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Masters 2023

In July 2023, I made the decision (of sound mind) to go back to school and get my masters. Leaving my nine-to-five and risking financial ruin, I'm committed to leveling up my cartooning skills and becoming a master of graphic and comic arts. Below is somewhat of a blog (do they still exist?) with a chronological timeline of processes, sketches, and test works - hopefully culminating into a finished product that you can put on your bookshelf in July 2024. Thanks for checking it out, I will try to regularly update it as I get closer to my goal of becoming MASTER™.

What will my comic be about?

I'm still figuring that out but here's some ideas:

  • Coming of age or ‘I came of age and what the heck do I do now?’.

  • Emotion paralysis.

  • Postponing, avoiding the ‘next stage’ in life. What does the ‘next stage’ even mean?

  • Nostalgia for youth/ living in the past.

  • How childhood effects adulthood

  • So far, i have not enjoyed working.

  • Actually I don’t mind the work, it’s more the social gymnastics in the office world that no amount of education can prepare you for.

Figuring out my style

  • All my favourite artists have a unique style for their characters, if you put their characters in a
    police line-up, you would be able to guess easily which artist drew them.

  • I aimed to find my own unique style and explored a few options.

  • I came up with a design that I call “boneheads”, a style that I have vaguely used before and I’m keen on expanding upon.

Playing with character

  • Sometimes cartoonists create a character as an avatar for themselves. Using them to tell stories based on their own life and experiences without having to strictly adhere to the real facts of their life. There is also the opportunity for longevity, as these characters can be used again and placed into new situations and stories based on the authors' experiences.

I'm a real cartoon boy

  • One of my aims for this project is to explore using classic cartooning media. I started using an ink brushpen with indian ink. 

  • It doesn’t completely transform my comics but it’s doing things subtly with my lines that I'm vibing with.

  • My process for creating comics is improvisational. I draw the panels on the page first, then I fill them with images, and each panel informs the next one. The words come at the end.

  • So far I have only created standalone pages with no connecting story. My next goal is to draw a story that lasts for 5-10 pages. Start a page and just keep it going.

An emerging character

  • Inspired by famous cartoon strips, like Charlie Brown and Dilbert, I wanted to create a character that can could be an avatar for me and the reader, someone I can funnel myself through and readers can see themselves in.

  • When I started drawing the comic, the character manifested as this spikey-haired, disheveled, everyman and loser called Chip Buddy. He’s impulsive, repressed, depressed, sarcastic, stuck in the past and afraid of the future.

  • I chose the name because it sounds like the happiest name in the world, but Chip is far from happy with his world. It also evolved from this idea of false, hyperbolic positivity that can be found in the workplace.

  • Most of the time the other characters just call him buddy, which we all know, buddy is one of the most condescending things you can be called.

JUST draw and don't stop

  • I said my goal was to create a continuous story lasting multiple pages. I had a story outline as a starting point, basically bullet points and short ideas.  I drew a 10-page story that could be incorporated into my final book.

  • My process is still largely improvisational, only using the story outline as a soft guideline, allowing unexpected story pathways and memories to appear as I’m drawing.

  • For me it’s important to draw before writing any words, my focus is on making sure each page is an interesting composition and different from the last.

  • All pages are drawn by hand, ink on paper, which I think is important for my style. It feels more real, every awkward wobbly line, mistake, ink smear. That is difficult to recreate organically in digital.

  • Also I like the commitment involved in drawing physically. You can't undo a stroke and try again.

feeling colour

  • In my colour tests, I explored simple monochrome palettes as well as multi-colour palettes.

  • I also explored different brushes and textures. Loosely colouring in with a felt tip marker brush to complement the naive style and also using halftone patterns/textures to reference classic comics and cartooning from which alternative comics have evolved.

  • Eventually, I settled on using an almost single colour palette (excluding white and black), that
    was inspired by Daniel Clowes colouring in
    Ghost World.

  • Also overlaying textures to have the feeling of watercolour or paint and using a distorted halftone pattern.

  • The colouring inverses on the page between being full colour filling the panels using white
    has shading/lighting, and white panels using the colour has shading/lighting. This creates more interesting pages as opposed to just having all the panels full of colour.

it's A cartoon life

  • I’ve come up with an idea for a title; ‘Cartoon Life’. I like it because it’s simple and self-descriptive.

  • I want to create something that I can keep adding to, keep making stories under this title, with this character Chip Buddy, or with different characters.

  • I’ve also started a cartoon diary, a daily exercise where I draw a panel inspired by something that happened in my day. I use the Chip Buddy design and character in this.

FACING THE TYPE

  • In previous works, I usually handwrite all the words.  It can be a very time-consuming process.

  • Considering deadlines and the number of pages I want to put in this book, I've decided to create a typeface based on my handwriting to speed things up a bit.

  • I made a few variations until I was happy with the weight and look of the font.

  • Using a handwritten font in comics is important for crafting a seamless package, pictures and words flowing from the same pen, the same hand.

  • I will continue to work on this font, adding alternate characters, and making it appear more random and messy.

let's throw it all together

  • The basic premise; Chip Buddy works at a company called Corporation Inc Ltd Limited and he’s at the end of his rope. Chip is presented with a door. The door represents the unknown and change.

  • He wants to leave and alter the direction of his life but he feels paralysed to do so, he has no agency or confidence. He constantly thinks about the negative outcomes that follow passing through the door, as opposed to positive ones.

  • Chip wants to figure out why his brain is like this
    and he goes on a journey through his life and memories to pinpoint moments when he was
    faced with The Door.

  • I like the idea of using colour as part of the storytelling. The story goes back and forth in time, using different colours lets the reader know if the character is in the present or living through the past.

TO be continued...

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