Day 883 of 1000
We took down Kelly’s old comic strip site. We wanted to have a home for the comics she drew for two years from ages 14-16. Over the last couple of days, I was reminded of when how she learned to draw the strip. Of course the start was our homeschool art with Kistler’s Draw Squad, but there was a lot more than that. She and Christian drew lots of cartoons before Kelly even got started. Then, Kelly started picking up cartooning books at bookstores and reading everything she could find about cartooning.
One of the things she learned and that I noticed in yesterday’s and today’s comic is that she often experimented with angles, distances, foregrounds, shadows, and a ton of other stuff. The comic got a lot more interesting to me when she started pointing out the different techniques she used to make the drawing interesting, pull interest a certain direction, set the tone of a given panel, etc.
Some of the stuff I am noticing was from her earliest work so the implementation is a little rough, but she is definitely experimenting with stuff she has read or seen in other comic strips. Here is yesterday’s strip. Notice the third person view through binoculars in the third panel.
Now in today’s strip she tries a couple of different techniques. The first panel shows the kids talking in the foreground with interesting stuff in the background to set the scene. The las three panels are from a balcony or stadium point of view with a narrator at the top. I love it.
There are lots and lots of different things she tries. Some of it has to do with the narrative and different ways to show people talking to each other–how they are positioned, their angles, etc. I am enjoying looking at these again as I re-post them. I really hope she takes up her comic stripping again very soon. I know she wants to start a new strip.
Betty Blonde #49 – 09/23/2008
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.
