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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Jazz Age/Annie Crossover!

Fans of my webcomic Jazz Age may want to pay extra attention to the Annie story unfolding now in papers around the country and online: Annie, Sandy and Santiago have found themselves in 1927 Boston!

And while I won't reveal yet whether any of the characters of Jazz Age will be making an appearance in the strip, I won't rule it out either. I will say, though, that some memorable landmarks will be seen, such as Scollay Square and the Public Garden.

Annie, Santiago and Sandy were flying to Boston in the present day when Annie's old friends from Atlantis accidentally scooped her up in their time machine and set her down in 1927.

Follow Annie's adventures in 1920s Boston, and keep an eye out for any private eyes or archaeologists!

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Confession: I Draw on Letter-Size Copy Paper!

One of the first things you learn as a working freelance illustrator is when you can cut corners and when you can't. Or more appropriately: What's important.

When I first started out, fresh out of art school, I had learned the importance of using the right equipment, the best paper, the most precise and elaborate methods. We had been indoctrinated from our freshman year in the importance of proper technique. We learned to be precise, thorough and detail-oriented. And, above all, we learned not to cut corners.

Well, those techniques and procedures are fine as a starting point, but over time you learn to develop your own methods and routines, ones that are attuned to the importance you put on things.

In a previous post I talked about the procedure I use to create comic strip artwork. It took me years to develop this technique. For years, concerned with the "proper" way of doing things, I had a much more labor-intensive method; I'd cut down large sheets of Bristol board, used Rapid-o-Graph pens for all the ruled lines and (GASP) the lettering, and everything else was done with a pure sable brush and India ink. Anything else wouldn't be kosher, I told myself; anything else would be a cheat.

Well, thank God I got over that mentality. Now most of the line work I do comes from Micron pens. I still use a brush for most of my more realistic comics illustration, like Jazz Age, but 90% of Annie is done with the pens now. And as I'd gone over before, the lettering is now done in InDesign! The pure Bristol Board has been replaced by 11" x 17" 80-pound matte cover stock and fed through the printer for the lettering and panel boarders.

For most of my other freelance work, I draw on good ol' letter-size copy paper. ( I originally put "typing paper" before realizing that it hasn't been called that in a few decades!) It works as well as any kind of paper for inked line work, it's cheap, easy to find, easy to scan or fax -- the only down side is when the job calls for the original being given to the client, which has happened less than half a dozen times in the twenty years I've been doing this. On those jobs, I break out the thicker card stock. (This, of course, is in the context of the freelance work. For the comics work, I still use the card stock that's very much like Bristol board because there is a market for the original art.)

In short, I figured out what's really important: Do what works. Get the job done as well, as quickly and as reliably as you can.

People are paying me for the digital file of an image. They don't care what paper it was drawn on, or even if it was drawn on paper at all. It doesn't matter to them that I drew it with India ink, or if it was on 100% rag content paper. They want their image, and whatever is the best, easiest way to make it is the proper way.

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Responsibility: Drawing a Legend

Last Sunday, August 5, was the 83rd anniversary of the very first Little Orphan Annie strip, created by Harold Gray back in 1924. Last Monday, on August 6, I received a very nice card in the mail. It was a birthday card, addressed to "Annie Warbucks," in care of my address, and it was sent to me by a nine-year-old girl. Her father had bought some Annie original art last year, and so he knew where she could send her card.

Annie is known the world over. Little girls everywhere can sing the songs from the movie and the musical -- which came to Philly twice in the two years I lived there, and is coming here to Albuquerque in a few months. People know the archetypes of Annie and Daddy Warbucks (Sandy too!), and the strip is as ingrained in American culture as Superman or Snoopy.

And I draw that comic strip.

Wow.

Now, let's be frank -- the strip ain't what it used to be. It's running in a smattering of papers across the country, mostly smaller ones -- though it's still running in the New York Daily/Sunday News, where it's been since August 5, 1924 -- and most people I talk to don't realize it's still going.

But people are reading the strip -- if not in papers, online -- and they compare our work (Jay Maeder of New York has been writing the strip since 2000) with Harold Gray and every other artist and writer who've worked on it. Last week, when Drawn.ca posted a link to my post on creating the Annie strip, one reader commented that the strip "...is so far removed from Harold Gray’s Annie it isn't even funny."

