So Summer was certainly something, what a busy a summer. I made a board on my other blog if you wanna look at it with Leaflet's board feature (which I totally didn't know was there.) But the cool fall breeze is coming and with today we officially change the season into harvest!

https://torrent-empress.leaflet.pub/3mvk27ltacc2k

I started comics school with comicsworkshop.bsky.social in their Year Long Program!

And I've been digging in super deep into the stuff they've been doing - I have been transitioning putting a lot more of my creative work into Figma specifically because we're finally moving the majority of Trueref operations into Figma. And did you know??? the Figjam boards on ipad have an entirely different interface that's like HELLA cute it even has washi tape!!!

So I've been taking handwritten notes of lectures on my ipad - since canva whiteboard was too fucking slow and freeform is ipadOS locked basically and I don't have an iphone.

The eventual point will be complete girliepop-ification of the notes (which I probably will do at a later point when I do review.)

This quarter started off with the history of comics with 3 lectures on the distribution of comics (this admittedly had a western focus but it was still fascinating as fuck). I learned many things - like that Archie comics lobbied for their own Hayes style comics code and that there were like congressional hearings about the "effects of comics" and like... holy shit lmao - meant to stifle the distribution of comics - reminds me a LOT about the mastercard debacles of the present with video games and steam/itch.io and it was all a giant bullshit just to kill MAD comics - which makes me wonder if this was all an orchestration on the part of bigger publishers like EA to kill marketplaces like Steam? Good luck.

Ironically Archie comics runners at that time would literally kill themselves if they saw fucking Riverdale (man I love Riverdale it's a camp masterpiece of shit on the same level as Showgirls, do not @ me thank you)

We also started on a class on drawing for comics - which focused on gesture and figure drawing. Now embarrassingly - working on tools for artists doesn't leave me too much time y'know... practice with those tools myself but I learned a lot! It ended up being a really interesting product research study as well as y'know informational.

Those 30 and minute long drills completely beat my ass....

But it taught me the importance of being able to see what camera distortion was used in order to improve proportions, since the teachers could spot the distortion of the body so quickly in other tools like Line of Action! Made me paranoid.... But in our next product sprint I will be focusing on refining our filters and search functionality even more! (I tell myself, MVP... MVP.... the next sprints will be shorter).

In a plot twist though, our instructor actually focused instead on tubes as a way of drawing the body over cubes - even shittalking Bridgeman.... I was shocked but the man's art spoke for itself. Who am I to argue with an archmage of the arcane comic arts here.... He said that cube vs tube is a preference but it seems that this art teaching is technical - but also a cultural difference. The Korean and Chinese teachers I've been learning from on Coloso and Rednote seem to strongly prefer cube... but the western masters seem to prefer tube.

The arguments for cube are structural - It teaches more realistic and balanced perspective, giving a better overall basis in drawing.

The arguments for tube seem to be based on expressionism - Real life is rarely that perfect and overly rigid structure can stifle storytelling and movement.

While I continue my cube studies - I think that I will also start experimenting with tube. Tube vs cube... East vs West.....

In my last class I've started - Storytelling for comics, I've been working on better panels and storytelling - telling more concisely with less panels (something I desperately need to finish AAVIA, esp if I wanna hit my goal of finishing this year.)

In my first exercise we were meant to depict different passages of time, past/present, future/present, and then a mix of all 3. I have been trying to break my artblock and these silly little panels with Veluthe and Goosestarion were a good side start.

Feedback

First panel was the weakest - failed to show context - added props or background could've strengthened the overall panel - but may have been fine in a longer sequence.

Second panel was pretty prefect!

Third panel - This was hard because it needed to be past present and future, my feedback was that I could've made use of Veluthe's second hand and more allusion to the past with the bottle. I think that's fair!

This Week's exercise expanded by taking our weakest panel and then continuing the story to better provide context with each panel having different directions - some of them had to randomly change the position or subject - I tried my best! (we had like a minute for each panel)

the last part of the exercise was to make additional panels to give context or connect some of the other panels

Poor Goostarion, seeing the sun but at what cost.... Also the implication that this is somehow Gale's fault. (I will always blame Gale for anything.)

Overall though, a really solid ass exercise on inventive comic paneling since I really am trying not to just do the talking heads things.

Belle starts the Dark Souls of the Artists Way

So since I finished the Artist's Way earlier this year (which you can totally click on and see my experience), I figured I would push to do another Julia Cameron book. Skipping over the sequels to the Artist's Way this year, I immediately reached for instead apparently what is considered the "Masterclass of The Artist's Way" - The Vein of Gold.

Split into distinct "Kingdoms" instead of weeks - this book is the most Cameron - prime white lady woo - hyper spiritual. And as a spiritual baddie, and seeing people talk about how it truly was the master - and I mean hey. Doing the Artist's Way I did actually achieve my life long dream of becoming Head of Product and then found my way into Creative Directing on shoots (something I would've never thought of!) I tried it earlier this year, and unfortunately it triggered a deep trauma that made me kind of go into a deep depression over the summer.

(Pic related)

However, I am stupid as fuck, so I instead went and checked the transits and determined that October would be the best time to return to another try. Ironically I had mostly forgotten about this promise to myself until it came up naturally in conversation with friends. Turns out, people wanted to do the Artist's Way and the Vein of Gold did explicitly suggest doing it with a "Creative Cluster" therefore... this worked out perfectly.

I took it a bit more seriously this time, even doing the contract - (and giving it a nice makeover, even giving a real stamp, I'm REALLY into stamps lately, it's a whole autism thing.)

Well that's this week!