Updated the landing page of my website to include several news portions: RSS feeds for my blog and my two webcomics, and links to my most recent comics.

I have also made some significant changes within the site: mostly, the reconfigured Archive which makes it easier to see all of my work since 2014 (well, filling in the gaps in the archive still a work in progress…). You can view all of what’s new in the Site Changelog.

mumblesplash:

comics as an art form make me insane. they’re so difficult to do well. there’s so many different ways to make sequential art work and most of them are deeply unintuitive. onomatopoeia that feels completely ridiculous to put down often reads seamlessly. panels on a page become a fractally nested image composition challenge that’s only possible to lose because if you do a good job no one will notice. you have to direct the readers’ eyes on a specific path across the page but also account for the fact that they won’t follow it. comic time isn’t linear. if the order of events isn’t crystal clear the story becomes incomprehensible. sometimes you need to do this on purpose. all this for a medium almost universally considered less effective than animation and less respectable than plain text. even its own name doesn’t take it seriously

:) comics is such a deceptively complicated medium but I love it so much for that same reason.

Sidenote: I am cataloguing all of the visual-literary devices used in comics at the Comics Devices Library. Go look at it if you wanna see what comics can do that other mediums can’t.

A reading list of comics craft books:

1. Scott McCloud - Understanding Comics, Making Comics (two classic texts on comics)
2. Will Eisner - Comics and Sequential Art (the first comics craft book, and what McCloud’s books are in response to)
3. Lynda Barry - Making Comics (exercises to loosen up drawing, with nuggets of wisdom)
4. Ivan Brunetti - Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice

My library has a link page for other craft resources too from different places, including a comics SFX database, journals, podcasts and more https://comicsdevices.com/links/

belated Alexander the Great birthday + Alexander Comic 3rd Anniversary since debut post.

Book 2 of Alexander Comic is currently ongoing.

Random concept for a warm up doodle

As the tapir who drew Perth Comic Art’s Festival 2024 poster, I’ll be guesting next weekend and hawking my wares, talking some talks, battling my peers and go all in!! Let’s hang out and celebrate comics!!

1. My table has the usual stuff (no TCM this time, due to weight + I have to prioritise Alexander Book 1 for now). You can buy my books, bookmarks and prints at Table B3 at State Library WA on Sunday July 28. You can get a free bookplate stamp or emboss stamp too for your books.
2. On Saturday July 27 I will be sharing the stage with a few other creators to talk about the mistakes we made while making our comics. If you’ve followed me since TCM times, you can probably guess which one I will talk about……..
3. Between 12 pm to 1 pm on Sunday I will be drawing competitively??? If you want to see me fail or win spectacularly

There’s PCAF merch too with my animals on it as additional things you can get. :3c

Malu & Irie, from last month’s pet portrait commission sale.

Alexander, The Servant & The Water of Life
Chapter 8.03 (July 17 2024)

He left when the world needed him most.

1. I wouldn’t recommend doing such a big ambitious webcomic while doing your Masters…..
2. The footnotes are juicy for the first page in this set of updates! Head on to the Alex Comic site (link below) for the historical artefacts that were referenced.

About the comic

2 pages (or 2 double pages). If you’re interested in the research footnotes, click the link in the header text to go to the webcomic site! See the art in glorious full-size too.

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Comics layouts based on different styles of historical art:

Ancient Egyptian wall paintings, ancient Greek pottery (Kersch style), & medieval European illumination (Alexander Comic - alexanderromance.com)

Early modern Ottoman illumination (The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya)

More to come @_@ Also these are all from my webcomics, you can read them for free!!!

Evie & Luna. Pet portrait commission.

My commissions are still open until the end of this weekend! Here’s more deets.

Been awhile since I was commissioned a reptile for a pet portrait!

Commissions are still open for a bit longer. (info here)