| Grab your copy of the Sequential Art/Comics Issue Today! |  | | Although more commonly referred to as “comics”, especially if the tales told concern the antics of super-heroes, the remit of a narrative genre in which illustrations share equal billing with the words is much wider than that of simply propagating fantastic world-saving feats. |
Thinking (Inside) The Box |  | | It can involve film-making story-boards, animation and speech balloons, and with its 2D presentation of “moving” graphics, it acts as a kind of halfway house between literature and the cinema. Good drawing skills are as necessary as the ability to delineate a plausible story-line. But within those very wide parameters, there is room for as many styles as there are practitioners of them. |
Mumbai, India |  | | “In creating a comic page, one has to think about various aspects of image-making including story-telling, eye movement, composition, anatomy, values, etc. Every page is a challenge and it’s exciting and satisfying to think of the most efficient way to solve these problems. Also, I like the fact that a comic-book page tells a story with still images with the help of a reader’s imagination to fill in the gaps.” |
Girona, Spain |  | | “The first thing all artists do with our first book is to try to make our best art, thinking that that will be enough. That’s a big mistake. Sequential art depends a lot on narration and the significance of the art in relation with the story, the mood, the intention of the script. There’s no sense in separating them.” |
Utrecht, The Netherlands |  | | “In my comic artwork I can tell stories and connect with all sorts of people. Every once in a while little jokes pop up in my head and they just want to come out. I’ve been drawing my whole life, for me this is a natural way of dealing with frustrations and making something positive and giving people a laugh in the process.” |
Leipzig, Germany |  | | “It’s always surprising to see that my work never turns out as expected. I might have a storyboard or the text written, but when you see everything printed and composed in a book it gives a whole new look and feel to the story.” |
Edmond, Oklahoma, USA |  | | “I think a major trap, and one that I still fall into, is the desire to only draw super-heroes. Sequential art is about telling a story and a story involves much more than being able to draw a super-hero. You have to be mindful of backgrounds and props. You have to understand what information the reader needs to get out of each panel, and then how to effectively convey that information.” |
Putaendo, Chile |  | | “Nowadays a trap is to keep waiting for a big publishing house to publish your stuff. We have all the tools to do it ourselves, it is really cheap and we have total control of the creative process.” |
Hamburg, Germany |  | | What is the attraction of creating sequential art? “It opens new ways of expression and allows one to tell more than with a single illustration. I like to illustrate motion in different ways, and deciding about the narrative tense.” |
Warsaw, Poland |  | | For “Thrashead”, sequential art is a hobby, the outcome of his fascination with classic comic books and retro movie posters. His work was created as so-called “fan art”. |
Bratislava, Slovakia |  | | What mistake or trap should a young artist/designer avoid when working on sequential art? “I am still making a lot of mistakes every day. But I don’t believe that’s a bad thing, we all learn from mistakes and they help form us into the artists we want to be one day. So just be persistent, work hard and results will come eventually.” |
Toronto, Canada |  | | What mistake or trap should a young artist/designer avoid when working on sequential art? “Treating it as a sequence of separate pictures and/or blocks of text. Like good design, in sequential art every element influences every other element, so the focus must be on flow and the cumulative effect of the entire work, rather than producing individual elements, however interesting they might be on their own. The elements don’t have to be ‘invisible’, but it all has to work together.” |
Vancouver, BC, Canada |  | | “Finish the project you want to make and put it out there. It’s easy to do these days — that’s almost the problem: it’s so easy that so many are doing it, so it’s hard to stand out. Go to cons. Meet people. Show them what you’ve made. Also, I recommend starting with small projects, e.g. a complete 10-30-page comic. Learn what works for you before investing too much time in a 1,000-page epic. Plus, it’s easier for strangers to read.” |
Philippines |  | | What is the attraction of creating sequential art? “You can freely create/design characters based on your mood and personality, which can add up to the client’s description of them, and can transform whatever characterisation you choose.” |
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