Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello, everyone. I'm Pat. Many years past and I
specialized into making comics. Today, I'm here to share
my knowledge with you. In this class, I'll be
teaching my practice and strategies to transform real
life into funny comics. I decided to split
the class into two big sections or blocks
and in the first block, we're going to see how
to find inspiration, how to find ideas, and how to observe reality and take
inspiration from real life. In the second block,
we're going to see the practical side of it. Everything I know, everything I do to make comics that work. The classes for everyone, you don't need to
be extra skilled. You just need to love comics or drawing in general
or communication. Mostly the goal of this class
is to have new lenses to interpret life and how to
maybe exercise or let's say, take life a little
lighter thanks to art. Now without further ado, let's dive into it.
2. How I find Inspiration: An illustrator and
creative person, the most frequent
asked question is, where do you find
your inspiration? The truth is everywhere
and nowhere. I tried to explain many
times that I get ideas like notifications on your phone or maybe pop ups on a website. I'm doing just normal
stuff and even washing my hands or going to the bathroom and something
pops up in my head. I perfectly know this is
not the same for everyone. But I'm perfectly aware
this is just my brain. I know we are all
different and so I thought if I
should teach someone else how to practice
that muscle that allowed me to reach the point
where I get the pop ups, what are the practices
that actually allowed me to train this muscle that
gives me pop up ideas? I noticed that many people
introverted like me share the same trait that is we are big observers and listeners. It might sound obvious, but not all of us
are so used to this. I thought about sharing with you some of the practices
that help me improving this connection with the outside and the inside. Let's start with observation.
3. Observing: Fintly from general judgment, I truly believe each one of
us has something to say. Our lives we often
judge as empty or uninspiring are actually
full of little stories. Every day there is
something going on, something that happens,
it doesn't matter if you have many friends,
you have no one. If you go outside of your house, if you stay in your
house all day, we all have little stories. I think owning your
story means that you are really aware of what's
going on in your life. Without taking it for granted. You might be the happiest
person on earth. You might be the
unhappiest and still, you have something
to say or to share. I'm perfectly aware how
much our brains tend to normalize our lives in
order to keep us safe, we normalize
everything, everything becomes boring and uninspiring, thank you, Brain for
keeping us safe. But in order to be creative, we must find something
interesting and inspiring. I'm a truly believer that
we can do it everywhere, even if we never
leave the house. I do have an exercise
that really helped me realizing everything that I'm sharing with you right now. The exercise is actually
extremely simple. You just have to maybe
take a notebook or you can prepare an Excel file
or even sheets in Google. Every single day, at
the end of the day, you just type down or
write down one thing, maybe two, maximum three things that happen
during that day. I notice for me it's really important that I'm
not writing too much. I usually write around the sentence with
just a few details, and you will notice that maybe some days
will sound boring. But at the end of the month, you will have a whole database
of ideas and stories. It's not classical journaling. Again, be brief. I only use a sentence, really. It's really just a line of small things that
happened during that day. And if you stick with it, you will start noticing things
that usually go unnoticed. You will also collect another
really important data that is noticing what information
is your favorite. For example, you might
notice that you put more light into
relational things. For me, it's more about existential thoughts about life for other people might be that they focus more on
something practical and misadventures that happen
during the day and other people might focus
more on spiritual stuff, poetic stuff and discover themselves maybe
as poetic souls. It's really a super
easy practice, but you will be collecting data about what you really
see in the world, what really catches your eye, and all of those ideas and memories after you stick
with it for a while, are all potential pieces of art. It might be funny comics, it might be complex
illustrations.
4. Listening: Another aspect of absorbing ideas and finding
inspiration is listening. Sometimes ideas do
not come from within. Sometimes we get clues
from the world around us. For example, I might be at the post office and I hear
someone complaining about something and I
agree with it and I find it comical and I can
make a comic about it, or maybe I can watch a
movie, listen to music, and that generates new ideas and thoughts that
maybe I never had, maybe I already had, and I forgot about it. And other times I just
learn something new and I want to honor that
information and I transform it in a comic
or an illustration. The best practice for this, always talking about
what works with me is to just find
something you really like. It might be go to the park or do the thinking walk
or watching a movie, TV show, whatever, and try your best to not do anything
else meanwhile. Focus on one thing.