We have a responsibility to stay true to the roots of the comic strip. When you take over an established property like Annie, you take on that responsibility. If I completely reinvented the strip, throwing out all that made it what it was, then what I'd really be doing is marketing my own, new strip under an established brand name. If I want to do my own, wholly original work, I should go ahead (and I did) but not within the old strip. People expect, and deserve, continuity.

But it's also important to allow the strip to evolve, to change, and as the author of the work I have another responsibility -- to be true to my own artistic sensibilities, and to my own style and strengths. The artist picked to take over a strip should already have a similar, or at least compatible style, from that which came before, and I think that was the case this time.

But if I were to just ape Harold Gray's style -- which I have done once in a while, when it was appropriate, such as in the art sample above, when modern-day Annie went back in time to visit the Annie of the 1930s -- then I'd be cheating the readers. There's no way I can draw like Harold Gray better than Harold Gray did, so my work would be inescapably inferior. When an actor takes on a role that another had played before, should she simply try to imitate the previous actor? Or do we want to see a new interpretation of the essences of that character?

That's what I try to do with my work on Annie -- take the essential characteristics of the characters, both in terms of their personality and in terms of how Harold Gray drew them -- and build from that, using my style, my strengths and my perspective. I feel what I've come up with works, but I'm constantly refining and redirecting the work I do, checking to see that I'm still on course, still remaining as true to Mr. Gray's ideas as possible while also being true to my own. It's a difficult task, it's a huge responsibility, but it's also very, very rewarding.

Annie got the little girl's card on Monday, and she'll be sending a thank-you card by the end of the week.

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How I Make A Comic Strip

Welcome to my summary of putting together a comic strip. Or at least, my way of putting together a comic strip. This isn't going to be "how to draw" (I'm sure I'll cover something along those lines before too long) so much as it is "how to set up to draw."

Everyone needs a system for putting together a comic strip. Drawing comics is as much a job as it is a calling -- and on days when you don't really hear that calling, it's still a job. And for most cartoonists, it's not a very good paying job. So it's essential that you have a system in place, a streamlined and standardized way of going about the task. I draw seven strips for Annie a week -- six dailies plus the color Sunday strip -- and I need to get that work done quickly and get it out the door by deadline, and still leave time for other freelance work, my webcomic Jazz Age (I'm on hiatus right now, but it's usually a full-color strip written and drawn every week) and, if I'm lucky, my family. I don't want to waste any time here. I need to get the boring stuff out of the way, to give me the most time actually drawing, and get it all done fast.

The system I show won't work for everyone. It may not even work for anyone, except that it works for me. Other comics artists use other systems -- maybe some of them will comment here on theirs -- but this is the one that has evolved for me. Even if none of this is applicable to you, young apprentice, I hope you at least come away with an appreciation for the need for a system.

The process begins with the script, which is written by Jay Maeder and gets to me from my editor, Tracy Clark. the script tells me who's doing what, who says what and what is being shown in each panel. Since we've worked together for some time now -- just over three years -- Jay and I have a pretty good understanding of what each other wants and expects, so his scripts are not very detailed. He trusts me to know the right angles to show things in, and to make the new characters interesting and appropriate.

After reading through the script, I go to my layout worksheet. This is a worksheet I made up that gives me little boxes, scaled-down versions of the individual strips, and lets me sketch out the six dailies on one page. These layouts are loose and sketchy -- since I'm the only one who needs to refer to them and since I'll be drawing the final art in a day or so, I don't need to go into much detail -- I'll remember what I had in mind. The most important aspect of the layouts is to show roughly where all the important elements are.

The next step surprises some people. I do the final lettering. Years ago I made the best investment of a couple hundred hours I could ever have made -- I created a digital version of my own hand lettering, in Fontographer. And I made alternative versions of most of the letters, which you can access by hitting OPTION with the letter, so double letters don't look quite so obvious. I also made up a library of word balloons in Quark -- which I've since transferred to InDesign -- that I can put the lettering into, and which are resizable and adaptable to any need. Using the layouts as a guide, and an InDesign template that has the strip dimensions preformatted, I create the panel sizes and add the lettering balloons, copying and pasting the dialogue directly from the script emailed to me by Tracy.

