Monday, January 25, 2010
Second Week Jitters
Click on the thumb to see a larger image.
I feel like that one weird kid (there’s one in every class) who brings his Blankey for show and tell. He thinks he’s going to share with everyone something that’s really important to him, but really he’s just opening himself up to be ruthlessly mocked.
This week is the second week of ‘Freelance,’ and the most exposure I have given it to friends and family. I have only been going one week and a day and already I am worried about the way the strip is going.
The artwork is nowhere near where I want it to be. There’s nothing I can do about that, that’s just the way I draw, but I do kind of wish I had a Rogue-like (yes, as in the X-men Rogue) ability to drain other people’s power. If I could there would be a lot of very sad former artists out there. But the consensus of every notable Cartoonist (Watterson, Schultz, Adams, Larson, et al) is that the writing is far more important than the art. To paraphrase Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes: “Great writing can save weak drawing, but great drawing can’t save weak writing (for proof see nearly any superhero comic book you care to mention. The obvious exceptions being Watchmen, and Sin City).
Which brings me to my next point: The writing is not quite what I want it to be. I want people to invest in the characters and the storyline. Hopefully I can develop this over time. Interestingly (or not, whatever), the reason I changed the strip from the original format was that I was getting zero feedback on it. But as soon as I changed it people wrote to say how much they liked the old strip. Oh well. I still think the new strip is going to be better.
I think if I can get people to bear with me through the teething stages I can really make this strip work. I especially can’t wait to bring in the human element. Mango and Snug are great, but I think there has to be a bit of investment in a human character for a strip to really work. So look out for the eponymous ‘Lance’ in the next week or two.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
The beginning (again)
Click the pic above to see the full strip.
This week sees the re-launch of my comic-strip, Freelance. The first incarnation did not get the sort of feedback I hoped for, so I took a couple of weeks off to re-think the characters and the direction of the strip.
I decided to keep Mango and Lance (he will return later), and I have added the character of Snug. I think he is a good counter-balance for Mango. Snug is naïve and optimistic, and usually tries to see the good in everything. Mango is pretty much the opposite: cynical, derisive and usually only cares about himself. I feel like they both represent sides of me (and probably most human beings, if they are being really honest) and I really enjoy bouncing the two personalities off each other.
I will do my best to update it daily. My goal is to publish at least 50 here, get some feedback, and then pick the best ones and to try and get it published in more mainstream media.
Wish me luck.
P.s. I have started a Facebook Page and a Twitter Page for the strip. Check them out for regular updates.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Common Sense and Ironic Commentary.
Irony is probably one of the most complex concepts in language. I am not even sure how many languages actually employ it, but in the English language it has a number of different meanings.
It comes from the Greek: eirōneía, which means hypocrisy, deception or feigned ignorance (I looked it up. Oxford English Dictionary). But it has sired a number of bastard children with the English language.
The most basic dictionary definition of Irony is: “A figure of speech in which the intended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words used.” When I was an English teacher in Thailand this concept caused numerous problems with my students. We seldom realise how much irony is a part of our everyday language, and that we don’t even notice when we say the direct opposite of our intended meaning.
The forms of irony as I know them are:
• Verbal Irony - most commonly associated with sarcasm. In this way we say the opposite of what we mean, but denote it in conversation with a specific tone or emphasis.
• Dramatic Irony- When a spectator has special knowledge of situation that a character in a play (or even a person in real life) does not. It creates humour or dramatic conflict when a character is relying on certain knowledge, which the observer knows to be contrary. i.e. In Romeo and Juliet, the audience knows Juliet is not actually dead, but Romeo does not. (This is actually tragic-irony, a sub-division of dramatic-irony)
• Situational Irony- When there is a certain ‘perverse appropriateness’ to the outcome of a story or event. This was the form of irony Alanis Morissette was going on about. Another version of this is cosmic-irony, where it appears there is some grand-overseer or God deliberately toying with our lives to ensure things have an ironic outcome.
