Reddit mentions: The best art history & criticism books

Even if this is supposed to be a part of something larger, it should have its own arc. You know what's supposed to happen as the author, so maybe to you, it seems like its fine. But you need to look and craft these things from the perspective of the audience.

I'll use, say, Cowboy Bebop as an example. It's almost entirely a series of self-contained episodes, save for a few episodes that touch on this relationship between Spike and Vicious. But, the self-contained episodes are often iterating and riffing on some of the same overall themes that these connected episodes are built on. Or, when they aren't, they're carried on pure entertainment value. They feel good. They're flat out fun to watch. Or they revel in the absurd, which ties into the show thematically and also rides pure entertainment value.

Fallout: New Vegas does this as well. Side-quests seem self-contained, more or less, but they build on your understanding of the world and they often build on this theme of nostalgia for the Old World, or Old World Blues, as the game eventually puts it. All of the companion character side-quests riff on this theme of clinging to the past or moving forward, the factions all follow in this theme (whether its the major factions modeling their selves after Old World powers or the Brotherhood of Steel finding that they don't belong in the world anymore, so they either need to adapt or cling to the past and die). All of these side quests are self-contained, thus having their own arc and feel satisfying to complete, but also they build on the overarching theme of the game and give the player something to think about once everything is said and done.

You can do this with your own work. You can figure out what it is that you want it to be about and make build on those themes, even just from the start. If you have ideas and themes you want to explore, you can explore them from the start in whatever way you want, and tie it all into something more grand later if you're telling an overall story, or just keep riffing on them in different self-contained scenarios. The main, best thing to keep in mind though is that if this is intended for an audience, you need to write it with the audience experience in mind. Your ideas could be incredible, but the audience would never know it if you've written it to be impenetrable to them, or just so boring that it's unlikely they'll continue to read to get to the good parts.

As an example, I love the show Eureka Seven. Somewhere towards the middle of its run, it has a small arc with a couple of characters named Ray and Charles that culminates in some of the best TV I've ever had the pleasure of seeing. But, I can almost never recommend this show to anyone. The first ~10 to 15ish episodes are a chore. The show sort of acts like you should know who all the characters are already, or doesn't give you a whole lot to work with in terms of giving you something to come back for. For this reason, it took me from when it aired back in 2005 all the way until 2014 to finally finish the show from front to back. There was a ton of good there, but it was so, so difficult to get to it through the start of the show.

So, Entertainment value. Have you read Fiona Staples' and Brian K Vaughan's Saga? The very first panel of the very first page oozes entertainment value, while also giving some great banter to help establish the characters and introduce us to the world. This is a strong opening, and even if there is some lull to the comic afterwards (which there may or may not be depending on your tastes), its given you a taste of what it is and a promise of what its capable of delivering. This is a really great thing to have. If you're aware of Homestuck, it's the GameFAQs FAQ that serves as the end of the comic's first Act that suddenly shows you how the comic will format itself: Lots of nonsensical goofing around until hitting an emotional climax that re-contextualizes the events you had just seen. This isn't at the start of the comic, but entertainment value carries the comic until that point, assuming you're into programming jokes and goofball shenanigans. But, this scene comes so comparatively late that it's likely you've already dropped the comic before getting to the "good part" if these jokes didn't carry the comic for you.

Actual Advice and Critique

Comics are hard, because, unless you have a writer or have an artist to partner with, you're doing both jobs, and the quality of the thing depends both on being well-written and well drawn (or at least some balance between the two that makes it palatable to read). I think that if you think in an actual episodic way, you could improve your writing a ton. With this comic, the arc would be "how did Lasereye become Lasereye?" It's potentially a pretty good premise, right? You'll establish a character and have plenty of chances to create entertaining scenarios because... It's your story! Lasereye became Lasereye in whatever way you decide he did. Go crazy, tell us a story! How did some young, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed kid turn into some dude in a slum with one eye glowing brighter than ever and the other dim and jaded? Telling this in three pages would actually be a great exercise.

Your art is rough in that it looks like you could use learning some base fundamental things like human anatomy. Your palette and the food stand itself reminds me of Kill Six Billion Demons though, which is great. You've created a good atmosphere in panels 1, 2, and the last panel on the last page, despite the artwork itself being rough. That's great! You know how a thing should feel. That's a great thing to have down pat that will only continue to be a boon as your technical skill improves (and it will if you work at it!). I think that if you buckle down and grind through learning how to draw, you could make very great, visually appealing work.

There's a problem in page flow on Page 2. Here I've shown how your page directs the eye with red lines. The way the page is laid out, you end up reading the fifth panel before you read the fourth panel, which will cause a reader to have to double back to read things in order. You don't want that. You'll wanna keep an eye out for how your pages read in the future. Just give them a once-over and ask where the eye would naturally go following the lines on the page.

So, if you aren't currently, learning human anatomy would be a great place to start placing effort. If you have access, figure drawing classes and the such would be a great way to start working on that. It helps immensely to have others around who can help you if you aren't sure what you're doing at first. Books on comics in general would be a good place to go as well. Understanding Comics and Making Comics, both by by Scott McCloud, are good introductory texts. Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative by Will Eisner and Comics and Sequential Art: Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist also by Will Eisner would be good as well.

For writing, Dan Harmon's Channel 101 guides will be great tutorials as he's one of the best working writers today in episodic TV. I'm aware this isn't directly comics, but the best writing advice is rarely going to come from a comics-focused book. Will Eisner will tell you how to use visuals to your advantage in telling a story, but the nitty-gritty of actually writing will have to come from somewhere else. The Hero of a Thousand Faces by Joseph Cambell may help you understand structure further. This is what Dan Harmon is riffing on and working off of with his Story Circles, but adapted slightly for the sake of episodic television. Film Crit Hulk, an online movie critic/ the Incredible Hulk has a screenwriting book called Screenwriting 101. It's invaluable. I highly recommend it, even if it isn't directly about comic writing. You'll be able to adapt the advice as you work in your own medium.

Ha, I knew it.

So, yes, we all face this issue in the creative space.
And honestly, it is a curse, it is probably the most damning thing that happens to our ability to work.
This book is all about that https://www.amazon.com/Art-Fear-Observations-Rewards-Artmaking/dp/0961454733
Interesting read if you want to read, but my main point with sharing the book is to let you know how common this issue is.

Now, the solution is, you suck, you need to accept that you suck, and you need to stop caring that you suck.
What you need to focus on is your love for music, your love for sound. That feeling you get when you press the keys using a synth with a cool sound or listen to a cool beat.

