RobertTidwell
stop with the teenage angst crap. The four categories are meant to be specific to the way ones mind FOCUSES on certain issues. Do you focus on creating the most beautiful people? On raw emotion? on creating "art"? on experimenting with style and accepted rules of art? Its been said those are the four basic, most primal urges in art and the idea is to help you find people who are more like minded to confer with. Nobody is fucking labeling anything.

I'm glad someone finally said it.

I've wanted to for a while now but felt i was getting on peoples nerves. I have a habbit of coming off as an asshole.

I think you were justified. The categories aren't about the artists themselves, it's just about where a person focuses their energies, which 'school of thought' they belong to kind of thing. Some people try way too hard with the whole 'don't label me! I'm different! Look at how different I am!' thing. In the end, a comic will have influences from other comics and similarities to other comics, and the creator will have goals in common with other creators. It's not like two humanist comics are exactly the same, 'Fruits Basket' and 'Scott Pilgrim' may share the goal of making comics where you really relate to the characters and care about them, but they're nothing alike, and their creators are nothing alike.

...And yeah. I didn't quite explain the concept as well as I should have done, thanks for clearing it up.

The trick to "understanding" Understanding Comics is to take the pictures away from it for a second. If you look at its text as just text, you realize it's a pretty interesting "term paper" that Mr. McCloud illustrated. It's a really interesting essay. Once he illustrated it, boooooom, it became an entity unto itself. Which makes the reading experience pretty fascinating and helped make the book the smashing success it is.

But as long as you keep it in the back of your head that it's still just an essay told in pictures, it makes it a bit easier to not get overwhelmed by what he's doing or saying in the material.

At least in his first book. I'm not that familiar with his follow-up.

SteveMyers22
The trick to "understanding" Understanding Comics is to take the pictures away from it for a second. If you look at its text as just text, you realize it's a pretty interesting "term paper" that Mr. McCloud illustrated. It's a really interesting essay. Once he illustrated it, boooooom, it became an entity unto itself. Which makes the reading experience pretty fascinating and helped make the book the smashing success it is.

But as long as you keep it in the back of your head that it's still just an essay told in pictures, it makes it a bit easier to not get overwhelmed by what he's doing or saying in the material.

At least in his first book. I'm not that familiar with his follow-up.

I think there is a third one, also.

Scott McCloud's gotta be some kind of genius... I've read his Understanding Comics book and was blown away. O_O You sure picked the right guy to reference, DM.

Back on topic.

Let's see I started out making comics being a Iconoclast really focused on the message then I get deep into the characters and get into Humanist.

My teachers really push Formalist techniques on me. They don't really care what going on there unless the panels, figures, balloons are arranged in an interesting way. I've been messing around with that lately.

And of course most of the audience prefers decent art at least to bad art, so I am inclined to keep my art up and try to improve.

Well I care about the message(not really a big iconic in-one's-face thing; it's more getting the point across, playing around with scenarios not having the message being direct. But maybe when a viewer reads it and thinks about it as a whole.. I don't know I really love that part of writing and obsess over it daily.)
and... the characters too(they don't seem to be me forcing something on them..it's more a life of their own and I'm just putting them in weird situations).

RobertTidwell
I think there is a third one, also.

Shows you how out of touch I am. Heh.

SteveMyers22

RobertTidwell
I think there is a third one, also.

Shows you how out of touch I am. Heh.

The third one is called 'Reinventing Comics' and I hear it's quite controversial in the comics world, mainly because it argues against everything the big two (Marvel and DC) are doing at the moment. To be honest, even though I love his other two books, I'm not sure about the third one, I've never wanted to read it just because the idea of one guy, even if he IS a genius, saying 'you can revolutionise comics if you all do what I say!' irks me somewhat.
I am a fan of Scott McCloud, but at the same time, you get hints of this little edge of egotism to him, as though he thinks he knows best about everything, and the reason his comics aren't that popular ('Zot!' won awards or something I hear, but I'd never heard of it until I read 'Understanding Comics') is because not enough people are as smart as he is. I can appreciate when he's teaching stuff, and I think that's great, I just like it less when he gets all preachy and 'you should be more like me'.

His whole point of the second book was, "Dont be like me." So I rather think he's more or less just trying to get people to think about different things. I havent read the third yet, but the other two are way informative so I will be.

Wait, reinventing comics was the third one? Ack! What was the second one?

This is how out of it I am. I remember he talked about web comics a lot in one of them.

But his web comic (much like Zot) never really caught on. I think he usually makes some really great points. But his own work is never really the "thing" that sparks one of his points. Like all the things I remember reading him saying about web comics, I now think "Oh hey, he's right, just look at Penny Arcade."

