Questions Answered Before Being Asked!

Still reflecting on the subject of our last blog entry (translating Japanese) there should also be mention of the challenge faced by the cartoonist in presenting conversations between two or more characters in the same panel.

Here's two versions of the same cartoon. The first version (above) has been constructed in the vertical mode - from top to bottom - to satisfy the long entrenched reading habits of the Japanese magazine audience. (I'm not going to change them now.)

After years of using the North American layout for designing comic strips (from left to right) I have to admit, it wasn't easy at first to change my ways. Not only must the Japanese storyline progress in a downhill motion, but the speech balloons in each panel must progress from right to left. The exact opposite of my initial left to right impulse.

So I had to consider the stage location for all my characters; otherwise I'd find them blabbing their (zany?) back and forth comments out of order. Heck, it just wouldn't make sense for questions to be answered before they were even asked; if you know what I mean. The way I decided to deal with it, was to approach the writing task in reverse - a system that sometimes still persists today my conversations normal in.


The second version presented here suffers (first off) by not receiving the same depth and dimension that colour can add; and secondly, if I'm honest with myself, I think I drew the first one a little 'tighter' (better) too. The skinnier size of this domestic panel forced me to place the woman's spoken words ABOVE her husband's rather than beside it when they shared a square - a remedy I can always employ in both languages without being in error either way.

Here's another example of two characters speaking in the same panel and how I dealt with the translation switch. In each of the 4 comic strips I've posted here, there has been an opening panel deleted due to scanner limitations, but in most cases, the jist of the idea remains clear. What we've lost from the missing panel in the strip below however, plays a bigger part in the gag. The premise that the son (Raymond) has been on an unrelated search for his mask will tie in nicely with the mother's insistence that she perform homemade family haircuts from now on.



The more they talk, the less room they leave for anything else in the frame. It's important to advance the storyline, but not at the expense of delivering an attractive picture. What's more important to the reader? Sometimes choices have to be made between art and text and too much of either can diminishing both. When everything has to 'happen' in the confines of a four frame cartoon strip, without misplacing any word balloons, it can soon become more work than fun for both artist & reader.

STILL unreadable...

It's never been the character's speech balloons that have stumped me - I've got the original English versions here at home to remind me exactly what I forced them to say in each situation - it's the surrounding Japanese text the braintrust at Kodansha's 'Comic Morning' magazine would consistently add ALONGSIDE my cartoon strips that's always left me asking the question: 'wot's it say; wot's it say'.


I can't begin to understand Japanese. Are these foreign ink scratches translating a more dimwitted-than-usual comment I might have made once upon a time ago? Because I recall submitting myself to interviews (conducted by phone) for these 'about the author' segments that would accompany selected examples of my comic, so I can only imagine that what they've done here is to repeat certain blatherings I may have blathered during those interviews. Long since forgotten by me I'm quick to add.


Or it could just be the editor's personal opinion of my story; or maybe an explanation to the confused Japanese reader of an otherwise common North American phrase I've employed in the dialogue. I don't know for sure, but SOME of my cartoon punchlines probably sailed far over the head of the average Bullet train rider. Stands to reason, they might try to explain the gag to the reader or tell them when to laugh. Lord knows I've had to do that with my friends many times.

Cloud Rendering

As much as I find it difficult to draw a decent looking dog cartoon (see last blog entry) I gotta admit, I'm even worse when it comes to drawing a decent cloud. There must be a subtle trick to making them look puffy & natural - as in the photo above - and not built of cement & rebar which is how my versions turn out. I know exactly what I'm shooting for when I first put pen or brush to paper, I can see it in my mind, but when I'm finished, it's usually a far cry from natural looking and tends to distract the viewer from the main subject.

The project I found myself faced with was to design a residential street setting in which I could insert a postal character (again with the postmen!) as he delivered mail on a perfectly ordinary morning in a perfectly ordinary small town on a perfectly ordinary spring day.


And to make the quaint residential scene he occupied complete, the setting seemed to cry out for a crisp, partly cloudy sky with a 20% chance of showers. I tried to steer as far from big white marshmallow style as possible, instead, shooting for the thinner, stretched-out cloud formation. Clearly I went TOO far astray from 'pillowy' and ultimately this effort fails - but it fails in a flimsy, unfinished style. The rules of this game are both baffling and illusive.


This was not the result I wanted, so the stretched clouds were re-covered in blue sky paint and my search resumed. This time I thought I'd try to 'wing' it by jabbing the brush hither/dither on the page; my white markings slowly beginning to resemble the cumulus nimbus clouds I'd imagined for this scene from the start. Okay, they weren't perfect, but they were close enough. With the final overlay of titles and other foreground text, the initial unsettling reaction to the poorly executed 'cloud art' is hopefully lessened somewhat. The viewer's attention is on the postman; or the main title; or maybe the letters he's dropped behind him on the sidewalk. The clouds, meanwhile, should be a non-issue.


I finally got around to investigating the internet for assistance (after my good friend Jonny passed over HIS suggestions) and I found that, all this time I may have been approaching the task backwards. Some of the more believable images I've found of clouds, seem not to be the result of painstakingly precise artistic brushstrokes, but the result of NOT adding brushstrokes at all. In other words, leaving the space where a cloud is desired - blank. Unpainted. Merely 'indicating' clouds.


But no. That's not really a satisfying alternative for an artist either. There's a lack of involvement. We need to see an entire page/canvas as our own creation. If we start accepting what's MISSING in a painting as part of the painting then where does it end? Where do we draw the line, so to speak? No, it's clear there has to be SOME sort of personal effort or technique in evidence when studying the  rendering of clouds.

While this might seem a strange point to cease all discussion on the subject, here we are.