NaNoWrimo and Suzi Romaine: Follow-Up

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Elasticity: How Much Can Characters Change?

I want to talk about how much characters can change from one drawing to the next in a comic strip or other series of illustrations. There are two ways a character can change; one way is in the gradual stylistic change over the years, as the artist's style simply grows and evolves.

When I got the assignment to draw Annie, I had no time at all to work on developing my own style and finding that stable convergence between my style and that of the strip's predecessors. The strip was behind schedule, so I had to just start drawing, and figure it out as I went. The side-by-side comparison, above, between one of the first Annie drawings I did, back in August of 2004, and one I just finished for an upcoming strip, shows just how much my style in drawing the character, and the strip, has changed since those heady days of yore.

But the kind of elasticity I want to talk about is the day-to-day, panel-to-panel variety. The elongations of a character's face to exaggerate a facial expression, or the stretching of the body or parts thereof to make expressive gestures or to convey action or movement.

The fact is, elasticity is an important part of any illustration. It gives the illustration an expressionism that is a crucial component to any good image. Yes, some illustrations are supposed to look more realistic than others. But even the most photo-realistic image needs a little bit of exaggeration, a little touch of elasticity, to help emphasize some things over others.

We all know what a caricature is -- the extreme exaggeration of certain traits about a person, and the downplaying of others, that brings about an expressive likeness of that person. But the truth is, a so-called serious portrait needs to highlight and downplay those same characteristics in order for the portrait to be recognizable. They'll be much subtler, but they still need to be there.

Without any elasticity, whether based on mood, movement or both, drawings will feel stiff and wooden. Anyone who's tried to draw a expressive or dynamic pose using one of those wooden posing models knows how static and dull the poses usually come out. Also, anyone who's ever tried to draw, say, a ballplayer hitting a home run or a tennis player hitting a backhand winner from a photo in a sports magazine knows that even a photograph doesn't often have the flow and feeling that you need; you still need to push it just a bit.

The question, of course, is: how much is too much? I'd have to say it's too much when it's obvious. It's too much when the characters stop looking like themselves. It's too much when the average viewer says "that arm's too long" instead of "Hey, he's really throwing that ball fast!", or "his mouth is really big" instead of "Wow! She sure is hungry!"

Where exactly is that point? It's impossible to say; every style, every context has a different level of willing suspension of disbelief. Which ultimately is what this is about. I mean, if you can accept a girl without pupils...

...

(Okay, I was going to end my post there. Cute ending. But since I sometimes do get asked, very seriously, why Annie has no eyeballs, let me state for the record: Annie does have eyeballs. Of course she has eyeballs. everyone who can see has eyeballs. It's just her picture that doesn't. We see images all the time that are missing essential features -- ears, noses, sometimes mouths -- and accept that the characters have them, but they weren't included in the drawing for various reasons -- simplification, highlighting other features, etc.. Not having eyeballs gives Annie, and the other characters, a simplified, open expression, which is meant to convey their honesty and clarity of vision. It's notable that in the original Harold Gray comic strip, (and usually in ours now) all the shifty types, all the bad guys and most of the enigmatic, hard-to-read ones (The Asp, Punjab) didn't have those white open eyes.)

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Monday Morning Marty & Minnie!

The other day Marty and Minnie were tugging on the same stick. It was really cute, so we took a few pictures.

I used one of those pictures as reference for this drawing. I decided to do another woodcut technique, like I did back in August. Since the technique requires that the image be drawn in negative, then reversed digitally, it's difficult to visualize as I'm drawing -- every black line I drawn in ink will become a white line, and wherever the white paper is left will be black. So it's difficult to gauge exactly how it'll look. That presents a challenge, but also makes the project fun -- the end result is always a surprise.

I did retouch the image a little, around the dogs' eyes and some of the outlines. But overall, it turned out as I expected.

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NaNoWriMo and Suzi Romaine!

This year I'm participating, once again, in National Novel Writing Month -- also known as NaNoWriMo. The idea is very simple: write a novel in a month.

Well, they do specify the parameters a bit. Write a 50,000-word first draft of a novel in the 30 days of November. That amounts to 1,667 words a day. Doesn't sound quite so difficult now, does it?

For the past two years I did my novels completely improvised; I'd taken improv classes with my wife a few years ago, and have recently gotten back into performing. One of the formats for long-form improv is called the Harold. It involves setting up three totally separate storylines with three separate sets of characters, then finding some ways to make connections between them, so that hopefully everything ties up -- or nearly so -- by the end. It was a great way to write a novel quickly, because there were no outlines to follow, or expectations to meet. (In NaNoWriMo you're allowed to write up outlines, plot synopses, character dossiers -- anything that won't end up in the actual text of the novel -- before November 1.)

For each of the first three chapters I would ask Jennifer for a few prompts, like they do in improv: favorite color, a line from a favorite song, a strange place to take a date. Things like that. I would then use them for inspiration for that chapter.

This year I started that format again, but I wasn't happy with how it was going. Perhaps I just needed a change from this format, or needed to push myself to do something more. That's when I remembered Suzi Romaine.

Suzi Romaine was a character I'd created way back in the mid 1990s. She was a sort of Ayn Rand-inspired heroine, with a flair for pirates and historic costuming and a love for vintage Beetles. So, kind of an idealised female me. Except her personality is very different from mine. Anyway, I'd made hundreds of sketches of the characters, written up a plot outline for a five-issue miniseries/graphic novel, and even created three eight-page short stories of her to get used to drawing her. I even drew a couple pages of the first issue. But it was too daunting a task at the time, and I never got around to drawing the project. There it sat in my file cabinet, waiting to be realized. And waiting...

So when November 2nd or 3rd rolled around, and I realized I wasn't at all happy with the way my improvised novel had started, I remembered all the preparation I'd done for a Suzi Romaine graphic novel and realized it would make a great prose novel! So I've started on Suzi Romaine: A Girl, Her Beetle and Her Empire. I'm a little bit behind in the word count, but I'm catching up. I haven't even needed to look at my reference from fifteen years ago, I know the work so well.

It is more challenging writing something you care so much about -- the choices you make seem more important -- but so far I'm happy with how it's going. I'll let you know my progress. In the meantime, if any of you are also NaNoWriMoing, feel free to share your stories about your stories here!

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Introducing Monday Morning Minnie!

Now that she's been with us a week, and begun to settle in here (?) It's time to give Minnie her formal introduction. Notice the black coat and those piercing orange eyes! Okay, you can't tell they're orange from a black-and-white sketch, but I was able to capture the piercing part. And those ears that tuck down onto her head -- sometimes you can't see them at all, and then she really looks odd.

I mentioned last week that Marty's first reaction to her was a bit -- well, aggressive. Well now they get on like a house on fire! They jump on each other like Grecko-Roman wrestlers, trying to get underneath each other and flip, trying to pin each other down. Their play is so fierce it's frightening -- Minnie will bite on Marty's face and pull on it, and Marty will bite Minnie's ears -- but it's all in fun. The tails keep wagging, and moments later when they're tired out, they'll just fall asleep next to each other. Crazy.

This sketch was done in pencil, then scanned and the tones added digitally. When I augment a sketch like this, I like to keep it minimal. There's a danger of the digital effects taking over, and it's easy to go overboard, but I want the piece to still feel like a sketch.

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