Something about Theda Bara and Jujubes.

I think I figured out the formula for a problem I had. You just have to simplify the problem, figure it out, then complicate it back up.
<- this is it simplified.

I went out of my way a while ago and bought a BOOK ON PERSPECTIVE, and it wasn't even in it. I'm inclined to think that most artists are idiots. Or, at least, that's who art books are catered to. The book I bought was among the most highly rated on amazon, but it had nothing of merit in it. Seriously, there was nothing in the book that I didn't just learn by myself or know naturally (things get bigger the closer they get to you and smaller the... wait, i forget... good thing I bought this p.o.s. book). It was an entire book on perspective, and somehow they didn't get past the most basic principles. And I'm not exaggerating.

This is how crappy the book is- I bought "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way" when I was 12. That had 3 pages about perspective in it. I swear to you, those 3 pages go further into perspective than the entire BOOK ON PERSPECTIVE.

So, I'm just going to assume that all art books were written for dummies, and because of that, will be worthless and a waste of time. I mean, I went to college, I've seen "How to Art" books. Loads of crap they are. This was one of them, a book used to teach perspective in a class teaching it. Also, I only see "beginner's" books. Pfft, yeah, like there's also moderate or expert perspective... wtf? There are no difficulty settings in perspective. Perspective is formulas and facts. I'm wondering how they managed to fill an entire book with no more info than they actually had.

But anyway, I'm just glad I can reason my way through these problems. Luckily I'm a bit more mechanically inclined than the average "artist" (apparently), and I can just shift this stuff over to that part of my brain, think about it, and solve it. Like a puzzle.

And here's this thumbnail for the next page. I'll be working on this for a while. I'm looking forward to drawing it; I think it'll let me know what I'm made of. I'm only posting it because this might be the last post for a bit. This'll take a few days to finish, at the least.

And on top of that, I have at least 7 other medium projects to do and a large one, that have a real deadline and have to be finished. All of them secret for the time being. I'm not making money, and nothing would really happen if they weren't finished, but they have to be finished.

Randall, if you're out there, I vaguely remember you saying something about keeping track of things that were going through my head while doing this, like influences and things. To start cataloging that stuff. I think I'll start doing that, at least the stuff I'm consciously aware of. I think I'll probably start putting it here, on these, like a footnote. So far, I think there are only two things that might fall under that.

The first is about the placement of the word exploders. Usually, when there's a lot of dialogue, it takes up a lot of pages, and when it doesn't it's because they've made huge chunks of dialogue and huge word exploders. It's rare to have actual back and forth dialogue in panels. Seems like we talked about this. But anyway, I think Mignola is so far the biggest influence on the word exploders. Specifically, "Goodbye Mister Tod". If you look at it, you can probably see it. I'm sort of using it as a guide because that's one of the few stories that stick out in my mind where characters had multiple back and forth dialogue interactions in single panels and it didn't look bad.

The other is weirder and probably insignificant. I've been watching a lot of old silent movies. AMC plays them in the mornings when I'm making breakfast(actually dinner) and eating. And I've started to download them too. I guess I'll just have to wait to see if that's important in any way.

But in related news, I've decided to try to grow one of those thin mustaches, the kind that go across the very bottom of your upper lip. You don't see those too often and I think it's a shame. If those movies are a sign, they were all the rage in the 20's.