Monday 10 December 2012

Comics -- a caveat for artists

As I mentioned in my last post, in my younger days I did put a toe in the water drawing comics on as an amateur. Most of my efforts were pretty abysmal  and unfit for any airing before being committed to the bin. I did however collaborate on a few occasions with aspiring writers and this was, I'm afraid, without fail, an exasperating experience. As you might imagine a certain degree of creative disagreement is always gonna arise with a collaborative project and for a few reasons this is especially true within an amateur context. One cause is that people are protective of their creative input, this plus the absence of a commercial imperative gives rise to unrealistic expectations and a lack discipline, I suppose what you could call an unprofessional attitude.

The major problem I encountered as an artist was inflexible scripts, writers would submit half a page of script repleat with all the trimmings, directions and descriptions and such like. The trouble was they had little appreciation of visual story telling, often these pages would have line after line of dialogue with nothing happening except the comic equivalent of noddy shots. So you'd have four pages of artwork dedicated to a conversation, between, two, in one room, great. You see what I mean by the absent commercial imperative? there's no way that could happen if you wanted to make money, you'd just run out paper and bore your customers rigid.

The other point, which is related, is that there's a problem when the guy doing the writing has no sense of economy, it's all very well describing a elaborate scene full of detail, it's something else to actually realize that scene on the page. So as an artist you could encounter huge demands on your skills with no input on how to realize a story more effectively visually, that's quite frustrating, especially when your collaborator is a bit naive.  In film and television where there a whole creative team, the producer actually has to find the money to make the script happen on screen, so there a check to counter excessive demands  in scripts.

That's it really, just a small warning to artists, who might encounter this post and are wanting to try their hand at a collaborative effort.






7 comments:

  1. Especially coming after your last post I'd like to see some examples of what your were able to produce as an illustrative artist - particularly what you felt was successful in this context.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah when I posted that I felt that i shouldn't really put it up without some examples, you know, -proof of the pudding- My portfolio of old work is a bit scattered and I'm not sure of what I still have,I think the comic stuff, that's any good, is probably beyond retrieval without some effort in tracking it down, making some phone calls etc. I think I've one or two drawings that I quite like that are inked and scanned, If I'm feeling brave I'll find 'em and stick em up within a day or so. At the moment I'm concentrating with something that's taking up quite a bit of time but I will make some time to addresss this issue sort out a few items, probably new stuff, which is going to more satisfactory from a personal perspective. I'm not in the same league as the excellent artists featured on your blog though, which I'm still going through and enjoying very much.

      Delete
  2. Sounds like your collaborations were not very collaborative. The writer should be telling a story with the artist, working together. Comic art is something more than illustrations to accompany the words. You should try again with a more generous writer

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah I'm up for that, when I've got my act together, I really wanted to do do Naughty Boy Island, it was right up my street, although it was illustrated book not a comic. I just loved the idea of hawking this project around to prospective publishers and maybe even getting the odd sarcastic rejection notice, would have been a hugelaugh but maybe not a sensible use of time.

      Delete
  3. Naughty Boy Island made me smile. Did you do any illustartions for it?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I did do a some drawings that went beyond sketches, almost ready for repo, character studies. I've them around somewhere and I did intend to ink Maffew for the -Tips- piece, he's interleaved in layout somewhere god knows, so that'll havta wait. They weren't really satisfactory for the piece really though, It cries out for the old school Dandy/Beano/Buster/Topper style, like Ken Reid or Leo Baxendale. My initial drawings were too prosaic, lacking in that surreal quality those illustrators could've brought to the project.

      Delete
  4. You've fired me up to want to carry on with the story. I've got some dark places it could go next.

    ReplyDelete