Gatillos

Well I have what could be considered a full page but since I'm trying to make the comic easier to follow and read, I think I'm going to finish the minisequence before publishing it.

In the meanwhile, how's that for little girl Ana:

It feels much better to draw happy things :).

Well the dreaded moment where I need to actually draw a recurring female character is finally here. Let's see if I'm learning anything. From the male protagonist I've learned that I need to have some very clear traits that I can easily reproduce otherwise drawing it in different angles becomes really cumbersome. Also, I like much more this style, a bit more like a cartoon.

So... how's this for a face? She should be kind of cute and very simply outlined...

Just some words, not even a drawing.

This LIFE/interior thing is far from dead, I know lack of updates seems to point strongly to a looming future --but that's not it! It's only the usual spiral of unwanted events that keep conspiring against it, diseases mix with happy moments and stress mixes with relief, and between all of that there seems to be no space for little things like a continuing story.

All is not lost! Many drafts took life from otherwise dead trees and graphite and script and new moments are already in the land of future. Their migration to the digital world is taking longer than I'd like, and sometimes I think that this lonely tear of sweat on the side of my face doesn't only come from the hot summer but also from the guilty feeling of lousy comic parenting. Also, the unborn pages keep asking me to get my **** together and do some drawing, now (unborn pages talk like that, they are a bit foul-mouthed).

There's weekend hopes! Some nasty pieces of life will have taken care of themselves by then, and drawing will resume.

Promise.

It's on the Internet. It must be true.

Well the title is intentionally a reference to Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics", which I'm reading these days. The book is an essay (in comic form) about comics, but from a very uncommon point of view. He talks about sequence, about the cognitive process involved when reading a comic, the difference between painting, literature and comics and much more I haven't read yet. Everything there is wonderfully illustrated with examples as he explores the different approaches authors take and all the great opportunities that this kind of media has.

But today I discovered what a webcomic is really good for: feedback!

Let me explain. I have the rare opportunity of actually talking to real 'readers' and ask them about the comic and I was interested about the last two pages, because a very important characteristic of the older Mr Mann is supposedly revealed there, and some key elements are introduced. But.. a suprisingly high percentage did not get the message I was trying to convey on those two pages. At all. It's not only the message, which can arguably be missed as it's only a couple of pages, but the actual sequence of events was unclear for almost everybody. That is, they didn't understand what happened.

The comics are here and here.

My original intent was to stop that sequence there and go to a flashback introducing the character 'Ana', but I'll add another page to the therapy sequence, trying to further explain it because it's kind of important.

I believe there's two main issues there: the main character is at times difficult to recognize as I still need to improve drawing, and more importantly, when I tried to display the contradiction between what Mr Mann is telling the psychiatrist and what he was actually doing (and what he is remembering), well, essentially I failed.

I think I should have added something more obvious, like some kind of cloud separating thoughts or memories and inserting more shots of Mr Mann's face while explaining it. For your knowledge: the idea here is that Mr Mann lies to the psychiatrist, pretends the whole event was a very simple thing, and hides the fact that after that 'flip out' at the office he went and beat the crap out of that new character that appears (the junkie) in something which has to do with another character yet to appear (Ana).

So FAIL for me ;). I'll try to learn something from this. It's good to have this kind of feedback so early in this process, because I can react quickly.

And if by any chance you did understand it, do post. Maybe my user sample was biased :)