Why do I do the lettering first? After years of frustration with trying to make lettering balloons fit a tight space because I underestimated it when I drew the panel, or having to cover up some really nice background art I drew with a balloon, I realized that the artwork was more adaptable than the lettering. It's easier, in other words, to make a figure, or a face, a little bigger or smaller in the panel to fit the space after the balloons are put in than to make the balloon bigger or smaller to fit the space after the artwork is put in. A figure, or a face, can be partially cut off and still work -- words are rarely that flexible.

Once the lettering and layouts are completed, I print them out on good card stock. I used to pay a small fortune to buy Bristol board pads, cut them down to size and throw away the extras -- they never did learn to make those pads 11 x 17" -- and then start doing the lettering by hand. Now, I can buy 11 x 17" card stock and print out the lettering, all ready to go, for a lot less! Even before I got my large printer, and had to email the InDesign files to a printer to output onto the card stock, it was still cheaper than buying the Bristol board. And it works just as well for drawing on. Nearly. It's not quite as thick, so it can warp if you lean and sweat on it too much. Oh well -- everything's a trade-off.

So now, with the lettering and panel borders printed on the card stock -- I put two dailies on one 11 x 17" sheet, or half of a Sunday strip -- I'm ready to get down and draw. Which, as I mentioned, I'll have to cover another time.

With the line art all done, I scan the artwork. Until I invest in an 11 x 17" scanner, I have to make two scans of each page and splice them together. Then I clean up the scans, and send the strips to the editor for approval. Ta-daah!

For the Sunday strips, after I scan the artwork, I create a color guide for the print house, which they use to put together the final color files for the newspapers. That'll also be another post.

So there you have it. My system. My regular process for breaking down a very large job into bite-size pieces and taking care of them in order. Like I said, it may not work for others, but it works for me. Every week. Now I feel tired.

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Tutorial Will Have To Wait...

Dad-gum it. Wouldn't you know it?

I was just in the middle of some really good writing, explaining the need for a good comics-making system and outlining the beginning of the process. I was writing about the rough layout stage, and the layout worksheets I use, and was going to scan the most recent one.

Then I realize I'd thrown it out. And it went out in the trash.

Sigh.

I saved the draft, and I'll pick up working on it next week, when I will SAVE the next layout worksheet in preparation for this series.

Boy, it's going to be a good one, though. Just you wait. It really, really is...

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On Being a Comics Reporter

Last week Alan Gardner, the guy who runs the excellent Daily Cartoonist blog, put out a call for cartoonists and people in the comics world to help fill in for him during his vacation, which began yesterday. I wrote in saying I'd be happy to! It'll be good exposure for me, I figure, and it should be fun, too. He says great, thanks me, gives me the login info and all, and off he goes on vacation.

And then it hits me -- I'm supposed to find NEWS STORIES for this blog!

The Daily Cartoonist, for those of you unaware, is a great news source, with all the latest about who's doing what, what comic strip collection just came out, who got fired, who got picked up -- and I'm supposed to contribute to this? Daily Cartoonist is where I find out all this stuff!

Luckily there are two other volunteers who are also filling in for the vacationing Mr. Gardner -- Charles Brubaker and The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon -- both of whom seem more than capable of filling in single-handedly. I've been supplying a few stories so far, and I'm actually enjoying tracking them down, but it's clear I'm not needed for my journalistic sleuthing. I can't compete with these guys there.

But one thing I can do, that neither of them can lay claim to -- I can talk about what it's like to draw Little Orphan Annie!

I'm going to put together a series of posts on the creation of a comic strip, and link those posts to Daily Cartoonist. I know, it's shameless self-promotion -- except that I am, just a little, ashamed -- but that's what I was asked to do, dammit. Daily Cartoonist is a site for fans of, well, cartoons. And cartoonists. And cartooning. Even if you prefer the term "comics illustration." (I know I do.)

So look for those posts to begin some time soon. Maybe in mere moments, depending on who calls me in the next few minutes with work.

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Making Use of the Time You've Got

So the storyboard job is well underway; I wrote about it in a previous post. I'm drawing storyboards for a few sequences in the new Kevin Costner comedy Swing Vote. The work is going very well, indeed -- so well that I find myself with plenty of down time.

Don't get me wrong, I love down time -- especially when I have other projects to work on, like the Annie comic strip which needs a week's worth of strips, six dailies and a color Sunday, done every week. By starting early, over the weekend, and putting in evenings, I got the week's worth done today, just in time for the July 4 holiday -- I'll be able to relax tomorrow.

