Zen and the Art Of Random History Comic - Inspired by Mizuki's SHOWA

Thinking about another attempt at a comic, and this was the first step in scratching that itch. No super heroes. Inspired by Mizuki's SHOWA Manga which mixed recent Japanese history with his own activity of the time. I found it really interesting.. The alternative was to start a CARtoons car related comic, but I haven't found any of those stories as interesting as Miyaks work, and some bits about music production stuff and synths is what I spent much of my career working in. So this randomly starts in 1984 in Sydney.... but the first CD player went on sale in Japan in 1982 which introduced the world to 16 bit sound. That the Series III had 16 bit sound is significant. The Mac hit this year too, but it would take a bit to be musically significant. Was playing around with reference images, a grid of up to 3 x 4 panels and a long text I was writing, and put this page together to see the size of the font vs content and panels.... very little of the text I wrote fitted on this page. Actually haven't drawn anything here, but it is my intent to actually draw it all. A rapid prototyping approach to use a tech term for a dummy page. A lot of Mizuki's Showa has panels that are processed photos and that does work quite well. Clip Studio Paint has tools to do that too. He also has lots of simple cartoon characters that may be on such processed photos. That all helps to get something finished in a reasonable amount of time. This is more NON SEQUITUR than I was planning, but the font size and panel size, when using this NARRATIVE CAPTION style means I need to use less panels a page to do that... the reason I did this to see how it looked. The Narration takes up too much of each panel and that is way too much. The font is too small too to be printed at A5 for me.
After doing 5 pages in this style and showing it to a few people, the reaction I've received is that this is really interesting the way it is. The photos add proof or validity that would be taken away by line art of this true story. That is encouraging. I seem to have stumbled onto something interesting. It is a bit terse, but that would be elevated with more panels on each mentioned topic, but that might also change the energy it has.

Update: Jul 21 2019
Have made CBR and KindleComic versions, so have that process down.  Also changed the name. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" was big when I read it and a book on philosophy, which isn't quite what this is, so a name based on a memory makes more sense. 

To see if I can actually generate any interest, or comment at all, I have made the first 20 pages a free webcomic and put it on our website at this link,  This Is Where The Smoke Comes Out - A Collection Of Memories

Have a look, and leave a comment. 

This is the same as everything else. Finding those interested in it is very hard, as there are 6 billion other things screaming for attention, so no one will notice. "The Long Tail" ended up being not true either.

We can be contacted at Art & Technology

Car Cartoons and Illustrations

We do a lot of business related vector logo work, but we also do straight cartooning , such as these samples above.

All starts with pencil on paper, but ends up in the computer and digitally colored. I think this gives the best results, but as we blogged before, we do the occasional water color work too.

Have been posting recently to some car truck bike cartooning Facebook groups. Interesting, but everything on Facebook scrolls away never to be accessible again in a few days time.  It isn't like a permanent gallery, so you still need to go to someones website to see their collection of work.

See ours, and contact us at ArtAndTechnology

Good Taste Just Never Goes Out Of Fashion... or Vectors

Says the pink fox tailed fat guy....

This is a vector design. Starts as a pencil sketch, but is converted into a series of mathematical lines, curves and objects, some with cut outs in them and completed with a solid color or a mathematical graduation between 2 colors.

Doing this makes it size independent. No mater how small or large you print the file, the lines and colors are "perfect". Never get any jaggies or pixelization you would if you digitally painted it at whatever resolution instead.

The thing sign makers and printers love. Of course of it was done in color at 300dpi, that is good enough for a glossy magazine, and we do that too.

We can be found at Art & Technology.

The Artists Art and The Artist - A recent Twitter Artist Event.

The Twitter Art community has a few yearly Art promotions.  One is for Artists to post a picture of themselves surrounded by eight of their works.  Such as the above.

An interesting aspect of this is that many artworks look a lot like the artists. Many artists that do character art appear to draw themselves in most of what they do.  Not the case for me, but as I mostly do mechanical/ automotive related commissioned work that wouldn't happen anyway.

Thing is I found it hard to select just 8 artworks. I do caricatured, cartooned, but also realistic depictions AND logos.  The above was the comprised selection I came up with a few months ago.

At another time I would have a different selection.

To see the range , visit our website, ArtandTechnology.com.au  where the range is on display... where you will also find links to our store, videos and music.

The New 2019 and a Realization

Just noticed 12 months ago the post here was on comic printing. Getting those double sided pages in the right order.  Others involved music production and my first try at translating manga.

So if I look back at the year I didn't talk much about the ongoing illustration work I do.  Mostly Automotive related.  As a lot of that is caricatured, it does relate to much of the comic related posts. A picture tells a story, even if a comic is much more about the story. But as I put the new Art samples up on our website, I rarely mention them here.

The translation thing is the topic that stands out as being  very different, as far as topics go on this Blog, but has been a very significant aspect of my life for 35 years or so.  Even if making those 20 or so pages of the manga in English looked like they came out of the blue.

My wife and kids are native Japanese speakers.  So I have been involved with a lot of English to Japanese and Japanese to English translations, without being a "translator" for many decades.

There are a lot of expressions in English that if directly translated don't mean anything. A lot of Slang is the same. And the reverse is true of Japanese.  So a lot is not what it says, but what it means.

I am now following a few different Japanese to English Translators on Twitter, people that do that for a living, and have found them to say what I was thinking all along.  Fluency in Japanese and being a great Translator into English are "almost" not related to each other.  The Translator is the one doing the writing in the new language, and must be a good writer in that language. They also must be an expert in the field the text is in.

So I Realized I was on the right track all along....