Tomorrow is your chance to see me and a distinguished panel of colleagues (including Axe Cop cartoonist Ethan Nicolle, who drew the above image) speculate on The Future of Comics at WebVisions Portland, the annual conference on all things Web (spoiler alert: The Future Of Comics is probably going to involve the Web). Here’s copy from the Website:

While blockbuster films based on comic book characters have been a box office bonanza, the comic book industry as a whole has experienced radical change. Industry powerhouses like Marvel have diversified their non-print offerings by unveiling Infinite Comics, a new digital format targeting mobile devices. For smaller publishers and independent artists, the future of comics will be built on the shifting sands of change, but opportunities abound for self publishing, crowd sourced funding and digital distribution.

The Future of Comics Panel
Speakers: Arnold Pander, Richard Bruning, Jacob Pander, David Chelsea, Ethan Nicolle, Rachel Nabors

Thursday, May 23 2013 at 10 am
Room D139/140

WebVisions Portland at the Oregon Convention Center.
777 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd Portland, OR 97232
(503) 235-7575

Caricature for the New York Observer, 1990s

David Chelsea is listening to:
The Interestings
by Meg Wolitzer

Just in time for today’s 24 Hour Comics session at TFAW, an interview with Henry Chamberlain (with a nice shout-out to my latest, ARE YOU BEING WATCHED?) on Comics Grinder:

http://comicsgrinder.com/2013/05/18/24-hour-comics-interview-david-chelsea/

David Chelsea is listening to:
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
by Edmund Morris

Come see me draw my SIXTEENTH 24 Hour Comic (a World Record until someone tells me different) this weekend. After jaunts to Eugene and New York, I’m back on home ground. The 24 Hour Comics – Portland Edition is taking place from 10:00am on Sat., May 18th to 10:00am on Sun., May 19th at Things From Another World (2916 NE Broadway St.).Things From Another World is easy to find if you know Portland- it’s just at the spot where you turn on Broadway to go to Fred Meyer’s.

David Chelsea is reading:
Life After Life: A Novel
by Kate Atkinson

I’ll be sharing spare with seven other talented artists; Paul (Boilerplate) Guinan , Pete Soloway, Jacob Mercy, Sera Stanton, Tom Lechner, Rachel Nabors, and my daughter Rebecca Celsi, who is taking on the 24 Hour challenge for the first time. Here’s copy from the TFAW blog:

Artists David Chelsea (Welcome To The Zone), Paul Guinan (Boilerplate), Pete Soloway (Pizza Gun), Jacob Mercy (Pizza Gun), Sera Stanton (Sera Stanton Illustration), Tom Lechner (Nightlife), Rebecca Celsi (Kelso’s Choices), and Rachel Nabors (18 Revolutions) will take on the challenge of creating an entire comic book in 24 hours at the 24 Hour Comics Portland Edition May 18 at the Portland TFAW — and you’re invited to come watch! The entire event will be filmed for an upcoming documentary by Milan Erceg.

24 Hour Comics is an event where illustrators and artists have 24 hours to create a comic, including the story, finished art, lettering, color, paste-up, and proofreading. The Portland Edition is part of a two week-long event called The Wild, a series of events that takes on the world of artists, makers, writers, and cultural iconoclasts who juice up Portland’s awesomeness. The Wild takes place May 11-25 and is sponsored by the Portland Mercury, WebVisions, and more!

The Portland TFAW will stay open the entire 24 hours to host this exciting event — which takes place from 10 am May 18 to 10 am May 19 — but will close the register to sales after 7 pm. Make sure to stop by to see comics created right before your eyes all night long!

TFAW blog page

24 Hour Comic Website

And don’t forget to pre-order the upcoming collection of my first six 24 Hour Comics, Everybody Gets it Wrong! and Other Stories: David Chelsea’s 24-Hour Comics Volume 1

Newly arrived from my publisher: here are some sample pages from the new Japanese editon of Extreme Perspective!:

David Chelsea is reading:
The Artist Himself: A Rand Holmes Retrospective
by Patrick Rosenkranz

Hey, Japan, I look forward to seeing more Manga in curvilinear perspective!

So here’s what I did at last weekend’s Stumptown Comics Fest. I sold some comics:

David Chelsea is listening to:
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
by Steven Johnson

I bought some comics:

I did my Perspective Police! PowerPoint presentation:

Photo by greyaenigma

I got thirsty and posed for pictures:

Photo by Ocean Yamaha

I drew this heavily stippled envelope during down time. I wonder who I’ll send it to?:

I spent a lot of time being interviewed by my filmmaker friend Milan Erceg, who is shooting a documentary about 24 Hour Comics. While Milan shot me, I took his picture with my Palm Pilot:

With all that activity, I didn’t have time to take as many photographs as in years past. Instead, I concentrated on getting as many shots as I could of a suddenly prevalent type, the Nerd Girl With Glasses (my wife tells me that Nerd Girls have been around for ages, but this is the year they seemed to reach critical mass at Stumptown):

Mayim Bialik should be collecting royalties

Thanks to the staff and organizers. Thank also to my table-mates, Jacob Mercy and Pete Soloway of PIZZA GUN, for being such good company,  and especially for processing my credit card orders. My next convention appearance: Wizard World Comic Con in Chicago in August.

Here’s part of the presentation I gave last Saturday at Stumptown Comics Fest:

My fellow cartoonist John Linton Roberson brought this one to my attention. It comes from a comic called Flashpoint: Legion of Doom #1, published by DC in 2011. (Superhero comics, like animated cartoons, are a group effort. The credited artists for this panel are Rodney Buchemi, José Marzan, Jr. and Artur Fujita.)

