Secrets of the comics: What the nib-holding industry doesn’t want you to know
Via Matt Madden, Hillary Allison reveals a money saving technique for ink-slingers who favor the nib. Bonus: Elite Beat Intern Maggie Siegel-Berele stars as the ink-slinger in question.
Continue ReadingVideo Watch: Tom Gammill at CCS
Comedy writer Tom Gammill (Seinfeld, The Simpsons) has a comic strip called The Doozies, and has made a bunch of videos in which he teaches the ancient secrets of cartooning. In his 26th episode, he visits the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont and discovered things about the climate and the students. The humor is a bit, er, broad, but this video is quite charming.
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MUST READ: Todd Klein on the Greatest Comics Logos
Talk about informed, could you have a better guide to the history of comics logos than the lettering master himself, Todd Klein? His research into the history of comics is as extensive as it is informed:
Continue ReadingArtists: Are you guilty of the “Smarm brow”?
LACKADAISY artist Tracy J. Butler delivers some notes on cartooning and facial expressions. Her examples are anthropomorphic, but can be applied to all "cartoony" 'tooning styles.
Continue ReadingPaul Duffield on motion comics
FREAKANGELS artist Paul Duffield, who has a background in animation, shares some informed thoughts on motion comics proving that there is more you can say about the hybrid form than "Yuck." However, there is a conceptual problem, he says.
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Required reading: Comics as an information medium
Get out your grad school pants and sit down to read this vital paper: researchers Edward Segel and Jeffrey Heer have written a paper called How Do People Tell Stories through Interactive Visualization which examines several modes of contemporary "charticle/infographic" information parsing, including comic strips. Enrico Bertini at Infosthetics writes:
Continue ReadingFiffe Files: Kyle Baker
Share this link on Facebook!Tweet It’s Kyle Baker’s birthday today so wish him a happy birthday over on Facebook, visit his blog, leave a comment, and buy tons of his books while you’re at it. For the occasion, I wanted to spark a discussion about the differences between digital vs hand drawn comic art. What better artist [...]
Continue ReadingPantone Announces the Color of the Year 2011
Share this link on Facebook!TweetPantone, the world-renowned color corporation, has announced their choice for Color of the Year: Honeysuckle. A Color for All Seasons Courageous. Confident. Vital. A brave new color, for a brave new world. Let the bold spirit of Honeysuckle infuse you, lift you and carry you through the year. It’s a color for every day [...]
Continue ReadingSample work schedule of a manga artist
Share this link on Facebook!Tweet How do they do so many pages? Three hours of spare time a week. And we thought WE had it rough. Via Kwanza Johnson.
Continue ReadingPlease stand by…
As many of you have noticed, the recent server shuffle has resulted in a loss of visual images. The Beatrix herself is spearheading our crack team of technological troubleshooters, and we hope to restore normalcy soon. Normally, in situations such as this, we would run "classic" columns from before the advent of the World Wide Web. Unfortunately, our tape archive was mistakenly recorded over with the 67th Academy Awards. So instead, we have reverted to ASCII mode.
Continue ReadingAntique comics production tools #2: The Ames Lettering Guide
Dustin Harbin delves into the strange world of the Ames Lettering Guide, whose mysterious wheel and holes have long mystified non-acolytes:
Continue ReadingAntique comics production tools #1: The color chart
Via the CO2 blog, Gerry Giovinco explores the history of coloring via the color chart, a mix of CMYK values which was all folks had to work with as recently as 10 years ago. I remember once seeing an editor reduced to tears by having to spec a color guide from a color chart. It wasn't pretty.
Continue ReadingLogo Study with Rian Hughes
Via The Source a study of the Great Rian Hughes's various logos for Batman and Robin. All so similar in the strong shape (derived from the 60 year old original) and yet differing in tiny details in the readability of the lettering and even Batman's eyes.
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