Give it your all and just try to tune in
with the world around you. Again, it might be a movie, it might be doing sport, it might be watching a TV show, it might be watching
art documentary. Just try your best to
listen profoundly. I wanted to talk about
listening a little bit to open a little note, that is really important for me. That is being inspired
does not mean stealing. Now I have a decade
long experience of people stealing
my art and I post something and then next
week I see many people posting the same thing and
it was extremely annoying. Now it's not anymore, so bad. It still is annoying, but I really think none of us create something really
new or original. Sometimes it's amazing that different artists all over the world are creating
something super similar, they took that idea from an invisible cloud
we are all connected to. But stealing is another thing
and please don't do that. As creative people, we are inspired by everything
and others all the time. But that's listening and that's observing
and being inspired. It's not okay to just
go on pinterest and steal a random idea to have something to
post on social media. Just try to tune in with yourself and make this little
practice to observe and listen into the world
around you in order to be inspired and feel
genuine and authentic. It will be extremely rewarding. That said, we can proceed
with the garbage of ideas.
5. The 'Garbage' of Ideas: Right now we are all
at the same level. We are the visual people
who just get ideas, nonsense out of nowhere, and we also have
the other part of people who are practicing and
trying to find inspiration. Now we're all at the same level. Where do we put these ideas? I really need to have
a garbage of ideas. My favorite way to do so
is having a sketchbook. It's even obvious. But I notice that
it's pretty different from other artists
because they use their sketchbooks more
to practice anatomy or just practice their skills and stuff like that
for me is a huge mess, and you probably wouldn't even recognize the same style of
the things I post online. It's really a garbage of ideas. I don't need it to be fancy, I do not want it
to be all perfect. If I want to practice
art and skills, I just do it directly on the iPad because
I draw digitally, so I do everything on there. Instead, on paper, it's more of a mixed media because I journal, I write quotes that I love from movies
or stuff like that. I draw with ball
pens, I don't care, and I highly recommend to do
the same because you really need a place where to put everything that
comes up in your mind. It might be a little notebook, something like that, or it
might be an A five journal. It's really not a big deal. Or alternatively, if you
love notion like I do, if you don't know what
notion is, it's this thing. You can create a
database on there. I actually used it for a year. I had a database on
notion where I had all of the ideas that came up in my brain and I put
everything on there. Then I decided that I wanted something that I could
really take with me everywhere without the friction of opening the phone or
bringing the laptop. So a notebook is just fine. You choose the size,
it doesn't matter. This will be extremely
helpful for two reasons. One, you never lose valid ideas. I cannot count anymore. All of the times that
I had great ideas, I was awake at 4:00 A.M. And I just forgot them because I just didn't write them down. So don't do like me, write everything, get
it out of your head. And the second reason
is after a while, you will have a huge archive
and a lot of information. When you have an art block
or you feel uninspired, you just have to go through
your journal, notebooks, sketchbook, whatever, and you
will have plenty of ideas. Do it. Get it out of your brain.
