Really Freehand: Comics Going Digital

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BitStrips debuted at SXSW, and it’s pretty much the only thing I remember from the trade show. Attendees immediately used it to illustrate conference shenanigans like the after parties and Sarah Lacy’s infamous “interview” with Mark Zuckerberg.

It is a little tricky to figure out at first, but as your avatars are saved and can be shared with friends, it gets quicker with frequent use. I hate to say that Bitstrips is this year’s ___, but it’s definitely a breakthrough app that you’re going to see illustrating blog posts all over the place from now on.

Bitstrips (like ZingFu and Toolet) is new to bloggers, but cartoonists have been using software for years to sidestep tedious, repetitive tasks. This is a debate among cartoonists over software as selling out. Last years, Stuart Immonen wrote a strong dissenting article for Comic Book Resources, admitting he uses tools like Google SketchUp, Photoshop, and the Creative Commons photo library:

sImmonen.jpg Face it, deadlines are murder, especially when they come around every thirty days or so. The sheer volume is astonishing; even with a lowball mean estimate of four panels per page, the typical monthly superhero comic boasts nearly 90 separate drawings each issue– that’s over a thousand a year! I don’t think there’s another job in the commercial arts field which is similarly demanding. The comic artist’s motto might very well be “by any means necessary.”

It’s no wonder artists condescend to using various tricks in order to try keep up. Some have an arsenal of stock poses and expressions from which to choose; other use assistants to contribute to background drawings; others fill empty space with incoherent linework, or lots of silhouetted figures; still others use that dirtiest of dirty tricks– photo reference.

Recently, drawing the human figure from life has come under heavy fire, and indeed it seems like there have always been macho artists who have dismissed the practice, claiming some superiority through their intimate and intricate knowledge of human and animal anatomy; through their natural ability to “work it out with a pencil.” However, not all of us are so gifted, and when the editor starts to call for more pages, one is often forced to resort to the methods closest at hand.

Photoreferencing has suffered under the pejorative euphemisms of “copying”, “swiping”, “stealing” (not to be confused with “aping”, implying a (possibly still unsavoury) talent for mimicry) or that most damning of epithets, “cheating”, and without temperance, the otherwise competent artist can easily lapse into outright plagiarism. Whether or not the harangued artist intends to appropriate someone else’s work or to merely quote it– what Thomas Mann ennobled as “higher cribbing”– is irrelevant; of late, the artist who uses reference material is a pariah…

Despite my bristling reaction all those years ago, I shamelessly admit that the computer has radically altered how I draw, and how I think about drawing. It’s improved my speed, and I think, my creativity. I still use a pencil, but it’s not the only tool in the shed.

I know it’s cooler to call them “comics,” but I only really read them graphic novel-length. I like to sit down with a full book of a series and read it all in an evening — sort of like my preference for literature over poetry (although that is such a pretentious analogy anyone who is already annoyed I legitamized the term graphic novel likely hates me now.) Unfortunately, novel-length comics could take a lifetime to make. I saw Charles Burns speak at Brookline Booksmith a few months ago and someone in the audience told him it was so frustrating to wait as long as he did for the next in the series. Burns explained he’d been working as hard has he could.

There really aren’t any obscure graphic novelists, because so few ever finish their attempts. Very few people have the almost counterintuitive skills required to make one: awesome imagination and preternatural patience.

While a cartoonist might be able to get away with Photoshop and other “cheats” in storytelling, there is a limit to which software can be employed. A graphic novel composed with Bitcomics would be like Ernest Hemingway translating Mrs. Dalloway (another pretentious analogy, sorry!) The appeal is in the organic form of the images and the great detailing that computers just cannot do. (By the way, I have no idea if Charles Burns uses anything other than pen and paper. I just mentioned him earlier, because I saw him speak recently.)

I just got finished reading Rob Walker’s “Buying In,” (also, at SXSW.) Toward the end, he discusses Etsy and trends toward homemade goods. The women (90% of sellers are female) seem to agree that outside some infuriating instances of mass marketers like Urban Outfitters ripping off Etsy designs; the pseudo-homemade stuff you might find at Target is actually good for their business. People get used to the idea of “homemade” and start to value the difference between something an individual took time to create by hand, and an items that only appears that way.

I can’t help but think that mass-produced comics might create a similar respect for the more detailed and labored work that can only be done with a pen and paper. After drawing the cover of the Believer for years, in January Charles Burns was finally the subject (it was also the 50th issue.) Maybe the comic is this year’s ____.

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Posted by Joanne on Mar 17, 2008 | Comments | Link

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