David Chelsea is reading:
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
by Mary Roach

This panel somewhat confused me at first glance, and not just because of the perspective. The central character resembles Plastic Man, the super-stretchy Golden Age superhero, with his dark glasses and striped belt, but he doesn’t have Plastic Man’s bare legs and lace-up decolletage. John informs me that this is because he is not the “official” Plas- he’s a darker, grittier version who is not a part of the central DC Comics continuity, but who lives in an alternate universe that exists only in Flashpoint (Alternate universes abound in DC Comics. The hoopla over Green Lantern coming out as gay last year was tempered for real comics fans by the knowledge that it wasn’t the Green Lantern who has his own title and appears in the movies, but a revival of the long-dormant “original” Green Lantern,  who only appears in a series where 1940s version of the DC heroes are still at work in present-day. Every few years DC cleans house and consigns the more tangential universes to the editorial dustbin.).

All right, something weird is evidently going on with the perspective in this one. To analyze it, I create a grayed version in Photoshop and import it into Adobe Illustrator:

On diagramming it out, it seems that things are not all that wrong after all. The view is a three-point perspective looking up (a “worms’-eye view”), and while some of the lines going to the vanishing point on the right don’t line up as they should, it wouldn’t take much tweaking to bring them all into line. My problem is with the implied viewpoint. Our worm is not viewing the scene from a spot on the floor- he actually seems to be BELOW the floor. Indeed, if you look at not-Plastic Man’s feet, you can see that he is standing on a black triangle that reads as the edge of a floor that has been cut off, and he’s dangerously close to the edge at that.  One more step and he’s liable to fall over. It is as if we are in a theater watching a play, and the prison cell is a cutaway part of the set above our eye level (and actors who work under such conditions really should be collecting hazard pay).

For such a claustrophobic scene, I would prefer we take a view that gets us inside the cell.  The best way to do that, I think, is to use fisheye perspective, as in the photograph below (which is, of course, taken from outside the cell, but you get the idea).

Fisheye perspective can be difficult to construct, but fortunately I have just the thing: curvilinear perspective grids included on the bonus disc which comes with my book EXTREME PERSPECTIVE!

I select a grid which roughly fits the existing scene and combine it with the panel in Illustrator. Following the rhythm of the existing grid lines, I add curved lines which define the floor and ceiling lines as well as the bunkbeds:

Now, I create a version of the panel that is just the background, with the figures removed. I see one more reason why the perspective looks odd- the artists have not given us any indication of where one wall ends and another begins:

The next step is to adjust the lines to conform to the fisheye sketch in Photoshop,  mostly by using the warp tool:

One by one, I add the figures on separate layers:

After erasing stray bits of background and overlapped figures from each layer, I selectively warp Plastic Man’s boots so they stand more naturally on the floor. I add some shadows and texture to the floor as well:

As a final, touch, I restore the word balloon and the type on the bottom, and the panel is complete. Our worm-level spectator is now right there in the cell with them:

Many thanks to John Linton Roberson. You can order his latest work, Book One of a multi-part graphic novel adaptation of Frank Wedekind’s Lulu, here at Amazon.

(BTW, judging from the background, Lulu looks like she might be in the cell with them. )

Got an example of iffy perspective to show? Be a whistleblower! Send an e-mail to me at davidchelsea(at)comcast(dot)net and include Perspective Police! in the subject line.

The Many Moods Of David Chelsea At Stumptowns Past

This year at Stumptown Comics Fest I’ll be presenting something new. Rather than the tried-and-true perspective drawing grid slideshow and demonstration that I have presented two years running, I am doing a slide show version of my irregular blog feature Perspective Police! in which I analyze published drawings by artists like Joost Swarte, Ivan Brunetti, and Alison Bechdel, and propose revisions to better bring them in line with perspective. Not that I am free from error myself; one of the images I police is an early illustration by a promising young artist named David Celsi.

David Chelsea is watching:
Sealab 2021 – Season 1

Most of the show will consist of images I’ve already covered in my blog posts, but here’s one that hasn’t been- a panel featuring stretchy superhero Plastic Man:

This is my first time doing this particular presentation, so I’m not exactly sure how long it will take, but if there’s time afterwards I’ll do a bit of perspective policing on pictures brought in by members of the audience. I’ll be at my table the rest of the weekend, signing copies of old books and the new SNOW ANGEL one-shot from Dark Horse. and if you haven’t done it yet, don’t forget to stop by my one-man show at Fotoeffect Gallery, which includes original art from SNOW ANGEL, THE GIRL WITH THE KEYHOLE EYES, and other recent comics.

Perspective Police! post revising Alison Bechdel

Perspective Police! post revising Ivan Brunetti

Perspective Police! post revising David Celsi

Perspective Police! post revising Joost Swarte

Perspective Police! Presentation by David Chelsea At 10th Annual Stumptown Comics Fest
Saturday, April 27 5-5:45pm Room B113 Oregon Convention Center

David Chelsea One-Man Show at Fotoeffect Gallery
625 NW Everett St, #107, Portland, OR, United States, 97209
Up through the month of April.

An advance copy of my latest book arrived from my publisher last week. EVERYBODY GETS IT WRONG! (AND OTHER STORIES): DAVID CHELSEA’S 24 HOUR COMICS VOLUME 1  collects my first six (of fifteen so far) 24 hour comics between hard covers. The book will not be in stores until June 5th, but you COULD beat the rush and pre-order it from Amazon today.

David Chelsea is reading:
The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman
by Meg Wolitzer

Previous post about EVERYBODY GETS IT WRONG!

Everybody Gets It Wrong! And Other Stories: David Chelsea’s 24-hour Comics Volume 1 HC

Published by: Dark Horse

Written By: David Chelsea

Art By: David Chelsea

Cover By: David Chelsea

152 pages, black and white, $14.99, in stores on June 5.