How I Draw, post #1: The Technical Side of Things

This post is devoted to describing the process I go through when drawing Familiar Magic.

Materials:
-Bristol Board (smooth)
-Drawing Pencil, #3 or #4
-Plastic Eraser
-Pigment liners, 0.5 to 0.7, or
-Technical Drawing Pens, 0.35 to 0.7
-Brush Pen
-Scanner
-Computer + Mouse
-Photoshop

Step 1: I lay out panels with a pencil and ruler.

Some days I actually have ideas about what I will later put into each panel. This, however, is rare. I generally have an overall concept for the page--what it does to the story, who appears in it, etc.--and keep that in the back of my mind while I set up a "grid" that I, at least, find visually pleasing. The geometric pattern of the page almost always comes first.

Step 2: I sketch the comic in light pencil.

This is where the plastic eraser comes in. I sketch, erase and sketch again until I'm satisfied the page does what I want it to do. Bodies and faces are the things that take me the longest and involve the most trial-and-error. Plants give me the least trouble. This is in part because I never check to see if the plants I draw actually exist in our world. I just draw the "tree/flower/grass I want to see there" and call it good.

Step 3: I ink the page.

I take my 0.5 pigment liner and ink all the 'normal' to 'medium' lines (in terms of thickness). Lines from pigment liners smaller than 0.5 have a hard time surviving the journey from my scanner to my computer unbroken. I can go a bit smaller with the technical pens. I use wider pens to color in small sections of black and a brush pen for large sections of black that I don't plan to color on the computer. I also occasionally use the brush pen for hair, feathers, emotional SFX and other flowy, wispy things. I do not ink the panel borders.

Step 4: I clean up the page.

All hail the return of the plastic eraser! I erase stray pencil lines to prep the page for scanning.

Step 5: I scan the page into Photoshop.

I usually scan the page in at 600 dpi, though I've used both larger and smaller resolutions.

Step 6: I clean up the page again. I play around with levels, fills and the magic lasso to make the black-and-white page, well, black-and-white (instead of black, many varieties of gray, white and some other colors that snuck in when the page was scanned). This can get really tedious.

Step 7: I color the page.

This is where I really go to town. I mean, the comic is basically a digital coloring book at this point. What's not fun about that? I use brushes of different sizes and textures--and many, many layers of opacity--to get the effects I want. I play around with contrast/brightness and color settings when I feel the need. My wireless, ergonomic mouse is quite a blessing at this stage.

Step 7.5: I reboot Photoshop, cussing out the program the whole time, and make up my lost work so I can finish coloring. This step only happens for the obvious reason. Fortunately, I usually prefer the final version to the "one that got away."

Step 7.75: I compulsively save my work at near-random intervals, compelled by my recent loss of progress.

Step 8: I add speech balloons and speech balloon tails, guided by a general idea of what the characters say.

Step 9: I add speech. This is when I decide what the characters actually say.

Step 10: I add any verbalized thoughts and SFX that were not added during the penciling and inking stages.

Step 11: I resize the page. All standard Familiar Magic pages are 700 pixels wide, though they vary in length.

Step 12: I save the page in .png (though it was .jpg up until a few updates ago) format.

I then post the page, wait for it to upload, check to see how it displays, update my archives, etc., but all that isn't really part of my drawing/pagemaking process (except perhaps in a broader theoretical sense, as webcomics do not truly stop at the borders of their comic pages) so I will not discuss it now.

Spotlight #4: Twelve Kingdoms

English Title: Twelve Kingdoms
Japanese Title: Juuni Kokuki
Author: Fuyumi Ono
English Publisher: Tokyopop
Anime Makers / Distributors: Studio Pierrot via Media Blasters
Manga?: No.
Novels?: Yes.
Anime?: Yes.

Twelve Kingdoms is my favorite anime. Some pieces of fiction hit you in exactly the right way at exactly the right time, and this can make you feel close to them, a bit in the same way that you can feel close to a person and a bit in the same way that you can feel close to an idea. Greer Irene Gilman's beautifully dense, painstakingly ornate novel Moonwise hit me in the right way at the right time. So did the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And so did Twelve Kingdoms.

