EM

It’s Mole Man! Someone call the Fantastic Four!

organicgroov:

The Gates of Hell Just Opened In Guatemala

“This can’t be real” was my first thought. Then I checked the source: The Guatemalan government. This sinkhole appeared last sunday in a street intersection of Ciudad de Guatemala. Just looking at the photo gives me vertigo.

A sinkhole is a natural depression caused by the removal of underground soil by water. Usually, it happens when the substrate is formed by limestone, carbonate rock, salt beds or any other rock that is easily eroded by water streams. The process could be slow, but sometimes the land just cracks open without notice. In this case, it happened suddenly, swallowing an entire house. The cause: Massive underground water torrents created by tropical storm Agatha.

Sinkholes’ size ranges from low terrain depressions to hundred of meters. Unlike the similar sinkhole that killed two teens in 2007, ~~there seems to be no victims~~. At least one local newspaper is reporting one person dead, but the authorities have not confirmed it. Some neighbors claim that a whole three-story building and a house fell into the hole.

more images here

A sinkhole? Really? It’s getting a little crazy with all the natural and man-made disasters of every variety sprouting up recently. The lead-up to 2012?

PS that really sucks, and is really scary.

Posted at 2:43pm 30 notes #Fantastic Four #apocalypse #comics #natural disaster

Comics are Illustrated Directions

The first art class I ever took was when I was 10 (1987), in summer camp. It was called something like How To Draw Cartoons and was taught by a cartoonist who worked for the RPI newspaper, The Rensselaer Polytechnic. I created a bunch of comics that summer… my parents favorite was about Chomper, this scary dog who bit people.

I’ve had “comic writers block” since then. I spent the rest of Elementary School, Junior High School, High School and these past 15 years drawing in a comic book style, but without the ability to create sequences of images that told a story. Crazy, right?

So yesterday I was doing my periodic checkup on submissions to the Under This Tree photo group and weeding out the images from those who didn’t get the concept. There are a bunch of photographers who do excellent work but didn’t really follow the concept. At first I blamed them for not paying attention (as many Flickr users seem to post to 1 bajillion groups to see what sticks) but then I realized that, hey, I never really explained it. So, as I am in drawing mode lately, I decided to draw a picture of the concept. I whipped up a few instruction boxes going over the steps to making a picture.

I didn’t set out to make comic and it took me by such surprise that I blurted out, “HOLY SHIT! I made a comic!”.

So how did that happen?

I realized that what made it a piece of sequential art and not just an instruction illustration was a seemingly insignificant bit: the sidewalk. The sidewalk is what ties the first panel into the third panel. In the first panel the character is walking down the sidewalk and in the second panel the character has moved from the sidewalk to the grass but the sidewalk is still visible. If the second panel were not there or did not show the sidewalk the first and third panels would not connect enough to make a story, it would be two unrelated events.*

It then occurred to me that comics are basically instructions you want to explain to the reader. Try to visualize these as comic panels:

Walk into the kitchen from the back yard.
Take the orange juice out of the refrigerator.
Pour Orange Juice into glass.
Look up at Sally who just walked in and insulted you.
Pour glass of orange juice on Sally’s head.
Calmly walk into living room.
Sally has #@!*# above her head.

Bam! Instant comic. It’s easy to imagine the scene, right? There’s obviously more to making sequential art than that but the idea that I am illustrating a set of directions eluded me for twenty three years. I feel like a new person right now… like though I knew english all these years someone just told me about letters that I had never heard of.

I’m indebted to Scott McCloud’s excellent Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art because without having read it I would surely not have made the connection. Read it if you haven’t yet.

Posted at 3:15pm #comics #sequential art #me #writers block #Under This Tree #Understanding Comics #Scott McCloud #childhood #writing

‘Worth Dying For’ by Frank Miller - GelaSkins for iPhone, Kindle, Nook, and (not in this case) iPad.

edit: oh wait here it is.

Posted at 3:25pm 1 notes #Frank Miller #illustration #iPhone #skin #comics

I’m looking forward to trying out ComicBookLover for the iPhone tonight. I own ComicBookLover for the Mac and think it’s the best comic book reading app. The iPhone version is currently in Alpha releases but it’s free, and syncs to the Mac app.

Posted at 9:02pm #Mac #app #comics