Thursday, May 24, 2018

Nancy is Blowing Me

....Away

I'm Reading Nancy Comic Strip Again

As a child and on into adulthood, I always read the Nancy comic strip when it was available in the newspapers. I was in Philadelphia when they decided to do a purge and bring in new comic strips and only Blondie and Peanuts survived.

I always considered Nancy a boring strip. I would constantly say, 'I'm not going to waste my time reading it anymore.' Yet, everyday I was there reading it. Ernie Bushmiller was weaving some kind of hypnotic spell over me through ink and newsprint.

Nancy was taken over by Gilchrist. It was definitely more visually exciting, yet the writing was nothing to get excited about. After sampling it, I never read it again. It wasn't Nancy.

It wasn't until the interent that I found out a lot of artists shared my guilty pleasure of reading Nancy.
Now the internet is abuzz about a new creator on Nancy.

And that becomes the first weird thing to discuss.

Everyone seems to be excited that it is a woman writing and drawing Nancy for the first time. Her name is Olivia James, or is it? Because the Internet is also saying that this is a pseudonym. I don't know how anyone knows it's a pseudonym and if it is - is it a pseudonym for woman or a pseudonym for a man?

In any case, that has nothing to do with the price of butter. Let's start looking at this first Nancy daily strip by "Olivia James." It debuted on April 9, 2018. I worked my way backward from the current comic on gocomics.com to find the first one. What a difference from the day before. In the comment section it previously averaged about 20 comments. This first new creator strip I'm looking at it now (as of this writing) has over 200 comments, over 100 hearts and over 40 pins. An astronomical leap over the previous strips. The comment section themselves are worthy of a whole article, Perhaps for another day... let's look at the first strip.
Nancy copyright 2018 UFS

We see an unknown person looking at Nancy at a table with a pie. We don't know if this person is male or female and don't find out that she's a female until the last panel. We never find out who she is and why she is so interested in Nancy. She's kinda creepy. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

She starts out complementing Nancy and then kind of dogging  her out. Now this seems to happen in real time as if she's talking in one continuous moment with no pauses. Meaning pretty much as we read it that's the time it is taking her to say it. 

But, Nancy's down with quantum space time.

Now let's break this down panel by panel.


The person comments that Nancy is a sweet girl. Sweet girl, sweet pie, Sweetie pie, get it? So from the first panel we are unsettled by this woman's interest in Nancy; a little girl. Is that intentional? Nancy is sitting at a table, most likely in a cafeteria because of the tray holding her pie. We don't know if this is in a school or a food court in the mall. So we will just have to go with "a cafeteria somewhere." Nancy is sitting, smiling looking at her pie on the tray. She has no utensils and that wouldn't be unusual for a kid to eat a slice of pie with her hands.


The second panel has the woman commenting that Nancy is "also a salt girl." Whoa... wait a minute. Now Nancy suddenly has a fork, a salt shaker and a drink. Whether someone brought those to the table or Nancy got up herself to get them, that definitely means time has passed. So this person has been standing in the same spot the whole time the new items reached the table. That means this is not a continuous monologue. She had to wait for Nancy to get all this, pick up her knife and salt shaker to continue talking about her.


Moving on to the third panel this woman is still dogging Nancy, who now has a knife. The fork and salt shaker have disappeared. She also now has a hamburger, a stick of butter in her hand, with a cupcake near the drink. So a lot more time has passed and this woman is still standing there commenting aloud about Nancy to herself. There is no audience revealed to us.


The fourth and last panel the woman comments about Nancy really enjoying her cornbread. So again, the cornbread had not been present the whole time, so this could only have arrived later. This unknown woman is stalking Nancy and commenting on everything that she's eating. That is creepy.

And that is what is going to keep me reading this comic strip. One; because the storytelling seems to be operating on many different levels at the same time. Two; because if you just do a surface read of it nothing odd seems to be really happening much like the Bushmuller strips. Unlike the Bushmuller strips there seems to be a level of uneasiness introduced. Questions that have to be asked, yet may never be answered. We are left to consider what type of reality we've stepped into here. Has Nancy achieved a whole new level of absurd, bland, formulaic, minimalist subversiveness? 

Let me know what you think. Start reading Nancy here https://www.gocomics.com/nancy/2018/04/09

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Remember... Just Create!

Thursday, May 10, 2018

I'm Open for Commissions

Working on a commission right now. 


The water is going to be hard to draw.

Fury and Tsunami
Remember... Just Create!


Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Looney Tunes Comic Book Art

Porky Pig and Donald Duck Comic Book Pages


Pencil art I've done for DC Comics.