The problem really starts there, because while you produce, your love for music will so easily get trumped by the music that you love.
Do not do this, do not compare yourself to others like that.
They are different humans, with different experiences, and different lives, different brains. You will never be like them.

You are your own person, your own brain, your own experiences, and this is where your beauty lies.
People often tell you, when you want to pick up a girl just be yourself.
Well it's the same is with making music, just be yourself.
If what comes out of your head is beep boop beep, then make beep boop beep, do not feel shame for your simplicity, focus on the love of the sounds you choose, focus on the ideas that pop into your head and express them, no matter how primitive they sound to you.
Another link about this exact topic, little more esoteric.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHW1I8T0caI

Trust in your own ability to get better, do not compare yourself to others all the time, again, they are different people.
Don't buy a shirt because it looks cool on some dude, buy a shirt because you like it and it fits you.

In short, you are trying to climb a ladder starting at the top.
It's a very common feeling for all, we all have to go through this, the solution is to accept your suckage and try to improve yourself not by trying to be someone else, but to be a better you.
If that pulls you away from the music you love, let it pull you away.
If you find yourself making classical music or pop songs or punk or whatever instead of techno, let it pull you away. You need to set yourself free creatively, you need to relearn the joy of play.
To box yourself in with a genre or worse, music that you like, is extremely damning, especially if you are not well conscious of your own creativity etc.

Grab your instruments, play around, have fun. Drop some notes, drop some beats, just make music and play. If something does not feel right to you, tweak it until it does, but stay within yourself, trust your own gut, your own inspiration, stop the automatic response to start looking at other work to try and find their solutions.
Do look at other people work to study as you please, you can learn a lot, just do not do that while you are producing your own song.
Don't do so when you are trying to put yourself into your creative/expressive mindset.


Anyways, hope it helps, feel free to hit me up if you feel crappy about stuff. I have suffered this exact issue for years and years, it took me like 10 years to finally start to grasp the issue.

EDIT
more ranting

In more practical terms, I suggest you try to find your creative playful mindset.
If you are bored with a track and not inspired, fuck it, let it die, trying to finish so you can share it, will quickly kill your creative mindset, you need solid awareness of this conscious switch to be able to deal with it.
Do not try and make music like others, make the music that you hear in your head, even if it's just beep boop beep human music, hmm, I like it. You will get better and more expressive as you dig deeper, trust that.
Do not make drum patterns the way they are supposed to be, make drum patterns that sound good to you.
Use your hands and feet as much as you can, record things live using your midi keyboard, tweak after, it does not matter if you can't play piano, the point is to express yourself, using your body to do so is a much shorter road for your mind to fall into that mindset.
If you dance, then dance, do you know this moment while you are dancing and forgot to care you look stupid? That moment when you are just having pure fun and are feeling one with the music, flowing like some ninja or whatever? This is it, this is what you want to dig for.
Dance on your midi keyboard and record it, and tweak it after, with your dance recent midi keyboard dance still fresh in your memory.
Music is language, try and think of it like that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmKyySG6qp8
Listen to you beep boop beep, reply to it, maybe another boop? beep boop beep boop boop boop BAM! Whatever, have fun with it.

For me techno sounds like "yeh, yeh, let go, woohoo,, watch out, wait, wait watch out,, here we GO! yeh yeh yeh" It's primitive, stupidly retarded in a way, and gloriously fantastic.

Classical music is often like "can you hear it? can you? omg it is beatiful... no... no wait!.. it is happening again.. my love where have you gone?.. now I am here alone again.. waiting for you .. alone alone.. forever alone.. .. alone... NO NO NO I WILL NOT ACCEPT THIS.. FIGHT.. I will FIGHT!!!.. glory glory!! fight for glory!!"
It is more an emotional rollercoaster ride, which people find is more complex I suppose, fair enough.

EDIT

https://www.amazon.com/Art-Spirit-Robert-Henri/dp/0465002633/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0465002633&pd_rd_r=893TKNMA88H6YMF627F7&pd_rd_w=TcJuv&pd_rd_wg=temwA&psc=1&refRID=893TKNMA88H6YMF627F7
This book I also recommend, it's about painting, but the same ideas apply to pretty much any creative endevour

Hey! I graduated from IB in 2007 and did standard and higher level art, got a 6 out of 7 (I slacked a bit towards the end, senioritis). I then went on to do a 4 year Illustration program and graduated with a BFA. I hope you go down a similar path, art is very fulfilling and you seem to have some passion. Don't feel discouraged if your work doesn't yet match your ideas, you need to crank out tons of studies and eventually you'll feel yourself improving in leaps and bounds.

What IB really wants to see from you is a consistent theme. You've got a lot of experimentation in different media which is great, but I recommend you get some inspiration from art history. Just straight up copy old masters, if you see an old painting that you enjoy try to duplicate it and you'll understand it in a way you could never imagine. Try you hand at things like chalk pastels (Nu Pastel is a good brand), charcoal, watercolor, maybe even some oil paint. Avoid using small scratchy lines all the time, try flipping charcoal on its side and making broad strokes or get some powdered graphite and apply with a brush. A quote I try to live by: "Big artists use big brushes."

Find one or two types of media that really appeal to you and run with it, struggle with it, learn from it, study it, become bored with it, master it. I did digital painting for the most part which was sort of cutting-edge at the time and scored me some originality points and still to this day I work in that style.

Contemplate what you think is an interesting theme to make a series of artworks about, go to a local art gallery or museum and see how other artists approach themes. Get inspiration everywhere and write it down, lyrics in songs, things on the news, ideas in the shower. I did 'Creation / Destruction' as my theme and focused on the duality of the two through mythical stories of gods, warfare, self esteem and perception, yatta yatta. You're in high school, remember that this is a good time to just noodle around, try crazy shit, don't worry about being judged for failing, failure makes you better because you learn what not to do. And originality isn't the most important thing, imitate the art you love and once you feel you understand it you can tweak it.

Here's the biggest secrets I never knew in high school. Artworks are broken down into a few essential components, if you keep these concepts in mind you'll do much better.

1. Color is composed of a few parts - value (lightness and darkness), hue (red, green, blue, etc.), temperature (cool or warm), and saturation (how gray the color is). You can have a dark, cool, desaturated red or you could have a dark, warm, saturated red. When you're trying to paint skintones or landscapes, ask yourself - how dark is this color? What hue is this color? Is it cool or warm? Is it gray or saturated?
   