The first time I watched Twelve Kingdoms, it was not my favorite year. Stuff went down, I cried a lot, and I wanted out. Not a permanent out, but just a chance to sit back, relax and breathe for awhile.

I read a lot of fiction and watched a lot of anime that year. Of all the new anime titles that I "discovered" during this period, Twelve Kingdoms is by far my favorite. This review will be focused primarily on the Twelve Kingdoms anime and not on the books upon which the anime is based. (So far, only three of the seven novels have been published in English.)

"Normal high school student" Nakajima Youko is attending her normal high school while some long-haired blond guy called Keiki pledges loyalty to her, gives her a sword, and goes on to be entirely unforthcoming about why Youko and her classmates are being attacked by a bunch of demons from another world. Keiki then spirits Youko (and her two "friends") away to said other world, where Youko obviously has an important destiny awaiting her.

Sounds pretty predictable so far, right?

However, just about as soon as they get to the other world, Keiki is put out of commission, and the three "normal high school" kids are left to fend for themselves in an impoverished kingdom where foreigners are despised and where, for some reason, only Youko can speak the language.

What really makes Twelve Kingdoms is its character development. When we first meet Youko, she is a rather unremarkable complete pushover of a reluctant fantasy heroine. By the end of her development arc, she is competent, confident and mature. (I feel like Twelve Kingdoms is the anime that women should give to their younger female relatives.) However, this is nothing like a smooth transition, and in the intervening time, Youko makes a lot of mistakes and actually gets to learn from them. But the lessons she learns are not the lessons that anime heroes and heroines tend to get in any genre. (How to "train" for the next battle, how to be nice, how to expose yourself to ridiculous and unnecessary risk (which leads to success for boys and failure for girls, more often than not), how to let yourself get walked on, etc. Youko started out the series getting walked on, remember? Happily, this means her big life lesson is about something else.) At the heart of the first arc, Youko learns that the world can be very harsh; even more importantly, and with much greater difficulty, she learns how to maintain her own human decency in a harsh world.

Youko is my favorite anime character. Also, she looks great in drag.

Youko, though central to the anime, is not always the central character. There are arcs toward the middle and end of the series in which she barely appears. Nonetheless, all of the major characters go throgh developmental arcs, and their development is always based on learning, about themselves and about their wolrd(s).

Twelve Kingdoms fits pretty solidly in the category of "femdom anime" as I define it. Keiki is an important enough male character in the show to vie for the position of "male lead." (Another possible contender is Rakushun, the mouse Hanjyuu (half-animal) who befriends Youko.) And (you can see this coming miles away in the show so it hardly counts as spoiler here, but SPOILER ALERT anyway) since Youko is eventually an Empress, the only male characters in the Twelve Kingdoms who could have official authority over her would be the world's actual gods. So, Twelve Kingdoms is femdom anime. What is even more exciting, however, is that it's also feminist anime. Hallelujah.

A short note on the first three novels: They're good. They're solid YA/children's lit fare, with a focus on strong young characters. In all three books, children from our world find their place in the world of the Twelve Kingdoms, where they learn about honor, courage and personal responsibility. Youko is the hero of the first book (and apparently shows up later in the fourth and sixth, which I await eagerly). The young male leads of the second and third books both discover that they are kirin, noble unicorn-beasts with the duty of choosing and serving the rulers of their respective kingdoms.

Why I Draw, post #1: Some reasons haphazardly presented

When I started this blog, I said that one of its primary purposes would be to serve as a place where I could discuss why I draw and what it means to me. I realize now that I have been putting this off long enough.

I draw because I love stories, and after I discovered that I love stories told in a graphic medium, I realized that I wanted to create them. I went through one of those near-inevitable downturns in my fiction reading somewhere in elementary school, when I decided that I was "too old" and "too imaginative" (silly, no?) to need or want things like pictures gracing words. (Irony of ironies: one of the things that spurred me to this very adult decision was Gaston's horrified reaction to Belle's picture-free book in Disney's Beauty and the Beast.) So it took me until someone loaned me their prized Sandman trades to realize that I do, in fact, love comics.

