Alex Claw

Character design

The other day I was listening to the Paper Wings Podcast, episode 9, wherein they talk about making characters designs more dynamic. Their tips were very interesting, one thing they brought up was the idea of characters having a ‘power center’, which spurred all sorts of thoughts in me.

A power center is a point where the character’s entire body gravitates to. The two examples they gave were Woody Allen and Charlie Chaplin. Woody Allen’s power center is at his forehead; therefore his entire frame gravitates toward his forehead. When he speaks, his hands are near his head, when he walks, he leads with his head, etc. Charlie Chaplin’s power center is near his knees and his entire form centers on that. The addition of a power center gives a character a couple of things, a strong silhouette and a identifiable mannerism.

If you draw out a character, then black it out, the silhouette that remains should be easily identifiable as one of your characters. When I was beginning All Manner of Bad, that’s one of the things I tried to incorporate into the comic. Hence, Bryan’s crazy hair and Jase’s bald head, not to mention their physical differences.

Although, I managed to achieve the silhouette aspect of character design, it was the mannerisms of the characters that got away from me. I’ve been realizing lately that all the characters I draw aren’t very distinguishable from one another in the way they stand, the way they walk, etc. They all just sort of stand there, shoulders slumped and static. People are different and the way they’ll stand is different also, and the way they stand and move are all centered on their power center.

Let’s take the two characters in the webcomic. Bryan and Jase. Both are have different personalities and both have different mannerisms, but you can’t really tell that from the way they’re portrayed on the comic. They both move the same way, they both stand in a similar manner, and they both lack that center where their body would gravitates.

Bryan is a generally happy, gregarious character, but he’s also a slacker and lazy. The way I’ve always imagined him, but haven’t really shown it, is that he’s a bit hunched over, his shoulders sloped and his head tucked a bit down. He’s a big man, but his stance is one where it’s as if he’s got a ball hanging right before his stomach and he’s curved around it. This makes his head tilt a bit forward, his back curved, and his legs bent slightly at the knees, bringing them up toward that center. His hands would tend to hover around that spot when he’s talking.

Jase on the other hand is sterner, practical, and more solid than Bryan. It’s the practical and solid nature of Jase that would shape the way he stands and the way he moves, add in the usual gear he carries with him, shotgun, pistol, the vest, and backpack, then you’ve got him loaded down with a lot of weight. That causes the way he stands to be more straight back, feet about a shoulder width apart, and head held straight. The power center for is directly below him, it’s as if all the weight is pulling him straight down, therefore he stands in a bracing manner of when he moves it’s hands at his sides and body somewhat straight, unless he’s holding a weapon and even that would tend to drift downward until it’s needed to be used.

I’m sure there’s plenty I’m still missing when it comes to character design, but for now those thoughts have wriggled their way into my brain and hopefully they’ll stick, allowing me to keep drawing these characters in interesting ways.

Alright, time to get back to drawing.

Update

It’s not that I’ve forgotten about this blog, in fact this blog has been weighing heavily on my mind for the last few weeks.

There’s this thing that I keep wondering, which is, just how much information is too much information. I could ramble on all day about the things that are going through this semi transparent noggin of mine, but I would assume folk would find that a bit too much to bear.

I’ve been writing, well not completely writing, mostly hammering out a different system of writing, since my last method seems to have produced nothing much.

Along with writing, I’ve been thinking really hard on the whole getting All Manner of Bad finished up to a hundred pages and then packing those hundred pages into a book. I’m still hesitant on if that’s a leap I want to make at this time.

Concurrently to the whole book making thing, I’ve been also thinking a lot on self-promotion. I’m the kind of guy who would prefer to lurk in the shadows and cackle to myself (while wearing a hooded cloak). There are ways to self promote and I’ve been hammering through a few ideas to try and get All Manner of Bad and Zombie Roosevelt known to the masses, or at least more people than those who currently know about it. These ideas, of course, all will take time and that’s the one thing in my life I never have enough of.

And finally, there’s the whole novel writing thing and the attempt to resurrect Bitterwater Tales.

Those two are like hammering against a granite wall with a rubber mallet. I think I’m focused too much on the overwhelming volume of words that have to be generated and that’s what’s been holding me back. The only way to get better at writing is, obviously, to write.

Therefore write I’m doing.

Added to all of this are the quiet sighs and pondering on how to produce another comic and where to find the time to draw and write that one.

The obvious answer is to quit the day job. That of course will just mean I’ll be starving and living without power or home… So, not the best option.

Okay, time to get back to writing.

There’s been a ton of things on my mind lately. So much so that there are times I forget to do things… or choose to ignore them.