   
2. Take your artwork into photoshop or any editing program and turn it to grayscale or desaturate it. If your art works in black and white, you can apply any color on top of it and it will still work. This is why the art of people like Andy Warhol works, even though the hue is crazy out of control nonsense, the value (lightness and darkness) matches so your eye can read it properly.
   
   
3. When you are drawing from observation, squint to see value and open your eyes to see color. Squinting helps so much, it fuzzes out your vision and will remove a lot of unnecessary detail. When you squint you will only see the most important forms, the lightest and darkest areas.
   
   
4. Reflected light is important for creating realism. When light hits a surface, it bounces off and casts light on the sides of other objects. A sphere, for example, will have a bit of light in the shadow area because it bounces off the table and hits the bottom part. Keep an eye out for this, do studies of things on your desk and learn how light works in reality.
   
   
5. Never center anything. View objects on the page inside of 'envelopes' that encompass their widest points and move these around abstractly. Don't line up the tops or bottoms, keep them uneven, keep the shapes significantly different. I was taught that people usually cannot perceive a change in size unless it's at least twice as big or small. Try to have one center of interest and a couple areas of lesser interest. View your composition as a dart target where the bullseye is the most interesting part and the outer radiating circles are increasingly less important. You should view your center of interest like a shiny jewel. If you surround it in other shinier stuff it won't be as impressive because it won't pop out. But if you put it in a nice velvet box with a subdued but gorgeous color suddenly that gem seems very beautiful.
   
   
6. Few things are ever fully black or fully white. When you are observing a black object, ask yourself if you can imagine a black that's darker than what you're looking at. If 0 is black and 10 is white, a 1 is a very natural darkness. A 9 would work in the brightest highlight on the object. Most objects are a middle tone between 3-7 including skin. Black and white are also boring, instead of black try a super dark color. Instead of white try a really bright hue. Think mostly about temperature, do I want a warm feeling or a cool feeling?
   
   
7. Most objects have a warm-cool relationship when hit by light. Go outside and look at a rock. If it's cool, overcast day, you might notice the light is cool and the shadow is warmer. Not way warmer, but maybe it's a more reddish purple instead of blue. Or go outside when the sun is low and check out how warm the light is. Orangey red tones on everything, but look at the shadows and you'll see beautiful cool blues and purples.
   
   The books I'd recommend are:
   
   The Story of Painting
   
   Imaginative Realism
   
   Everything by Andrew Loomis (Free!)
   
   Classical Painting Atelier
   
   View these websites:
   
   http://www.linesandcolors.com/
   
   http://www.googleartproject.com/
   
   http://gregnewbold.blogspot.com/
   
   http://beardedroman.com/
   
   http://www.artrenewal.org/
   
   Good luck! My website is www.caycegoldberg.com so feel free to contact me if you want critiques or advice or whatever. And don't let the stress of IB take you down, stick through it. It's a tremendous struggle but it gives you a huge leg up on life, you'll appreciate it forever.

Yeah, man. Look, I hope you didn't think I was being too harsh. I tried to make constructive criticism.

I will say this: I really appreciate hearing when artists try things that are different and out of the ordinary. Its necessary, and I will always support artists who try things differently more than artists who tread the same tired waters in a more polished way.

Yes, you could use some practice in the application of your ideas. But I hope this will be a fire under your ass a little to focus in on taking the little elements that you like about what you do, and find a way to do them better. That's where the true magic happens as an artist.

I'm reading a book right now called "So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love" by Cal Newport.

The main idea of the book is breaking down the idea of being motivated to do what you do based on passion, and how that's an idea that can be dangerous. He says we can think about our work in two ways. There is the passion mindset, and the craftsman mindset.

• In the passion mindset, our focus is on what value our work will bring us.
  
  
• In the craftsman mindset, our focus is on what value we can bring to our work.
  
  The passion mindset leads us to find more heartbreak and creative blocks in our workflow because of our expectations for the kind of feelings and value we perceive our work to be adding to our life.
  
  The craftsman mindset however, is much more fulfilling, realistic, and helpful in the long run. Our minds become not consumed with the grandiose ideas of how amazing our work is, and instead are focused on how we can improve them. This ultimately leads to a point where our work is undoubtedly much more full of value, because of all the energy we put into giving our work value. We can't help but feel the value in our work. We don't have to rely on vague abstractions of passion and trying to stay optimistic with our work, because we know exactly how much work we put into it.
  
  I have found this to be especially true, and there are a lot of other theories and things I've found along the way that support it too.
  
  The book mentions Ira Glass's Famous quote on advice for beginners. The idea that we've got to just keep working and learning and improving and not focus on how good our work is. Here's a really nicely animated version of the short speech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1oZhEIrer4
  
  Then there's the famous 10,000 hour idea from Malcom Gladwell's book Outliers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_%28book%29) The idea that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a master. I always take that with a grain of salt, but there is something to it. I generally take it though that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberately working on getting better to become a true master. 10,000 hours of casual playing will make you a master at casual playing. Like Kenny G. (who I still consider a master, by the way. He's the best at what he does, even if what he does is fucking simple)
  
  Another of my favorites is the story from the book "Art & Fear" (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0961454733/lifeclever-20?tag=lifeclever-20) about the pottery teacher who turned one semester class into an experiment. He split the class into two halves. One half were told they would be graded on only one pot that they could spend all semester working on, and the other class were told they would be graded on the amount of pots they created. The long story short is that the side of the class who took all semester working on one pot had inferior pots than the side of the class who wasn't graded on the quality of work, but by the quantity they produced. The side who made a lot of pots gave themselves so many opportunities to learn from their mistakes simply because they gave themselves the freedom to make them. Once you do something so many times, little changes each time mean you find a better method. There is only so much you can do to improve when the approach hasn't been practiced, and all the fundamental skills haven't been repeated over and over.
  
  Something that can help us to keep in this mindset is from one of my favorite books "The Artists Way" by Julia Cameron (http://www.amazon.com/The-Artists-Way-Julia-Cameron/dp/1585421464) She suggests a practice to help artists work through creative blocks by a process of freewriting with a pen and paper, a practice she recommends for every kind of artist. She suggest starting every single day out with writing 3 pages of longhand writing without stopping. The only rule is to not stop. You write and write, even if you have to repeat stupid things over and over because you can't think of anything else. You come up with ways to keep yourself from stopping by writing about your day, or your grocery list, or saying "this is stupid" over and over. Anything to keep you from stopping. It gets the juices out and you keep going and going, and going. You practice getting over the fear of making the mistakes. You are practicing your art. Free expression where there are no mistakes. You practice coming up with ways to keep going. Then when you are done with the three pages, you close up the notebook and you don't read over it. You are done with the pages and you move on with your day. There is no reason to look over what you wrote since you are not critiquing what you wrote. The process is about getting over creative blocks and creatively acting without hesitation. I've found this practice to be invaluable.
  
