Short Stories
High school was all about one-sheets...a blocked out piece of paper on both sides that I would do my bad cartoons on. The point was to make people laugh and I would always try my hardest to knock out a comic that people could pass around school and read. That's what they used to do...someone would read the comic and pass it on to the next person...sometime later the comic would finally get back to me...usually people would laugh or point and make fun of my work.
College was harder. College was the weekly strip in the college paper that was only 3 blocks. You read comics in the newspaper and think "Eh, that wasn't very good or funny." but you never know how hard it is until you try. I did it for all of 3 semesters when I realized that doing 3 block comics wasn't for me and so I went back to doing bootleg issues of my favorite characters 'Chris and Vernbugg' (I say bootleg because I'd draw them, photocopy them, then stick them with the college papers).
When I decided to make this comic a one-shot with 10 different stories I knew that I needed to write stories that would either captivate the audience or make them laugh. I chose to try and make people laugh rather then glue them into their seats. Lucky enough I have a plethora of material from the past couple years as, if I'm out drinking, something stupid usually happens to me. So most of the stories in the anthology do, in some way, come from something in my life.
Pacing is key. It's amazing how only doing 12 blocks can fail if you don't set up the pacing correctly. In trying to write a short 2 page story I first started with my old format. Grab a piece of paper, draw 6 blocks on each side, then start my plotting that way. Make sure it looks good on a page (even if it is just my stick figures), make sure the transition is smooth from page one to two, and make sure the ending wraps it up all nicely.
So I included two samples from back in the day. One is a Chris and Vernbugg circa 1992, with the two trying to form their own cool posse (only one of the two pages was scanned ...so you only get half the story). And secondly is a very badly browned 'TSC Blues' comic strip from my days at 'The Signal' at Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey).
Tomorrow I'm going to go over a bit of what was said on the message boards last week about where to find good places to find scripts and such. Alot of people put some great info up, I'm just going to repost the links here one after another.
NEXT WEEK: Big news for CBM #3. Well, it is a BIG deal to me. I'm sure most will just read it and say "Dude, THAT was your big news??? You need help." But maybe one person will think it cool.
Link of the week: Check out Culture Shock Comics, doing their own anthology Quixotica: http://www.cultureshockcomics.com
College was harder. College was the weekly strip in the college paper that was only 3 blocks. You read comics in the newspaper and think "Eh, that wasn't very good or funny." but you never know how hard it is until you try. I did it for all of 3 semesters when I realized that doing 3 block comics wasn't for me and so I went back to doing bootleg issues of my favorite characters 'Chris and Vernbugg' (I say bootleg because I'd draw them, photocopy them, then stick them with the college papers).
When I decided to make this comic a one-shot with 10 different stories I knew that I needed to write stories that would either captivate the audience or make them laugh. I chose to try and make people laugh rather then glue them into their seats. Lucky enough I have a plethora of material from the past couple years as, if I'm out drinking, something stupid usually happens to me. So most of the stories in the anthology do, in some way, come from something in my life.
Pacing is key. It's amazing how only doing 12 blocks can fail if you don't set up the pacing correctly. In trying to write a short 2 page story I first started with my old format. Grab a piece of paper, draw 6 blocks on each side, then start my plotting that way. Make sure it looks good on a page (even if it is just my stick figures), make sure the transition is smooth from page one to two, and make sure the ending wraps it up all nicely.
So I included two samples from back in the day. One is a Chris and Vernbugg circa 1992, with the two trying to form their own cool posse (only one of the two pages was scanned ...so you only get half the story). And secondly is a very badly browned 'TSC Blues' comic strip from my days at 'The Signal' at Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey).
Tomorrow I'm going to go over a bit of what was said on the message boards last week about where to find good places to find scripts and such. Alot of people put some great info up, I'm just going to repost the links here one after another.
NEXT WEEK: Big news for CBM #3. Well, it is a BIG deal to me. I'm sure most will just read it and say "Dude, THAT was your big news??? You need help." But maybe one person will think it cool.
Link of the week: Check out Culture Shock Comics, doing their own anthology Quixotica: http://www.cultureshockcomics.com
posted by Ryan McLelland at 5:32 AM
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