Emotional Charges and Diminishing Returns

Many writing methodologies suggest mapping out the emotional change of each scene. The scene either starts positive, and goes to either negative or “extra positive”, or starts negative and goes to positive or “extra negative” by the end of the scene.

So if a lovelorn ...

One of the great things about the original Star Wars movies was the strong sense of a grand, adventurous, and terrible history before the movie started. So much is hinted at through Obi Wan Kenobi about the Jedi Knights, Anakin Skywalker, great friendships, laser swords, and terrible war and loss ...

I think I spent my Saturday night the same way as plenty of other people did–in a movie theater watching a film based on a book by Stephen King (and No, I am not talking about The Dark Tower). It is still September since the last time I checked ...

SINGLE PAGES vs. The GREATER WHOLE

I'm at a nice place in my webcomic right now. Well, it's nice as the writer, at least.
The characters have a nice history now, with some adventures behind them, some established relationships, and a stable of supporting characters who can be ...

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The saying goes that “Good artists copy, great artists steal”, it's attributed to various luminaries such as TS Elliot, Picasso, Tantz Aerine etc, but the important thing is the true meaning: there are very few original ideas, culture is built up out of inherited inspiration that is built ...

They say that the best and most important elements in visual arts, from movies to comics, are done well when the audience doesn’t quite notice them. And that is definitely true- research and plot development and world building are some of them about which I’ve already talked about ...

Just the other day was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jack Kirby (Jacob Kurtzberg, originally).

Jack “King” Kirby drew comics from the 1930's for various companies and co-created many characters for Timely Comics, notably Captain America (co-created with Joe Simon). Cap was one of the few Marvel ...

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This week we interview the artist and creator of the comic Kings Club, AmeliaP! Her comic was featured and Gunwallace also gave it a theme tune that was featured in Quackcast 335. AmeliaP is a talented professional comic creator and game designer. We couldn't interview her directly because ...

This week I wanted to dredge up something from the past and talk about a comic that is effectively dead. Launched in June 2010, rightly featured in October 2010 and last updated with an actual page of content in August 2012. But still one of my favourite comics on the ...

I was a big fan of all the Indiana Jones movies back in the day. When the fourth one, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, finally came out, it was exciting times! Harrison Ford only seemed to get cooler with age, and what a treat it would be to see ...