Monday, October 11, 2004

Not just anybody's help.



The best feedback an comic book artist (and writer, for that matter) can have comes from the reader. He's your target audience to begin with, and he will eventually buy (or fail to buy it, in case you suck) your book.

Comics should, at first, work as a medium where a story is told. If you give your work to someone to read and he (I'm sticking with the "he" bit 'cause most comic book readers are male, even if my most avid fans aren't) does not understand your story, even if it's only a part of it, your story has a problem. It's easy to assume he "didn't get it", but it's always good to stop and think about "why didn't he get it?" in the first place.

When I was beginning, my audience consisted mainly of my friends at college and most had never read a comic book before. That was a great bouncing board for me, as they would ask me questions I took for granted and made me think about all aspects of making good comic book that everybody can understand.

Do my comics got dumber because of that? No, they did not. They just started working on another level. For me, the joy of creating a new story consists in layering several levels in the story, so there'll be something there for everybody.

A late farewell.

Scott Kurtz put this over at his site.

Beautiful image.

Coincidentally (or not, for those who believe in this type of stuff), we did a Superman-like character last week for our weekly children's magazine's job.

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