Belated Flowering Nose Day post

Here it is already past Flowering Nose Day, and I just haven't had time to post anything here.
What I was afraid would happen has happened.  Seth's memory has grown dimmer; the grief that attended his death has become less, and we have moved on to other things.  As Robert Frost said in a poem called "Out, Out--"
"And they, since they
were not the one dead, turned to their affairs."

However.  In my affairs, I never forget Seth.  When he was small I taught him, and then when he grew up, he taught me.  The letter I am posting below is not only the heart of what he taught me, it is, I believe, the heart of what we have proposed as the meaning of Flowering Nose Day.
And so I give it to you, dear readers who love Seth and his art, as a gift from Seth.
Here it is:

 "Art is not the end in and of itself. Your art is a reflection of the way you view life, and if you EVER settle and decided you have arrived, then you have died. Your art is the most important thing in your life and you must give it everything you have every moment of you waking and sleeping life. It is only a SYMBOL. But it is the symbol you have chosen, so if you do not honor it, everything else in your life will reflect that. Suppose that you fall in love and suddenly you find girlfriend asking for more of your time when you really know you need to be drawing. If you are unable to balance these priorities, it is your life that will suffer. Your art is only a foot print that reflects the whole of your experience. If your art falls it is because you are struggling for a foothold in your spirituality (or whatever label you want to put on it.) If your art succeeds it is because you are connecting with the universe.

  "STYLE. Style will come naturally, but remember that no matter how great or accomplished you become you will never be Seth Fisher, or Alex Ross, or Carmen Infantino...you cannot be. They are them...you are you. They will help you, but ultimately you must accept yourself while simultaneously never being satisfied with yourself. A paradox? Perhaps, but understanding the self requires you to let go of the rules of logic that you have been taught by so many misguided people. You must love yourself WITH your faults...then you may fix them. One by one.
 "I see the heart in your work. But if you want to be a professional comic artist sadly you must balance HEART with POLISH. Polish is what you give your work that tells people, i spent enough time on this that it proves that what i am saying is worth listening to. Ultimately heart is what people are searching for, but they need a method for sorting through the piles of soulless art, and most people choose to look at the time and care and polish put into a work and use that to choose what they will let affect them. Do not confuse polish with heart!!! Polish is the package...heart is the contents of the box. An empty box wrapped in many bows and ribbons is a waste of time for everyone.

"The size of your audience is relevant only as it pertains to your ability to make a living. Perhaps it is too soon, but eventually if you wish to retain your heart you must give up attachment to the idea of fame. People will buy ANYTHING. Your popularity is not a gauge for your worth. Seek to make work that makes people reflect on themselves. Then eventually even that will cease to be relevant. You exist as a human being to be a mirror for others because we (in own minds which we perceive to be imperfect) are unable to see our own perfection. But when we look at others we are able to see our own godliness. You will be the world’s mirror and in turn the world will show you who you are.

"And you thought we were talking about ART?!?!

"You are talking about your eternal soul. Do not let your art EVER cease to be the lifeline that connects you to your humanity. If you let this passion fall away, it will be reflected in every step that you make. You will fall away from the path that you know exists and begin to wander. You know what you need to become...now be it. Every step that you make is painting. Every movement that you make is a brushstroke. YOU are the masterpiece, your comics are just the inevitable footprints that you leave behind you. Take care in every movement that you make in your life. Speak with every vibration of your body. The only way to do this is total honesty. This, i think, you have naturally. DO NOT LOSE IT!!! Wear on your chest proudly those things that you most want to hide. People will flock to you because they are dieing to make peace with these things themselves. Speak only with honesty. This is very important...it will become your base if you let it.

"No matter how inspired you are at any moment, you will forget sometimes. You must use your dedication to your work to remind yourself everyday of why you are struggling. This is a vow you have taken and you should treasure it. It is not a burden it is a gift. You will hate your desk sometimes when you see your friends outside having fun, but this is when you will make progress. This is a spiritual journey. And one day you will suddenly understand the secret (that i should probably not tell you now): all this time your art work was YOU trying to teach YOURSELF something that you already knew (and that we will discuss when you arrive).
"Gather Wisdom.
"See yourself in others, especially those you deplore.
"Understand.
"Give freely.

"Never cause harm to others."

