This week we revisit the topic of a panel’s “innards”–the content of the panel itself. We talk about staging, “blocking” our shots, composition, scene transitions, and how studying photography and theatre performances could help a struggling cartoonist find new inroads to creating interesting panels.

We meant to get at two topics this week, but we just plumb ran out of time.

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 Art & Story 059 - The Big Block II [91:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week we tackle a topic put forth by Dungeon Warden, namely: How does one speed up the drawing process?

We’re joined in the audio by Krishna Sadasivam of PC Weenies and Uncubed for a discussion on expediting the process of drawing comics. We cover life drawing, sloppy sketching, and the stick-and-bubble method throughout.

We’re joined in the chat by Dungeon Warden, Largopredator, Kevin Cross, Tony Piro, Javier Hernandez, Jim Lujan , KvinDkr, and Frumph. If I forgot anyone, or if I neglected to link to your website, please email me, and I’ll add it to the show notes.

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 Art & Story Alive! Episode 34: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week’s episode is a bit of a follow-up to last week’s talk about thumbnailing, or plotting. Mark and I discuss the procedural nature of how we create comics. By breaking our process into smaller stages, we’re afforded the luxury of putting a lot of focus, consideration, and concern into each stage. We broached this subject originally in episode 09, but we thought we’d revisit it both for the sake of new listeners and to see if anything has changed in our process since then.

For more discussion on our thoughts on process, you can check out our commentary track for our Switch Runners project.

In other news, be sure to check out my interview on Planet Comic Book Radio! My thanks once again to Javier Hernandez for being a great host and interviewer.

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 Art & Story 58 - The Big Process II: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week we talk about a recent post on Krishna’s website about reaching creative plateaus.

We follow with a subject submitted by Tony Piro:
“It would be interesting to discuss the thought process of putting together character emsembles. For example, how many characters is optimal, what decisions do you make when picking personalities, how do you pick characters that are interesting together.

What about the design of an ensemble? How do you give each character individuality, but make them still part of a larger whole. Both the actual designs (body size, facial type, etc.) and the color palettes of the characters.”

We’re joined in the audio by Krishna Sadasivam of PC Weenies and Uncubed.

We’re joined in the chat by Dungeon Warden, Largopredator, Kevin Cross, Audra of nemu*nemu, Tony Piro, Horatio, Javier Hernandez The Blog Comics, Gamegeezer, Diana Nock, KSekelsky, Manuel FM, and Frumph. If I forgot anyone, or if I neglected to link to your website, please email me, and I’ll add it to the show notes.

Another reminder to check out the Sequential Artists’ Pub this Friday night on Talkshoe!

Also, a quick book recommendation from Krishna: Creating Unforgettable Characters, by Linda Seger.

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 Art & Story Alive! Episode 33: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Sunday September 28, 2008: 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm — Pittsfield Branch: Program Room Ann Arbor.

To anyone in the South Eastern Michigan area, I will lead a discussion and hands-on workshop about the sophisticated array of choices involved in visual storytelling. Participants will be invited to create comics of their own. All supplies will be provided. Free to the public.

For more information go here. Hope to see you there.

In the latest copy of Comics Buyers Guide, I got a pretty nice write up about Echoes From Asteroid X, the mini comic I released a few months ago. You can check out the article here.

Page 1, Page 2

This week we explore what our concerns are when creating the plots, or thumbnails, of our comics stories. As we’ve stated elsewhere and in other podcasts, this is, for us, the most intellectually labor-intensive part of making comics. We do our best to chart some of the many battles we pick when we write our stories with pictures.

Our focus mostly rests on an unfinished project of Mark’s, but we compare his process on that to past projects such as Switch Runners and The Galactic League of Marshals.

Also, one more reminder about Mark’s upcoming workshop at the Ann Arbor District Library this Sunday!

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 Art & Story 57 - The Big Thumbnail [93:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week we tackle two subjects submitted by Tony Piro:
1. how do you find the one sentence summary of your comic?
2. what kinds of reader involvement techniques to your readers respond best to, i.e., blogging about your comic, put up flyers, etc.

Our discussion leads to some interesting ideas to use technologies like Twitter to help spread awareness of our comics.

We’re joined in the audio by Krishna Sadasivam of PC Weenies and Uncubed.

We’re joined in the chat by Dungeon Warden, Largopredator, Kevin Cross, Scott & Audra of nemu*nemu, Tony Piro, Henrik, The Blog Comics, Gamegeezer, Diana Nock, DjYrai, and Kaiki. If I forgot anyone, or if I neglected to link to your website, please email me, and I’ll add it to the show notes.

Don’t forget, Mark’s workshop is this coming weekend!

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 Art & Story Alive! Episode 32 [67:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Some interesting listening on the latest episode of the Creative Writing Podcast that ties in with content covered in Art & Story episodes 41 and 51. Just wanted to point at it for those listeners who have expressed interest on the live show about character arcs. More options put on the table for you, as well as confirmations of some of the ideas Mark and I have discussed.

Mark and I spend a lot of time on this show talking about struggling to analyze, practice, and otherwise improve our work. However, as a cartoonist works on his/her craft, he/she will inevitably amass a “bag of tricks” to help expedite their comics endeavors. You just get better as time goes on, though we don’t always see it happening. So this week we back off of the digging deep into our craft and reflect on what we consider to be our strengths as comics storytellers and how our latest comics project, The Cosmic Adventures of Gena Kranz, is being created from our “comfort zones”.

Also, one more reminder about Mark’s upcoming workshop at the Ann Arbor District Library this month!

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 Art & Story 56 - The Big Comfort Zone: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download