Posts Tagged: quality

Drafting Work Towards Completion

Posted by & filed under Underdogs.

One of the central truisms of being an artist is this:

You will have to do many drafts of your work.

It’s unavoidable. There is this myth among artists about how the masters of the craft were gifted from the beginning — that they went into their studios and produced works of greatness in a matter of hours. This is exacerbated by videos like this one, where it’s possible to watch a master like John Romita Sr. as he quickly busts out perfect drawings of Spider-man with a felt tip marker. Amazing, right? And deservedly so! John Romita Sr. has created comics since 1949 and has been drawing Spider-man since 1966. He’s had a lifetime of practice in order to reach a place where he can draw something amazing with minimal revisions. (more…)

Qualities of Great Comics

Posted by & filed under Underdogs.

I recently finished Habibi by Craig Thompson. It’s an amazing piece of literature to say the least. The degree of experimentation, intricacy, and precision with which Thompson approaches his art is on display with each page. It blew me away! Reading Habibi has led me to start thinking about the nature of what makes a “great comic,” so that I can pass that knowledge along to my students.

Habibi

Image from Craig Thompson’s Habibi

The qualities of great comics are important to discern, especially when learning how to make comics. The following five qualities are the standards around which we at Making Comics (dotCom) are constructing our MOOC (massively open online course). Follow these principles when creating your own MOOC project.

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Defining Scope

Posted by & filed under Underdogs.

Read the article, then grab the activity sheet!

60 Pieces In 60 Minutes
Read the article, then grab the activity sheet!

When beginning any project there is always this moment of “oh man, what do I do first?” For the longest time I would start in the worst way possible by diving head-first into projects and working only on the parts that excited me the most. I consistently ignored the big picture in order to focus on the details. I learned a couple of things from trying to work this way for nearly a decade:

  1. I never finished a project working in this manner.
  2. I still do this and always risk failing to complete projects as a result.
  3. It wasn’t until I worked on defining the scope of my project that I understood what I needed to “hyper-focus” on.

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