When most people take a picture or draw a picture, the natural thing to do is to photograph or draw the subject in the center of the frame.

But one of the big tenets of visual composition is the RULE of THIRDS.

So pretty much, the frame is divided into ...

There was recently a Provincial Election in the part of Canada where I live, and there's a Federal Election coming up in about a year.

With the brouhaha going on in the world these days about politics and the divisions between many people that are resulting from it, I ...

We live in a world that can be exceedingly beautiful or appallingly harsh, and everything in between. And as art reflects one's experiences, emotions and questions about this world, it's unavoidable that both the themes of amazing beauty and the themes of absolute terror, disgust and horror will ...

What happens when ordinary people suddenly become massively super-powered, possessed of abilities well outside of the dreams of any normal person? Comics tell us they become either super heroes or super villains, this comic looks at it another way… They become gods. Or at least that's how they think ...

A couple of days ago Banes gave us a wonderful article on the issue of who to please- yourself or the audience, and how that can go very right or very wrong.

So that got me thinking that we should also talk about the dreaded silence. You update a page ...

LISTEN!

Retro is GOOoooooooooood! Damn good. Don't underestimate the power of retro. Old material and the past is where pure gold hides. Mine that stuff for all it's worth! But it can be overdone and when it is it's like warmed over fish and chips, it becomes ...

Maureen is a happy go lucky student, just wanting nothing more than to go and see her favourite band with her best friend. But it looks like that's not going to happen… this is a world filled with super powered supervillains and only a tiny handful of heroes to ...

So last time we had talked about the Javert trope, a category of character that is very compelling and makes for excellent drama, immense suspense and often gets their own following in fandom. (Just check out Saito Hajime's hero's journey as a prime example.)

The Javert character is ...

A story can be strengthened by coordinating the first and final images in some way.

It's not a hard and fast rule; it's not a rule at all. But it can be worth trying out in your writing!

The movie Halloween (there it is! I had to start ...

Javert is such a stellar and powerful character in Les Miserables that he has his very own trope.

He's the skilled, dogged, unwavering locomotive of a chaser that in the name of the law, the church, the state, the cause pursues and persecutes the hero of a story, and ...