Articles Written By: Ben

How’s it going?

Things are progressing nicely these days as I’m getting a handle on staying organized. I’ve been sorting and prioritizing my work, setting tasks and whatnot. Now that I’ve finally got my bookmarks and notes under control I’ve been putting calendars together. Before I’ve always had the trouble of writing stuff down and then never actually doing it when I said I was going to. This time around I’m getting into the routine and keeping on schedule fairly well. The two key things are to be consistent and realistic. I need to go to bed at a regular time and get up at a regular time. I need to be working on certain things at specific times of the day. There’s some wiggle room here and there. I like drawing in the morning when I wake up and writing in the evening to wind down but I’ve found I can color the comics almost any time of the day, even later into the evenings. There is a point to just stop and go to bed – when I’ll do more harm than good. I’m not in college anymore and I shouldn’t be pulling all-nighters but sometimes the work’s engaging and can benefit from that type of environment. And some nights I just can’t go to bed so I might as well be in the studio. Luckily that usually comes around on weekends.

You get what you give

I’ve seen people fail to visit their own sites regularly and then wonder why nobody else can be bothered to, either. I’m taking this to heart and I’m going to announce this here: The site will be updating every weekday for the foreseeable future. This could be blog posts that are newsy such as this one, they could be info dumps with useful links and advice, random pieces of art or previews of work I’m doing, hopefully more podcasts/reviews/interviews, or it could be comic updates. Rest assured I’m going to have something new on this page every weekday and I’ll try my best to make it worth everybody’s time.

Brand new comic “2071” launches next week

Speaking of regular content – the new comic should finally be arriving a week from today on Monday the 15. Why the 15th? Getting all my ducks in a row, writing new blogs to be posted later, and to give myself time to hit the ground running working on the next section. I’ve already been doing research and collecting ideas. I’m eager to move on in the story from the part I’ve been laboring over lately. I’m very proud of what I’ve accomplished so far on this. I can’t wait for everybody to see it.

Pencils and preliminary inks on the prologue to 2071 are done. The next stage involves scanning all the analog work and touching it up digitally. This includes whiting out inking mistakes, straightening out lines, fixing some wonky circles, and over-all getting the best linework we can get before toning/rendering/lettering/what have you. I’ll be streaming it live and blogging about the errors I’m fixing. I haven’t settled on a streaming service yet but I’ve tried most of the ones out there. Everyone’s invited to come watch and join in on the chat. Following NoRights on twitter is the best way to keep up with me.

I’m posting this Sunday night since Monday I should really be focused on inking instead of blogging. I hope everyone had a great New Year. 2010 is hopefully going to be a busy year for me. I’ll be launching my new comic this month once I get the prologue done. (I was aiming to have it ready by the first but with 5 pages to finish that didn’t happen.) The holidays hit harder than I would have liked but I’m going to try getting back on track here. I’ll be blogging more on drawing and cartoon oddities when these pages are finished.

Destino has an interesting history behind it. Originally Salvador Dali worked with the Disney studio in 1945 on this experimental film. Though storyboards and 18 seconds of test animation were produced, the film was scrapped because of financial troubles. Supposedly Walt’s nephew, Roy Disney, discovered the project while working on Fantasia 2000 and revived it. I’ve also heard it was rekindled because Dali’s estate was seeking to recover his contributions to the film since it was never completed. Either way, the short was finished in 2003 using mostly traditional animation and some computer work. It’s seen a limited theatrical release along with playing various festivals. The home release has been delayed a number of times for different reasons. Last reported it was slated for 2010. Until it’s available you can find it on various places online.

Something I can talk at length about is cartoon history. So for this next batch of posts I’m going to take you on a trip. We’re going to look at some stuff you might not have seen before, some stuff older folks might remember, and possibly a few you’ve just forgotten about.

Today I’d like to tell you about the 1943 Walt Disney Donald Duck cartoon, Der Fuehrer’s Face. Originally it was titled Donald Duck In Nutzi Land but that was changed after the success of the Spike Jones and His City Slickers cover of the Oliver Wallace theme song. It won the 1943 Academy Award for Animated Short Film.

Obviously this is an anti-nazi propaganda short. It features Donald waking up in nazi Germany and going through the unhappy daily ritual of slaving away in a munitions factory, heiling Hitler, and being driven mad at bayonet point. It’s a good film with catchy music, solid animation, and very beautiful artwork. (All the hidden swastikas and whatnot make the backgrounds worth a thorough looking over.) Like most World War II cartoons there’s an attempt to make the enemy look silly, but it’s far from the most offensive or racist depictions I’ve seen of that era. It’s easily found online but since this one was released in Walt Disney Treasures – On the Front Lines and Walt Disney Treasures – The Chronological Donald, Volume Two (1942 – 1946), I urge you to either rent or buy it if you can. Usually these WWII shorts have to be passed around from collector to collector on poorly done tape dubs so anytime a studio releases a nice quality copy on DVD or something I’m gonna recommend picking that up.

I’ve heard people say “fake it until you make it” to mean that, if you want to be something you’re not yet, you have to pretend you are until you actually are. I don’t like calling it that because fakery implies falsity. To paraphrase Guy Gilchrist in his Drawn to Success series, “Think yourself into the BIG-TIME.” You have to start thinking and acting like a successful whatever you want to be before you can actually be a successful whatever you want to be. This means considering yourself among your peers and it also means doing the work expected of somebody in that position. It means trying things, researching things, and not just going on an ego trip.

You want a good example of people who fake it? Join twitter. Almost immediately you’ll be followed by social media gurus, web marketing experts, SEO specialists, online pioneers, and internet entrepreneurs. These are the folks who set themselves up as professionals on the internet because, hey, they’re on the internet, and you’re an expert in anything if you call yourself one, right? I used to have a courtesy policy of following people back if they followed me. Eventually spammers forced me to question if the person I was following back was even real. I’d thought I’d figured out a decent system to tell. Then I got direct messaged telling me the secret to a bigger penis. That was the day I stopped participating in the great circle jerk and quit following people I didn’t care about hearing from. Yes my numbers dropped almost immediately, but if they were only following me for the return, it’s not a big loss on my part. And the signal:noise ratio of my feed is so much better now.

That’s what it was – noise. I’ve seen a lot of people set up sites where they think they can hold a megaphone, shout, “I am awesome!” and then the masses are just supposed to come. Yes, I know, “build it and they will come” is a popular chant but it means more than building a simple functional site. It also means building a decent comic, building a decent report with people, and giving them a reason to believe you are in actuality awesome.