Woo hoo! My old “Damania” webcomic returns with all new episodes for yet another mini series. You can catch up on the previous two mini series here and here.
Yes, in the middle ages/ Tudor times, this probably would have been treasure.
As usual, this comic update is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
![[CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE] "Damania Returns - Treasure" By C. A. Brown](https://pekoeblaze.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/2016-31st-may-artwork-damania-returns-treasure.jpg?w=291&h=300)
[CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE] “Damania Returns – Treasure” By C. A. Brown
Well, it’s the end of the month and that means that it’s time for me to give you a list of links to what I consider to be the best ten articles about art, comics and/or writing that I’ve written this month. I’ll probably include a couple of honourable mentions too.
All in all, this probably wasn’t the best month in terms of articles. Due to being busy with making this comic and parts of this webcomic mini series [that was posted back in April], as well as going through a couple of uninspired times – quite a few of the articles this month were either fairly short articles about making comics/ webcomics, random rambling articles and/or articles that repeated things that I’ve said in previous months. Still, there were at least a couple of good articles here this month.
So, without any further ado, here’s my “top ten” list…
Top Ten Articles – May 2016:
– “Character Rotation In Webcomics”
– “Making The Art In Your Webcomic Look More Detailed Than It Actually Is – A Ramble”
– “How Much Of Yourself Should You Put Into Your Webcomic? – A Ramble”
– “What To Do If You Make A Terrible Webcomic Update”
– “Thinking Of Your Webcomic Like A Sitcom”
– “Three Advantages Of Making Stand-Alone Webcomic Updates”
– “Three Tips For Creating Unique Fashion Designs For Your Art”
– “Three Very Basic Ways To Salvage A Failed Painting With Digital Editing”
– “Five Ideas For “Lazy” Art Projects (That Look Impressive)”
– “Three More Ways To Deal With Unenthusiastic Times (If You’re An Artist, Writer And/Or Comic Maker)”
Honourable Mentions:
– “Four Tips For Making A Comic In Just Two Days”
– “Why Is The Fear Of The Unknown So Important In The Horror Genre?”
Woo hoo! My old “Damania” webcomic returns with all new episodes for yet another mini series. You can catch up on the previous two mini series here and here.
Ah, if there’s one thing worse than suddenly finding your old guitar, it’s realising that you don’t really remember how to play much on it.
As usual, this comic update is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Damania Returns – Old Guitar” By C. A. Brown
Near the end of last year, I was reminded of a topic that I’ve talked about at least a few times before. I am, of course, talking about art quality and comics. Even though I’ll mostly be talking about single-panel comics/ cartoons here, everything in this article can also apply to comics that contain multiple panels.
Amongst the things I got for Christmas last year were several books of cartoons. Most of these were single-panel cartoons that had either been published in magazines or newspapers, or they were political cartoons.
The interesting thing was that virtually all of them used fairly simple and fairly basic black and white line art. Some of them looked like the kind of thing that anyone with any drawing experience could easily scribble in a few minutes.
And yet, they were deemed fit to be published professionally, in actual books. Why? Well, it’s all to do with the writing.
The most difficult part of making a humourous cartoon or a political cartoon, (or even a full comic) isn’t making the art. No, it’s the writing and/or the idea behind your comic. This is the part that makes people laugh, this is the part that makes people think, this is the part that makes a point. This is the most important part of your cartoon or comic.
The art can enhance the writing and it can illustrate some ideas in a better way than words ever can. But, if the idea behind your comic isn’t any good. If the joke in your comic isn’t funny, then your art could look like something from the Renaissance and your comic would still be kind of crappy.
However, if the writing is good and/or your comic contains a suitably interesting idea, then as long as the art vaguely resembles what you’re trying to depict, then people will ignore the art and focus on the writing. They’ll laugh at the joke you’re telling, they’ll think about the point you’re making. The art can help you to express your idea or illustrate your writing, but it can’t be a substitute for either of these things.
Of course, it helps if the art also looks good – but this isn’t essential if the writing or the idea behind your comic is really good.
A good metaphor for this would probably be the difference between a badly-written and unoriginal Hollywood movie that has multi-million dollar special effects and a really cool TV show with a lower budget, but better writing and more interesting characters. One of these is something that you’re probably going to watch once and forget about, the other is something that is probably going to linger in your imagination for quite a long time after you’ve watched it.
So, yes, although comics are a visual medium – the most important part of any comic or cartoon isn’t the art, it’s the writing.