Achieving clarity: Batman SNOW #194 page 16

One of the things that Seth advised in his list of illustration tips was to "use key objects to simplify your story telling". I was looking at a few pages of his from the Batman SNOW book, and trying to determine what he meant by that.
In this page, let's see what he has done. The scene takes place at the Gotham City waterfront, among the canneries and tackle shops, where nothing much that's legal happens at night. Seth sets the scene quite vividly in the large upper frame, with the planks of the pier on the right, and those rolling metal warehouse doors on the upper left. In front are the police detective and his cohort standing behind a wall. I am not sure if all these things could be termed "key objects", but they all help to set the scene so that one can tell easily at a glance what is happening. It doesn't require dialog to understand that the people in front are hidden from the people in the middle, or that something is going on that is probably against the law.
I think that's what Seth meant by "simplify your storytelling". He set the scene so clearly and plainly that the dialog doesn't have to do that job.
Key objects in the next two frames are (1)a bulldozer and (2)a truck filled with electronic surveillance materials. In just these three frames we have a good idea of what is happening here. Incidentally, the previous pages do not refer to what is going on here, so this one has to explain itself.

Making a story clear

The other day I had a nice visit from Chris Ryall, the editor in chief at IDW Publishing in San Diego. He came by to bring me a complimentary stack of books of a graphic novel called Locke and Key, which has the story Freddy Wertham Goes to Hell added in the back. Both stories were written by Joe Hill, who also wrote the Spiderman Unlimited story that Seth drew. Chris, who is a fan of Seth's, wanted to see Seth's last work (even though his part of it was only the blocking out of the pages) printed in color, went to some trouble to get reprinting rights from Grave Tales, and then Seth's friend Langdon--who actually drew the pictures--did the coloring. All in all, it was a labor of love.

Interestingly, in the lead story, the first of a series, they printed not only the graphic story, but also the script that was given to the artist, Gabriel Rodriguez. Though I am not a fan of the genre (horror) I read the story, Locke and Key. The pictures are stunning, but I thought the story was hard to follow, until I read it with the script in hand, continually looking from the script to the pictures.

Now, please understand, for the most part, I am not a comic book reader. The only comic books I own are ones that Seth did. So I am not the audience for whom this book was intended. I also am SO VERY familiar with Seth's work that I see all the subtleties that probably most readers miss. HOWEVER, it seems to me that even though some of the stories that Seth illustrated--notably Willworld, and the two issues of Doom Patrol--make jumps of logic that continually befuddle the reader, the pictures give details that clarify some of the more abstruse questions. I wondered what Seth would have done with the scripts that Gabriel was given. A useless question of course, but it brings out the matter of how to make a story clear.

I'd like to talk in the next few postings about some of the issues that give clarity to a story.

Issue number one: Who are the characters?

How do you identify the various characters? Line drawings of faces can be very general, especially when they are printed small enough to put several boxes of them inside a page that is about 8" x 10".

Here is something that Seth said to an aspiring artist about making characters identifiable:
"Try to design characters so that they are identifable 360 degrees around. Ie the mohawk is a good design since you can ID the character from the back of the head so it gives you more options for angles to take in the scene and still keep things clear. You can use hats, clothes, a bird on their shoulder, whatever...."

In this page from Willworld, the cast of characters has their own peculiarities that give them instant readability: Hal of course wears the green mask. But even in black and white, his face is recognizable. His hair falls lankly down on his forehead, and he has that bewildered expression. Mu-Fon has no nose, and a beret and turtleneck sweater. Kelly has six arms. Even the people at the bar who we see only once in the story are all recognizable as individuals, both from their clothing and their facial style.

Illustration, part one: Content

What makes great illustration?

In her very clear and thorough analysis of the illustrations of the great Charles Mikolaycak, Judith Johnson, PhD gives these three elements of illustration: Content, Composition, and Control. (She adds one other, Color, which is not applicable to Seth's work, because his color was added later by someone else.) Today I will look at content, and we will think about the others on subsequent days.

Content: What is in the foreground? What is in the background? the middle ground?

What is the cultural context? That is, where and when are the people living that we are looking at? What does their clothing tell us about them? The drawings should give us a clue to their modernity or antiquity, their relative wealth, the culture they live in.

What is the emotional content of the art? What is the position of the actors on the page? --Are they sitting, lying, crouched down, cowering, standing at attention? How are they placed in relation to each other? We should be able to read from the picture something about how the characters feel, without words.

It's interesting to go over this image with these things in mind. The place is clear from the picture: a large city in Japan. We see the chaos and destruction, and we see where it is coming from: the huge monster whose wings are so widespread that the picture frame cannot contain them. and whose face is so angry and menacing that we know at a glance that his destructiveness is not accidental, but methodical, deliberate, and malignant.

