A couple of comments on the comments.
From Paw -
it was noticeable the lack of reference to other comic cultures in other countries, some of which have a longer history than that of American books. It doesn't annoy me as there are other sites trying to deal with e.g. British comic history. As you'll have noticed, here on CB+ we have many non-American based members, a fair number of whom are keen on discovering comics from other cultures.
A valid point, but what to do about it?
I would imagine that currently you are a one-man band more or less, so your ability to spread yourself out wide would be limited.
So, perhaps ask people - here and on 'The Academy' site for links to relevant sites in other languages.
Then devise a statement of a page or two that you could email to those sites introducing yourself, outlining basically what the Academy is all about and asking permission to post links on your site, if the sites were relevant.
Start with a page of links with a short intro to what the sites are. This way you could build up this resource slowly and perhaps be able to get someone else to handle that under your supervision.
I'm bearing in mind that the Inkwell is primarily concerned with looking at older [more traditional] techniques and technology. There would likely be some interesting things to learn about how they do it in other cultures.
I would, however suggest that you don't attempt to do too much too soon, so that it gets too daunting.
It's important that you continue to enjoy what you are doing.
Also from Paw:-
The other thing about those Kirby Cap pages that I don't think you mention, is the layout mostly makes the eye follow from panel to panel. It leads the reader through the page. Jesse Marsh does this very well and it's important. We've all seen layouts that confuse and the eyes dart about looking for the correct next panel. Sometimes panels were numbered to get around that, but well thought out layout is always better.
Kirby was a master at getting the eye to go where he wanted it to go.
He was also a genius at doing this with covers. It's worth taking an hour or two looking at Kirby's covers and learning what your eyes do subliminally and how Kirby knew how to get your eyes to follow the information on the page exactly how he wanted them to.On many of his covers, particularly the early ones, you can use your fingers and trace lines from the top of the page to the bottom, crossing at a point in the middle. So the whole page is laid out on a basic X grid - Including word balloons and everything on the page-you have to be looking for it to find it - I only got it very recently. Looking at a piece of art as an exercise in composition is very different from looking at it as we do just picking it up to read the story inside. He was much less obvious about it in his later years. Like most artists I think as he matured he went from thinking deliberately about everything to working from experience and instinct.
I have to be careful talking about Kirby - I can get seriously carried away.
The changes in the site haven't affected the Web address have they?
Cheers!
Author
Topic: New Changes to The Vintage Inkwell Academy for 2021 (Read 2344 times)
