This 20 page obscure British Comics and TV fanzine was published in late 1982 / early 1983, making it a contemporary to Warrior magazine’s original run.
It featured a two page Alan Moore feature / interview by Pete Scott entitled “MOORE MYTH AND MAGIC” focused on Marvelman / Miracleman and Warrior magazine.
The interview dates from December 1982 which is very early in Moore’s career and predates other Moore fanzine interviews.
I tweeted these forever ago, but the internet just noticed and I figure I should probably at least put them on my blog. I’m glad people are finding them useful.
Here they are, a mix of things learned from directors & coworkers at Pixar, listening to writers & directors talk about their craft, and via trial and error in the making of my own films.
#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.
#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
#8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
#17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on - it’ll come back around to be useful later.
#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d'you rearrange them into what you DO like?
#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
#22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.
You can find more stuff I talk about on twitter as @lawnrocket - film and storytelling mostly. I try to keep the what-I-ate-for-lunch posts to a minimum.
I frequently see artists complain that their finished works got less attention than mere sketches, doodles and other smaller or less serious work. Which is frustrating! But almost as often, I can see exactly why the doodle got more attention. I’m going to cover some of these reasons, so you can use that information so you can do more than fume about it.
The doodle is easy to read, the polished work is busy
The polished work is completely drenched in little details that the artist slaved over, but the details create a kind of overall noise that makes everything harder to understand, making the whole image less appealing.
Don’t get too lost in little details, work from larger shapes to small details, use things like a highly readable silhouette, contrast, variance in line width or negative space to keep the image understandable. Pay attention to the composition to guide the eye where you want it.
The doodle is high contrast, the polished work is low contrast
When you do lots of details all equally well lit and easy to see, overall you lose the strong lights and darks that make a work pop. You have to sacrifice some of those details, let them be in shadow or out of focus in the background, to create a more appealing image overall.
You might also be forgetting that without lineart you need to use strong lights and darks, since lineart creates it’s own natural high contrast.
Contrast draws the eye, use that to create focus where you want it.
The doodle is simple to understand, the polished work is highly ambiguous in meaning and message
Many doodles that outstrip the artist’s polished work are jokes. Jokes usually have a specific clear focus and message, the viewer can understand it immediately (if they couldn’t, it wouldn’t be funny). You don’t have to make everything funny, but like a joke, you need to get to the point and give the audience the information they need to “get it.” More details can be present, but the viewer should not be confused about what to look at from the outset. Remember: people will look at and interpret your art in milliseconds. They might give it a longer look but only AFTER that millisecond look.
The initial glance is like the first page of a book. If it wows them they keep looking to understand more, if they are lost and confused, no second chances, they’ve already scrolled away.
You can use things like composition, basic structures of shapes and simple shape symbolism to give viewers the initial information they need to stay interested. Don’t feel like you have to abandon more personal and difficult to parse symbolism, these things can work together to create intrigue.
The doodle is fluid and expressive, the polished work is stiff and dead
The sketch for your polished work needs to be done with spontaneity and fluidity. When you want to really flex your drawing skills and show the world your beautiful realistic human faces, your sublime anatomy, gorgeous textures - it’s easy to forget about the undersketch and jump to rendering as soon as you can, creating a stiff or boring sketch that isn’t worthy of all the time you’re sinking into the minute details.
Practice quick gestures, read up on line of action, and before you make a polished painting, make sure you have a sketch that’s fun to look at even without the detailed rendering. Thumbnailing helps. Studies too. Sometimes you have to do the bad boring sketch, but you can take a few stabs at it.
You can’t make a bad sketch good by painting more details on it, you need to work out the sketch first before moving to the details.
Remember, if you’re going to spend 20 hours painting the thing, you can afford another half hour sketching a few different takes on your idea before digging in.
Lots of doodles, very few polished works
If you mostly post one kind of thing, your audience will be people who like that. Also, you may not have much practice with the techniques you are using in the polished work, while you have become a pro at doodles. You become an expert at what you practice, do more of what you want to be known for, become an expert at it, make it the only thing your audience is there for.
The audience is familiar with the subject of the doodle, unfamiliar with the subject of the polished work
Many artists do doodles of fanart and get fed up that people like that more, but the truth is, they don’t like it “more” they just already know they like it. You can increase the chances of people appreciating your original works by making sure they can understand what’s going on in the illustration without prior knowledge of who these characters are, or simply sticking to it until you have garnered an audience. Just keep at it.
Remember, the creators of the property you made fanart of are themselves artists who were pushing an original idea at one time. You can follow in their footsteps.
The doodle is quirky and unusual, the polished work is stale and samey
This can happen when an artist has an image in their head of what a SERIOUS and PROFESSIONAL painting looks like, usually based on a very narrow subset of artwork, often itself based on the same cargo cult of seriousness.