The only human we see in the photo is a guy sitting on the sidewalk selling electronic doo-dads, who seems to be the only one in town who didn't get the word that the monsters had struck.

There are people driving the tanks and other army equipment, but they are faceless in this image.

So we read terror here, but with a couple of clues that tell us not to take it too seriously. The large slug on top of the building on the right grimaces down at everything like a large, impotent playmobil figure, and below him a billboard celebrates Seth's son 登風（Tofu). These give us a wink from Seth, "Relax and have fun. Enjoy the ride!"

HANDS one more time: Big in Japan #2 page 21

Even monsters and very comic book-y superheroes have expressive hands.
Look at Iron Man in the top two frames. On the left he wrings his hands and on the right he holds on to his head for sorrow. On the right the dead monster Droom for whom he is grieving holds his hands out helplessly.
Even the robot in the wide frame in the middle of the page uses his right hand to point tauntingly at Giganto and Eerok.
And at the bottom, Dr. Yamane pulls away from the onslaught of monsters from the ocean, fingers spread wide in a gesture of anxiety.

More hands: Batman SNOW 192 page 17 and 794 page 22

These two pages show more of the expressive power of hands.

Dr Fries' tenderness toward his beloved wife is obvious from every gesture, setting up the flower vase in the first frame, gently touching her face in the second, and tugging at his sleeve in the third. Then when the doctor comes in to speak with him, he keeps one hand on his wife's hand while he whirls around to face the doctor.

In the bottom frame she reaches out with her hand after her husband. These gestures are easy to overlook because they seem perfectly natural. But natural doesn't necessarily come naturally.

The page on the right has the police detective reading the riot act to Batman.
Hands, remember, we are concentrating on hands. In the top image, he stands on the top step with his hands still holding on to whatever he was using to climb up to the top of the building where they meet. Batman has his hands sheepishly between his legs.

The powerful middle frame has one hand coming toward us, like Uncle Sam in the famous WW1 recruiting poster, but his other hand is back where it shows us that he is leaning far forward to rail at Batman.
Then he pounds his fist against his hand when he says, "Congratulations. You played me like a chump." Batman in the bottom center holds his two hands over his heart and proclaims his innocence.

All these gestures ring so true that you almost don't notice them. That shows how well Seth took his own advice about getting comfortable with drawing hands.

HANDS: Batman SNOW #192, pages 11 & 12

Seth said,
"Spend time now perfecting your hands and you will thank yourself for it later. Just keep a mirror handy and spend as long as it takes to get the hands right.... When you feel really comfortable with them your life will be so much easier. They can convey so much expression."

He was writing this advice to someone who asked him for help drawing a comic book. At the time he wrote it, he was working on this series. If you look at the hands in these two pages, in nearly every frame they are full of expression.

On the left page, Dr Fries argues with the person at the desk, gesturing with his left fist and his right two fingers, not just one, as I might have been tempted to draw. In the next frame he says, "I can't believe you're even considering this," and shows with his hands his exasperation.

In the page on the right:

Upper left frame: the gunman adjusts his glasses with his free hand. A small, incidental gesture that gives this whole page the feel of reality.
The girl crying on the right covers her face with her hands. The man lying in the middle covers his head with one hand while the other curves toward the package he was holding.

Bottom right, our friend the police detective holds his glasses away from his face while he ponders his options.

Character identification: Happydale

The people in Happydale are pretty distinctive. It is not hard to pick each character out of a crowd, even from the back. One has a beard and wears a dinosaur suit; one has no arms; one has no legs; one has long flaps of loose skin hanging from his face; one is a dapper midget. There is also one who has a third eye, which he keeps covered with a bandana, and another who always wears a superhero suit (Paradox man), so that none of his friends has ever seen his face.

In this double page spread, there is also a swat team of nameless and personalityless outsiders, as well as other citizens of Happydale to whom we have not yet been introduced. Many of them are also unique and interesting in their own rights: the man with the mohawk wearing formal Japanese attire, the man with the a spear and tattoos who looks as though he might be from a tribe near the Amazon River, a guy taking pictures who is dressed for a mountaineering expedition, and of course, just at the left edge, our friendly but shy alien. But it is easy to find the people we know from the story, regardless of what they are doing. They all have their own pecularities that make them stand out.

more character ID: Victor Fries

There are a lot of recurring characters in this Batman story. The challenge is to allow the reader to recognize each of them instantly, no matter what angle they are seen from.

