Posted on September 2, 2008
Filed Under Teaching | Leave a Comment
I often say that I do political work because of “The never ending struggle for truth, justice and the American way”. I believe in comics or in this case an old black and white tv show that i will go out on the streets and hold a clip board, make endless phone calls, organize demonstrations and occasionaly even get arrested. The reality is that it’s the concept of solidarity, standing with people in the time of need, I learned it first in CISPES, then saw it in the union movement and I helped build it in the Graphic Artists Guild. Then Lloyd Dangle and his pals, arrogant closed minded white men all, destroyed the Guild. Turned it into a husk of what it could be, to prove how smart they were. I became a cynic and self involved. I accepted their type will never let anything that takes away their power, ego and self centeredness.
I gave some money to Move-On and other causes, I occasionally made phone calls. In 06 I made so many phone calls all the kiddie organizers didn’t quite know what to make of me, they didn’t have to push, ask or cajole. I just came in and did it. But I didn’t believe any more. Truth Justice and the American way? it really was just a line from a comic book.
I never ever believed I would hear an American Presidential candidate say things like this, never. It’s like being 10 and opening up a comic book by Jack Kirby for the first time. There is such power and idealism in his words I feel all the tired cynicism of the last ten years, all the pompous superiority of Graphic Artist Guild fools washing away, cleansing me of their cynical stupidity. I feel clean and idealistic again, now I hit the phones and donate money, now I can really believe again.
I’t nice to feel whole, to reclaim the idealism of youth and believe in it again. God I hope this sucker is for real.
Using Movie Clips from a loaded swf
Posted on August 28, 2008
Filed Under ActionScript | Leave a Comment
/*
When you need to load a movie clip in a loaded swf how do you do it? then you want to use the clips in the loaded movie your swf.
Every swf can be loaded in three different ways , while you can use the code included in a movie clip this also allows you to use the visual assets in the fla’s library . to make this work you need two swfs on your base swf with this code in the main timeline
Yes I know it should a class but we’re just trying to learn the basics of the code
In our second swf named s_1.fla is a movie clip in the liibrary named C1 set to dispatch
*/
var _loader:Loader
var info:LoaderInfo
_loader = new Loader(); //create a loader
info= _loader.contentLoaderInfo;//checks the actual contet of the object not just the loader we are splitting things up here
info.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onInit, false, 0, true)// add a listener for the init event that fires when all the assets of the loaded swf is available to you
function onInit (e:Event) {
// e is the intit event it means the swf is ready to be used
// e.target target is the swfs contentloaderInfo every swf has an applicationDomain, a loaded swfs domain by default is the main movies child. hasDefinition is a method it’s asking if in this application is there a Movie CLip named “c1″
trace(”head exists: ” + e.target.applicationDomain.hasDefinition(”c1″) );
// okay so are definition exists but we need to set it up so we can use is as a constructor and make it into a class we do that by using the keyword as types the “c1 as a Class so we can pu tit into a variable and then make a new instance of the it
var head:Class = e.target.applicationDomain.getDefinition(”c1″) as Class;
var p = new head()
//make a new instance and stick it on the stage
addChild(p)
}
// actually load the swf
_loader.load(new URLRequest(”s_1.swf”))
addChild(_loader)
//
//
You should be able to past this code into a main timeline and it will run once you make the second swf named s_1.swf with the movie clip in it.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACK!
Posted on August 28, 2008
Filed Under Comics, Jack Kirby | Leave a Comment
It’s Jack’s 91st birthday, so I figured a panel from a comic book about Ghandi and non-violent communication is appropiate some how. Jacks work is so large and so powerful it can become a driving force in any comic and of all the panels I’ve ever done, here’s one that owes him a lot.
And yes it’s also “I have a dream” day that other King gave and that Obama guy is giving a speech tonight that means the next three months are spent making phone calls and walking the streets for him but right now
“Long Live the King!”
Using Stick Figures to Tell a Story
Posted on August 22, 2008
Filed Under Teaching | Leave a Comment
So I have a plot of three to five paragraphs from the famous Gerard Jones, In the old days of Batman and superman I would have worked thru it page by page making elaborate layouts 4 pages at a time on tracing paper.
Whats nice about this is you can block in the whole story within the space of an hour or two because at this point there is no worry about composition, design, rhythm or drawing, stick figures are very easy to draw. It’s just events with one to two words. I’m not even hitting page counts just drawing out the story. Pg 2 I wanted to do a full page head shot.
What did I learn?
1. Gesture and faces that move actually work best with same panel size, because the figures stay locked to a reference point,. I need some way to frame and transition scenes for Carabella, both on the web and in print. Print the characters walking away from the scene becomes more obvious.
2. This becomes draft writing of a comic, more so then plots, scripts pencils or anything else, if you can make a stick figure comics with one or two lines of text all of your story becomes very solid. Plots are always driven by cool literary ideas that mayor may not work in a comic. Here do a fancy drawing of a monster, the standard draw the character with a sad smile, do a dynamic slam bang Kirby fight scene in a quarter of a page. Plots aren’t comics as there in words, with stick figures you cansee what your doing without going to finsihes and being seduced by nice drawing, it’s just storytelling.
3. Holes become obvious Carabella goes to the coffee shop browses the internet and tries to find some information she can use to forge her identity in the next page of stick figures I have four panels of rectangles representing web pages that make no sense as a storytelling device, insert paragraph telling writer toc over artists ass in the notes. That I need to go back to.
Abstract Comics-
Posted on August 18, 2008
Filed Under Teaching | Leave a Comment
Here’s three panels of a “story”. Fantagraphics is going to do a book on Abstract Comics with Andrei Molotiu . he found me though a google search of my posting of a college drawing and asked me to color the pencil drawing.
It’s of course very odd to look back and redraw/ink 30 year old work but the issue of what abstraction is these days, what’s its’ value and how the heck do you bring abstraction to comics is a challenge. If comics are narrative then that means same size panels imply a structure but if you break a page into different layouts structures, it breaks that implication of time. Then you need the characters to carry the time from panel to panel.
But if your characters are just shape and you crop and clip like a good DEgas fanatic your shapes become not character and transforming and moving things.
It’s funny at 20 I knew it all at 50 I realize as Sgt. Schulz would say, “I know nothing I know nothing”