Try studying works outside your usual stomping grounds. Look to artists that likely inspired your faves (if you’re talking about realistic artists who inspired your favorite concept artists, here’s some likely culprits to get you started on the google search: JC Leyendecker, Alphonse Mucha, Norman Rockwell, James Gurney, Rembrandt), look to artists outside your genre, and look at your doodles and ask yourself what “not serious, just for fun” source of inspiration is making them so fresh and vibrant that your audience is connecting to them so strongly. Study that, respect that fun and try to pull it into your serious work.
The polished work was hard to make and no one cares
Being an artist is hard, and that we keep at it is commendable, but struggling and taking more hours doesn’t make a piece better necessarily.
There are a few things to consider here. First, you need to realize looking to the vague faceless masses of the internet for a fatherly “I’m proud of you, son” moment is always going to be disappointing and painful and attempting to guilt strangers into fulfilling that role for you is awkward and inappropriate. You need artist friends who can recognize your hard work and cheer you on and you need to be your own cheerleader, value your own hard work and practice.
Second, you need to realize torturing yourself doesn’t in and of itself make art better. Hard work is something people love about art, the meaning of someone spending that time, but if I screamed for 8 hours, drew a single line, then posted that, the internet wouldn’t be wrong to be unexcited about it. Rather than blame the viewer, think about two things: how can you make the art itself more appealing while still doing the painting that you’re interested in doing, and how can you do that faster and with less pointless suffering?
It’s okay to be a masochist when it comes to art, many artists are, just make sure you’re spending your time and suffering wisely.
You’re complaining about someone else’s “doodle”
Sketches and cartoons are deceptively hard to make appealing, rather than fume that they are getting more attention, look to them for lessons. What could you learn from them? Could you do it? Maybe you should try. Would make a good exercise.
And never get mad that their drawings are more appealing to the internet than yours, even though they spent less time on their drawing than you did on yours. See above for why time is not important here, but also keep in mind they may have been practicing longer than you or may be more established than you.
Keep working on your art, keep posting, push to be seen, advertise your work, put yourself out there. These things take time but work.
freesharkwolf asked: So im having a problem. Ive been wanting to do a comic for a while i have confidence in my writing and areas of my art and have no problems with ideas but ive been trying to do a short 5 page story to start but everything ends up growing to something bigger. Any advice?
take the one story that seems the most sprawling or out of your control and do an exercise with it. take out ANYTHING you don’t need. scrape the story down to its basics. I mean, the bare basics.
just to show yourself what the story actually needs. what it really needs. sometimes that sprawling out of control story is really ego OR you actually don’t have a good take on the story yet. you’re all over the place.
or you may just have a big sprawling story.
but to find out, start sculpting. don’t add. just sculpt. cut. cut cut cut, you’ll find out a lot about yourself and your craft. its an excellent exercise that a lot of us do all the time.
argoid asked: I want to write a story that is about a culture and an ethnicity that is not my own, how do I write something without offending anyone? Or is the an impossible uphill battle? P.S. I can't wait for what you bring to DC.
find the people who know the answers to your questions and ask them. I do it DAILY.
just today and yesterday, I asked three strangers if I can come by their work next month and shadow because I am writing about something in their world and I want to take it in.
go dig in. first of all it is so fun. and if its not, that means you’re not the person who should be writing about whatever it is you were researching.
and don’t worry about offending anyone. that is fear fucking with your head. worry about finding truth. write the individual. write your characters unique perspective. no matter the culture or ethnicity, it is the individual and thier experience and perspective that will bring about real truth in your writing and if anyone has a problem with it… you know its truth because you did the research.
you don’t even know what you don’t know. go find out. and ask anyone you are researching: based on my questions, what do I not know?
this is a basic answer to a big question. if you think you’re offending someone ask someone, politely, with context, who might be offended if what you’re doing might offend. I have never met a person who didn’t graciously and warmly answer.
and if the idea of researching real people scares you, don’t be. people love helping. people love being research. it’s flattering.
you’re biggest problem should be when to unhook and start writing because research can be addictive and so distracting. (last night I read research for hours, forwarding it to my collaborators, driving everyone crazy, but still had to get my pages done.)
luke-i-am-your-senpai asked: How much impact does an artist's illustration style have on a writer? Does it change the way you want to write towards that story?
in my mind if the artist’s voice does not completely consume the writer’s craft or how the story is being told the writer is just doing it wrong.
artists are not your art monkeys to do your bidding. if anything I think its the opposite. I dive into the artist’s world. I study. sometimes my spotlights here are a reflection of that research, sometimes I’m just being a fanboy.
I won’t even start writing the script until I know who’s drawing it. I study their strength’s and weaknesses. I write for the artist and the artist only. you don’t see the script, they do. my script is for them and no one else. it is a story to inspire thier best work.
I do believe, regardless of what other people think of me, that The reason I’ve had such success is because of this philosophy. I put my ego away, because it’s completely unnecessary anyhow, and try to service the great honor I feel when working with artists so much more talented than myself.
Right now, as we speak, I’m about to start working with a handful of artists I’ve never even met before. Some are legends and some are peers and I am studying like I’m taking the bar exam.