And, this is why comics and cartoons with “badly-drawn” art end up getting published professionally. The writing is so good, the humour is so funny or the ideas are so interesting that they more than make up for the low-quality artwork.
————————–
Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
Woo hoo! My old “Damania” webcomic returns with all new episodes for yet another mini series. You can catch up on the previous two mini series here and here.
Well, this cartoon ended up being a bit more political than I expected. Originally, it was going to be just another cynical comic about how old FPS games are better than new ones. But, then I remembered this Eurogamer article I read a while ago about how some modern games companies pay large licencing fees to arms companies in order to include their guns in their games (it’s like a strange form of inverted product placement).
To get a little bit more political, I believe that this kind of stuff is only really a problem for gamers over the pond in America. Given that, in many other parts of the world (including the UK, if not especially the UK) game companies can advertise real guns as much as they want but people thankfully can’t usually actually buy them.
Still, it’s yet another reason why FPS games should return to the good old days of including a vast array of interesting, cool-looking and most importantly very much imaginary weapons.
I also made some visual edits to this cartoon after I’d scanned it. In most of the series so far, I’ve had to edit the dialogue for quality/flow reasons, but this is one of the most major visual changes. Basically, I removed a large dramatic-looking mushroom cloud from the last panel, since it accidentally made the accompanying dialogue imply that nuclear war was “cool”. Which it isn’t.
As usual, this comic update is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Damania Returns – Big Fictional Guns” By C. A. Brown
Well, although I’m currently over halfway the final episode of this WAD at the time of writing, I thought that I’d take a quick look at a WAD for Ultimate Doom called “Strange Aeons (V 3.6)“.
This WAD may have been updated by the time that this article goes out [Edit: it was already up to version 3.7 a day or so after I originally wrote this article], but I’ll be reviewing version 3.6 because that’s the version I played.
As usual, I used the “ZDoom” source port when playing this WAD and, from what I’ve read, it requires this source port in order to work properly. Although I don’t know if it’s also compatible with “GZDoom” too.
Anyway, let’s take a quick look at at “Strange Aeons (V 3.6):
Strange Aeons (V 3.6)” is a 36-level total conversion for “Ultimate Doom” featuring new levels, weapons, graphics, power-ups, music and monsters. The thing that first interested me in this WAD was the fact that it was apparently based on the works of H.P.Lovecraft.
The story behind the events of the game is that you play as a man who tries to find his son’s spirit by travelling through several strange Lovecraftian dream worlds. This WAD has much more of a story than many WADs do – with custom story text (and artwork) at the end of each episode.
And, yes, these text screens are written in a very Lovecraftian way.
Although you have to wait until episode four before you can see anything even resembling Cthulhu….
Whilst some parts of this WAD certainly have a wonderfully creepy and very Lovecraftian atmosphere to them, this varies somewhat throughout the game. Since this WAD is based on Ultimate Doom, it is split into four episodes – each of which has their own unique setting. This structure comes with all of the usual benefits and flaws inherent in traditional episode-based FPS games.
One cool feature about the episodic structure is that, in the first three episodes, you begin each episode in the main character’s bedroom – before stepping through a portal into the dream world that you’ve chosen to visit.
Yay! Cosmic horror 🙂
In my opinion, episodes one and four are probably the most Lovecraftian (episode one takes place on a collection of floating islands and episode four takes place in an icy wasteland). Episode three is also kind of cool and it’s set in an ancient Egypt-themed area of some kind.
But, apart from one really cool level (E2M5), most of episode two is – quite frankly – boring. It’s full of dull “industrial” areas, with only one level set on a giant vehicle (plus an epic boss battle at the very end of the episode) to break up the dreary monotony.
Seriously though, it’s worth slogging through the first four levels of episode two to play this one level. The boss battle in level eight is pretty cool too.
In terms of difficulty, this WAD actually has something of a difficulty curve to it. The first episode is ridiculously easy and the game gradually gets more and more challenging as it goes on. Most of the time, the difficulty doesn’t rise above “mildly challenging” (if you’re an experienced “Doom” player), but it was still fun nonetheless.
However, some of the difficulty in this WAD is due to the level design itself, so expect to get stuck searching for a well-hidden switch or key occasionally. Some of these are hidden in extremely fiendish ways – for example, in E4M4, a switch you need to press in order to complete the level is only revealed when you’ve defeated two large monsters that you’ll probaby just run away from when you first see them.
So, there’s both the fun kind of difficulty (eg: during the boss battles etc..) and the occasionally frustrating kind of difficulty here.
