I've finally completed the conversion of Girt By Sea into a web comic. It now lives online here .
The exercise was challenging but it pushed me to explore a range of different approaches in order to tell it the way I'd hoped. While the sequential imagery was handicapped because of its genesis as a sound play, I nonetheless discovered a range of montage techniques which made the project exciting to pursue.
My comicifying confidence has risen sharply. I may be creating photo comics but I'm also handling my materials as photo montage.
It's like all my Christmases have come at once.I've been absolutely smitten by the work of John Heartfield and co(history of photomontage) for decades and now I'm developing the photo manipulation techniques that may enable me to do in like mode. I also suffer from a groupie obsession with the collages of Kurt Schwitters...
The results may look 'messy' but if it looks like the graffiti wall at the local railway station, that's they way I like it.
Girt By Sea from Ratbag Media
Afterward:
Afterward:
So now the world is my oyster. In pursuit of inspiration I watched the film, American Splendor tonight (again) which is about Harvey Pekar's contributions to the genre of non fiction biographical comics -- American Splendor being a comic series about his own mundane existence. That he started writing comics initially by working with Robert Crumb is a tad disconcerting as I have never ever been a Crumb fan, despite my 60s background and my penchant back then for Underground Comix.
But my mental cogs are whirling...big time.
I suggested today, semi publicly, that my next 'political' project could be a webcomic about the Northern Territory Intervention. I also suspect that I can comicify my long held intention to generate a sort of Fibomyalgia Survival Manual, drawing on my own, everyday, experience of the condition.
In the meantime Punch and Prof will keep me working at the coal face and I'll use that to see how far I can push the boundaries and explore my creative options.
I think I am onto something -- a limited toolbox it may be but there is enough there to sustain a few projects, if I keep working on my photomontagery, my graphic editing skills and my photography.
I'm thinking I'd really appreciate a IPad #2 with a PhotoBooth ap so that what I do on my desktop I can do out and about. That way I can look at the image of myself plus what or who ever while I'm shooting it. For now I need to explore and master the skills for composing photoes (with me in them) using my camera's self timer.
Another option may be to use my cheap pocket video camera set to still mode ...
