Let off some steam

      Lately, I've been thinking about the action-classic "Commando".  A movie I've watched dozens of times over, but then went several years without viewing.  It had been long enough that I went back to it, just recently, with fresh eyes.  I had always known it as king of the dumb action movies, but never fully appreciated the depth to which that's true.
     When you talk about what makes a movie entertaining, there are several measures.  Some of these are subjective, we don't all have the same tastes.  However, even if a movie falls short in those areas (acting, plot, characters, etc.), there are a few objective measures too.  Basic crew competence (camera operating, lighting), art assets (cg, matte paintings, costume design) post-production (foley, editing) and other nuts-and-bolts areas of production can elevate something that lacks otherwise.

     When a movie meets the objective criteria but not the subjective, you get a standard Summer blockbuster or average Marvel movie;  looks good, totally forgettable.
     When a movie meets the subjective but not the objective, you get into the realm of cult/b movies.  Sam Raimi, Roger Corman, people making movies that are charming as hell on a shoestring budget.

     So what happens when a movie fails both measures of quality, and is still amazing?
     I call this "The Commando Effect".

     I am completely unable to get bored of Commando.  Boom mic dips, continuity errors, cranes visible within shots, clunky dialogue, erratic characters, unimportant.  What is important is that you please don't disturb John Matrix's friend, he's dead tired.  Did you know Matrix eats Green Berets for breakfast?  Or that he can ram a car head-on into a telephone pole at 90 km/h, without being buckled in, and survive without a scratch? 

     I could probably write an extremely long essay on exactly what is going on in Commando, or any other movie this amazing.  An alternate name for this phenomenon could be "The Dolemite Effect".  What it boils down to is this;  yeah, these movies are dumb, but they're confident as fuck.  Nothing in this world is more persuasive than a confident idiot, so much so that I'm willing to believe Bennet, who spent the entirety of the movie talking about how Matrix is too dangerous to fuck with directly, could pull an unprompted 180 and decide that yes, I'm just going to knife fight this guy who just murdered 400 people.


     So anyway, speaking of objectively and subjectively bad

      I just said fuck it and went full scratchy on thumbnailing panels out.  I'm actually pretty close to finishing the first pass of the first story, this is a scene that has the beats worked out from start to finish.  Some of these went up in a previous update, but I included them here for the sake of clarity.  It starts off after the three characters have fucked up by staying up too long and drinking too much, and passing out, missing their opportunity.

      Sometimes thumbnailing just means nothing but stick figures, baby

      Coil rifles are an actual thing, but they're pretty impractical and usually not all that powerful.  I just like the idea of a home brew railgun.

      They did good for once

      That's probably still confusing and unclear to you, but at least I know what's going on.  After the thumbnailing pass, I'll probably find it  a lot easier to progress.  I'll still have to switch some things around or redo some ideas, but it won't be long before a tale of fat men failing come to life.

Bweeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

A nebulous cluster of dumb-looking assholes

     But enough about politics! Hah! Do you get it? It's because politics and FAAAAARRRRRRRTT.
Here are some pictures and words.

    

     In my head, the two headed guy here talks like an old math teacher of mine.  Or at least, the exaggerated version of him that built up in my head.  All the hard and sharp edges of his syllables are rounded off, so he'd be all "Hmm yez bleez viggs my gumbuder" whenever windows 3.11 was acting up. "Yez hello I am a Zbider Robod, bay no addenjin do my boorly drawn legz".  The guy on the bottom left is maybe the uniform I would make my henchmen wear, if I got some.

     "Mild disappointment/discomfort" is my favourite emotion to portray.

    
     Maybe my least awful looking snake fellow yet.  Also maybe an accidental Homer?, ?

     I keep falling into the same trap when I try to do comic related things.  Putting too much work into something before the stuff that comes after it is conceptually finalized.  This time I tried really hard not to do that and results followed.  This first one is the page before the "aah, empty" page from the last update.  I like to be vulgar.

     This immediately follows the "aah, empty" page.  I like to say I enjoy high-concept comedy but then I turn around and everything is "the heavyset man pees, then falls over.  In the distance, a fart."

     I have no idea how to even begin organizing the approach to this, so I'm mostly just winging it. I've still got a pile of in between pages to scribble out, but I'm pretty close the the end of the first scribble pass of this (issue? episode? story? volume?).  Following the scribbles comes sketches, then lines and background.  I'd like to paint it in but that still turns up looking like garbage, see panel 1 of the "Shitty Raiders" strip I put up a year ago.

mmm bop,

Hands and feet, Incomplete

     A bitter wind howls against the bedroom window as I wallow in the glow of a late-stage hangover.  To my right, my cat, Flapjack, is sleeping off his dinner.  He snores quietly, and I'm positive I heard him fart, just once.  As the abrasive malaise of too much wine slowly fades, what remains is a nagging feeling that I should try harder.

     I suppose I have been; when I first started doing this the updates were mostly single-image pictures, and now I've usually crammed three or four in there.  It's probably a good thing that I'm not satisfied, it makes me push more. It's still a frustratingly slow procedure to outline/write/thumbnail in a comic structure, but the more I do it, the more sense it makes at least.

     So here's some recent leavings.  There are more, but they're pretty much failures that I put too much work into and aren't worth your time or mine.   First off is form practice, and a little bit of conceptual character design. The top left figure is someone that I have an idea of a story arc for, but they aren't finalized or even named yet.  

     One big problem I have is drawing a figure that isn't just standing blandly, with arms and legs being uninteresting.  Another is drawing a person from a perspective that isn't Garfieldian.  Straight-on shots of people facing each other aren't interesting, regardless of how much lasagna they are eating.