  Some advice that started to help me was to not spend too much time on each of my songs deliberating over details, until I was good enough where it was hurting the final product to not dive in deeper. I also don't listen to my tracks over after finishing. Instead, when I finish a song, or make a recording. I listen to it and set it aside and begin working on something else. After at least a day, or sometimes more, I listen to it with a notepad and take notes as objectively as I can, and try to find ways in which I would have improved on the song. Things I could have done better or approached differently. If its a couple of small things, I might fix them right there, but if its a bunch of bigger things, I just appreciate that I learned a lot from that song and try to incorporate what I learned into a new song to practice it.
  
  All of these all point toward the same thing, and I hope you find some of the advice useful if you try it out. I'm not telling you this because I think your music sucks, but because I think you have what it takes because of how you are trying things outside of the ordinary.
  
  My ideas to all artists: Abandon thoughts of your work being brilliant. Focus on keeping moving. Let yourself make terrible music. Learn from your mistakes without getting down on yourself. One finished song that you had to think creatively to get to work even though it sucked, is a better use of your time than 20 unfinished alright ideas sitting as loops. If you do like making lots of loops, export them as audio loops and churn them out like an assembly line. Don't deliberate on every move when your time would be better spend actively working through a block. In art, mistakes is where magic happens. Hone in on your mistakes and see if you can let them dictate the direction of where your song goes. Focus on improving your skills instead of feeling good about being an artist.
  
  I hope this wasn't just a bunch of gibberish. Let me know what you think about this kind of stuff if you're interested. I'm always down to talk about it when I can't be making music.

I am going to art school and have been drawing and painting for a few years now. I offer up a few suggestions, mostly things that helped me starting out. I run the risk of sounding like a know-it-all or a snob, but I'm just hoping to offer up what little things I've learned along the way. I don't claim to be an accomplished artist, but just someone who was where you were once, and took similar advice from people who had been doing it longer than me. I hope to humbly pass on some of the things that were passed on to me.

I mostly use oils, but the startup for oils is a little more expensive. I would consider trying them out sometime, because they offer a little more freedom in what you can do with them, but you don't need them to learn to paint. You can mimic a lot of these capabilities with acrylics. With oils, you mix the paint with medium to adjust the viscosity of the paint. You can paint thick, chunky strokes, or have nice smooth flowing strokes, just by how much medium you add. Acrylic is water based, so try adding some water as you paint to adjust the viscosity, it will give you more control and more options. I'd suggest going to an auto parts store and getting a little oil squirter can, (yes, like the tin man had) and you can squirt small amounts of water on your pallet next to each puddle of paint and mix it in with your brush as you apply it. Less messy that way. (I think other people have mentioned this, they've got the right idea.)

Another thing that gives oils an advantage is working time. They take an incredibly long time to dry, which gives you lots of time to work in transitions and shadows while the paint is still wet. To achieve this with acrylics, which have a relatively fast dry time, try using some retarder in your paint. It's a clear, gel like substance that when mixed with the paint, helps keep it from drying, without changing the color or consistency. This gives you more freedom to work, and keeps you from being restricted by time (as much). You might be able to get it at a big box art store, but I recommend finding a smaller, locally owned one. People tend to know their shit in the smaller, local kinds of stores, and will be more helpful at answering questions, and have a better selection.

Another piece of advice I'd give is to learn a little bit of color theory, and practice mixing colors. My professor always said that you should never use a color straight from the tube, because chances are it wasn't really the color you need, and that if you look closer, the color you really want is a mix of a few things you have. He used to say "You think that winsor newton knew exactly what color you needed there?". It mostly just helps you look and see more specifically. 80% of painting is seeing more specifically, and getting your hand, brain, and eye to work as a unit. The book "Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green" Is one of the better books on color theory and mixing with paint. Check it out. You can practice by finding something, and trying to mix that exact color, holding them side by side to test it. You'll find often that 3, 4, maybe 5 different tube colors mix to make the one color you need. Being able to mix any color you want will open doors for you and let you have more options.

Also, try painting on large canvases/paper. Giving yourself more room to work is a big thing that helped me starting out. I was still gaining control over the paint and brush, and bigger space made it easier to hone those skills and fit more detail in. You can make your own canvases for a fraction of the store bought price, message me if you're interested in that, I could write up a quick how to.

I think you're going to notice yourself improve greatly over time, you'll gain control over your brush, the paint, and then anything's possible. I think you've already got a good eye for things, and this painting looks pretty good, damn good for a 3rd painting. My third painting was in black and white (hadn't even ventured into color yet) and it was a sloppy mess. You've got strong compositional lines here, nice color choices, and a good sense of depth. It looks like you're trying out a little bit of an impressionist style, which is good. Find awesome paintings/painters, and learn from them by imitating. Once you've imitated some of the things they do, you'll have learned a little more and will be able to find what you want to do.

Most of all, practice a lot. Hope this is encouraging, if you like it, keep at it. Also, another must read is "Art and Fear" Good luck!

There's a ton of advice I could give you - and I'll try to throw a bunch of it at you - but keep in mind I've barely begun this process myself. This is what I can tell you based on what I've observed, take it as you will.

My first piece of advice is to do the thing you said you never do. Put them down to paper. These little scenes and random thoughts you have swimming through your head are exactly where "we all find ideas to start from." It could be a simple scene in the middle of a larger story, it could be the very last words you want to someone to hear. Regardless of what it is, put it down on paper. I always carry a small moleskin notebook with me and have gotten into the habit of just jotting down something whenever it goes through my head. When you're used to just thinking of things, it's a little jarring at first to stop and write it down, but believe me - it will be worth it. This is the fountain of ideas you're looking for.

Arguably the most important thing I can tell you, is to write. Don't worry about whether it's formatted right, if you've structured your characters enough, or if you've done a good outline. Write. Whenever, wherever, as much as you can. You're only going to get better at writing by writing.

That being said, worry about format, structure, and outlines. And what I mean by that, is look back on the work you did, figure out where you could have done better and the next time try to do that. The first thing I ever wrote, I did without thinking about my characters, what they really meant, their back story, the environment they lived in, and said to hell with an outline. After it was finished, I knew for my next project that this had to change.

