Starting with Jung’s archetypal motifs, I think it’s best to remind why they’re called ‘archetypal’ first:
Archetypal motifs replicate themselves in stories across time and culture, in all human endeavors to create.

Motifs in general are tokens in a story that appear several times and symbolize something ...

Welcome back, friends! Today we're gonna talk about deadlines!

When I took over this here Friday blog from my (much more capable) predecessor, I asked Oz, I says, “Oz- I can write whatever I want to, huh?” And he may or may not have actually greenlighted that but if ...

Comedic Characters - You Take the Good, you Take the Bad…

This week we continue talking comedy. Last time we started creating characters by choosing a “STRONG COMIC PERSPECTIVE”…like greed, innocence, obseque–obquestri–obteq– uh, weasellishness, and then EXAGGERATING that perspective to the extreme.

Now we finish creating our characters ...

I’ll start today by talking a bit about one of the superstars in the field of Psychology (please don’t groan, it’s for a good cause):

Carl Jung was a Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist (the super sayan combo in our field). He is considered the founder of analytical ...

LISTEN!

Photocomics don't get nearly enough love. A while ago Banes did a great newspost on the subject where he did some great little promotional reviews of some prominent photocomics on DD. I thought that was a cool idea and I've been meaning to return to the subject ...

This beautiful image is from the movie Metropolis by Fritz Lang, it shows Atlas the giant carrying the weight of the entire city on his shoulders. In this image Atlas represents the combined might and labour of the working class. Interestingly the same theme in imagery is often used for ...

HAPPY THURSDAY!


The comedic premise is very much the same idea as a premise in any other genre. It's got the same elements…Character, goals, themes, conflict…

Plus laughs.

One way to look at or create a comedic premise is that it has some kind of separation from reality ...

We've all been there: all of the sudden, the trajectory of your own life seems to thwart you from your ambitions! Maybe it's obligations to schoolwork or your day job; maybe your partner or family; maybe you wind up homeless or awkwardly crashing on a series of couches ...

Ying and Yan by TonyAlpsen

Ying and Yan are twin brothers who are joined at the hip…and the shoulder, and everything in between.

It's a simple, perfect premise for standalone jokes playing off the brothers' conjoined status, or the difference in their personalities, or snarky commentary on life ...

Aight! It's that time again, ain't it? Now we been talking a lot about rules and limitations and discipline and approaches to making your comics and making them better. This week we're gonna step away from all that for a spell and talk about how not making ...