If I really looked I could probably find hundreds more definitions for Irony, but these cover the most common forms of it. I think it’s the complexity of irony (and the fact that in story telling it gives you a huge bulls-eye at which to direct the path of your narrative) that makes it so fascinating to me. I would be lying if I didn’t admit to the fact that in the majority of my strips I am trying to achieve some form of irony in the storyline.
For this strip I went mention ‘ironic commentary’ which I believe is a situation where there is the voice of a commentator describing things the opposite of how they are actually occurring. I am not even sure if it is a actual concept, but that’s the way I’m using it here.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Singles
This week is a practice run of ‘single-strips’ or ‘fillers’. These are just one-off strips without any continuing storyline. They allow readers who haven’t been following the regular storylines to get an easy start into the world of Freelance, and would also work to pad out a week if I ever could not make a story fit into a multiple of 5 (5 working days means that storylines should ideally reach some sort of a conclusion on a Friday, to avoid readers losing track over the weekend).
Today’s strip comes from the story I always hear people tell about how van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime. It’s perfectly true, but the real message of the story is that true genius being recognised after the person’s death is actually quite a rare event.
If it were common place then the van Gogh story would be ordinary, and therefore not worth relating. Nevertheless it is a useful way to shore up our self-doubt: If we continually fail in our lives there is always the hope that everyone will discover we were actually a genius all along and they just hadn’t noticed. It’s a lie I tell myself often.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Blogs are for people with too much time on their hands and no real social lives. So I should be great a keeping one. But alas, I am not. My updates are about as regular as that poor woman who seems to be in every laxative commercial, (before she empties her metaphorically-dubious handbag and starts farting rose petals).
Last week the theme was love and what we go through in the hope of having it returned. A trifle cynical, but I don’t think it’s too far a stretch to imagine that if there were vampires, there would be people lonely or desperate enough to date them. And I mean real blood-drinking vampires here, not the tofu-sucking vegan-vampires of recent popular fiction and movies. The physical demands a vampire-lover would put on your heart would probably be insignificant compared with the emotional demands a typical relationship puts on it.
This week we’re in the territory of dealing with imminent death (I believe ideas in comic strips can be extended beyond Monday-hating cats), and do we really learn from our mistakes.
If we could travel back in time and change our lives how many of us would? I’d like to think there are plenty of things I’d go back and change, but then I wouldn’t be who I am today. And if everything in my life had run smoothly, I’d have nothing to write about. Also, I’m not sure how much free-will we have in the decisions we make in life. Most of them seem to spur-of-the-moment and made on instinct. The feeling of having made a meaningful decision only comes later when we rationalise the choice to ourselves.
Relax.
Matt
Love and Vampires
Luckily I write a few days in advance. Writer’s block has struck me like hairy fat man in a dress who hears you laughing at him behind his back. Today was wretchedly unproductive. Oh no, wait, scratch that. I did work my way through half a bowl of chocolate mousse. Now if only I could find someone to pay me to do that…
This week’s themes are ‘love’ and ‘vampires.’ Or perhaps what we might be willing to put up with in the hope of being loved, or even appreciated for who we are.
The First Post
Hello, dear reader. May I just say you are looking particularly lovely today. Yes you, the one looking at the screen right now. Maybe lean back a little though, I can see right up your nose from here.
This is a my first blog entry for the new site. From today onwards (30 November 2009) this site is going to be updated daily, which is pretty exciting (well, maybe not for you, but for me it’s the start of trying to get this strip syndicated)
If you haven’t figured it out already, this site was created to launch my new strip: “Freelance”. If you follow it regularly you will get to learn a lot more about the characters, but for now all I need to tell you is that it primarily revolves around Lance Freeburn and Mango. Lance is a freelance writer, and Mango… well, Mango is a talking chimpanzee.
So take a look around, and enjoy. I’m still building up the site, so some of the links might not work yet, but soon it will be running like a well-oiled machine (even if that machine is being operated by a particularly dozy man, working in his fluffy sheep-skin slippers).
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