Remember... Just Create!

Monday, May 7, 2018

Read my Art Ebook for FREE


Welcome to Tangent City

FREE Ebook


You can my read my ebook for FREE (more of an e-pamphlet) if you have KindleUnlimited on Amazon at https://tinyurl.com/tangentcity

The book is to help artists avoid some nasty cooties called “tangents” in their art. So spread the word far and wide.

Right now I’m ranked around #900 in the Art Books category. Not bad considering how many thousands of art books are available there.

Now I only ask you for one teensy-bitsy favor . You can help increase my ranking if you give a review after reading it. I want to get into the Top 100 and your review can help make that possible. Your review might even get marked as useful, because it encouraged an artist to read it. and that’s my purpose to help other artists.

If you can spare the time, it would be much appreciated.Thank you.

Wait! There’s more! It helps more if people actually buy it for 99 cents! Just a thought, however, I don’t want to be greedy. I’ll go for the fame first and the fortune later.

#tangent #tangentcity #abbastudios #artist #illustrator #painter #educational #instructional #comics  #comicbooks  #education #studentproblems 
 #madewith wacom #madewithInDesign #adobeillustrator #adobeindesign

Saturday, May 5, 2018

Update with Free Software to Create Comics and Graphic Novels

How to Become a Comic Strip, Comic Book and Graphic Novel Artist

art copyright 2018 Howard Simpson

DIGITAL TOOLS OF THE TRADE

Today, we update a previous post about the software you can use for creation. New to the list is MediBang Pro and Mischief - both available for free. And now SketchBook which had free and paid versions, now only offers a full-featured free version.

Do you know of any others I should add to the list? Tell me about them.

RASTER-BASED IMAGE APPLICATIONS

Adobe Photoshop

  • The industry leader. It is used for drawing, coloring and painting. Not good to use for lettering.
  • Available for Mac OS and Windows.
  • Download at http://www.adobe.com/

ArtRage

  • This is a powerful and easy to use drawing and painting program. 
  • Available for Mac OS and Windows
  • Download ArtRage

ArtWeaver

  • An alternative to Corel Painter. Artweaver is available in two versions: The Artweaver Free version at no cost and Artweaver Plus version at 29 Euros with more features than the free version.
  • Available for Windows.
  • Download at http://www.artweaver.de/

Corel Painter or CorelDRAW

  • Very popular leading digital art software.
  • Available for Mac OS and Windows.
  • Download at http://www.corel.com/

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program)

  • A powerful open source image editor application 
  • Available for Linux, Mac OS and Windows
  • Download for FREE at http://www.gimp.org/

GIMP tutorials
http://sixrevisions.com/graphics-design/10-websites-to-help-you-master-gimp/
GIMP video tutorials
http://sixrevisions.com/graphics-design/gimp_video_tutorials/

Paint.NET

SketchBook Pro

  • Offers sketching and drawing software capabilities.
  • Available for Mac OS and Windows.
  • Download for FREE at https://www.sketchbook.com/

MediBang Paint

  • A lightweight digital painting and comic creation program that comes loaded with brushes, fonts, pre-made backgrounds and other resources for Mac and Windows. Has comic book creation tools also.
  • Download for FREE at https://medibangpaint.com/en/

Mischief 

Krita

  • An open-source raster graphics editor, designed primarily for digital painting and animation purposes.
  • Download for FREE or buy at https://krita.org/en/
Thanks to +Juan Ochoa for suggesting Krita.

Clip Studio Paint

  • Digital drawing & painting software to create illustrations, manga & comics available on Mac OS and Windows.
  • Download at http://www.clipstudio.net/en


Thanks to +Skot Whitman for reminding me of Clip Studio Paint

MyPaint

  • Nimble, distraction-free and easy tool for digital painters to create illustrations available on Mac OS, Windows, and Linux.
  • Download for FREE at http://mypaint.org/

Thanks to +Ronnie Tucker for suggesting MyPaint.

A word about software choices. Photoshop was created to be used by photographers for retouching photos. It was the creativity of artists that started using it for drawing and painting. So don't feel bad if you can't afford an expensive application. Use free or low-cost tools available. Your creativity can make the tool sing and come to life to fit your needs and style of art. Much like the early creative visionaries did with Photoshop by taking a tool that wasn't intended to create art and bending it to their will.

After all, people have made professional-looking movies on iPhones! There's nothing to stop you from creating a professional-looking comic strip, comic book or graphic novel with whatever tool you choose right now. Start today! Just create something!

Keep reading and  +1 me. Share with your friends. Please comment.
Remember... Just Create!

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copyright 2018 H. Simpson