I’ve been rethinking the whole Vampire Hours thing. It’s great from a productivity standpoint, no one to bother you as you slave away in the wee hours of the night, but from a social perspective. Sheesh, talk about a loner trapped in a small room slowly filling up with his own funk. This is coming from a guy who’s fully embraced his anti-socialism to a degree where he fantasies about that one Twilight Zone ep where nukes kill off everyone and I’m the blind guy stacking books on the rubble strewn steps of the bank. Oh, man that would be awesome.

The problem being, of course, that no one is awake in the wee hours of the night. Sure, some are, but those are the ones you should be avoiding, with their creepy hollow eyes and pale, pale skin. I’ve been realizing a good chunk of the whole trying to turn a webcomic, blog, book onto more people is networking and using social media to it’s full extent, which means interacting with other folk on the vast web thing. You can’t really interact with folk when the vast majority of them are asleep.

There’s something oddly attractive about creative works in the wee hours of the night. It feels more… real, or real in that sense of this is what a real artist should be doing. Staying up late to work on his/her craft. Not sticking to the nine to five Man’s watch. Instead I’m gonna stick a rigid ten pm to five am schedule that can’t be broken because I gotta go to work afterwards.

I’m going to give it a week. Test it out again, see where my head’s at by Friday. I might pass out in front of the computer like I did for years on end or I might, y’know, actually do things correctly and quickly.

Time is everything. There’s only a finite amount of it and I guess the key is to find out where to shift everything so that when it’s the time to do things, you’re in the right frame of mind and not so physically tired you’re about to fall out of your computer chair.

Right now, it’s time to stare longingly at a bottle of beer I can’t drink and a loaf of bread I can’t eat.

To be honest, it’s been a weird couple of months.

There’s been a battle for change and all that good stuff going on behind the scenes over here. Not big changes, just, y’know, the smallish life changing changes that have to be made so that a certain individual doesn’t succumb to the siren call of laziness. The battle is on going, but so far so good.

It began one sweltering July evening, while I sat hunched over my computer trying desperately to not fall asleep while drawing an All Manner of Bad update. You see, when one wakes up at five in the morning and sixteen hours later tries to complete an update for the following day, things get a little on the physically exhausted side.

Then in one of those Eureka! moments, I thought to myself: “Perhaps drawing when you wake up would be better than drawing after a loooong day at the day job”, it took a few moments to realize that yes, indeed, drawing when waking up would be far better than drawing when completely exhausted.

So began Vampire Hours. Instead of crawling out of bed at five in the morning, I began crawling out of bed at ten in the evening.

You’d be surprised how much energy you have in the wee hours of the night, while the world slumbers and snores away. I wake up and go about my normal routine, drawing, writing, and reading. It began to reflect in the fact that for nearly two months I haven’t missed an All Manner of Bad update and I’ve only missed one Zombie Roosevelt update. Plus, there was the continued blogging and sketching (which reminds me I have to get back on that).

Now that things are moving along a bit more smoothly, productivity wise. The new change that’s been going on is adding more productivity. I’ve been jotting down the things I’ve been doing lately and discovered to my semi horror that the weekdays are the only days I’m drawing or writing. In addition, I usually take Mondays off and sleep through Wednesdays. Which means that only three days and a hurried Sunday evening draw session are the only days where anything gets done. I’ve got the time and the knowledge of what needs to be done, now I just have to saddle up and ride off into that sunset.

Change is once again the big word for this last quarter of the year. There’s a lot that still has to change, not only in what I’m doing artistically, but also in the, y’know, real world stuff. There’s always that big cloud of worry that floats overhead of Health, Finances, Relationships, etc. etc.

As they say, the best time to tackle problems is right now…

Smallish Goals for the last Quarter of 2011
Draw a page a weekday (All Manner of Bad or Zombie Roosevelt)
Write two pages (physical pages) a day for the Novel.

This was inspired from watching far too many episodes of the Spectacular Spider-man cartoon.

Gwen Stacy has to be one of the saddest characters to ever come be included in any reboot. She’s basically fated to die. Her bright and shining moment was when her neck snapped after being tossed off that bridge.

When she comes onto the screen, I get that sense of sad dread for her. She’s gonna die, no matter what. It’s her role. In every comic, movie, show, etc. She’s the one pure hearted gal that’s going to be sacrificed. Sad really.

Third Time’s a Charm

Written By: Alex Claw

Imagine existence, for a lack of a better word, as an infinitely massive bowl of jellybeans and every jellybean a self-contained universe. Then imagine that bowl of jellybeans being constantly stirred, so that all the beans are moving and bouncing off one another.

We discovered that with each bounce there was a moment where we could connect to a neighboring universe.

We lost California to some cephalopod creatures on our first try

Our second try we lost Nevada to nightmare monsters.

