Mar 19 2012

Twitter Picks Page Two Of The Harveys Ballot

The Harvey Awards is easily the most difficult comics award to vote on. Mainly this is a function of its two-tiered voting process. In addition to the usual final vote where folks select their favorites among a small pool of stand-out nominees, the Harveys have an initial round of voting during which the nominees themselves are chosen–among a pool of every single thing published during the calendar year.

Even if you’re reasonably up the previous year’s reading, it can be a daunting task just to remember what came out when and what the standouts were in each category. If you’re a bit behind reading-wise, it’s a near-impossible task to come up with a list of the best books of the previous year.

So just for fun I thought I’d put out the call on Twitter–one category a day–and see what the consensus opinion was for the categories listed on page two of the Harvey ballot.

First, though, a few things:

1) I only did the second page because the categories on that page are generally the ones that deal with books from 2011 rather than series. Since I tend to read the former, those are the categories I was most interested in. If there’s a good reaction to this post, I’ll consider doing page one as well.

2) This is obviously a 100% non-random survey. The people who received my call for opinions are people who have chosen to follow me on Twitter and (presumably) have some commonality in their tastes.

3) Some categories are more robust than others depending on all kinds of “Twitter factors.” For example, there’s a ton of Manga in the “US Edition of Foreign Material” category because my inquiry about it got a retweet from an influential Manga blogger/reviewer. Even random stuff like what time of day I put out the call affected feedback.

4) I felt weird about including Oyster War in the online comic category, but several people listed it in their replies. They were probably just being nice, but they listed it so I added it.

5) Most important: Let me know your picks in the comments, via Twitter, or via G+ and I”ll add to these!

So, here it is:

Best Single Issue or Story

  • L&R New Stories 4 – (Whole issue or just the Love Bunglers story) –Los Bros. Hernandez / Fantagraphics

  • Ganges 4 – Kevin Huizenga / Fantagraphics

  • Blast Furnace Funnies – Frank Santoro / PictureBox

  • King Cat 72 – John Porcellino / self-published

  • Locke & Key: Guide to the Known Keys – Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez / IDW

  • Spotting Deer – Michael DeForge / Koyama Press

Best Anthology

  • The Unexpected / Vertigo

  • Dark Horse Presents / Dark Horse

  • Astral Talk / Domino Books

  • Study Group Magazine 1 / Study Group

  • Thickness #2 / self-published

  • Thickness #1 / self-published

  • Not My Small Diary #16 / self-published

  • Fluke 2011 / self-published

  • So Buttons #4 / self-published

Best Graphic Album (Original)

  • Petrograd – Philip Gelatt Jr. / Oni Press

  • Homeland Directive – Robert Venditti / Top Shelf

  • Unspent Love – Shannon Gerard / Conundrum Press

  • Finder: Voice – Carla Speed McNeil / Dark Horse

  • One Soul – Ray Fawkes / Oni Press

  • Infinite Kung Fu – Kagan McLeod / Top Shelf

  • Gingerbread Girl – Colleen Coover & Paul Tobin / Top Shelf

  • Congress of the Animals – Jim Woodring / Fantagraphics

  • Habibi – Craig Thompson / Pantheon

  • Troop 142 – Mike Dawson / Secret Acres

Best Graphic Album (Previously Published)

