the rules, I only managed to win once, so I guess I’m missing something in the finer strategy of the game.

Five Tribes is a mancala style game. You lay out tiles in a 5X5 grid and seed each with three random meeples. Each tile has a special ability and is worth points. Each turn starts with each player bidding to see which position they’ll play that round. If you want to go first, you may have to spend a considerable amount of money and money is worth points at the end of the game, so you have to be sure that your move will generate enough points to cover the cost. On your turn, you pick up the meeples from one tile and seed them in a line from that starting tile with the condition that the last meeple must match the colour of a meeple on the tile you place it on. You get to keep those meeples and activate a special ability based on their colour and you have the option to use the special ability on the tile. If after picking up the meeples on the last tile there are no meeples left, you claim the tile by setting a camel token on it and will score the points on the tile at the end of the game. The meat of the game is in trying to seed the meeples to get the best move possible without leaving a good move for the other players on their turns. The game ends when one player has placed all of their camel tokens or there are no legal moves left. There’s a lot to consider here and it’s easy to get overwhelmed while trying to balance all the different ways of scoring in the game. I didn’t do all that well in the game I played as I was too conservative in my bidding and had the moves I wanted to do scooped out from under me. It’s a game I’d want to play again, but I’m not sure I want to buy it.

Last night on the WWE Network, they aired an episode of Ride Along, where they film wrestlers on their road trip traveling from one show to the next town they’ll be performing in. Last night’s episode featured JBL, Michael Cole and Byron Saxton and I found it rather appalling. Michael and JBL spent the entire trip berating Byron, who admittedly is a little goofy and more than a little square. Then at a rest stop, they sent him in to get food and drove off while he was inside. Really classy. Now, obviously, Byron wasn’t really stranded as there was a cameraman filming him and that cameraman got there SOMEHOW so he was going to be able to get a ride with the cameraman, but the bullying on display was just horrible, especially since WWE prides itself on its anti-bullying campaign. I guess they thought people would find the episode funny, but it really struck a sour note with me.

Okay, my coughing fits have returned. I think that’s all I have in me today. Peace out folks. Have a good seven and we’ll do this all again next Monday. Carja V.