Consume the media you want to create. Not only should you actively read comics, you should try to consume anything that gives you insight to the business and how other people work. This is a list of books I bought and think have been extremely helpful. They give insight into the importance of creating characters, environments, etc before you even begin a script. I've listed them in the order I personally liked from best to still pretty damn good

• Writing Comics & Graphic Novels by Peter David
  
• Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative by Will Eisner
  
• Writing for Comics by Alan Moore
  
• Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
  
• Making Comics by Scott McCloud
  
• Panel One: Comic Book Scripts by Top Writers by various
  
  The last one is great because you get to see the various script styles of in-the-business writers. For comics, I also actively listen to these podcasts:
  
  
• The Process - great podcast centered directly on writing for comics. I honestly cannot recommend this enough, and have yet to find one I like better than this.
  
• Nerdist Writers Panel - while this isn't for comics, it gives you great insight on writing in general. It's geared for TV, which I think translates to comics relatively well (in some respects).
  
  In addition to all that, I follow /r/writing and try to stay active on this subreddit. We've done a few writing prompts, which I think are great ways to get you writing - though I wish more people would take part.
  
  JoshLees has compiled a larger list of resources, definitely take a look at that. The above listed things are what I consume personally.
  
  That's all I have for now, and the community can feel free to correct me or add to it, but other than that good luck!

I am an artist that has studied narrative a decent amount and I also tutor art, narrative, math and english. I love talking about this stuff! I was not 100% sure this has been added yet, but the Hero's Journey is a great place to start understanding narrative when you are new to story telling. It's pretty much a drag and drop scenario template, and is referenced in every story boarding class I've ever taken. It's basically story telling 101. Yes it is insanely overdone, BUT it is overdone because it flippin' works if you do it right. Star Wars(The original three) is a perfect example of the Hero's Journey.

Here are some resources on the Hero's Journey, Sometimes called the Hero's Tale, and classically known as the Monomyth:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
http://www.thewritersjourney.com/hero's_journey.htm

This book was probably my favorite book on storytelling. It goes beyond just the Hero's journey and really explains narrative told without using words, visual media is different then just writing a story.

http://www.amazon.com/Graphic-Storytelling-Visual-Narrative-Instructional/dp/039333127X


Lastly, I'll just add a few comments about what I've learned after studying it all. I am pretty passionate about this stuff and have been since I was a kid!

"There are the things that happen in a story, and then there is why they happen." This is a statement my first story boarding teacher said and its stuck with me for years. Understand the difference. Recognize character motivation vs surface level events.

The exact story my teacher made up was: With his fathers permission, a 10 year old boy goes to the corner store to buy milk for the first time.

Going to buy the milk is what happens in the story, but this story is really about a boy hitting a milestone and coming of age. Its the first time his family has trusted and depended on him alone to do something. The fact that it is getting milk is nearly irrelevant without the meaning behind it grabbing the audience. Be willing to change the surface details in order to tell a better story. Go with the meaning over surface every dang time.

Start simple then expand. If the audience understands why your characters are doing the things they do, then they can support it. If people don't know why the villian is being so evil, or why the good guy or gal is even pursuing a resolution of the story then the audience will typically be indifferent.

Much like what cleavetv said he does, "Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the President?" It's not a bad way to start a story. Your story ultimately should be able to broken down into a sentence and this gives you guidance and clarity. A one sentence breakdown delivers a clear message and avoids convolution. Its the thesis statement of your story. If you start writing something off track or get lost in the process, just stop and go directly back to that first sentence!!!! It is your guiding light. If it is strong then your story will be strong.

One last thing about starting simple. Starting simple provides a foundation, then you can make your story more complex as you go. I know writers and directors that are obsessed with telling a complex story. "I WANT TO WRITE THE MATRIX! OR INCEPTION! OR SOMETHING WAY CRAZIER THAT WILL BLOW PEOPLES MINDS!" So they start by trying to do some crazy thing or gimmick and get completely lost and convolution sets in (btw The Matrix basically follows the Hero's Journey exactly.)

Study your favorite stories. Think long and hard about why you love the stories you do. Use them as reference. Tell a story you want tell. It makes it way easier to do so, because good stories take a long time to write typically.

Finally, I'll frame this in a way game devs will be interested! So you got this awesome game mechanic, but you want to tell a story, and its seems impossible to blend the two. The key is thinking about your mechanic and how it functions and then linking it back to the real world. Does it have characters? If it does then sending a character on a mission to find something is the classic way to do this, obviously. Mario, Megan Man, Zelda, etc., in the early days stuck with that formula and it works. But if you have a mechanic like tetris then the story becomes much harder to write. Why do we have to move these tetris shapes around? Maybe you're an astronaut that has to maintain the balance in a ship manually moving these shapes to keep your engines from exploding. Or its an ancient tribal ritual every tribesman must endure in order to become a full fledged adult member of the tribe. Once the meaning is derived you can flush out the GUI and cut scenes and music from there!

TLDR Learn about the Hero's Journey, Think about character motivation and the narrative having a deep meaning, think about how your game mechanic relates to the real world and functions in order to frame a story around it.

EDIT 1: After taking 5 minutes to reflect, I wanted to acknowledge that not every game needs a story. Tetris works great without one. If you feel your mechanic lends itself to narrative then go for it, it can be a lot fun writing a story and creating your own world. But if its just not working, don't be afraid to go without one.

I will post some of my favorite books in a second for you as soon as my computer gets turned on. :)

Here are a couple of my favorites from my school "Hey, I actually like these.. I'm going to purchase them!" collection.

General Graphic Design:

Graphic Design: The New Basics

This publication does a great job of showing "relationships between formal elements of two-dimensional design such as point, line, plane, scale, hierarchy, layers, and transparency." If you are looking for a general overview on a lot of subjects within graphic design I think this is a great way to upgrade your vocabulary and general knowledge about graphic design.


Graphic Design Theory: Readings from the Field

I feel like this book really can help you improve your vocabulary and general knowledge of the graphic design world offering "primary texts from the most important historical and contemporary designthinkers." It's also nice that it offers a bit of history too, analyzing the early 1900s through today.


Making and Breaking the Grid: A Graphic Design Layout Workshop

Great. Absolutely great publication for all designers showing effective use of the grid system and how to layout your compositions. "Effective layout is essential to communication and enables the end user to not only be drawn in with an innovative design but to digest information easily."


