According to a story appearing in the Japan Times Online, the Kyoto International Manga Museum attracts "200,000 to 300,000 visitors a year, including some 30,000 from abroad." The museum, which opened in 2006, features a "wall of manga," called, appropriately enough, the Wall of Manga. It's about 200 meters long and features over 50,000 comics dating back to the 1970s. There's even a computer search kiosk available so you can locate the exact manga you want to read. Pretty helpful if you know the one you want. But if you're not intimidated by the sheer size of the Wall, you can approach it and choose a volume at random. Whatever catches your eye. Yeah, you can read the manga. Take it off the shelf, open it up, start reading.
Since the museum's website claims about 10% of its visitors come from overseas-- bearing out the Japan Times story, I suppose-- they even have a number of international manga. That's comic books to you and me, Russ. The largest group is made up of Japanese comics in translation: 970 in English, 670 in Korean and a whopping 1330 in Chinese! Also represented are German, Italian, Spanish and Catalan and "other European languages." There are around 400 volumes of homegrown North American, European and other Asian comics, too. I wonder if they have that one Wolverine where he had an eyepatch and used his claws on those dudes...
"Summer School" at the museum just started today, August 1st, and runs through the 26th. I'm not out to earn my PhD in manga, but I'd love to attend some of the art instruction classes. They're in Japanese only, naturally. The museum accepts donations of materials, as well. If I leave Japan again that's what I'll do with my rapidly growing comic collection-- donate it to the Kyoto International Manga Museum so people from Japan and around the world can enjoy my impeccable taste in sequential literature.
Even though I've lived in Japan off and on since before this museum opened, I have to admit I still haven't made my pilgrimage. While I've been to Tokyo and scoured Akihabara, Shibuya, Harajuku and Ikebukuro for comics so many times I've lost count, I don't go to Kyoto very often. Twice. And both times I encountered cold weather and nasty rain. Kyoto and I just haven't been able to see eye-to-eye on what constitutes a pleasant visit. One of my good friends went to the museum, though, and he's not even a comic book reader. Before his visit, he'd read Ghost World, and that's about it. The museum deeply impressed him. Then he went down the street to a local bookstore and bought some English-translated manga for himself. Knowing my love for comics he texted me while he was doing it like some kind of pervert performing some weird and gross act we won't even begin to try to imagine and having to share it to increase his sick, disgusting pleasure, and like a similarly perverted individual I jumped right in to join him and demanded he buy the first two volumes of Ai Yazawa's Nana for me.
And that's how I became addicted. Addicted enough I need to hit Kyoto and visit this place. Unfortunately, I can't do it during my summer break. I'm already committed to yet another Tokyo junket, but that's mostly for business. My passport needs renewing! But since I recently became engaged and my fiancee is returning to Japan in October so we can start our life together-- I know, it's sickeningly sweet-- there's more than likely a Kyoto trip for two in our near future. Now she could give a rip about manga but she cares about me, so we'll stand in front of that Wall of Manga and maybe she'll share with me the ones she read when she was a kid.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Monday, July 30, 2012
More leftist art...
Your guess is as good as mine as to why these people and a giant gorilla are all raising their left arms. I think Batgirl is going to kick that erzatz Uncle Fester's ass (if she can ever untangle herself from that flowing mess of a cape), and Enid is confused as to how she got involved in this mess. Frazetta's happy monkey wants to play.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
A smile is something special, but honestly, ribbons are readily available almost anywhere
Just re-reading Ghost World yesterday. The part where Enid regresses emotionally while listening to one of her childhood favorite songs is very touching. It's a very fatherly gesture for her dad to drag out her little turntable and put the single on her bed. Does anyone listen to 45s anymore? I had a stack when I was a kid, but most of them were outlaw country by guys like Waylon Jennings. I especially like the
panel when Enid wakes up in the morning still in her beanbag chair with her hair sticking up all over the place. I'm almost completely bald and look like some kind of effeminate mirror universe Ike Eisenhower, so of course I'm jealous even of someone's terrible morning hair.
Anyway, I'm doing a deep study of the way Daniel Clowes draws eyes and hands. You have your slender Alex Toth fingers with prominent fingernails, your dynamic yet claw-like Gil Kane hands that seem rippling with muscles, and then your Dan Clowes hands which are largely featureless. They're not perfunctory, though. They're typically well observed in whatever pose he chooses to place them.
Eyes vary. Weirdo comedian Joey McCobb-- is he for real, or is he simply a hack with an outsider gimmick?-- has wrinkly cartoonish eyes, kind of pointy and football shaped. Visually, he reminds me a little of Peter Lorre. Very little. Mostly just the eyes. Enid and Rebecca have more nuanced eyes, at least at the beginning of the story. Eyelids, lashes, little lines underneath to show the roundness. Eyes protude slightly. There's at least one panel later in the book where Enid's eyes are simply a curved arc above and below, but they're somewhat obscured by the drawing of her glasses frames.
I could be mistaken. I'm writing my impressions the next day, at work. It will be interesting for me to go home this evening and see if I really saw what I remember seeing, or if I'm just making things up in my head.
As an artist myself, I've never settled on a particular way to draw eyes. Sometimes I want to do sort of abstracted, simplified shapes with full outlines, but other times I go nuts with the detailing. I change frequently depending on who happens to be influencing me that day, or if I've seen someone new I want to rip off.