But the reason this down time is significant is that the film company's paying me by the day. I'm getting a day rate, for five days total, and to be honest, they're not working me very hard so far.

Of course, if it doesn't bother them it shouldn't bother me. We're not behind schedule, in the least -- on the contrary, they might love the latest revisions I sent them this afternoon and not want me to go back and tighten them up, and I'll be done two days early.

But when I agreed to work five days, I committed myself to them for those days. The other work I've done was never at the expense of their work -- it was only done while I was waiting to hear back from them, after finishing the work so far and sending it in for review. But to part of me it still feels like I'm cheating, like I'm getting away with something.

I remind myself that as long as I make myself available to them -- and I haven't made any other appointments or commitments for these days so that I would be available to them -- then it's okay if, while I'm waiting to hear from them, I take care of other work. It's actually a great arrangement for me, obviously. The director seems happy with the work so far, as does the director of photography. So it's all good, right?

In fact, as a freelancer whose time is valuable I have a duty to make the most of the down time, to take full advantage of the gaps in my storyboarding workload to get other work out of the way. To not do so might make me feel more loyal to the film company -- for reasons that don't even make any sense as I'm writing this -- but they'd be at the expense of my business. I can't afford that kind of luxury.

Just as a good freelancer needs to accept without shame when things aren't going well, a good freelancer also has to accept, without guilt, when things are.

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Multi-Tasking Hand

This is an odd thing to confess, and I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but -- I think my hand doesn't write as well when it's been drawing.

Let me explain.

On the best of days, my handwriting is pretty bad, as anyone who's seen it can confirm. My writing is usually a block lettering anyway -- yes, like the kind used in comics -- because my cursive, and even my upper-and-lower-case print writing, are rather -- unsophisticated, shall we say.

But when I'm in the middle of drawing, it's a lot worse.

I just came upon this thought now, as I'm drawing up the layouts for another week's worth of Annie strips. I have these pre-printed blanks I made up, with a rectangle representing the strip, some guidelines marking the 1/2, 1/3 and 2/3 spots, and lots of room on the sides for notations about the sketches, which aren't very elaborate. Jennifer has commented occasionally about how I never use those notes areas, and just now, as I was writing a little comment about what one of the characters was doing, I realized why.

I can't write worth crap while I'm sketching.

Maybe writing and drawing use different parts of the brain. That makes sense, since they're very different ways of seeing, and different ways of thinking. And since creating images and putting down letterforms are very different ways of using the same hand muscles, maybe transitioning quickly from the one to the other causes some stumbling -- like shifting gears in a car without properly using the clutch or something.

And maybe, since I'm an illustrator through and through, and since that's what I've always been, maybe that's why my handwriting has always been so bad. Maybe, as soon as I pick up the pencil or pen, my drawing instincts take over, and don't want to surrender control to the writing part of my brain.

I know this is an odd theory. I don't even know if it's true that I screw up my writing more often when I'm in the middle of sketching or not. It seems to be, but who knows? And I don't know what possible practical application this could have, other than to try pausing a moment when switching from one to the other -- like waiting for the clutch to engage in the car. Maybe just being aware of this brain change will be enough to improve the situation. I'll let you know what progress, if any, I see.

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Little Orphan Annie ALSO Back In New Mexico

Art, indeed, imitates life -- or vice versa.

The current Annie storyline takes our heroine back to New Mexico, where she visited three years ago and met the Broadcast Ranch boys and confronted a cross-dressing Satanist and his iguanas from Mars. No, really.

Now Annie, Santiago and boy inventor Tom Short take on the border security issue head-on—or perhaps sideways—as well as a crooked lawyer exploiting xenophobia.

Now, the irony is that by the time Jennifer and I get to New Mexico, Annie will probably have moved on, so I won't be able to use any firsthand reference in drawing the Land of Enchantment. Of course, I really don't need to -- wherever my memory might fail me, we have our own photos, the Internet has photos, and if needed, Jennifer's family could take photos.

When I say Annie will have moved on, I'm speaking about the strips I'm drawing. We're about five to six weeks ahead of publication, so Annie's New Mexico strips will certainly still be running when we get back.

Anyway, the storyline is good, and I'm happy with how it's going. You can check out the strip every day at www.comicspage.com!

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