Typography: <3

30 Essential Typefaces for a Lifetime

I loooooove this book. It gives a bit of history and usage examples of 30 amazing typefaces you should know and love.


Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, and Students

Another great typography book. This publication was one of my favorites because, at the end of the day, I'm a visual person and this book has SO many visual examples to compliment it's copy it's beautiful. "This revised edition includes ... the latest information on style sheets for print and the web, the use of ornaments and captions, lining and non-lining numerals, the use of small caps and enlarged capitals, as well as information on captions, font licensing, mixing typefaces, and hand lettering."


Typographic Systems of Design

This is a very good resource for learning, as the title states, typographic systems. It "explores eight major structural frameworks beyond the gridincluding random, radial, modular, and bilateralsystems." Overall, I feel like this book helped me to improve my positioning and creative use of type in designs.

Here you go, ladies.

Pegging. Thoughts?

• No thank you. Even if he asked for it, I’d be worried about doing him an injury by mistake. Not a sexy feeling.
  
  
  How old were you when you lost your virginity?
  
  
• 15.
  
  
  If you could change it, would you make it earlier or later?
  
  
• The date is less relevant than the individual I chose. I’d change the person.
  
  
  Do you like using toys in the bedroom?
  
  
• On my own, yes. Though much less often, now that I have the miracle of sexy audios. I prefer my hand.
  
  What is your go to song for when you are
  
  
• a) sad - Uno, Ludovico Einaudi
  
  
• b) contemplative - Gong Meditation
  
  
• c) happy - Get Lucky, Pharrell Williams. I associate it with walking into the Louvre in Paris.
  
  
• d) head over heels smitten - To each man his own song, but in the past I've swooned to Simply Beautiful (Al Green) and Keep Them Kisses Comin' (Craig Campbell)
  
  
  When was the last time you laughed a lovely laugh full of mirth?
  
  
  
• Last week. Something a friend said in response to another friend, that cracked me up. Extremely not-PC remarks about Easter between a Catholic and a Jew. The kind of thing only two very good friends could get away with riffing on.
  
  
  What is your favourite colour and what does it signify?
  
  
• All the colors. What I wear entirely depends on my mood and my whim. I'll admit my closet and drawers are color coded. For your reading pleasure, this is an excellent book about the origins of pigments; [Color: A Natural History of the Palette](https://www.amazon.com/Color-Natural-History-Victoria-Finlay/dp/0812971426/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0812971426&pd_rd_r=WPK9M49AJFY6BVCG98HN&pd_rd_w=cAyMT&pd_rd_wg=sySho&psc=1&refRID=WPK9M49AJFY6BVCG98HN
  ), by Victoria Finlay. It is well worth your time.
  
  
  And the SUNDAY SPECIAL for this week:
  Your favourite on screen villains/ vamps of all time...
  
  
• Total fail here, ladies. I got as far as whoever shot Bambi’s mother, the eponymous star of Alien, and was wondering if Hitler counts (because he is in so many movies) when I stalled out. Was pondering horrible characters, when I realized that if they are good at being villains I don’t like them, so the concept of having favorites doesn’t really work for me.
  
  
  
  

> The problem is I don't know where to start, every video/guide talks about picking the favorite character and read about it, but that's not what I want to hear

Why didn't you like the "pick your favorite character and read about it" advice? That's, imo, the best way to get into superhero comics.

> I concluded that there is different origin story for each character in each one of the events

What do you mean by "in each one of the events"? Every character's origin has been re-told MANY times. People will recommend a "best" origin, but it's not definitive, actually, it's very subjective. TBH, origin stories are kind of a new reader trap. They adhere to the beginning, middle, and end storytelling structure of "complete" self-contained stories people have come to expect from other entertainment mediums. Comics are decades-long ongoing stories. It's like a TV show with 100 seasons and every 40 seasons it get's "rebooted"—the characters are the same, but they have to find creative ways (e.g. time travel, multiverses) to change the actors/directors/writers out because they got too old/ran out of story ideas. How many times do you want to hear about Batman's parents dying before it gets EXTREMELY tiresome/boring?

Anyway, here's my copy/pasta for new readers (let me know if you have questions):

DC Starter Guide
--

---

How to Get Into Comic Books (13:40) | Patrick Willems

Consider your intent/commitment. Think about your favorite stories/characters from TV, movies, games, books, etc. Do you seek quality storytelling or encyclopedic Marvel knowledge? Plan to collect? What time/resources are available i.e. how many comics (per character) could/should be read before burning out?

Don’t try to read everything—there’s too much. Forget about “catching up”, continuity, universes, and timelines; it's all very confusing, even to creators/fans. Older comics can be an acquired taste for modern audiences, so first appearances/early origins may not be the best starting points. Creative teams change often, characters get re-worked, and origins are re-told (e.g. I never cared for Aquaman until Geoff Johns’ run).

Pick an interesting character/team and seek their “greatest hits”. Don’t get stuck “preparing”, just start reading. Focus on well-received, relatively self-contained, and complete stories. You may encounter the occasional unexplained reference/character/event—just ride along (Wiki if necessary). Remember, there are so many other great characters and publishers to explore, and not all comics are about superheroes.

Where to buy (US):

• Digital: Marvel Unlimited, Comixology, e-library (e.g. Hoopla - free), webcomics (free)
  
• Print (collected editions): instocktrades, ISBNS, library (free)
  
• Print (singles): midtowncomics, mycomicshop, DCBS
  
  Modern DC characters/teams:
  
  
• Animal Man | Grant Morrison
  
• Animal Man | Jeff Lemire
  
• Aquaman | Johns & Parker
  
• Batman: Year One | Frank Miller
  
• Batman: The Long Halloween | Jeph Loeb
  
• Batman: Hush | Jeph Loeb
  
• Batman | Scott Snyder
  
• Batwoman: Elegy | Greg Rucka
  
• Birds of Prey | Gail Simone
  
• DC: The New Frontier | Darwyn Cooke
  
• Flash | Mark Waid
  
• Flash | Geoff Johns
  
• Gotham Central | Brubaker & Rucka
  
• Green Arrow: Year One | Andy Diggle
  
• Green Arrow | Kevin Smith
  
• Green Arrow | Jeff Lemire
  
• Green Lantern | Geoff Johns
  
• JLA (Justice League) | Morrison & Waid
  
• Justice League | Geoff Johns
  
• Kingdom Come | Mark Waid
  
• Omega Men | Tom King
  
• Suicide Squad | John Ostrander
  
• Secret Six (Suicide Squad) | Gail Simone
  
• Superman: Birthright | Mark Waid
  
• Superman: All-Star Superman | Grant Morrison
  
• Superman: American Alien | Max Landis
  
• Swamp Thing | Snyder & Soule
  
• New Teen Titans | Marv Wolfman
  
• Watchmen | Alan Moore
  
• Wonder Woman | Greg Rucka
  
• Wonder Woman | Brian Azzarello
  
  Alternatively, you can skip to the recent Rebirth re-launch by reading the DC Universe: Rebirth event and then any Rebirth series #1. /r/DCcomics sidebar for more info.
  
