This is tricky. I've had quite an upset yesterday with my confirmation of my Masters of Fine Art ( a confirmation is where they review what you're doing and make suggestions about what you should do). It seems the stuff that I have expertise with (and seemed easy to do) was highly praised as Art, and the stuff I slaved over was discounted as being too "commercial".

The comments were made about the two graphic novels I'm working on: Real Life Trips (RLT) and Gender Transition for Innocents (GTFI). The idea was that each was a different take on the same thing. RLT was the personal (recounting five trips I'd taken in my lifetime), whereas GTFI was the impersonal and theoretical (in a manner similar to the Scott McCloud books. Ultimately I was looking at having them printed. In short (samples below from RLT):


Confirmation Ideas by LauraEss, on Flickr

The example on the left (full size here) was derived from taking photos or "snapshots" in Second Life (SL). I spent a whole month creating the set, buying/customising/building the props (over 300 of them) and customising the avatars (including the automated pets) for this. The example in the middle (full size version here) was a process of traditional drawing imported/converted/coloured into Illustrator. The example on the right (taken from the RLT Introduction) is the same, but I'm not drawing in a "funny animal style". Up to now most of the (meagre) feedback I've been getting has been that the SL stuff is "soulless" whereas the drawn stuff is OK.

In RLT there's a framing story and that's what the SL stuff was going to be used for, because the look was "closer to the now", whereas the stories told - all flashbacks to trips in the past) would be drawn in different ways. The first one mimics Rupert Bear album pages (like this this one) because it was the oldest story and Rupert was my first real comic love. As the stories got closer to the present, the characters would become less funny animal/furry, and be more human (the limited colour would also expand in each chapter).

And yet yesterday it was suggested that..

* I abandon the different styles for only one style, and that
* it should be the SL style, and that such should only be online, not printed

...in order for it to be considered ART! The other styles were considered to be too bland and commercial to be either either interesting or art. Now this has put me into a huge spin.

See I really do LOVE working in SL to make comics (just check out Seconds). But up until now I've gotten minimal response and it seems a battle to have it recognised as a legitimate way of making comics let alone art. The discipline is different from just drawing something - it's midway between a traditional comic and machinima (animation made from virtual worlds and video games). There's no proper name that I now of for this form of comic (other than some form of Fumetti). It's not "easier" than doing a comic any other way, not if you want to do it well.

But I had not considered it for the whole graphic novel. I had thought it "too easy" and the "soulless" comments had gone to heart. And there are limitations. Like Thunderbird puppets there are limits to the facial expressions you can use and you can't pose things like individual fingers. Even so, the example above accurately recreated a real person's flat, and approximated what they and I looked like in 2006. Also, I can't see the SL style being useful for GTFI. That is hugely inspired by Understanding Comics and I want it simple and straight forward.

And a post-Masters goal has been to have both printed. Huh? So, what do folk think? I'm particularly interested in hearing from those who've undergone something like this in academia, but I need some feedback. The suggestions made have hit me out into space, and I need some grounding.

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Just a reminder about this year's Transgender Day of Remembrance Webcomic Project. And just what is that?

The Transgender Day of Remembrance was set aside to memorialise those who were killed (or forced to suicide) due to anti-Transgender hatred or prejudice., and is held annually on 20 November. The Webcomic Project is where participating contributors draw and publish a relevant webcomic or image for the day (or equivalent date, depending on schedule) with links to other contributors and/or the archive. The main thing is to educate the readership of each person's webcomic or blog about the issues listed above.

You don't have to be transgendered to join, just appreciating the tragedy of the lives lost that are memorialised is enough. What you do need is a suitable image or comic that appears on a site (webcomic, blog, Live Journal et cetera) read by others. If you do a webcomic yourself it could be included in that, or in a related blog if such would be out of context for the webcomic.

If you do participate, be sure to send a copy of your contribution to the Archive where they will be uploaded later for posterity (details of how to do this are at the site). This year's theme is "Open" - You may do whatever subject you like, related to the day.

This is pretty much the final version of my entry "Cutting Edge" for the exhibition CLASSIFY ME.
You need to follow the link to Flicker to see it in "full size":

It's about a lesbian. It's about a man. It's about to get confusing!

( In it August 2011 Cover Story, the Lesbian News sat down with three of the actors (Stephanie Reibel, Kristen Howe and Fay Wolf) who star in the ground-breaking LGBTQ web series to talk about their lives, their roles in the series and more. )

Season 2 is here! After a long wait, you can now check out the 1st episode in FenceSitter Film's popular Bisexual Web TV Series Rose By Any Other Name . . . in what promises to be a crazy season!

( Read more... )

1st pen draw First one done with my new intros pro pen tablet.

The annual Transgender Day of Remembrance is fast approaching on November the 20th.

Are you an artist and want to contribute to this year's event? You can by participating in this year's Web Comic Project.

Participating contributors draw and publish a relevant webcomic or image for the day on the web. The project is the collection of webcomics, blogs and sites at the time all with the unified theme of getting the message out there. You don't have to be transgendered yourself to make a contribution, you just have be able to draw, and care about the issues of the day. Your contribution can be stored at the Project Archives. For this years theme and details on how to contribute, see this page.

Come on people, time to educate people in the way we know we can!