6. Is my Idea 'Good Enough'?: Okay, now I have found
the right inspiration. I wrote them down. But how do I know that my idea is good? The answer is, I
don't. I never will. Today specifically, I'm talking about slides of live comics, funny comics and not everyone has the same sense of humor. Someone will get it, some others won't,
and it's okay. For example, I personally
love short stripes, punch lines and the
shortest stripe, usually the biggest the laugh. Other people might prefer long comics and maybe
pages and pages of comics. What I really love
about comics and I think it's why many
people are making short stripes and
short comics online is that you can convey a message in a very direct way and fast. Of course, illustrations and
art have strong messages. It's the reason why art exists. But I think that for people
that are very introverted, people that love communicating and people with a
complex inner world, it might be great to
make shortcomings that communicate everything
that you have inside and give them light. But in order to create something that is
genuine, authentic, and to reach the right audience that have your sense of humor, you must know yourself first and what is the key
of communication, the one you like the most. The more you're clear with
yourself about what you like, to see in other people's comics, the sooner you will get the
right formula to create your own comics that make
other people laugh or cry. So far, we saw how
to get inspired. How to practice
observation and listening. We talked about knowing
your sense of humor first, and so we can finally proceed into the practical
side of this class. Since this is my class and my favorite type of
comics is slice of life, very short stripes, I'm
going to share with you everything I do to
make my comic work.
7. Let's get Practical: Okay, now on the
practical side of it, I'm going to share
with you all of my secrets and what I
do to make comics that work and that communicate
a clear message to the audience and that
allowed me to find my niche. As I anticipated a
few moments ago, my favorite type of comics is
the slice of life category. That means you
have a few panels. You might also have
more, of course, and you are basically
talking about everyday life. Nothing too complex,
nothing too philosophical, nothing too poetic, is
just slices of life. For me, specifically,
the formula is using two to four
maximum panels, and I usually have
a strong message. Not everyone gets
it, but honestly, I don't care and the
most important thing is that I feel better after taking it out of me and put it into paper or
on iPod, in this case. I experimented with
longer comics. I posted on webtoon for a year and it went
pretty well, actually. But at some point, I stopped because of my
life was just too much. I burned out strongly, so I really prefer to do shorter
comics for the audience, the general audience, and maybe one day transform
them into animations. Also, nowadays, you
probably already know that our attention span is like
smaller than a spoon. So I noticed how
shorter comics that convey strong messages are more like effective
and impactful. Communicating a message in two to four panel might
sound challenging, but I promise it's not. We have to keep in mind that we don't just have
bubbles with text. We also have colors, expressions,
backgrounds, subjects, characters that helps us
build a story and convey a message that's even stronger than what you
write on the bubbles. Let's dive a little bit
into these specific traits.
8. Expressions & Body Pose: So first thing first, we
have strong expressions. For example, let me take this very viral comic
that I made and let me show you how everything will change if the expressions
were different. If we look at this, honestly, there is nothing new. There is nothing
extremely original and it's something that probably you already saw multiple times. I mean, the message underneath. You probably saw it multiple
times on the Internet. What makes this impactful
is the expressions. Here, I really wanted to be clear about the
sense of frustration of procrastination that is hunting me probably
since I was a kid. I wanted to put everything
into two panels, so be extremely
brief and direct. The majority of the message
is in the expression. Also the body pose,
it's really important. I will say the body pose, it's already the 30 to 40% of the strength in
this type of comic. But let me change the
expression, and this is it. We might find it funny anyway because she is looking
almost idiotic. It feels flat to me because she's not expressing
the amount of determination and
that strong ambition that I feel when I want
to start a project and do my best and excel and then realizing that I am a huge perfectionist and
so a huge procrastinator. I think just adding
strong expressions and strong eyebrows changed the whole sense of this comic, maybe it's me, maybe it's just something that is
communicating to my gut. But to me, this little
change changed everything. I feel like in this case, we do not have a bad comic.
