Super Siblings Web Comic Strip for the week of March 8th, 2010 by Patrick Scullin. I got the idea for today’s strip from an old professor of mine who said he was a little “old-fashioned” because he only used his phone for making calls.
Archive for ‘March, 2010’
Floppy Talk – League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
by Patrick on March 4, 2010 at 12:01 am
Floppy Talk – is a new feature I’m adding to the site. Periodically I’m going to write about what’s on the top ‘o my stack of comic reading goodness. This week I thought I’d talk a bit about League of Extraordinary Gentlemen a lame movie and really fun graphic novel by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill. I’ve had the misfortune of seeing the movie before reading the book. In fact I’ve only now just started reading it and I’m really enjoying it. (Note: For my young readers this is not a book for kids because of the adult humor and situations.)
It’s heretical to say but, I have no special affinity or interest in Alan Moore. Sometimes I like his books and sometimes I don’t. This one seems to fire on all cylinders because of its beautiful marriage of text and art. O’Neill’s illustration style seems perfectly suited for the story. It’s a mixture of traditional pen and ink with a cartoonists flare that hits just the right note. It evokes a Victorian style while at the same time being entertaining to modern readers. In terms of the writing I’m a big fan of finding new ways to tell or retell traditional stories so it’s great to see how Moore included all of the different genres into this Victorian spy novel. I even like the tips of the hat it makes to James Bond.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 1 – Thumbs Up
#webcomicschat – Character Design
by Patrick on March 3, 2010 at 9:15 pm
Thanks for participating in #webcomicschat tonight. We had a good discussion about character design. I’ll break the chat into two parts. First how to write a good character and second how to draw a good character. Obviously how you write your character depends upon the genre and style of your comic strip. My webcomic is a slice of life, humor strip (which if not readily apparent is a cause for concern.) I tend to draw upon my own experience for ideas, so the characters in my strip have become different expressions of my personality. Over time my characters have developed their own voice and it’s become easier for me to write for them. “Time” is an important component in character development. I would say that most comic strip characters evolve and develop over time, which is a good thing. It’s very hard to completely flesh out a character from the beginning so I think webcomic artists should be flexible and open to change. It’s been my experience as well that some characters become our darlings. This can be good or bad so being aware of that tendency is important.
The second part of character development is their visual design. Characters should be unique and have recognizable traits. When it comes time for me to design characters I tend to parody people I know. Good caricature artists are a great resource for ideas on how to parody people. Here are a few artists that came up in our discussion: Stephen Silver, Dean Yeagle, Bruce Timm, and Laurie B. There are many others so feel free to post your suggestions here. With that it’s always a good idea to create model sheets for your recurring characters (advice I never seem to follow myself). I cringe at the look of my first strips, but the same can also be said of most comic strips. Have you ever looked at old Peanuts or Garfield? Yikes!
Thanks again for playing, happy webcomiking!