I draw because it's new to me. I am new to it. Everyone should have the joy of being able to do at least one thing they are new to and one thing they are accomplished at. I like learning to draw and I've been writing for pretty much all of my conscious memory . . . so, writing and drawing a comic feels wonderful. Frustrating and terrifying and wonderful.

I draw to learn. I have learned so much about comics as a form of expression from the simple act of trying to create my own. Writing a comic is everything and yet nothing like writing a poem or story. And pacing a comic--specifically, a webcomic, which updates one page at a time--is like nothing I have ever tried to do before. My hat is seriously, seriously off to webcomickers who manage to pace their comics well. For me, pacing is the Philosopher's Stone of webcomics.

I draw a webcomic because I like to read webcomics. I check for updates of my favorite webcomics as part of my daily morning routine. I read them archivally when I'm sick or sad. Furthermore, the webcomic is a fascinating and relatively new animal on the creative scene, and I think there's a part of me that just wants to be a part of that, in howsoever limited a way.

I draw for practice and I draw for catharsis. I look at pages from a year ago and I can think "Hey, look-improvement!"--and that's an amazing feeling. I also draw--and write--to work through and learn to accept my ever-changing thoughts and emotions.

I draw for therapy. I like activities that calm me down and draw me out of the world without the use of drugs and alcohol. A good drawing session is like a good cup of tea and soft music, or having a cat on my lap on a rainy day. It just . . . helps.

On a not-entirely-unrelated note, page #89 is up at Familiar Magic. Only 11 pages left until I hit 100 . . . which makes me a little bit happy.

Reality Breaks In: Comics Deemed Obscene

The title of this blog is "Breaks From Reality." Some days I have breaks from reality and some days I need breaks from reality. Some days, however, reality breaks in.

If I had not been taking so many breaks from reality, I might have noticed this sooner:

So, there's this guy in southern Iowa who likes manga. A lot. He collects it. A lot. He orders it from Japan so that, presumably, he can, well, read it.

In 2006, some customs officials open his mail and find--OH NOES--porn! And not just any porn, but "Seven books of manga" with "cartoon drawings of minors engaged in sexually explicit acts" and some "bestiality" to boot (quoted text from David Kravets's May 28 Wired article on the subject, found here).

In May 2009, Christopher Handley pleaded guilty to:

1) the mailing of obscene matter and
2) possession of obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children

He was being charged under the 2003 Protect Act, which, while by-and-large designed to actually protect children, also prohibits the mailing and owning of "obscene" materials (including drawings and statues) that depict minors doing sexual things. And how is "obscene" defined, exactly?

That's just the thing.

It isn't.

There is no national standard that defines obscenity; whether or not something is "obscenity" is officially defined by the community rather than the country. The closest thing we have to a national standard is the SLAPS test, which asks the "community" in question to judge whether a work has any Scientific, Literary, Artistic, Political or Scientific value.

Which community, you ask?

Weeeeell, that's just the thing. That's not really defined either. Based on this particular trial, one can only assume that the community designated to judge whether or not a work is obscene is the same community in which you are caught and charged with the possession of obscene material.

Let's all let that sink in for a bit.

So, there's this guy, and he's the first person to be charged under the Protect Act for the possession of cartoon art of any kind. When officials searched his home, they found no evidence of any child pornography, either in hard copy form or on his computer. The "obscene" material that he owned was part of a larger collection, most of which was not "obscene."

So, who, exactly, did Christopher Handley hurt in ordering naughty manga from overseas?

Children? In other "child pornography" cases, the prosecution argues for the defense of the abused children being used as models. Which does, after all, make sense.

You don't need actual child models to draw lolicon. (Lolion and yaoi were the two genres most frequently referenced in descriptions of the case.)

The community? Perhaps manga of this sort is seen as inherently corrupting.

As far as I know, he was not trying to expose his "community" to the "obscenity," just himself. Hmm, is self-corruption a crime, now?

Of course it is! Hasn't it been scientifically proven that looking at dirty pictures makes us do the things in them because as human beings we have no free will? Which is, of course, why every last person who has ever had an immoral, perverse or harmful impulse has immediately acted upon it?