  Events/crossovers can be fun and/or tedious. They are most appreciated by readers already well-versed in relevant continuity. Generally, the best non-event comics integrate these seamlessly or avoid them entirely (notwithstanding editorial/executive mandates). Regardless, you may want to familiarize with major plot points.
  
  Modern DC events/crossovers:
  
  
• Crisis on Infinite Earths | Marv Wolfman
  
• Identity Crisis | Brad Meltzer
  
• Infinite Crisis | Geoff Johns
  
• 52 | Geoff Johns, et al.
  
• Final Crisis | Grant Morrison
  
• Blackest Night | Geoff Johns
  
• Flashpoint | Geoff Johns
  
• Forever Evil | Geoff Johns
  
• The Multiversity | Grant Morrison
  
• Darkseid War | Geoff Johns
  
• DC Universe: Rebirth | Geoff Johns
  
  DC also publishes varied-genre, creator-owned comics for “mature readers” under separate imprints (e.g. Vertigo):
  
  
• Daytripper | Fabio Moon
  
• Hellblazer (Constantine) | Delano, Ennis, et al.
  
• Planetary | Warren Ellis
  
• Saga of the Swamp Thing | Alan Moore
  
• Sandman | Neil Gaiman
  
• Scalped | Jason Aaron
  
• Sleeper | Ed Brubaker
  
• Transmetropolitan | Warren Ellis
  
• Preacher | Garth Ennis
  
• Y: The Last Man | Brian K Vaughan
  
  Discover your preferences and let them guide you. Do you like: old/new comics? Specific genres? Literary/natural narratives? Cartoony/realistic art? Familiar/weird concepts? References/self-contained? Social/political commentary? Family-friendly/explicit content? Optimism/pessimism? Have you noticed that a specific artist/writer consistently makes comics you like? Follow these instincts.
  
  Suggestions to improve this guide are welcome.
  
  EDIT: Added Jeff Parker run to Aquaman recommendation
  
  
  

Nah, I honestly can't stand superhero comics unless there's something really special about them. That said, sry, but one of my first recommendations is a marvel comic called [Runaways] (https://www.comixology.com/Runaways-Vol-1/comics-series/1029)
'Six couples meet up every year for a party and each year each couple brings their child. This year, the children decide to find out what is so special about this annual party, only to find the parents committing murder!'
Maybe it's just because I grew up with the series, but the characters and their development just feels really sincere and organic.
Now, onto stuff you might like a little better:

• [SAGA] (http://www.amazon.com/Saga-Vol-Brian-K-Vaughan/dp/1607066017/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405020051&sr=8-1&keywords=saga) is an ongoing space-operay type romance/adventure books that's pretty hard to describe. It's crazy imaginative, but again has great writing and sincere characters. Plus the art is gorgeous.
  
  
• [Punk Rock Jesus] (http://www.amazon.com/Punk-Rock-Jesus-Sean-Murphy/dp/1401237681) is a graphic novel that sounds like it might be fitting to your interests. It's about a future where they are able to extract enough dna material from the shroud of turin to produce a clone of the biblical Jesus Christ, there by manually bringing about the second coming of Christ and being able to televise it all. From his birth, to him growing up as a baby. Uhg, sorry but I just think that plot is so cool.
  
  
• [Daytripper] (http://www.amazon.com/Daytripper-Gabriel-Ba/dp/1401229697/ref=pd_sim_b_63?ie=UTF8&refRID=1GD0G6GZC9VN6R8S50V6) is also worth checking out.
  'DAYTRIPPER follows the life of one man, Bras de Olivias Dominguez. Every chapter features an important period in Bras’ life in exotic Brazil, and each story ends the same way: with his death. And then, the following story starts up at a different point in his life, oblivious to his death in the previous issue – and then also ends with him dying again. In every chapter, Bras dies at different moments in his life, as the story follows him through his entire existence – one filled with possibilities of happiness and sorrow, good and bad, love and loneliness.' It's down to earth and realistic, while still having enough room for imagination and beauty to keep it interesting.
  
  Hopefully that's a wide enough spread to where something might look interesting. Most libraries carry at least one of these books.

It's a good thing you're not cutting anymore...

​

Hey, I didn't even go to prom junior year and didn't have a date senior year. To be trite, it gets better. I'm guessing you're not even 18 yet, but people do get less shallow/more mature over time. A lot of the shorter dudes I know (myself included, at 5'5" - and my dad is 5' flat) ended up doing just fine. Here are some things you can do:

​

1. Bulk up. It's an easy way to compensate for a lack of verticality. Plus, it'll give you a hobby and something to talk about, even if mostly with gym bros and fit chicks. You should also make sure to dress well. You don't have to "peacock" or any of that nonsense, just make sure your clothes fit and don't clash. You can compensate with shortness a little with a hairstyle like a faux-hawk or something, too.
   
2. Get charismatic and confident! There are tons of resources out there on how to develop good social skills, make good conversation, and come across as super interesting. Of course, you can only come across as super interesting by:
   
3. Becoming an interesting person. Find a cool hobby (or job) and get good at it, develop a good sense of humor, get well-informed and worldly. Maybe pick up a martial art or something similarly badass (I'm biased, as I'm a black belt and instructor).
   
   ​
   
   It's absolutely unfair and absolutely sucks. Unlike weight, you have essentially zero control over it. You *will* have to work harder than someone taller. To the extent that it forces you to work on yourself, though, it's also a good thing.
   
   ​
   
   Peter Dinklage is 4'4" and married to a total babe. It's not by any means hopeless.
   
   ​
   
   For reference:
   
   https://www.youtube.com/user/charismaoncommand
   
   https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe0TLA0EsQbE-MjuHXevj2A
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Art-Shen-Ku-Intergalactic-Universe/dp/0399527257

Again, doing one exhibit on all of comics is really difficult not only because of its narrative nature, but for narrowing it down to what to pick amongst so many great talents. Will Eisner is my honorary mention. Mostly because I can't find something online that shows how great his work can be. The best I could do was some of the great title pages and covers he did for The Spirit. But if you are really interested I recommend The Best of The Spirit. Considering the entire Spirit Archives collection spans 27 volumes, The Best of The Spirit is a great place to start with his work.

