Print making, lino cut

brokecracker

EDIT: the Printmaking image is halfway down the page.




Leys skip the chit chat and get to the part where yell at me.
Crits welcome.
Editorial cartoon about voting machines

I swear I drew this long before the "Cheney's got a gun" video.

Some recent strips.

Forbe!

I like the first two. The other tree strips need work as far as art goes.

I'm not too sure what kind of critique you're looking for, art, humor or what, but to me, its all fairly mediocre.

MagicToaster

Those strips are too long. I don't even wanna read em.

Ehmavisca

I don't even want to look at them.

Axim

you can say dump again

big fat steamy dump

CatnipCat

the thing i don't particularlly like about the long strips is that the first panels for all three are EXACTLY the same. especially the last two.

brokecracker

Sooo...
Thanks...
What would make them easier to read? Just three panels? Less text?

WizToast

I think part of it is that you're doing a b&w comic with essentially the same angle over and over. So, everything looks very sort of redundant. The quantity of text doesn't help much.

I'm not sure quite why, but your scans also look a little bit fuzzy to me. What rez are you scanning at?

As for the writing, I'm not really sure what you're about. There are two political cartoons, one cartoon with a New Yorker feel to it, one cartoon with a very typical Sunday page feel to it, and one with an Internet style abstract pop culture reference.

In one page, the black-haired guy is saying he doesn't listen to modern music. In the next, he's talking about Gnarls Barkley, and the origins of its members.

The only common thread seems to be that the writing is smug and condescending. In general, I feel like you're trying to impress me more than you're trying to make me laugh. I'm not really seeing you in these comics. I have a bunch of different styles of writing, all of which feel very derivative.


Overall it's a decent start. But your art has a long way to go, and you need to find your "voice" as a writer/cartoonist.

Jonis

*arctic

brokecracker

Thanks for the crits.
To answer some questions:
I think they are scanned at 150 dpi, I'll start trying them a 72.

They are all black and white because that is what the paper that runs them asked for, I am not that great in color anyways. (I'm taking a Photoshop class now to improve that)

I had not noticed that two of them were "Have you heard of (insert band here)..." strips. Those tend to be a bit weaker for me. I don't do those often, but the strip takes place in a record store, so I feel like I have to address new music every now and again. How could I write those in without being stale sounding?

The smug tone is sort of intended, the black haired character (Wayne) is a music snob a-la High Fidelity, but I don't want readers to not know what is going on, so I will cut that back.

The editorial cartoons help me practice drawing new perspectives and one shot humor. Most people seem to like those better, but I would like to transfer that humor to the strip. Any suggestions?

P.S. I can’t fucking believe I missed the “arctic” thing.

MagicToaster

brokecracker wrote:

I think they are scanned at 150 dpi, I'll start trying them a 72.

Even though the detail level low, you should continue working at 150dpi. Keep the high rez version for yourself and save a copy at 72dpi. You always work bigger than the final rez size.

brokecracker wrote:

Any suggestions?

Newspaper cartoons are sucessful because they are short and simple. PA is succesful because it is short and simple, you should keep yours short and simple.

Every comic in my file of bad-comi-art has the same mistake: Poorly drawn scenes, un-funny jokes that drag on for too long... also, really boring subjects, similar to what you have here.

My suggestion is to shorten down the strip length to three panels; Draw your heart out on every panel, and lastly; make this more interesting! If I see another strip about two guys that hang around I'm just gonna give up all hope on man kind's creative future.

Seriously, put a new spin on it... we've all seen this before.

brokecracker

Thanks for a more detailed crit MagicToaster.

I'm working on a story arch right now that deals with the store they work in getting bought out. I'll post some of the strips when I get them back and I'm going to start working in three panels, trying better angles and *Gasp* backgrounds.

The story should get them out of the store and get rid of the stale "Two guys talking" feel.

I've never done a story arch with a short strip before, so any suggestions are welcome as always.

brokecracker

So we were doing lino cut prints in one of my classes and here was one I was working on:
P.S. The outside got cut off cause my scanner is small, but you can still get the idea...



I still have the piece of Lino, and was wondering if you'se guys had any suggestions.

NightDragon

It seems all you really did was "draw" with the stylus, as you would with a pen and paper, rather than trying for the reverse, as most people do...

examples.

http://www.birgittaheiling.nu/images/linocut.JPG

http://www.solga.com/works2002/westside_lino.jpg

http://www.lib.uconn.edu/about/exhibits/ziner/zi4.JPG

http://www.lib.uconn.edu/about/exhibits/ziner/zi5.JPG


i.e. what you're doing is drawing what you want, rather than removing the material you DON'T want. The latter would result in a print that has black lines, rather than white lines.