Establishing A Schedule

Why have a schedule?

Deadlines? Estimates? Spreadsheets? Who would want to deal with boring things like those? Well if you’re anything like me, establishing deadlines or benchmarks to direct the creative process provides peace of mind (not to mention increases productivity) during a long-form comic book project.

From grade school to college, I hated math class. “What does math have to do with comics?” All I wanted to do was draw. When I first started teaching at High Tech High Chula Vista, that sentiment changed in a hurry; I was glad to know basic math. I found myself managing hundreds of students over multiple projects. Knowing math allowed me to track everyone’s progress.

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Ability Calibration

GO TIME YOURSELF!  Try the worksheet that is designed to help new and aspiring artists gauge their ability to create within a period of time.

As an artist, it’s important to develop a strategy for increasing productivity. It’s a necessary evil. Artists are driven by emotion, right? How can a person like that be expected to adhere to a schedule? One with goals and deadlines?

George Lucas. John Lennon. Michelangelo. Alan Moore. JRR Tolkien. Creative geniuses often develop strategies to help them stay focused on their tasks. How do they do it?

Perhaps the more important question is: How did they start?

When I was a kid, I spent six years doing competitive, Olympic-style, archery. The thing that stuck with me more than anything else was the method for figuring out how to aim. The idea was basically this:

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Murder Your Darlings

“…if you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.” 
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863–1944).  On the Art of Writing.  1916.

Killing a project is one of the hardest things you will ever have to do. As long as I can remember I have had ideas for stories. As a child growing up in the woods of New Hampshire I would often spend an inordinate amount of time by myself acting out the stories in my head. This was fun for me. I would go on adventures with the X-men or create whole new characters for Spider-man to interact with. At some point I started creating my own universes.

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Digital Coloring for Comics – GIMP Edition

I still remember feeling awe the first time I super-imposed text, with effects, over a picture downloaded from the internet. My high school’s art room had a brand new Gateway computer with Adobe Photoshop 3.0. Finally, I could make digital art and I was the only person I knew who could do that. My obsession with the program grew so that by age 18 I was co-teaching the digital-arts class.

1999 was a lifetime ago. Nowadays, basic information on Photoshop is widely available. My mother can place text in an image and I routinely see 8-year-old kids who post their digital creations on the web.

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The Tools

Be they traditional or digital, your tools are an extension of yourself. They are the vehicle that communicates story, expresses feelings or ideas, and connects you to the humanity at the core of us all. I’m not going to tell you what tools are the better than others, or whether I think you should focus your efforts on digital over print. I’m not opinionated enough for that kind of talk. I am, however, very passionate about comics. I will therefore discuss my thoughts on tools, with the understanding that these are choices that were formed based on personal experience.

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Qualities of Great Comics

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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