But I can't even remember what his web comic was back in 2000-ish. It was like him and Stan Lee both got news stories written about their new internet ventures. And I quickly forgot about both. Though IIRC, Stan Lee did something with Mary J. Blige? Maybe?

Understanding Comics
Making Comics
Reinventing Comics

i just double checked the dates on those and according to amazon Reinventing Comics came out before Making comics, but my copy of making comics doesnt even asknowledge reinventing comics, which is why i thought it came after. weird.

So I take everything back. I've read the first and third ones.

Understanding Comics
Reinventing Comics
Making Comics

I rather liked understanding comics and making comics.

I guess I'm a Classic Humanistic Formalist. Well, recently. I want to do very good art, and I've been going over how not to make my characters two dimensional. And now, I want to mix things up a bit.

If I update my comic, that is.

Also, which one of these 'tribes' would be doing comics for fun?

I'm gonna go ahead and label myself a Classicist Humanist Formalist. Right now, I think Nadya's in the Classicist Formalist zone.

AQua_ng
I guess I'm a Classic Humanistic Formalist. Well, recently. I want to do very good art, and I've been going over how not to make my characters two dimensional. And now, I want to mix things up a bit.

If I update my comic, that is.

Also, which one of these 'tribes' would be doing comics for fun?

hopefully all of them.

Whenever I write, I keep in mind how Alan Moore rights. And that theres a guy willing to define everything that much out there, I've got to work harder than him. Theres a quote this nutcase I knew would say all the time and had written in every room in his house. "When you're not working out, someone else is and when you meet him in competition he'll beat you" Paraphrased of course. It was kind of pyschotic in that he had it everywhere, but it was very relevant motivational. Wizard had a little sampling of Moore's script for The Watchman. I believe it was for the first two panels, and was about three pages of material. When I saw that, I knew that a couple of paragraphs a panel wasn't enough. I always try and elaborate on my work.

I should hunt up the article in question. I think it was from the January issue, possibly December. It mostly talked about Civil War/DC stuff like Wizard always does, but the mainstream madness was sort of up heaved by a decent how to write comics article. It included
a sampling of Brian Michal Bendis (Marvel's current 'big' writer he's done Ultimate Spider-man for years now, been on the Avengers for awhile, and done some other work) Garth Ennis (my personal favorite writer he did the Vertigo series Preacher, then moved on to doing The Punisher at marvel, and also currently writes a series called The Boys which is also great) Alan Moore (most likely the best comic writer from a literary viewpoint, nearly universal praise is showered onto The Watchmen and a lot of his other works) and someone else. I think it was Jeph Loeb or Mark Miller, I can't remember. It was a good couple pages of an article, I found it much more insightful than Understanding Comics. Also Alan Moore's how to write for comics wasn't a bad tool, but the best tools for writing are just basic literary tools. A dictionary, a thesaurus, and an encyclopedia. Also handy is the news. All of which a quick search engine entry can find for you, free of charge and instantaneous.

marine
All of which a quick search engine entry can find for you, free of charge and instantaneous.

I'm quoting this to highlight it. Underscore it. And basically point big neon pointer fingers at it. Because it's sooooooooo damn true. On the artistic side, having image search engines also is such a boon for quick reference material. Like say I have to draw a .357 magnum, instead of digging through my basement for a book on handguns that I picked up 15 years ago for photo reference, I can just google the gun and have an assortment of pics to help me draw it since I can't draw it from memory. The same goes for the writing side, as you've pointed out so well. Dictionary, Thesaurus, Encyclopedia, news articles on subject matter. Like for the Superchum strip I did on navel oranges ... the joke is that they're actual mutations. Or Mutants. And I hadn't really done much other than make that a joke. But this time around I had an entire page to flesh out the gag. So google on oranges came in so damn handy.

SteveMyers22

marine
All of which a quick search engine entry can find for you, free of charge and instantaneous.

I'm quoting this to highlight it. Underscore it. And basically point big neon pointer fingers at it. Because it's sooooooooo damn true. On the artistic side, having image search engines also is such a boon for quick reference material. Like say I have to draw a .357 magnum, instead of digging through my basement for a book on handguns that I picked up 15 years ago for photo reference, I can just google the gun and have an assortment of pics to help me draw it since I can't draw it from memory. The same goes for the writing side, as you've pointed out so well. Dictionary, Thesaurus, Encyclopedia, news articles on subject matter. Like for the Superchum strip I did on navel oranges ... the joke is that they're actual mutations. Or Mutants. And I hadn't really done much other than make that a joke. But this time around I had an entire page to flesh out the gag. So google on oranges came in so damn handy.

what he said.

Wow, Marine's decaffeinated and imparting nonconfrontational wisdom. Heed well!

