Sye Online: November 2011

Improving my comic technique has been my main focus since the beginning of summer, and while I have half an hour spare before I head for bed, I think now is a fabulous time to go into some detail about the thought process behind my diary comics, explain some of the things I am trying with them, and why I think they are important.

University is taking an undeserved and probably unwise back burner at the moment. I've had some difficult family stuff to deal with recently, I've also been looking into restarting my self-employment as a means to make a little extra cash, and of course I have been reading, writing and studying comics and illustration for the past few weeks. All of this leaves me little time for University, which I admit is not really a terrible thing. I know, I know! It's what I have been working towards for the last four-or-so years, but I will be honest with you (as I always am), I have been studying media performance for the last two years with very little gratification from the course; I am starting to burn out. Naturally when you start to feel the strain of work, the best solution is to shift your focus to other activities until your interest is renewed. For me, my interest has shift back to my art.

I'd report back here during the middle of summer that I was trying to improve my comic process, this continues in much the same way having experimented with a number of techniques and confront some issues on that list. I've had a lot of fun working in different ways, with both traditional and digital material. I realised not too long ago that while the quality of the artwork has improved over these last few months, and being published has been a good indicator of that, my work was taking too long. Each comic of Steven took between eight and twelve hours to produce; one of the reasons there are so staggeringly few of them.

Enter the Diary Comics.

With my diary comics (DC's) I am able to still experiment with my art work, framing, speech bubbles & lettering, panel placement, storytelling and relevant subject matter without having to worry too much about polishing the final product. My DC's are admittedly a little amateur looking, but I am happy with that as I still consider myself somewhat amateur on the web-comics scene. It is also somewhat gratifying to know that I can have a subject in my comic which can be blissfully self indulgent of my own thought process, and people will still enjoy them. A few places around the web will tell you to avoid talking about yourself as the subject of your comic. Obviously most artists, if not all artists, put portions of themselves into every piece of work that they do. This is certainly true for character work, as far as I have seen. Some of the best characters in terms of depth, relatability, consistency and likeability have a noticeable trace of the artist; of the real in them. Then you get real gems such as Erika Moen's DAR Comic, a very impressive and in-depth diary comic which is very engaging to read (I really suggest reading it from the beginning).

So far, each DC has engaged my brain into trying a new storytelling approach, or a new approach to colouring or inking. Publishing on a regular schedule is very satisfying and because I have a bit of extra time right now, and the passion to tell such stories as I experience them, I am even pleased to say that I have a comic buffer for when things really heat up and I have less time to indulge.

I hope you enjoy them, I would like to say that I have not at all abandoned Steven, I just feel I need to wait for inspiration to approach me rather than force myself into making a comic. I felt I did that with the last one and as a result the whole thing suffered. I am pleased with how it turned out, I just didn't enjoy producing it as much as the first two.

Goodnight dear reader, dream of green fields~