Rantz Hoseley interviews Australian animator, designer and artist Trudy Cooper at the Panel & Pixel message board. Cooper is the artist of the webcomic Platinum Grit which has been running on and off since…1994. The entire strip is archived online — unfortunately the early ones use Shockwave, which doesn’t work on an Intel Mac, so we couldn’t check them out ourselves, but the latest ones are very stylish indeed, with Sim-esque panel layouts, lettering effects, cross cutting and other sophisticated comics storytelling elements…all in an easy to use click for the next panel format. There you have it: conquered by technology one moment, mastering it the next.
PG is notoriously difficult to sum up. I’ve had 14 years to think up a snappy synopsis and still can’t! Very basically, it’s a magical-realism black comedy about a broken boffin (Jeremy) and the girl (Nils) who befriended him. On the surface it’s about their relationship, which is often unhealthy, occasionally deranged, yet ultimately touching (although some will say that we haven’t quite gotten to the touching bit yet. I say we have). Wedged into the middle of them is Kate, who belongs in the real world, but finds herself utterly caught up in the not-quite-right world that Jeremy lives in.
Underneath all that is the ticking clock of his family’s odd legacy, which he’s deliberately been kept in the dark about. Mysteries, secrets, and terrible terrible things.
But Heidi,
YOU HATE FLASH!!!
so Platinum Grit sucks just like Zuda right?
badger
I guess I hate Flash when it’s annoying! The interface on PLATINUM GRIT was very very easy to navigate and read.
SHOCKWAVE is another matter.
THIS is how Zuda should have been made…flipping a series of panels instead of like a Sunday comic strip from the newspaper.
Thanks Heidi for introducing this, never heard of it but the art and story are great.
I only found this comic recently, and I loved it– I’m glad to see it mentioned here. While I think the characters are fun and the story is compelling and the art is incredible, what really makes it a stand-out for me, actually, is the reading format. It’s like having pageturn reveals built in every few panels, and although that sounds annoying to say it, it actually makes for an excellent reading experience, at least, the way Trudy does it. Trudy Cooper is a master of comic book timing (as well as many other essential comic book skills). I’m keen on buying the collections (which are print-on-demand) just to see how the flow compares.
Tha’s a good’un.
I liked the interface, just what the style and timing of the story needed.