  • The Death Ray – Dan Clowes / Drawn and Quarterly

  • Hark! A Vagrant – Kate Beaton / Drawn and Quarterly

  • The Smurfs Vol 4 : The Smurfette – Peyo / Papercutz

  • Donald Duck in the Andes – Carl Barks / Fantagraphics

  • Mr. Wonderful – Dan Clowes / Pantheon

  • Big Questions – Anders Nilsen / Drawn & Quarterly

  • Casanova (vol 1 & 2) – Matt Fraction, Fabio Moon, Gabriel Ba / Marvel

  • Daytripper – Fabio Moon, Gabriel Ba / Vertigo

American Edition of Foreign Material

  • Color Engineering – Yuichi Yokoyama / PictureBox

  • The Man Who Grew His Beard – Olivier Schauwen / Fantagraphics

  • The Arctic Marauder – Jacques Tardi / Fantagraphics

  • Pinocchio – Winshluss / Last Gasp

  • A Bride’s Story – Kaoru Mori / Yen Press

  • Wandering Son (Book One) – Shimura Takako / Fantagraphics

  • No Longer Human – Usamaru Furuya (Vols 1 & 2) / Vertical

  • I’ll Give It My All… Tomorrow – Shunju Aono (Vols 3 & 4) / Viz

  • Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths – Shigeru Mizuki / Drawn & Quarterly

  • Velveteen & Mandara – Jiro Matsumoto / Vertical

  • The Drops of God – Tadashi Agi & Shu Okimoto / Vertical

Best Domestic Reprint Project

  • Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Vol. 1: Race to Death Valley – Floyd Gottfredson / Fantagraphics

  • Pogo – Vol. 1 of the Complete Syndicated Comic Strips: Through the Wild Blue Wonder – Walt Kelly / Fantagraphics

  • Prince Valiant, vol 3/vol 4 – Harold Foster / Fantagraphics

  • Tarzan: The Jesse Marsh Years Vol s 9-11 – Jesse Marsh / Dark Horse

  • Walt & Skeezix 5; Forgotten Fantasy: Sunday Comics 1900-1915 – Frank King / Drawn & Quarterly

  • Bob Powell’s Terror: The Chilling Archives of Horror Comics Volume 2 – Craig Yoe/Bob Powell / IDW

  • Captain Easy: Solider of Fortune (Vol 2) – Roy Crane/Fantagraphics

Best Biographical, Historical, or Journalistic Presentation

  • Genius, Isolated: The Life and Art of Alex Toth / IDW
  • The Comics Journal #301 / Fantagraphics
  • Caniff / IDW
  • The Ink Panthers Show /Mike Dawson

Special Award for Humor in Comics

  • Ian Boothby – Simpsons Comics, Futurama Comics

  • Michael Kupperman – The Autobiography of Mark Twain 1910-2010

  • Sergio Aragones – Sergio Aragones Funnies

  • Roger Langridge – Snarked!

Best Online Comics Work

Special Award for Excellence in Presentation/Art Direction/Production

  • Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Vol. 1: Race to Death Valley – Floyd Gottfredson / Fantagraphics

  • The Incal Classic Collection / Humanoids

  • NoBrow 6 / Nobrow Press

  • Everything We Miss / Nobrow Press

  • Nipper 1965-1966 / Drawn and Quarterly

Best Syndicated Strip or Panel

  • Cul de Sac – Richard Thompson

  • Mutts – Patrick McDonnell

Mar 19 2012

W is for Wyvern

From the original Monster Manual…

W is for Wyvern

The original art for this is for sale here.

 

You can follow the other “W” entries as people post them to Twitter this morning by following the #AlphaBeasts hashtag. View all previous AlphaBeasts entries at the AlphaBeasts Tumblr: http://alphabeasts.tumblr.com/. You can also find some submission guidelines there, as well as links to bestiaries and lists of creatures.

Mar 15 2012

Portrait Night Revisited: Falling In Reverse

I may have stopped doing weekly #PortraitNight drawings on Twitter, but that doesn’t mean I won’t do the occasional doodle in my sketchbook. Here’s one I did last week. As per usual, I grabbed a subject from one of the ubiquitous music mags that  are usually piled up on my coffee table. The band here is Falling In Reverse, and the photo I used is from last month’s issue of Alternative Press (posted below my drawing).

The facial likenesses didn’t turn out that well, but I was happy enough with some of the brush-work to scan the original drawing from my sketchbook and throw some quick color on it with Photoshop.

Mar 12 2012

On Visual Reference, The Movie Meatballs, and Pinterest

I recently got a commission to illustrate a six-page memoir comic about going to see The Empire Strikes Back on opening day. Empire was released in the summer of 1980 and so one thing I had to take care of before I got to actually drawing the story was getting visual reference for the story. Specifically–since the author of the story and the other characters were kids in 1980–I needed reference for children’s clothes from that era.