I'd love to see that article you mentioned, if it's available online.

I'm definitively a blend of Iconoclast and Classicist. For me, my stories must have a say something and they have to look good.
I don't want to be a Formalist much. I don't have the desire to experiment. Experimenting gets in the way of telling a story.
I'm not a Humanist much. I'm not trying to evoke an emotion.

Who is a Classicist? Moebius comes to mind. He made beautiful comics but his story telling was lacking by comparison.

Who is a Humanist? How about Gary Larson, wanting to make us chuckle.

Who is a Formalist? Winsor McCay

Iconoclasts - Just about everyone else, like the creator of Maus

Hmm... I think I identify myself under Iconoclasts group when I work with my own comics, :-) coz I always stick to this qoute-'Its not the story that counts, but it is told'.

However, I tend to prefer those with Humanist aspect when I decided to follow a comic. :-P

A bit of all four I guess. I am trying to achieve "pretty" art while at the same time push the boundaries of it by experimenting. There's usually some underlying idea (with the exception of Din Krakatau, which was built out of an experiment so any ideas were tacked later on, but my other scripts have some basis), but when I write things I let the characters speak for themselves (thus the story writes itself).

I'm pretty sure that depending on a project one of these four will dominate slightly, but I decided long ago that I'll try to explore different paths and approaches :)

I am trying to create a set of steps or rules to follow. So far I came up with:

1. Art should be sufficient to convey your idea, tell the story you want to tell.
2. Once it's good enough to do that, it should be brought to a higher standard to at least not scare away potential readers and hopefully encite them to pick up the book.
3. If possible, it should attempt to push the boundaries of comic book storytelling even further than they are.

so the first point would be iconoclast/idealist, second step would be idealist/classicist and third step would bring you to the formalist category too, thus achieving perfect... perfect whatever is after trinity (tetrity? quadrity?).

The goal is a graphic novel (I like that term for some reason) with an original visual presentation that shines, but never outshines the story or the characters or the underlying idea. And hopefully is drawing from traditions while allowing itself to be groundbreaking at the same time (in the space of same book, anyway).

Perfection? Perhaps? Perhaps not? :)

Of course these are 5am ramblings so there's a possibility I'm mixing stuff or misunderstanding terms :)

I'd have to say... I'm most like a Humanist. I love creating characters more than anything else, really. :3 Comics can look as flashy and professional as they want... but without believable characters... is it really worth reading?

That's just my opinion, of course. :) I'm not the best artist ever, so all I really have is the cast.

In terms of National Dex, I have the most fun just thinking about what will happen next (even though I've written it out ahead of time) and how the characters in the chapter will react to the current events of the story. Revealing a little bit of their pasts from time to time to try and stir some emotion up in the reader is another thing I really strive for. :)

So... Humanist. Easily.

I'd have to say that I fit the Humanist bracket fairly well. I'm fond of character creation and world creation, how the characters react to the world around them is my biggest key thing. I'm very fond of the interactions between character, environment and each other.

I am however not the artist, so I leave the actual visual side of my comic to Reva. She has a knack of taking what I've written and putting a spin on it, she's pretty good at making the characters I've created come to life.

Hmm, what a silly theory.

Well, for myself personally, I'd have to say I'm a Humanist-classicist. Story always comes first for me and the characters in which it's includes. I do, however, like to try and make my own art look good.

I'm definitely a Classicist/Humanist, skipping wildly between the two and dipping my toes into the other categories when I have the time.

To me, the way a comic looks is hugely important, because it decides whether I'm able to read it or not; the story has to be really, really, really good before I'm prepared to overlook shoddy art - it might sound shallow, but that's the way it is.

However, the Iconoclastic type of comic rarely appeals to me, because a comic - like any story - is carried mainly by the characters. If a character dies, and it's just to get the message across, it doesn't have the same impact as a character who dies after you've gotten to know him/her and have started to emphasize with them.

with putrid meat i'm pretty much all humanistic when i write it.

there's another story i might take on some day that's been rotting in back of my head though that'd be more classical/iconoclastic. not preachy iconoclastic, but revolving around some idea i got from watching cosmos one night. we'll see how it turns out.

I'm a classicist-Formalist.The art is my main point, above story, since I'm not much of a writer.

Certainly Humanist. While there are comics that are groundbreaking in artwork or design, I feel that if a comic doesn't tell a story well then it doesn't do it's job. The characters, the plot, the elements of the story have to pull together. To me, the artwork is just the skin-deep beauty. I want a good story, dammit.

I'd like to consider myself Formal Humanist. I'm interested in pushing the boundaries of sprites to a new extreme, but my focus is always on plot and the characters themselves. I don't want to have a story that's considered shallow, and I certainly hope I don't have one.