That's not the point. But I feel like here, the most powerful message is in the text and
not in what we see. Even though I have a
strong pose in the body, I don't feel that friction, that emotional charge
that I feel here. Where the text is
as much important as what the character is
expressing with the body. Still talking about expressions, I want to focus a
little bit more on not just facial expressions, but also on the body. I selected a few comics that I made that were very
loved by people, and let's take this other one. The message is pretty clear. It's not so crazy. I just wanted to express again, my frustration because sometimes
when I feel very tired, I'm like, Okay, now
I'm very productive. Now I can conquer the world, and then after
three to 5 minutes, it's like, I need coffee. You might think nothing
is going on right here. But actually, in my
very humble opinion, this text without
the illustrations would not be so funny, honestly. Because everything here, it's happening because we see
the bee, it's really happy. Yeah, I'm very productive. I'm on my computer, I'm programming something, so I'm doing something
very seriously. But boom, no, I'm
taking a break and she's delusional in a way with this expression
that didn't change, she's still living
in the illusion that a break will not make a
difference in her productivity. Even heading a tumble up on
a bee, it's funny to me. I want to take another
example so that we go on the same
wavelength. Let's take this. I changed the expression of the most important
subject here. This is an extract from a bigger comic that I made
on webtoon last year, and that was a result
of me actually going to the store taking a plant and telling
the person I was with, I'm saving this plant, poor little plant and realizing that probably it was a
selfish thing to do. Everything here is happening in this panel and is the
50 50 between the text, I was doing perfectly fine
on my own and the face. If I change the expression
of the plant, yes, the message is still clear, but I don't know, it's not so strong. I like to take more examples, take this one as well. Here we have a
tutorial and the Be being extremely tired of
seeing this tutorials. By now, you already
know where I'm going. If I drew the B, not so angry with these
little hands and the fire and everything in this
panel is extremely strong and it's communicating with everything about the bead, the expression, the
body, the pose, everything is communicating
a huge amount of anger. Without that, we wouldn't
have the effect, the impact on the viewer. I think by now, it's clear enough how much
important for me it is, the expression in the
face and in the body.
9. Add Subjects & Objects Wisely: Number two, we can choose
characters or subjects, animals, people depending on the message that are the
perfect match for a comic. For example, I always draw bees. That's my main character and
sometimes there is a bunny. Other times, there are
other characters and I need subjects and I might need also subjects or objects that help me conveying
the message even more. For example, let's
take this one. This one was really
loved as well, and it's people talking
to be like so wise, always have the right
words. What's your secret? You're such an old soul. It's trauma here, the scenery, it's really important
Bea can you imagine the same comic
without the wine, the red chair, and all of
the lights and the glasses. Honestly, I think it will
be way less impactful. In this case, I
think it's really important that I added
more objects than usual. Usually, I like to
stay very minimal and not adding too
much into my comics, but sometimes subjects
extra subjects, objects, furniture might be used to improve the strength of the message you want
to communicate. Let's take another example. It's still be, but we
have a lot more going on. Don't judge me for this comic. I really hope it's okay
that I censor this word. The bee here became a scientist
only to prove a point. So this is already powerful when you're part of my audience
and know that B is just a B. If she became a scientist
just to prove this point, there is already a powerful
message underneath. Everything here is still
about expressions, and the objects here are extremely helpful to
create a context. She is in a lab. So we have all of this stuff. We have this dingy here. She's wearing this
classical scientist robe. Objects and the
scenery is extremely important to make the
concept more powerful. Let's take this other example. We have another character. This time I changed
the character. Because I'm talking about stars. B was totally out of context. This is just a thought I have after watching a
documentary about stars, and I was thinking like we always think that
stars are shining, but actually they're burning and what will the stars
think if they had a brain? They would think something
like this and they will complain like
we do all the time. So here we have expressions and here are even more important because we
don't have hands, we don't have a whole body
to communicate something. So here, the most
important thing is the expressions
and the background. This is how you express and make powerful
a concept that otherwise, if you took the test alone
will be nonsense, honestly.