No, wait, that doesn't sound quite right . . .

And even if our control of our actions were truly so terrible, we still have no proof that the erotic manga in this case was being read erotically. After all, the guy had both lolicon and yaoi in his collection, and that's a pretty unique overlap.

I don't know Christopher Handley. I don't know if he is a good person or a bad person. I don't know anything about him other than what was covered in the reports on his trial. I do know that he is a man who is being charged, at heart, for--of all things--the unacceptable taste that his community has judged him to have.

This is an attack on all otaku.

This is an attack on Americans' freedom, not only to speak, but to read.

A good chunk of manga is, let's face it, pretty gross. Even the stuff that gets categorized as "okay" to sit on bookshelves sans plastic wrap can be quite vile. Some of it has even made me feel physically ill.

When I first saw a description of this case, that's exactly how I felt: physically ill.

And this obscenity is going to take me a lot longer to get over.

Related Links:
Neil Gaiman's comments early in the case.
The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund on the case

Spotlight #3: Ultimate Venus

English Title: Ultimate Venus
Japanese Title: Kyuukyoku Venus
Author: Shigematsu Takako
English Publisher: Go!Comi
Anime?: No.
Summary: Yuzu is poor and her mother just died, so she does what any sensible homeless teenager would do and starts camping out in a playground. Kagami, Yuzu's rich, estranged granmother's all-purpose employee/servant, picks her up and takes her to her grandmother's honest-to-goodness palace, where Yuzu is basically kidnapped and forced to start training to become the Shirayuki heir, or at least one of the main candidates for this position.

Now, there are a lot of rags-to-riches stories where some loser kid gets picked up and whisked off to some amazing life of wealth and luxury only to whine, moan and cry about missing the good ol' simple days, and these stories can be tough to take. And Yuzu moans plenty. With Yuzu, though, the whining is actually pretty understandable: after kidnapping her and locking her up in a room that's basically an opulent jail cell (Seriously: it has bars and everything. Those wacky rich people!), loving Grandma Mitsuko and Kagami proceed to confiscate all her possessions, and (deliberately) try to throw out everything that reminds her of her deceased parents. Not to mention that Kagami slaps her within the first thirty pages of volume one.

This goes on the femdom list because, even though Yuzu herself gets pretty much manipulated by the household staff, Kagami and the rest are technically, at least, responsible for serving her and looking out for her welfare. It also goes on the list because Yuzu's grandma has her own freaking harem. That's right: a bonafide harem of pretty boys who lounge around being pretty but (of course) double as an equally pretty security force of elite bodyguards. Oh, and her palace is maintained by a staff of pretty young boy "maids" (sadly without any frilly apron cosplay; their uniform, while not screeching of masculinity, is more or less 'boy-appropriate'). So . . . I gotta say . . . good for Yuzu's grandma. I have to wonder what that hiring process is like, though.

Obviously, the strict, cold, 'Kagami-san' is destined to be Yuzu's one true love, and I suppose it's a relief that he's more reserved with her than ever actively mean (despite the aforementioned face-slapping). It comes out fairly early on in the series that the poor boy (He's older than her but younger than me; it's weird that I'm older than even some 'grown-up' manga characters these days.) harbors secret affection for Yuzu and wants more than anything to help her and protect her, but can't tell the recently-orphaned young girl that he gives a damn about her for some Mysterious Reason (TM).

I like this series for two reasons. The first and most obvious reason: Mitsuko's harem. Shoujo titles with harems of lovely guys in them are the necessary counterbalance to all those loser-guy-gets-the-girls shounen titles. Or so I declare. The other reason I like this series is that, despite her obvious destiny to become the romantic interest of about every significant guy in the series, I actually quite like the protagonist. Yuzu can be pretty intimidated by Grandma and Kagami, but every so often she snaps and says or does something a bit 'aggressive' and 'inapprorpriate' (at least for a high-class-lady-in-training, I guess). And, despite this being shoujo manga, she is not always punished for such displays of unladylike temper. And a manga that lets girls know it's okay to get angry is not a bad thing.