Michi Mathias. illustration & comics.
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Learning through cutting out snowmen and playing with paper

27/10/2017

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One week ago, at the House of Illustration in London, I was attending a masterclass in character and composition with the very fabulous Alexis Deacon. To my surprise, it was all done using collage: cutting out shapes, arranging and re-arranging them. Playing with paper was my most fun thing as a little kid, yet I've never tried collage before, and here we found that simply pushing the pieces of a snowman shape a little off balance can suggest a surprising degree of emotion and intent. 
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I think my comic characters tend to stand around in fairly static positions too much of the time so it was a revelation to try out these effects from small changes. Using collage saved drawing and re-drawing and erasing, and also allowed for looser experimenting, letting accidental effects happen. 
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Things of course got a little more complicated as we then had to use random cut-out shapes to form new, imagined characters (which I never do, by any sort of method, and found terribly difficult). When I got stuck and admitted I was clueless, Alexis sat down and showed by example; he was kind and helpful and constantly moving round the room to check on everyone's progress with real enthusiasm.   

Finally we had to place these characters against a background scene in a way to express something about the newly created character. Alexis showed us some elements of background composition which included:

- leaving empty space for certain effects
- directing characters' gaze toward other characters or something of note, guiding the viewer's eye
- separation or overlapping unification of silhouettes indicating relationships between characters 
- visual links by echoing colour or shape, grouping elements through use of shared colour pallette
- reader's viewpoint - from character's eyes, or cinematic overhead distance shot near ending... 

These notes are pretty sketchy and some of the concepts probably too subtle for what I do but it was fascinating to learn about how much is going on, probably at a subconscious level, when looking at a beautifully made graphic novel. Alexis was very clear in his explanations, truly an excellent teacher. 

And I think I might even try a bit of collage in planning some panels for my graphic novel Two Shillings per Day. Anything that can help add variety to the look of four people cycling along country roads has got to be good!

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How to beat procrastination

4/10/2016

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Well, this is a funny thing.  After having a couple of projects on the go for sooo long it seemed doubtful I'd ever really do them, they both got done this summer. (Those two being Up, Down, or Stay the Same? and Just a Normal Day?)

On the right is me talking to Jessica Abel over skype, showing her my work schedule which resulted, however loosely, from the planning techniques I learnt from her Creative Focus Workshop earlier in the summer. And with this plan, the projects actually got done.

Having been such a Class A procrastinator previously, the difference was amazing enough that I got interviewed and featured on Jessica's blog as a case study! 

I've got a lot to live up to now! And I'll need all these tools to make headway with my next project, which is much bigger than anything I've done before.  More about that one soon. 

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The wrong kind of imagination

12/7/2014

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Recently I found myself being about eight years old and unable to do my school creative writing assignment.  I had gone up to the British Library to attend an evening class in character development for graphic novels, and suddenly felt that terrible childhood helplessness of being completely unable to think of a single idea for a story I was supposed to be writing.  I never could come up with ideas for fiction; I would force myself in primary school to write some random opening sentence just to put something on the paper, but could never get any further.  Somehow I did manage to graduate even without completing any of those creative writing pieces through the years.  

It was a weird thing, feeling that mild panic return as a (normally) functioning grown-up.  The brain freeze, the embarassment at complete lack of ability to carry out a simple exercise.  We weren't even being asked to do anything more than simply imagining a character, defining their physical traits and personality,  making them as interesting and unusual as we liked to make them stand out a bit and be memorable.   But all I could do was think of real people I know,  and no attempt to add or embellish features or aspects to apply to them felt the slightest bit convincing.  I simply could not do it.   And I felt bad, since these new characters were then meant to encounter each other and we could see what happened next...  

Associating with creative types, as I do, just makes it worse.   Too many people for whom writing stories and songs is a very normal day-to-day occurence.  So what's wrong with my brain and why didn't I get the creative gene?  Can it be learnt? 

Unfortunately, this is not to say I'm totally lacking in imagination.  Just the useful, creative sort.  It doesn't take much prompting for a whole dreadful sequence of events to play out in my mind, uninvited and very quickly.    
Like this one -->   

Does this happen to everyone else, too?

 

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What are you most afraid of?

21/6/2014

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I've been attending an evening manga course, not because I necessarily want to draw that style but because I'm keen to learn everything about this whole new universe of comics I've fallen in to.  

Last night was about horror manga, which - to be honest - I wasn't looking forward to. I don't watch scary films, I'm frightened of ghost stories, I shy away from gross scenes of violence.   But it was fascinating to learn how, like all the manga we've looked at so far,  the genre is divided into numerous categories and sub-categories: demons from ancient times, horrendous gory stuff,  subtle psychological scariness, modern surreal situations and much more.   

Then it was time for the drawing part.  First we all had to list three things we were most scared of; our tutor wrote 1) darkness 2) solitude 3) dolls and told us about her doll phobia as well as some even more amusing phobias from her friends including tubes and moss!   She drew a quick four-panel strip about how dolls scare her.   

My worst was too horrible to write down on paper,  but I made myself do it: eyes being stabbed.  It's hard to even type that. My second one, noises in the dark, is as nothing by comparison. For the drawing,  we could just use the tutor's  examples if we wanted,  so I tried to think of a four panel sequence about anything scary or awful.  

But I couldn't.  The other seven students were scribbling furiously away  while I stared at my blank page.  All I could imagine was the eye business, and I certainly did NOT want to draw that!  But still nothing else would come to mind.  

So I had to draw the dreadful thing I imagine every time I see umbrellas near faces.  And I survived.  (My son told me later "I didn't think you would be able to draw that.") My hope is that this will have taken away some of its power.  But I still don't feel like inking it in, so this is just the rough pencil sketch. 

What are you most afraid of?  What would you not like to draw?
 
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Drawing Stories

7/11/2013

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I've been greatly enjoying a five-week course called "Drawing Stories" taught by the fantastic illustrator and animator Joe Evans at Evolution Arts in Brighton.  We've been made to do all sorts of things that don't come naturally to me at all and therefore are quite mind-expanding, always a good thing!  The course is all about the foundations of creating comics and graphic novels so we've been imagining and drawing sequences of events, experimenting with layouts, developing a single concept for different audiences, adding pictures to dialogue and dialogue to pictures, working out storyboards and much more, all requiring new ways of thinking and seeing.  All in just a two-hour sesson once a week.  It's been really challenging, and great fun, and I think it's going to be really helpful for a new project I have in mind.  
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    ​Note: Two Shillings per Day graphic novel-related posts now appear over here on their own page. 

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Michi Mathias     illustration & comics    

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