The boss battle at the end of the second episode is my favourite so far. Before you encounter the boss, you have to fight quite a few monsters in an arena. It isn’t quite a “slaughter map” level, but it vaguely reminded me of one.
One interesting thing to note is that, although this WAD has jumping disabled by default, the second level of the first episode is seemingly impossible to complete without leaping across a chasm at one point. So, make sure to enable jumping before playing this WAD.
As for the new weapons, I’ve only found three so far and they’re each surprisingly useful. The basic pistol has been replaced with a slightly more futuristic laser pistol. The chaingun has been replaced with an assault rifle that looks and sounds wonderfully dramatic.
In later episodes, the chainsaw is replaced by something called the “Scepter Of Souls” which is like a chainsaw, but it has a slightly longer range – which makes it extremely useful. The basic shotgun now also has slightly better sound effects too.
It’s a sceptre… and it’s made from skeletons and magic too. Nice!
The new monsters in this WAD also help to keep the gameplay fresh and to add a lot to the atmosphere too. Although a few of them have been borrowed from other classic FPS games and/or other Doom WADs (eg: the spiders from “Blood“, the giant worms from Freedoom, the sewer monsters from “Dark Forces“, modified “Hexen”/”Heretic” monsters etc… ), there are at least a couple of monsters here that I haven’t seen before.
Yes, that floating red thing is actually a monster. And a surprisingly powerful one too!
Yay! There are ghosts here too 🙂
Another cool thing about this WAD is that it contains a few new power-ups. One of these is a red orb that gives you unlimited ammo for thirty seconds – and, yes, you will find these after you’ve picked up the BFG 🙂 However, there’s another very similar-looking power-up that doubles the rate of fire for all of your weapons. And, yes, it’s easy to confuse the two power-ups (and waste ammo) if you aren’t careful.
I’m not sure if this was meant to be an “Incredible Hulk” reference or not…
The other new power up is a green “mutant power” orb, this turns you into a tall mutant creature (with a lot of health) who can defeat most monsters by punching them a couple of times. This is really cool, but one annoying side-effect of it is that, when it’s active, you can’t pick up keys, ammo etc…
As for the music, it’s pretty much what you would expect from a H.P.Lovecraft- themed WAD. It’s quiet, creepy and ambient.
All in all, this is a rather cool WAD even if it is let down by annoying level design in some parts. Even so, this WAD certainly tries to be as Lovecraftian as possible and it succeeds about half of the time. It’s fun, occasionally challenging and kind of cool.
If I had to give it a rating out of five, it would just about maybe get a four.
Woo hoo! My old “Damania” webcomic returns with all new episodes for yet another mini series. You can catch up on the previous two mini series here and here.
Yes, I know, this is quite literally the oldest joke in the book. Still, it amused me enough to make me want to turn it into a comic.
As usual, this comic update is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
![[CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE] "Damania Returns - Holiday" By C. A. Brown](https://pekoeblaze.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2016-28th-may-artwork-damania-returns-holiday.jpg?w=292&h=300)
[CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE] “Damania Returns – Holiday” By C. A. Brown
Although this is an article about art, fan art, artists and art styles, I’m going to have to start by talking about music yet again. Once again, there’s a good reason for this that will become obvious later. Likewise, I’ve probably mentioned all of the stuff in this article before, so apologies in advance if I repeat myself.
A while ago, I was looking through some of my old CDs when I happened to find an album that I bought from a stall at a music festival in 2008. The album was titled “A Tribute To Judas Priest – Legends Of Metal Vol. II“. As you might have guessed from the title, it’s an album that contains covers of Judas Priest songs by various metal bands.
The covers on this album are of varying quality, although they were absolutely fascinating to listen to again. It’s always interesting to hear a familiar song performed in a slightly different style by a different band.
Not only does this give the bands a chance to show off their own unique “sound”, it’s also reminiscent of the really old days of music when songs were just songs and they weren’t “owned” by any particular musician (or record company). Every song was just part of the current culture, and every song was open to anyone who had the ability to perform it.
So, what does any of this have to do with art?
Well, artists do something similar to this. Most of the time, it ends up being non-commercial fan art and/or parody art, but it can sometimes take the form of studies of old paintings (which have fallen out of copyright).
There is no better way for an artist to show off their own unique style and perspective on the world than by re-creating their own version of something that everyone already knows. This is especially true when it comes to fan art based on non-visual mediums. Since most fictional characters are only described using words, fan art pictures of the same character from a novel can vary wildly from artist to artist.
