Big Time Attic: The Comic

Influences: Fil Barlow

In the discussion of influences on drawing and writing style, there are some obvious cartoonists that have been covered over and over again, but I'd like to talk about some less well-known people that have influenced me over the years. Over the course of time, we'll cover the obvious ones as well, but in a more specific way, pertaining perhaps to just one piece of work.

Fil Barlow
Fil Barlow is an Australian cartoonist who created a comic in 1986 called "Zooniverse". Not really a big seller, I expect, and no one else I knew bought it, but after the first page of the first issue, I was hooked. His ability to fill a world with detail and depth, and still create beautiful, bizarre, and entirely un-cute aliens had me stunned.



When Zooniverse #1 came out in 1986, I was 13 years old, and every drawing I made suddenly underwent a drastic change in uniform. For about 6 months, I drew all of my characters that I'd created up to that point as adventurers on an alien planet, clad in dusty leather uniforms that had interesting seam patterns.



I also started drawing my characters' faces with a bony, well defined features. I didn't know enough at the time to try experimenting with the types of pens he used (presumably a flexible nib for most linework), but when I began doing a comic strip in college and getting serious about using the so-called proper tools for cartooning, I gravitated to that kind of pen for its ability to create subtle textures and sharp, bony elbows.



His writing also made me start to think that the formulas used in comics at the time (revenge-driven vigilante, parody of revenge-driven vigilante, ninja, anthropomorphic parody of ninja) were perhaps not all there was to comics. His story was a galaxy-spanning adventure of which the Kren Patrol (his three heroes) were only a tiny part. There were governments at odds with each other, well-connected crime lords, mercenary outposts on lost planets, and a powerful matriarchal galactic army.



Fil Barlow has also done a great deal of animation design for shows such as "Ghostbusters", "Alf", "Starship Troopers", and "The Chronicles of Riddick". I got to meet him in LA about ten years ago, while he was working on "Extreme Ghostbusters" for Columbia Tristar, and while I was sitting in his office, someone came in and told him that they needed a big blobby ghost designed right away. He excused himself from our conversation for a moment, sat down at his desk, and drew it in about four minutes, putting down new sheets of paper and partially tracing previous sketches before coming up with a beautiful (well, horribly ugly) evil ghost-blob.

When Zooniverse #1 came out, Fil was 23 (according to the inside front cover of the comic) and that really stuck in my head as a middle school-aged cartoonist. He was writing and drawing a full-color comic at the age of 23! I had better get moving if I wanted to do that, I thought. It was one of the things that got me to start making comics for my friends in middle school, and to start thinking about what I needed to do to get better. It's what influences are for, isn't it?

Chapter 99: Hipster U

* Click for Larger Image *
One of the founding goals of Big Time Attic was to create an online comics forum where we could post new comics, new ideas, and new characters. Running with the twin observations that 1) it's difficult as heck to create an entire graphic novel on spec, and 2) it seems like everybody with a great story or character writes "Chapter One" aka "The Origin of My Story/Character," we thought: What if we just jump in and draw the, say... 99th chapter? That way we can ignore the often tedious plot build-up and character set-up and just get into the meat of the thing.

I Wish Someone Would Invent: A Non-Storage MP3 Player

Have you ever thought about an invention that maybe YOU can't make, but it sure would be nice if someone else did?



I wish someone would invent a non-storage mp3 player. It would just consist of a female USB port, a headphone jack, an LCD screen, batteries, and a clip (optional). You plug in any USB storage device, whether it's your 1 GB keyring or your 300 GB external hard drive and it automatically finds all the mp3s on it and plays them. Or it tells you to put all of your music in folder of a certain name (like "Music"), and then it treats all of the subfolders in that main folder as playlists.

It would be cheap ($20-25), small, and easy to use. The batteries would have enough power to run whatever needs to be run in a thumbdrive (Obviously the big hard drives would need another power source). It would output a high quality signal to a stereo or to headphones, depending on whether you used it for a portable or home stereo.

So, you want to invent it? Already know about a gadget just like it? Got a reason why it would never work? Got some suggestions? Got your own "I Wish Someone Would Invent..."? See you in the comments!

Cartooning Tips and Tricks: The Brush Pen

Pentel Pocket Brush Pen

Zander says: For quick, bold brush strokes and an organic feel to your artwork, the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen is possibly the best tool you can find out there. No other tool has so fundamentally changed the way I draw, and feel about drawing, like this pen. Its thickness and flexibility prevent you from using it to render tight, precise images, so you are forced to work more loosely and make more decisions about light and shadow in the inking stage than in the penciling stage.

I stopped doing the thing that I told young artists to do for years -- filling in the black areas in pencil before I ink. I've always said that it's important to judge the black and white balance of a picture before you go into the inking stage, but with this pen, I've started to improvise with ink and adjust the balance as I go. It makes for much more instinctive and fluid-looking images in the end.

Kevin says: This brush pen has brought back the joy of drawing. A lot of that joy comes from there being no need to clean the bristles. Yep, I hate to admit it, but the lack of responsibility makes me feel more creative. While I still like the line quality of the sable brush more than the brush pen, the brush pen lets me draw for thirty seconds, cap the brush, and go on with my life. This tool also opens up the possibility of drawing outside the studio without needing to pack a ton of accessories like brush, ink, water, towel, soap, etc.

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