Characters are crucial
I just started in on How to Make Webcomics (haven’t formed an opinion yet) and came to the bit where they started talking about the importance of your characters to your comic, and I thought, “You know, that’s one of the reasons I’m having trouble telling stories. There are no characters to tell the story.” So, as an exercise I started drawing myself, head on, as if I were speaking to you, since this is an autobiographical endeavor, and it just wasn’t working. I mean, the quality was decent, it looked like me, but it didn’t feel right, and I realized why. I don’t think of my face. If I think of my physical aspects at all it’s never head on, since I can’t see myself and I generally eschew mirror time.
I threw it out and came up with this. It’s about as close to me as I see myself. But, how can I tell you a tale like this? It don’t know that I can, at least, not most of the time. I think instead I need to focus on showing the world through my eyes. If only my world didn’t consist, primarily, of sitting in front of a computer screen…
My mother had a photographic memory. She’d cheat on her tests at school by just looking at the book beforehand and “reading” the answers off the appropriate pages in her mind. Me? not so much. It doesn’t really matter how close of a friend you are, I have a very hard time bringing up your face. But your voice… that I remember. I can hear the grit an squeaks, the lilt and tumble of your timbres, even when we’ve not spoken for ages. I can bring up your laugh and remember the sound of your smile.
I can draw you from life. I can draw you from a picture, but without the reference…. you’re more sound and touch than anything. And that, dear friends, is why I didn’t draw my company Sunday night, or tonight. How do I draw the sound of Diane in a way that would ever work for you, or me for that matter. It would be a drawn synesthesia, and I don’t really want to try and go there.