Even when fan art is based on something visual (eg: a film, a comic, a computer game etc..) seeing how different artists draw the same characters is absolutely fascinating. One artist might draw them in a very cartoonish way, and another artist may draw them in a very “realistic” way – but they’re both pictures of the same character.
As an artist, one of the great things about making fan art (even though I don’t do this that often, compared to many other artists) is wondering what a particular character will look like when they are drawn in my style. I never quite know this for certain before I make a fan art painting or drawing, so it’s certainly one of the most fascinating types of art to make.
Plus, like with music, one of the other great things about fan art is that it hearkens back to a time when stories were stories and when art was art. It hearkens back to a time when an artist was judged on how well they could depict a familiar thing (eg: all of those old paintings that are based on classical mythology, religious texts etc..), rather than on whether they were “original” or not. Back then, originality came from depicting familiar things in new, distinctive and interesting ways.
Plus, if you’re a fan of something, then seeing many different versions of the same thing made by different people can be absolutely fascinating for both nerdy reasons (eg: comparing the different versions) and because there’s, quite simply, lots more things that are related to your favourite thing.
So, yes, fan art is a more fascinating thing than you might think.
————————
Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
Woo hoo! My old “Damania” webcomic returns with all new episodes for yet another mini series. You can catch up on the previous two mini series here and here.
This comic suddenly came into being when I realised that Roz’s favourite TV show is almost certainly a certain well-known long-running series that debunks myths (through a series of dangerous-looking, and sometimes fiery, experiments) on a regular basis. And, well, I just had to make a parody comic about this.
As usual, this comic update is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Damania Returns – Mythological” By C. A. Brown
Although this is a philosophical article about creative works (and creativity) in general, I’m going to have to start by talking about one of my many favourite musicians for a while. There’s a good reason for this that I hope becomes obvious later.
A while back, I was watching random things on Youtube when I happened to stumble across this short highlight reel from Suzanne Vega’s “Carson McCullers Talks About Love” again. This was a musical play that Suzanne Vega wrote and performed in New York in 2011 and, from the highlight reel, it sounds really interesting. So, naturally, I took a quick look online to see if there was a soundtrack CD to it or a DVD of it.
There wasn’t. Apart from the highlight reel on Youtube and a few reviews online, there seems to be no record of it’s existence. This was a play that probably involved months of writing and yet it only existed for a couple of months several years ago in a city over three thousand miles away from me. It was this wonderfully interesting thing, and yet there is no real record of it.
And, well, this made me think about permanence and creativity. One of the great things about creating anything is wondering how long it will last. With things like art and writing, they’re meant to last. They’re meant to be able to be enjoyed at any time and, if they’re any good, then they’ll still be enjoyed decades or centuries in the future.
To paraphrase and misquote a brilliant line from Neil Gaiman’s “Death: The Time Of Your Life”, making things is a way of leaving your mark on the wall in the hope that people will see it long after you are gone.
All of this makes me wonder why someone would pour so much effort into something that would only exist for a few months in just one theatre and then never exist again.
I guess that, with making some things, the appeal isn’t that the results will last for generations – but the actual experience of making it.
I mean, when you’re feeling inspired, then the actual process of writing, making art etc… is an amazing thing in and of itself. When you have a creative idea that demands to be made form, then making it is an almost spiritual experience in and of itself. Likewise, once you’ve finished, you feel a sense of accomplishment that doesn’t depend on how many people will ever see what you’ve made.
Plus, thinking about it, I guess that permanence is often a lie that many creative people (including myself) tell themselves in order to feel more valuable and prestigious. And, yes, with solitary things (like writing, making art, making comics etc…), you need all of the motivation that you can get. So, sometimes, this lie is necessary.
I mean, a while back, I ended up making an entire 7-8 page comic in just two days. This was one of those “inspired” projects that I just had to make. Yes, I like to daydream about this comic eventually being considered part of the “canon” of everything I’ve ever made. But, honestly, in twenty years’ time – or even in five years’ time- it will probably have been forgotten by everyone except myself.
Very few things that people make are ever remembered in the distant future. For every Shakespeare, there were probably hundreds of other playwrights who have been lost to the mists of time.
But, even if virtually nothing is actually permanent, the idea of permanence is an essential part of being creative. It’s the thing that motivates us, it’s the thing that actually makes us feel like artists and writers, rather than just eccentric people who scribble, daub paint, type things on a keyboard and/or draw symbols on pieces of paper.
———————————
Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
PekoeBlaze - the official blog 