Jaime Hernandez has a simple yet convincing way of drawing eyes, the footballish upper and lower arcs, with rounded irises in the center. The top arc can be flattened and thickened, with a few strokes for lashes. Interestingly, in a fairly recent story arc, he chose to use the "injury to the eye" motif regarding Hopey, a character whose motivations I often think about. But prior to that, she spent the story "Election Day" (Penny Century #5, June 1999) hiding her eyes behind dark sunglasses, so much so one of the minor characters mentions thinking she's blind. At the end of the story she lifts the sunglasses while staring at herself in the mirror, revealing deep lines under them and some kind of enigmatic unhappiness. What's going on in that head of hers? Hernandez generally characterizes her as someone not given to introspection. The eyes are expressive, but they tell us nothing.
His art is slick and appealing, believable yet not exactly realistic. Steve Rude has a similar approach, but the character he's most associated with usually wears a visor. No eyes. When I picture a Rude face, I imagine narrowed eyes drawn as horizontal lines, squinting, the body straining, twisting and moving. Action eyes. Some of his aliens have big round insectoid eyes. Good for science fiction, not so much for earth-bound romance comics-- which is a genre I'm very interested in working in. I like to say "social realism," but if I'm really being honest with myself, I'm writing romance comics. They'll never see publication, but it's fun to churn out scripts full of emotional torture for my shabbily realized characters.
Alex Toth and Mort Meskin sometimes drew eyes as little slashes of black ink, or maybe a line up top and then a dab of ink below for the iris. Very simple and effective. Alex Toth is my primary influence for drawing eyes, but like Clowes, Hernandez and Rude, he employed different methods. His sketchbook pages, which are frequently just big piles of faces and heads, show all kinds of approaches. Some of them are extremely simple, just quick enclosed triangles and ovals.
Simply put, there's no one right way to draw eyes. Do what works best for you, what's appropriate for your characters. Above all, observe real emotions and learn to draw them. If you're good at acting on the page, more than likely you're rarely drawing eyes the same way twice anyway.
And work on those hands while you're at it.
panel when Enid wakes up in the morning still in her beanbag chair with her hair sticking up all over the place. I'm almost completely bald and look like some kind of effeminate mirror universe Ike Eisenhower, so of course I'm jealous even of someone's terrible morning hair.
Anyway, I'm doing a deep study of the way Daniel Clowes draws eyes and hands. You have your slender Alex Toth fingers with prominent fingernails, your dynamic yet claw-like Gil Kane hands that seem rippling with muscles, and then your Dan Clowes hands which are largely featureless. They're not perfunctory, though. They're typically well observed in whatever pose he chooses to place them.
Eyes vary. Weirdo comedian Joey McCobb-- is he for real, or is he simply a hack with an outsider gimmick?-- has wrinkly cartoonish eyes, kind of pointy and football shaped. Visually, he reminds me a little of Peter Lorre. Very little. Mostly just the eyes. Enid and Rebecca have more nuanced eyes, at least at the beginning of the story. Eyelids, lashes, little lines underneath to show the roundness. Eyes protude slightly. There's at least one panel later in the book where Enid's eyes are simply a curved arc above and below, but they're somewhat obscured by the drawing of her glasses frames.
I could be mistaken. I'm writing my impressions the next day, at work. It will be interesting for me to go home this evening and see if I really saw what I remember seeing, or if I'm just making things up in my head.
As an artist myself, I've never settled on a particular way to draw eyes. Sometimes I want to do sort of abstracted, simplified shapes with full outlines, but other times I go nuts with the detailing. I change frequently depending on who happens to be influencing me that day, or if I've seen someone new I want to rip off.
Jaime Hernandez has a simple yet convincing way of drawing eyes, the footballish upper and lower arcs, with rounded irises in the center. The top arc can be flattened and thickened, with a few strokes for lashes. Interestingly, in a fairly recent story arc, he chose to use the "injury to the eye" motif regarding Hopey, a character whose motivations I often think about. But prior to that, she spent the story "Election Day" (Penny Century #5, June 1999) hiding her eyes behind dark sunglasses, so much so one of the minor characters mentions thinking she's blind. At the end of the story she lifts the sunglasses while staring at herself in the mirror, revealing deep lines under them and some kind of enigmatic unhappiness. What's going on in that head of hers? Hernandez generally characterizes her as someone not given to introspection. The eyes are expressive, but they tell us nothing.
His art is slick and appealing, believable yet not exactly realistic. Steve Rude has a similar approach, but the character he's most associated with usually wears a visor. No eyes. When I picture a Rude face, I imagine narrowed eyes drawn as horizontal lines, squinting, the body straining, twisting and moving. Action eyes. Some of his aliens have big round insectoid eyes. Good for science fiction, not so much for earth-bound romance comics-- which is a genre I'm very interested in working in. I like to say "social realism," but if I'm really being honest with myself, I'm writing romance comics. They'll never see publication, but it's fun to churn out scripts full of emotional torture for my shabbily realized characters.
Alex Toth and Mort Meskin sometimes drew eyes as little slashes of black ink, or maybe a line up top and then a dab of ink below for the iris. Very simple and effective. Alex Toth is my primary influence for drawing eyes, but like Clowes, Hernandez and Rude, he employed different methods. His sketchbook pages, which are frequently just big piles of faces and heads, show all kinds of approaches. Some of them are extremely simple, just quick enclosed triangles and ovals.
Simply put, there's no one right way to draw eyes. Do what works best for you, what's appropriate for your characters. Above all, observe real emotions and learn to draw them. If you're good at acting on the page, more than likely you're rarely drawing eyes the same way twice anyway.
And work on those hands while you're at it.
Well, you see...
... in this comic book blog culture, things get confused out there; power, ideals, the old morality, practical artistic necessity. But out there with a pen and blank paper, it must be a temptation to be God. Because there's a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the "better angels of our nature." Every man has got a breaking point. You and your friends have one. This detail from my last post proves I've reached mine. And very obviously, I have gone insane.
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