As  a bit of background, I’ll note that I’m not as much a stickler for historical accuracy as some folks. Although I’ve done several books that take place in the 1920s, I have a similar philosophy to that of Eddie Campbell when it comes to historical details. I can’t recall where I read it, but I remember an interview with him where he said basically: No, I’m not concerned with tracking down historically accurate reference for light fixtures and whatnot–I just want to convincingly evoke the feel of a particular era. I adopted a similar approach with both Midnight Sun and Amelia Earhart. Obviously I didn’t want there to be glaring anachronisms, but I’m generally not concerned with after-the-fact nitpicking from history buffs.

One area, though, that I do feel really merits some research is clothing–especially so when doing a story like the one I’m currently working on where it has to read as a particular era that’s (relatively) close to the current time. The differences in clothing (and hair) styles will be fairly subtle, so if you want them to be really evocative of their era, you need to nail the little details that set them apart from clothes now.

You might think that in the internet era finding visual reference would be trivial, but it’s easier for some things than others. It’s quite easy to turn up reference for specific items with a Google Image Search (“members only jacket“) but you of course have to know exactly what it is you’re searching for first. Image searches are particularly problematic for turning up what you really need: photographs of large groups of everyday people from a certain era.  A search for “80s crowd” for example yields a few interesting things, but it tends to turn up a lot of random stuff as well–a motorcycle, some VHS cases, etc.

If you follow my blog, you know I do a lot of sketchbook drawings from magazines–and you’d think that fashion magazines might be a good source of clothing reference. Here’s the problem with that, though:

Old Sears catalogs and the like can be helpful for getting a look and feel for early 20th century clothing, but the clothing in modern-era fashion magazines frequently has little resemblance to what regular folks are actually wearing on the street.

One resource that I did find pretty helpful was the much-derided social “pinning” site Pinterest. Although Pinterest isn’t really useful for turning up either particular items or the illusive crowd pictures, it was really great at instantly generating a pretty solid mood board.  A search for boards with the term “1980” turns up a ton of stuff like this (click through to the actual Pinterest results):

While not much use for particular item searches, you can glean a lot of useful information from the Pinterest results–things like general color schemes and hair styles, and also tons and tons of things to use as props/decorations in interiors.

Ultimately, I think the best way to turn up good reference for everyday people wearing everyday clothes is to just study a film released around that period. Wikipedia has a handy list of films listed by year of release. In my case, I specifically needed a film with kids in it, so I put out a call on Twitter and folks suggested a number of good possibilities such as E.T., Meatballs, and one other Disney film that I can’t remember now. Luckily the local used DVD joint had a copy of Meatballs. Also lucky: the copy they had was an older pressing. It’s 100% galling, but some newer discs have DRM on them that won’t allow you to take screen captures of the paused film.

So, here are a couple of pages of super-quick sketches of what folks are wearing in Meatballs. I’m making quick notes as well about things I’m likely to have forgotten by the time I sit down to draw.

I actually wound up using the general look and hairstyle of one of the main characters from Meatballs for the main character in the story:

Finally, here’s a sample panel showing the character and some clothing:

I’d love to hear about your reference tips and tricks!

Mar 12 2012

V is for Vilstrak

We’re hitting the bottom of the barrel here with these final letters, but I actually like how this guy turned out. I love the bizarre hand/arm structure on the vilstrak design. From the Monster Manual II:

V is for Vilstrak

The original art for this is for sale here.

 

My favorite part of the Monster Manual II‘s description of the vilstrak is this: “The vilstrak are known as… tunnel thugs by humans.”  THUG LIFE, Y’ALL!!

You can follow the other “V” entries as people post them to Twitter this morning by following the #AlphaBeasts hashtag. View all previous AlphaBeasts entries at the AlphaBeasts Tumblr: http://alphabeasts.tumblr.com/. You can also find some submission guidelines there, as well as links to bestiaries and lists of creatures.