October Catch-Up

So, it's been a while since the last post. Summer's been and gone. And what an odd summer it was. Mostly consumed by my job at the local uniform shop, I still found time to make some work on the side and gain some new influences. But before all of that, I have a handful of animations to share.

Firstly is my final outcome for Unit 3, an animation called Birds. Even looking back from october, theis holds out really well. More for the tone than anything else, it really stands out and sets the template tonally for what I want to achieve this year.


Birds - An Animation About Art from Jonny Clementson on Vimeo.

Secondly comes the showreel. This was my first true experience of working and editing to music, so I let that define everything. The whole piece grew from there.


Showreel 2015 from Jonny Clementson on Vimeo.

And finally comes the stop-motion piece. We did a workshop towards the tail-end of last year over a couple of days practicing stop-motion using paper cut-outs and SLR cameras. It was a really fun experience and I will likely use stop-motion in a future unit for my outcome.


BFFs - A Tale in Stop-Motion from Jonny Clementson on Vimeo.

And now for the summer's batch of new inspirations and experiences. The first thing I'll be talking about is the webcomic Multiplex by Gordon McAlpin. Over the summer I re-read the archive and alongside re-experiencing one of the best-executed webcomics around, it also opened my eyes to an art style I'd never really considered seriously before: Vectors. Whilst I dabbled in them last year, I found them as a useful asset for design and logo-making, but as more of a tool that an art style. But then multiplex opened my eyes to how useful such things can be. Furthermore it restored my interest in movies and reaffirmed what an excellent character piece the comic is.

Next up in the holiday comic batch comes Prague Race (at top) by Petra Erika Nordlund, which is about as heavy a departure from the stylings of Multiplex as posible. The whole comic is hand-draw, which is a huge rarity in the world of webcomics. I adore the dark and creepy yet also charming and cute tone of the comic, and the characters are endearing and relatable. The tone is certainly having an effect on my current plans for the first unit of this year, and elements of the art style could creep in, as these things often do.

The next comic entry here comes in from far more of a writing perspective than an artistic one. It's the writing of Marc Ellerby. Over the summer, I read two of his books: Chloe Noonan: Monster Hunter (above), and Ellerbisms. Chloe Noonan is a Buffy-inspired comedy about someone who is totally unprepared to fight monsters getting a huge amount of responsibility. That's selling it badly though. It's really not about the monster hunting at all. It's episodic and mostly about Chole and her friends and all of the more normal things in her life. The monsters just form the backdrop which is a refreshing change from the norm. It's a comic that's hard to quite explain its appeal, but it's there, and it's great. Next from Ellerby is Ellerbisms, an autobio comic. This one started out life as a webcomic but was published at a later date. The tone here's pretty different. Whilst there is still some of Ellerby's trademark humour and silliness, the whole piece has a feeling of something more somber, as the majority of it is based on the author's years dating someone, and the events that led to it all falling apart. Both are well worth a read.

As you've probably grasped the theme for this list, the next comic here is Lucky Penny, by
Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh. It's part of a larger webcomic run called Johnny Wander that mostly consists of autobio comics and short pieces of fiction, like The Girl With The Skeleton Hand (at the bottom of the post), which is also excellent. But we're not here to talk about that. Lucky Penny is the first properly long-form piece published on their website. It tells the story of Penny, who is incredibly unlucky (it's kind of a misnomer). The story is fairly familiar, telling the story of a girl who meets a guy and everything going wrong then right again, but it's the art and the characters that make the story really work. Yuko is a fantastic artist, and the sheer flair with which the story easily removes any familiarity in the overall plot. The regular series is really decent too, populated with great characters and genuine heart.


The penultimate comic on the post is a lot closer to home. Both topic-wise and in actual setting (it's in Sheffield). It's a monthly comic called Giant Days by John Allison. Yes, I'm talking about John Allison and not talking about Scary Go Round. I'm sorry. But seriously, Giant days is a pure beam of sunlight. In a comic scene that's mostly filled with doom and gloom and ever-grittier reboots this one stands out by a mile. It's a comic by Boom Studios, who are responsible for some of the most progressive and interesting comics on the market today, and even by their standards this is cheery. It tells the story of three girls who meet at university and all the wacky antics they get up to. It features a lot of Allison's traditional style such as his trademark dialogue and british sense of humour, but the execution here is a level above most of his other output (which is still great). The art also does wonders for the comic. It's a match made in heaven, and does the comic some serious favours. It's expressive, incredibly fluid, and manages to keep up with the craziness of the writing.

I think it's about time to wrap this list up. It's getting rather longer than I'd anticipated. I really did read a lot of comics over summer. I might do a post on some movies later. Well, mostly just one movie, but it really was a good one. But that aside, it's time to the most out-of-place entry on this list.

Recently I'd hit a little bit of a slump with my reading and watching and videogaming material. I was watching the new Daredevil Netflix series which whilst excellent is pretty dark in tone and it's hardly cheerful watching. And thanks to some internet issues at home, I was stuck with the meagre selection of games I'd downloaded before uni. I decided I'd finish the Walking Dead game. Despite how good the first couple of episodes were, the rest of the series just got a bit stuck on the 'horrendously bleak' front and the rest of the episodes were just no fun. Playing a game where nobody has any hope and spends all their time being sad doesn't make for a great experience. And on the comics front I'd made...okay I wouldn't call it a mistake, but probably just mistimed my decision to read Batgirl. Similarly to The Walking Dead, the first ten or so comics were really good. The sense of drama was well played and the characters likeable. But the series took a downturn, getting bogged down with angst, poor villains, and an extraordinary sense of bleakness. Things were really looking down. But then came the new creative team at issue 35. Batgirl went from being a series about death and good people getting hurt and grim monsters and age-long plot arcs to being a series full of charm, relatable characters, and a light-hearted spirit. And that's the important thing. There are so many comics, games, and TV series full of darkness. It takes some guts to stand above them all with a smile and a one-liner, and all the fun a Batgirl comic should have.