Lessons in Teamwork - Support Groups - Do YOU Have Any (other than me)?

Support Groups Are Important.

No, not THERAPY, that's not what I mean.

I'm talking about COMMUNITY, whether online, on TV, on screen, or in your town.

Teamwork in support groups is good. For when you get lonely, or tired, or feel persecuted or penalized by others. 

Identifying a support group, locally or in the media really isn't all that hard. 

Just ask, Do I FEEL supported by these people? Are they nice to me? Do they give me honest feedback? Do they make me feel LESS isolated and not more. This can apply from anything to business to websites to media groups like YouTube and Twitter, to TV shows on television that make you feel included in their little teams. 

It's always good to have support. It helps combat bullying and social phobia and anxiety.

Best advice I've gotten on drawing comics recently?

Yeah, I got my art critiqued by a Top Shelf editor online at one point, and he shared some good experiential knowledge with me in his response to my email correspondence with him.

The number one thing I learned from a real life professional comic  book editor is the following secret about actually drawing comics:

Drawing (in general, sketching and full page illustration) and sequential art or comics artwork are not the same thing. 

Just because YOU can draw a full page sketch or illustration does not mean your comic book pages will look even HALF that good. For all we know, you could kick ass as an illustrator but really suck OUT LOUD as a comic book artist. I know I used to.

I've gotten better at drawing comics because I've been DRAWING COMICS and SEQUENTIAL ART, and not one image illustrations and sketches. 

Comics Training: The Ultimate Self-Teaching Challenge

No ones going to sit your down and teach you how to draw a comic book. You can read books and tutorials, but unless you attend the Joe Kubert school, that's about as far as you're going to go in terms of knowledge. With animation you might get a bit more lucky, as there's plenty of stuff and people out there to teach you about drawing animation. Not so with drawing comics and manga. If you know other people who draw comics also, consider yourself one of the lucky ones, as most independent comics drawing is a solo venture. 

What you produce here and now, on the spot is the best of what you can do ever, PERIOD!

For how you draw here and now, this minute, this moment is the basis your foundation will be built upon. The only real way to learn is by getting your hands dirty and doing. Only after you've dug the ditch will you truly know what it's like to have mastered digging ditches (i.e. finishing comics).

Drawing comics, if I'm going by my personal experience, it doesn't get any easier (you still have to force yourself to develop habits for it and train to do it), but you do get better at it. 

Unless you're really good at and have a really high aptitude for teaching yourself things, The first 100 to 200 pages of comics are going to be brutal. Brutally bad. They most likely won't go anywhere and won't look good in any way. And this is made even worse if you came up or are coming up from the Boondocks like I did and have where you live in and were raised in a noisy, unpredictable, un-supportive, and openly hostile environment that mostly isn't even conducive of creativity (i.e. pretty much anywhere that's not France, Tokyo, and L.A.). But struggle and self expression can make pretty good bedfellows, so don't give up on making comics just because the people around you don't support you in any way. Part of what makes good art is the war and the struggle that goes on behind it in the background. What matters is the final illusion, not what's surrounding you and your environment right now. The vision in your head trumps your visualization of your current reality any day. Because reality sucks ass and fantasy rules. 

Comics. Planning your pages...

Comic book pages need to be planned, if they're going to have any kind of structure  going on.

Comics really should have some kind of pre-written script for each page. It's more work to write out details of the page, but writing effort can really guide one page into the next, which is kind of the whole point when you're drawing comics. 


There's a REASON it's called "story", even if it's comics: Because it has WORDS. It's near impossible to construct a literate comic book narrative with just art, and without words. Words are necessary, especially if the comic has dialogue and tells a narrative. 

Man. I really gotta finish my graphic novel, and i mean SOON!

All the "graphic novels" on the top selling spots on Amazon? Nearly all GARBAGE. Those books SUCK!

Let me first tell you WHY the Amazon America graphic novel bestseller list pretty much sucks.

What I DID find on that list contained nothing new or innovative. Tired old comic book franchise based books that offer nothing new, nothing we haven't seen in the last hundred years of comics.

Then there's the adaptations of popular movies and TV shows. The only reason they're ON the bestseller list is because they have the name of a TV show on them. Or the fact that it was drawn or written by the CREATOR(s) of said show. Brand name recognition and all that. Why do I want to READ a TV show. There's a void of creative interpretation and originality there. Just more of the same you can already get on TV.

What original comics I DID see on that list (ranked at number 36 or lower on the list of course) was thinly veiled product placement.

One of the only current graphic novels I DO like would be "Understanding Comics"  by Scott McCloud. But I've read my favorite parts of that book at least 30 to 50 times already, and I know those lines by heart already. Wake me up when Scott McCloud release a NEW academic work that isn't promoting Google.

But I digress. 

Bottom line: Nothing new!

Obscure...things

Was digging through my old comics boxes. Turns out I have a Honeymooners comic  book, that was published in 1987, that I bought in 2001!

How'd that happen? That comic is dated as hell!

I am a proud Scorpio, but if you wish you could be my friend, you should probably be a Virgo, Aries, Sagittarius, and/or Leo. NOT a Taurus. Unless you're a famous Taurus.

Based on the Zodiac signs of the people and friends I actually like. I'm not too fond of Geminis either, especially my adoptive parents, who are both Geminis. Geminis make good "romantic peers" though.