The third time’s a charm.

There has to be something wonderful out there. We just have to keep trying.

Uplifted Rise of Whathaveyous

Written By: Alex Claw

We went out into space and it was empty. No new life or strange civilizations. Just radiation and a lot of dead rock worlds.

Collectively we didn’t want to be alone in the universe so we decided to give sentience a try on the home front.

We uplifted a few critters. Bad idea. You know how they say humans have an animal nature? Well, just imagine the animal nature of animals with the brains of Einsteins.

That didn’t bode well for humans.

Now we’re at war and it’s looking bad.

They buried the Statue of Liberty.

What’s up with that?

xxx

I, of course, watched the Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Good movie.

Y’know, I do love me some music. It’s pretty much been apart of my life since I first discovered how to record CDs onto cassette tapes and listen to it on my old school Walkman when I was a kid. Heck, even these days I wander about with ear buds practically surgically attached to my lobes and music blaring all the live long day.

Yet, for all of that. The most I can say about the music I listen to or anything relating to it, is that “oh, so and so is a good band”. When people ask why, I just stare blankly. It’s that thing of where you know what you like, but you seemingly can’t articulate why you like it.

That’s music for me in a nutshell. I know I like certain bands, I know certain music inspires certain feelings, and there are musicians that are good. But I can’t seem to explain why they’re good and why I like them. Most likely it’s a lack of the vocabulary to describe the music, but it might also be because I’ve never really settled down and thought about it, through and through.

There are scads of bands that I love, but I have no other knowledge about them, beyond the music. I consume their product, but rarely seek more information about them. The way I figure, writing these little reviews is a good way to fill in those gaping holes that surround all the music I love.

So, I’m gonna write as much as I can, share as much of my opinion on the songs as I can, and hopefully in time get better at it. Practice make perfect and there’s no time but the present to begin that practicing.

Once Upon A Time

Written By: Alex Claw

“Once upon a time isn’t retarded.” The man stated.

“It so is. No one uses that worn out shit anymore.” The other man dismissed, tossing aside the book. “Only idiots use that kind of retardedness to begin a story.”

“Once upon a time is a fine beginning.” the man restated.

“For fairy tales and retardation.”

“Once upon a time there was a great beast who could turn into a man. That made the beast more dangerous because it could go into the villages for it’s prey, no one the wiser.”

“See, retarded begin-”

The other man never finished his sentence.

Y’know when you’re playing a game of Solitary and the cards ain’t lining up? You sit there and try to figure out how to move the cards, how to set it up so that you get that free column in which to give yourself some maneuvering room, but it literally ain’t in the cards.

Creative endeavors can be that way.

There are times when all the cards fall right and you blaze through the game fast and easy, but there are times when you gotta reshuffle that deck and start again.

All Manner of Bad and Zombie Roosevelt underwent such a reshuffling this past week. The cards are all good, the ideas of both comics are something I’ve put a lot of thought into and the potential for good things are there, it’s just that the cards seemed to have fallen a bit off kilter this time.

I’ll admit I’m not the biggest fan of giving up on an idea, not to say that some ideas shouldn’t be abandoned, shelved, or merged with another, but the whole giving up thing rubs me the wrong way. Plus, I don’t want to give up on the comics, they’re something I would like to see brought to their full potential.

Therefore, the reboot for All Manner of Bad has begun. That’s the reason I’ve completely restructured Zombie Roosevelt. They are both good ideas and they both have a lot of potential in them if they’re handled right.

I’ve begun a few projects with little to no thought one the entirety of the story and it’s taken a while to hammer out the details. All Manner of Bad was on of those projects where I began it on a whim, but after a while I was overwhelmed with ideas and plotlines and stories that could be told in that little universe. That in itself can be a bad thing, which in this case happened quiet a few times. The story was pulling in every different way, in a novel or story, that wouldn’t be a bad thing, but in a daily comic, there were too many threads that were being tugged that the story itself couldn’t move forward all that much. All Manner of Bad suffered from a chaotic story structure that tried to be horror, humor, adventure, and half a dozen other things.

And how’s a reboot going to sort things out? Well, for one thing the story structure is going to be tighter. The shorelines aren’t going to be dangling all over the place and hopefully it’ll help speed things up and make the entire story more engaging and fun, That’s the key word right there, fun.

With a bloated storyline and too many things going on at once with too many characters, the whole thing bogged down and didn’t become fun again. That caused a plague of late updates and stress. Hopefully, with a tighter storyline things will shape out faster and smoother.

A reboot might not solve all the problems, but at this time it appears to be the best course of action. Plus, if ever one day I would like to put it together in a book, the formatting right now is set up so that won’t be too much of a problem.

Here’s to an interesting reboot and stories to be told.