Alison is an American cartoonist first and foremost best known for her ongoing comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, which explains her perfectly; she's a "dyke" to watch out for. With critical acclaim and two published works under her belt, she's someone to look up to, mostly because she makes money doing what she loves to do.
So let me ask you; would you like to know her secret? Well ladies and gentlemen, now you can! Well, kind-of.
Fascinated by her, I found the above YouTube video on our friend Alison Bechdel speaking about how she created the graphic novel, and her process which she calls "precious".
I found it an interesting watch- despite the poor video quality, hehe-, especially from an artists point of view, mostly because I was intrigued by how she layed out her panels, adding the text first and figuring out the image layout later. I personally find this bizarre, because for me, everything is image first, and then I try and fit everything else in as best as I can, making sure to stay true to the composition. (I should note that I'm enrolled in a Visual Narrative class and so this is completely relevant to me as I'm doing similar things!- very cool!)
In the end, where she talks about posing for her own drawings for reference, I couldn't help but chuckle; not only do I do the same, but there's an entire Tumblr dedicated to artists who use PhotoBooth to reference themselves for drawings. It's a laugh and a half. Worth a look-through!
As I'm sure you guys can see, I've edited the blog to include an illustration I made of Alison as the header. I tried to actually stay true to a simple line style like she uses to help make a link between the graphicness of the novel and this blog all the more! Feel free to comment and tell me what you think the "speech bubble" should read or have any other comments!
Posted by Sabrina
!!! LMAO @ the Tumbler link. Oooh that was good... Though I can't say I haven't posed for my self before. Actually I have a library of pretty embarrassing video's of myself acting out a scenes, characters poses and such to use as animation reference. I'll put my life on the line to make sure those don't get leaked onto the internet.
ReplyDeleteFun post! I found posted a video similar to yours (outlines her process), but yours is defiantly in a much better quality. I didn't get the chance to compliment you before on the design blog and nice drawing! :) Good stuff and I agree the simplistic style is very fitting to the 'Graphicness'
Oh yeah the comment was by me
ReplyDelete- Leanne Lau