Victor Fries is hard. After he becomes Mr Freeze he always wears an intergalactic-looking snow suit, but as an empathetic character in the first two issues, he is pretty regular. He has a lot of hair, as does Batman himself, though Fries' hair is not colored in, which makes it lighter colored. But that is not enough for an ID. His face is not especially distinctive and he doesn't wear funny glasses. The only two things that make his person recognizable are that his hair is longish with a curl on the side that seems to kind of fly out from his head. And his suspenders. If you see a guy in suspenders, that's Victor.

He appears in the page on the left on his way to work. Various people speak to him, which identifies him when you read the words, but for an artist, that is not enough; you can't let the text do your work for you. We must know who he is without text. But as you look at these two pages, you can tell, I am sure, without the words. He is walking by himself, center of attention, but he also is the only one wearing suspenders. This makes a particular difference in the image at the bottom, where we see him from behind and above. That's him alright, walking purposefully toward his office.

Character identification

Seth said in a letter to an emerging artist, "Try to design characters so that they are identifiable 360 degrees around...so you can ID the character from the back of the head so it gives you more options for angles to take in the scene and still keep things clear. You can use hats, clothes, a bird on their shoulder, whatever...."

When he drew these characters from Batman SNOW--Batman's crew of helpers--he was free to choose what they would look like. Some characters have a certain look they are supposed to have (Batman, of course), but some he could design however he wanted. Each of them needed to be unique, but not so unusual so as to be caricaturish. Here they are.

Gerard Van Daalen dresses in grey and has that haircut with the shaved sides.

Amy Ross has short hair and ALWAYS wears hats.

David Rubens is obese, and has that hair that flies back.

Mira Charan has long hair pulled back and wears suits.

Luis Diaz is the only one with no particular quirk in his look, but he has a slightly receeding hairline with tight curls, and a jutting jaw.

All in all, each one is identifiable from a small drawing or from behind, or even from above (since Seth does occasionally take that point of view).

matters of scale: Big in Japan

In the page on the right we see Iron Man next to the open hand of Grogg, the cow-faced megalosaurus. If we assume that Iron Man is about six feet tall, we could say that the span of Grogg's hand is a little over twice that, or roughly 15 feet wide. I did a cursory measurement of how many spans tall I am: about eight and a half. 8 1/2 times 15 equals 127.5 feet tall (or a little taller--he may be taller in relation to his hands than I am): about as tall as a 12-story building. So the size of his hand is consistent with the image on the left, where he is standing with his hands on top of a couple of buildings, but a few others are taller than he is. He is about as tall as a medium-size building in downtown Tokyo.

Seth talked to me a little bit about scale when he was drawing these monsters. He said that people don't know whether these monsters are 30 feet tall, or hundreds of feet tall. So he had to make that decision himself, and then make them consistent. There are places where he varied from that scale, either to make a point about HUGENESS, or just to play with scale. But when he did that, he did it deliberately.

Keeping things in scale

This is from a letter that Seth wrote to someone who had asked him for advice. (Thank you Steven.)
"Big Hint: Create location indicators to make panel transitions smooth. I wish I had a picture to show you.
"Imagine a checkerboard tiled wall with small circles all over the white tiles. Very distinctive. You shoot straight on with your character right in front of it. Now you have an identifiable SCALE and PATTERN that you can use again. Suppose a giant slug (it happens) crawls across the wall in the next frame. Normally you would have no way of noticing that the slug was huge without a scale cue like a hand or a salt shaker in the foreground, but you have it tagged now because you established it before. Also if you shoot that wall again anytime in the future, people will automatically remember that location and know where you are again, without you having to do an establishing shot again. You can use ANYTHING to give the reader a reference point that you can keep coming back to.... This is one of the most useful techniques around and even I don't use it enough. You take item A and item B and instead of relating them to each other, you relate each one visually to a new item C that you create. Really pulls things together."

I couldn't find an area where Seth did exactly what he was talking about above, but in the pages above, and in many other pictures of monsters, he used buildings and windows to show how big the monster was. He also used patterns on walls, floors, and ceilings to locate people in space. These two images show the same building from different angles, one from about second story level, which lets us see what the creature looks like, the other from the ground, which shows us the reactions of our heroes. Not only do we get the scale of the monster, but we also realize that we are looking at the same building under its feet, with its distinctive arched windows.