See SAW Comics updates from Feb 1 to Feb 11, 2024

Episode 3 - On Early Drafts

We had THREE topics that were somewhat braided together:

1. A thought Jess had: Become more interested in DOING what you're doing than KNOWING what you're doing.

2. A quote I wrote down: "I often find myself writing long meandering first drafts, that drift around a bit before settling down into a state of baffling indecision." - George Saunders

The Terrible Anvil: Episode 2 - Lean into the worst. In the Comics FLOW + PUBLISH group we asked around: how do you lean in when the going gets weird? What parts are EXTRA UNFUN, and how do you navigate it?

We spoke on all these topics, as well as the role of ritual and community in answering these three questions. We cooked up ideas on how to make a home there in the ruins, being okay with badly-drawn hands, what to embrace when we're working.

Our next Pro-Call is with Tessa Hulls! Come join us in our most affordable, online ongoing-community SAW FLOW + PUBLISH MEMBERSHIP GROUP (comes with a two-week free trial) to join in on MONTHLY PRO-CALLS!

We bring in comic professionals from all walks of life to guest speak (virtually) at SAW. These guest speakers give SAW students/members some insight from their personal experiences throughout their comics career and welcome questions at the end of each session. Come join us!

Welcome friends to 2024 at SAW! And a very special welcome to our friends here in Gainesville (I hope we’ll be seeing you in the space very soon!)

For folks who aren’t familiar with me, my name’s Emma, I’m the Assistant Director here at SAW. Since 2019 I’ve been helping founder, Tom, shape SAW across in person and online programs.

Your Idea(s) Will Change Over Time

Nail down some thoughts on paper or a napkin. Everything counts. Gather everything together and look at it. What are the napkins telling you that you don't know? Sometimes we project a structure onto something early on that falls away later in service of the narrative. That is normal and good!

Jess Ruliffson and I are starting our live discussion series, The Terrible Anvil, tomorrow , Jan 11, 2024 in the Sequential Artists Workshop Flow Community and this post is an invite (you can sign up for a free 2 week trial here: https://learn.sawcomics.org/courses/comics-flow-group )

Conversation is a part of life. Let's bring readers into the life of our comics. It comes up a lot where people think maybe they have too much dialogue, too many “talking heads". It can happen, but it doesn’t always happen.

The famous way out of this is Wally Wood’s “22 panels that always work when some dumb writer has a bunch of lame characters sitting around and talking for page after page…”

SAW's favorite novelist on drafts, failure, and limitation as gift.

As a maker-writer, you may have a story in mind, the beginning of a story, the end of a story in mind—but rather than emphasizing the narrative arc, she places importance on the process of a “continual thickening until right shape emerges…”

Why Art starts out as a handbook about different ways one makes art and how our audience can shape our art…

Sowing, reaping, and resting in our art. A post by Jess Ruliffson.

We read them instantly.

For Conversation:

Will Eisner, in his Comics and Sequential Art, makes the case that figures in a comic are like an alphabet that we "read."

Excerpted from
https://archive.org/details/Will_Eisner_Theory_of_Comics_and_Sequential_Art/page/n15/mode/2up

In this example below, he shows the example of a "worship symbol."

Do we create emotion symbols with our figures? What do you think? Share some examples or non examples in the comments!

One thing I seem to be thinking about a lot lately is how to make an "art budget" for a long form comic. Or even a short comic! In the SAW weekly meetings, sometimes we do short exercises.

Reading the Magic Treehouse graphic novel with my daughter I noticed some really nice pages, and thought I would point them out. Good visual communication and storytelling here!

Our next Pro-Call is with Jamila Rowser! Come join us in our most affordable, online ongoing-community SAW FLOW + PUBLISH MEMBERSHIP GROUP (comes with a two-week free trial) to join in on MONTHLY PRO-CALLS!

We bring in comic professionals from all walks of life to guest speak (virtually) at SAW. These guest speakers give SAW students/members some insight from their personal experiences throughout their comics career and welcome questions at the end of each session. Come join us!

I’ve been thinking about the ideas of Getting Seen and also Getting Good, and why we tend to worry about doing it in the “right” order. That is, we are so certain we have to be GOOD, BEFORE we are SEEN.

For anyone working on what feels like (or is) a "big idea" and not knowing how to start. OFTEN, a creator will make a small piece, not realizing it is about to become a bigger thing. This is great, and it's encouraged! Here are some examples:

I like to think that we can TRAIN the inner critc, first to become a NOTICER, and then, a SUGGESTER.

The Critic likes to ask, WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

But the critic has no idea who you are. The critic only knows who you're not. 

We had such a productive week from our last in-person Visiting Artist Workshop led by award-winning cartoonist, Tommi Parrish @tommi_pg (and their dog, Cool Dog)! Here are only a few photos taken from the week demonstrating how Tommi created an atmosphere of looseness and play while having students work on a combination of book making, playing with different DIY printing techniques, painting with gouache, and more! Tommi finished the week off by giving an artist talk over at local, indie bookstore, Third House Books.

How can we train our inner critic to use neutral language?