     

     There's a question that burns on my mind daily, and I ask it of my cat at every opportunity.  It might be easier to just get something that asks the question for me.

     I almost consider this a failed attempt, but when you are implored by such a handsome face, how can you refuse.

     This piece is called "Completely normal and average human, behatted"

     And here's another thumbnail page of the comic I'm working on.  The chubby man taking a piss is a catalyst for a major plot point.

     BYE

From the Mouth of My Canon

     Canon is the enemy.

     If you aren't familiar with the word, that might be because you're a functional adult.  For the rest of us, it's the idea of an official lore in some narrative structure, usually from children's media that adults can't get enough of.  For example, after the first Star Wars was in theatres, but before Empire, there was a book written that took place in between.  It had Luke and Leia hook up, because the idea of them being siblings hadn't been thought of yet.   This book is now non-canonical, meaning it isn't officially part of the story.

     For almost any narrative, some level of canon is essential.  Without some kind of bedrock for the structure to rest on, it falls apart.  The problem is, it's tempting to get too bogged down and completely hem yourself in. 

     An example of this is Adventure Time.  One of my favourite cartoons of the last 15 years, or at least it was for the first few seasons.  The entire premise was a boy had a magic dog, they were bros,  and they went on adventures.  The world around them was whatever it needed to be for the purposes of that story, and was set up in such a way that the creators were only limited by their imagination.   Skip ahead three or four years, and the original creative team wants to move on to other projects.  The show is still doing well, so the network wants to keep it going.  New writers are brought in once the originals are gone, and these new writers have a different understanding of the material; that of fans, rather than creators.  See also The Simpsons, from Armen Tanzarian onward.

     You don't necessarily have to understand something to enjoy it.  Adventure Time is pleasant to look at, the dog farts, and silly things happen.  The intended audience of children might not ever notice anything has changed.  A manchild like me will, though.  Ideas that served their purpose as vague explanations of why the world they were in was so strange were put under a microscope, picked apart and labelled until all the mystery was gone.

     Star Wars is another example.  A series trapped by it's own backstory, unable to tread new ground for fear of alienating fans with something different and losing the hundreds of millions of dollars invested.

     I guess what I'm saying is less Tolkien, more Moebius.  Anyway here's more scrawlings.

      This will likely be a motherfucker to paint.

      Zig-zagging from top left to bottom right: The Saddest Janitor, man holding drugs, the handsomest man, the second handsomest man, a bad angle, and marionette pantomime.

That little duck face in the upper right corner is my greatest failure.

     Still have back issues of Heavy Metal on my mind, as evidenced by Upsetting Hooters.

     The bottom right is me presenting you with this update.

Comic characters should smoke more

     Here's where I lie about what's happening in these pages

     In pulp sci-fi/fantasy stories, you HAVE to have someone smoking while they drink.  I'm pretty sure Moebius wrote a book about it or something. 
    

     The guy that runs the karaoke night doesn't appreciate you badmouthing Creed.

Bragging to the bartender about having a big money deal in the works, except the bartender isn't a hot lady, but a dumpy man.  

      Finally, this is me walking away after making this update.

Brrt

It's not as bad as it looks

     It's that time again. Still hammering out the kinks in drawing anything that isn't an unpleasant face at a 3/4 view, but I think I'm getting ideas across.

     

I tried messing around with how panels work, there's a lot to it.  I'd like to avoid uniform, static panels, but it's pretty easy to jumble it all up.  Here's a stupid way to depict a pistol firing.

     I'm still drawing landforms too shiny.  Light and shading hard, etc.  After I decided bandits would probably live in a badlands region, I thought I should at least know a little bit about them.  Did you know Hell's Half Acre is an actual place?

     I'm still not very good at building design, but this is all early sketching anyway and can be changed pretty easy.

     The story I'm working out here is about three idiots in over their heads. Write what you know.

     The incompetent men plot their heist.

     This one is a little older, throwing ideas at the wall for a later part of the story. 

Not a lot to say this time because this is all early draft stuff that will likely be left behind, but for now it's support structure.  Further updates as events warrant.

Dalliance in blue and gray

      Here's another huge dump
     

      I entered a phase where everything is Muppets, even if it's a self-portrait.

      A different take on the Choober, something I mentioned last update. Hook blob has had enough and is leaving.

      If you aspire to anything in life, let it be becoming the little bro on the casio. 

      Monster design verdict: Still lopsided.  This is a Warrens Anger, I figure they're about the size of a cat and live in areas prone to rat plagues.

      I have this issue where I can't make creatures threatening; they always come out a little endearing.  Here's another example:

      So I've been working more on trying to organize something longer.  Still in the blocking out phase and everything is placeholder, since I have no idea how to even approach something like this.  I suppose iterative is the best way to approach it, even though that will take an assload of time.  Here's some first draft nastiness.

      I'm trying to avoid too many words in each panel, because huge text dumps reflexively make me look away.  I think this is one of those situations like that first flash animation I did, where you can see the progression of figuring out basic things. 

      That doesn't really qualify as a joke but don't you worry, I'm sure I'll figure something out, like maybe a butt, or someone slipping on a banana peel and landing on a butt.
     

      God this is going to be filled with so much witty back-and-forth.  Heart pounding stair climbing ACTION. 

      This is Hugh, raider boss of Wolverine Gang.  He is a 100% original character and is in no way The Humungus from Road Warrior, nor is he Hugh Jackman's Wolverine.

     The punchline of every joke I ever write is "someone is stupid" so prepare for a lot of that once I start nailing down dialogue. 

So, anyway