10. Color & Light: Number three, color and
lights are your friends. The same example as I
was anticipating is the exact expression of how important is the use
of color and light. Here we have a very
extremely simple, clear idea of the sky
with some whatevers. And here, how could I help this star express all of
the frustration and angst, if not, with these
lines that are even more strengthening the
concept she's expressing. Let's take another example. This is my most famous comic. I mean, the one that was most
repost it every few days, people repost it without
my consent This is the perfect example of how important is the use
of color subjects, body pose, strong expressions. Here we have everything. Because if you take off all of the color, this is the result. We still have the body
pose that is very strong. I know that this is
very strong as well because it's not just a
B in a static position. We have the exact
opposites in the spectrum of emotions because
we have a B jumping, reaching the sky, is
communicating going above. And then we have the
exact opposite depression is laying on the floor. It is strong but not enough. Here we have strong
expressions, strong body pose. We have a strong message, but with color, it's a
whole different thing. Here we have the little
stars like, Hey, it's communicating such
a strong happiness and a sense of success. And then we have
here the depression, that is not complete because
I also added a shadow that it's like making the bee look
inside of an empty room, that in art, I mean, in movies and stuff like that, it became the symbol of
depression or feeling lost. Then I added some
little thing here. I don't know if you see it, that it's like a black fog coming above the Be
like depression, another metaphor of
depression when it's coming to you and last
but the most important, I added this extremely
dramatic light. And this might look like the silliest comic on Earth
and we totally agree on this. But there is a lot
of gut feelings. There is a lot of emotions here. This is all thanks
to color and light. Always remember that colors
and light are your friends. Like here in the example
we've seen before, if we take off these lights, this is the result and look
how much loses impact. For me, this is a
completely different comic. I think it's clear even if
you're a beginner because it's such a different
image from this. And this is just a dark
background and a few lights, she's on a theater or I picture there on one of those TV
show where the talk shows. This is another example of how much backgrounds
and subject and all of the mixture of them are
important because we have this little
roach suffering. We have these lights
converting into hits figure, like the attention
is on it's emotions. But what the bee is
feeling is very different. Don't answer. It's a trap. We have a more apathetic
background with this empty flat, light blue color without the same impact of
the first panel.
11. Power of Clarity: Number four, clarity
is important. The longer the message
on the bubbles, the less it will have an
impact on the observer. For example, let's
take this one. This is one of
those cases where I try to be as synthetical as possible because imagine
the same comic if it was longer or
with a lot of words. If I had to explain the
joke it will be weird. Most of the times I'm a
huge stand up comedy fan. I love stand up comedy, and all of the best stand up
comedians taught me that you shouldn't explain your jokes because that would
ruin the jokes. Same happened in comics. Imagine if here I would have to explain all of the inside
jokes and what's going on. And this is one of those cases where not everyone will
understand because this comic implies that you are not someone with a
very normal self esteem. You probably have
terrible voices inside that tell you all the time you're a loser
or stuff like that. And that's the
funny thing for me. That's the funny thing because
it's something horrible. It's awful to live with
such a low self esteem, and so the joke here is about a terrible truth because
when someone offends me, I shall be offended. But actually, when I'm the first person that tells herself the
worst things ever, for other people to
really offend me, they should say something that
I could not even imagine. If here I had used
many more words, even one more words, I would have ruined the comic and the impact of it
because it's very fast. Me offended, I'm a number one
air. You cannot offend me. But even adding that
you cannot offend me, you're already explaining
the comic itself. I really think the
clarity of the message, it's really important and being minimalistic
in this sense, it might be extremely strong. Of course, I'm not
against using more words. For example, you see even here, we already saw, I
used more words. It's not a dialogue
in that case, but I use more words. But in general, I try to be as direct as possible in
explaining something, a concept, a thought, a feeling because I feel like it's more
understandable, relatable. By the majority of people. Also, if you consider
that myself, I'm not English or American
and I talk another language. I'm perfectly aware
that it's also helpful for everyone
to understand instantly something
when you are not using a huge vocabulary or many many words that
maybe the majority of people don't even understand because not everyone
talk English, surprise, surprise, sometimes I don't even have
too many bubbles. Sometimes I don't
even have them. Sometimes it's just a
bubble and life, a concept. My recommendation if you
like this kind of comic and you feel drawn into the
same kind of comic, I will highly recommend
to stay minimalistic and try to be as
synthetic as possible. It's also a very good way to
know yourself more and to identify what you're feeling
quicker and more precisely.
Pat Diana, Pro Weirdo