I feel like you've been hammered here because of the amateurish nature of your work. Honestly though, I'm pretty sure that's why you came here, knowing that it wasn't up to par, and wanting to know how to change that. Here are some things that I would focus on if I were you:

Typography: By this, I don't mean using different typefaces, but rather the study of how to structure information in a legible manner. I work as a wireframer right now, and everything that I do is Arial. Because of that, I have a maniacal focus on size, leading, value, and block shapes to create a hierarchical system on a grid. A lot of it comes from practice, but I can also recommend some books, Thinking with Type, Designing with Type, Making and Breaking the Grid, and The Mac is Not a Typewriter. Typography is one of the most requested skills by design directors because it is hard and can be very bland, but it is absolutely vital for successful work.

Balance and Rhythm: When you are designing pieces, one of the important things to consider is the structure of negative and positive space. This structure influences the way that the piece is read, and the way that people move through the information. You seem to rely on center aligning things a lot, which is dangerous because it creates no action or movement. This topic isn't as advanced as typography so it's harder to give specific resources, but you can find information on this in any basic design text. I enjoyed Alex White's fundamentals book.

Style and Illustration: The type is amateurish, but what makes the work feel dated is the illustration style. When digital illustration was younger and the tools were rougher, the sort of illustration that I see in your portfolio was very common. The most recent trend has been "Flat", but honestly, anything that can complement or hide the digital nature of its creation can work. If you really would like illustration to be a continued part of your work, I would find some tutorials to really strengthen your Illustrator and Photoshop skills, perhaps stuff from Skillshare or Lynda, or even just internet tutorials.

In General: So to be blunt, you do have a long way to go, I'm not going to sugar coat that. That being said, you do have 2 things extremely in your favor right now.

1. You produce a lot of work. You're getting practice.
   
   
2. You know something is wrong. You're looking for a way to improve.
   
   Ira Glass has a really incredible short piece about creative work that describes the place where you are caught right now. Your taste is not aligning with your skills. You have taken the first step in the right direction, so now you need to go study more and keep seeking critique (Not criticism). Whether that is on design_critiques, or from a colleague or friend doesn't matter. Find a place where someone who is better than you can tell you what isn't working and challenge your status quo.
   
   Good luck, and keep at it!

I have some experience with webcomics. I write and draw Miamaska, which has been going on for 2+years, and I'm about to start my second comic next month.

General advice for web comickers!

(or: How I learned things the hard way and eventually stumbled into a good system)

• Always have a buffer. Always update on time. Be dependable, your readers won't invest in your story if you seem flaky.
  
  
• Don't do video/audio or fullpage ads. New readers will close your tab out of annoyance, and those that stay will be extremely peeved when trying to read a chapter all at once.
  
  
• Set up donation incentives. Wallpapers, progress art for the next update, bonus page when a certain amount is reached, bonus mini-comic, etc!
  
  
• Interact with readers! Put up a comment box, do twitter and tumblr, do request drawings. It's fun, a confidence boost, and a good way to build a fan base.
  
  Regarding dialogue and pacing... what I tend to do is thumbnail an entire scene (3-15 pages for me) first and read through it a few times. I'll leave mini-cliffhangers at the end of each page (like a question, or a realization, or a character entering the scene). During this little review process, I'll also make sure the view for the reader doesn't violate the 180 rule too much, that it's obvious which bubble should be read next, and where the reader is going to look first.
  
  I don't have any experience in the print form of comics yet. So no advice there. Just make sure your comics are in print resolution as well (300+ DPI), or you'll be sorry later.
  
  Resource time
  
  I didn't have many resources starting out, but I'm gonna recommend these for you and anyone else interested:
  
  PaperWings Podcast -- podcast and blog on web comic-making (ongoing, good community, regular but sparse updates, good backlog). Has even more resources on its website.
  
  Art and Story -- podcast on print +web comic-making and the comic industry (ended, but a great backlog).
  
  Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, and Making Comics by cartoonist Scott McCloud, worth a read for any comicker. A little more geared towards print, but breaks down comic theory really nicely.
  
  Comics and Sequential Art, Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative, Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative, by Will Eisner.
  
  Those books are pretty popular, so you can probably pick them up from the library or find them on the web somewhere.

Timothy Samara books are good for beginners - Making and Breaking the Grid was the book that finally helped me understand grid systems, while Design Elements: A Graphic Style Manual was my Freshman year design textbook. The Story of Graphic Design by Patrick Cramsie is also a great GD History book.

In terms of things that are less textbook and more actual books about graphic design, I enjoyed Just My Type a lot. Design Is A Job gives some great advice on the business side of being a designer - pitching to clients, dealing with contracts, etc. How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer has some really interesting interviews with some of the best designers in our field.

And I would be terribly remiss if I didn't mention two of my absolute favorite novels, which happen to be about graphic design. The Cheese Monkeys and its sequel The Learners are fantastic stories about a design student and his experiences both in school and in his first job. Plus, they're written by Chip Kidd, who is an absolutely amazing designer (imho).

But, in case that wasn't enough, I'll also leave you with this link to a previous thread on this subreddit about great GD books.

Good luck and happy reading!

I'm late to the party, but I made a cheat sheet for my boss niece last week: here's all the ressources I can think of to kick butts at matte painting.

The sites where we pay per month

Gnomon Online School
Super school of vfx in California. They have on their site a lot of tutorials from 8 to 20 hours to learn to make your own camera projections. You can either pay (expensive but worth it) for a private class with a teacher via Skype. Or you pay (cheaper) for a bank of tutorials.

private lessons
https://www.gnomon.edu/courses/online


the bank of tutorials
https://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials?tags[]=matte-painting


I recommend: All the tutorials of Dylan Cole (vol 1, 2,3), Camera Projection Techniques in Maya, Matte Painting Production techniques, etc.




Plural Sight (formerly Digital Tutors)


a site that has courses on a little everything. This site is very good when you want to learn new programs. Excellent serie on the 3D which becomes more and more present in the matte painting, and some tutorials


https://app.pluralsight.com/library/


related to 3D

Quick start to modeling in Maya (volume 1,2,3)
Professional Tips for Modeling Complex Shapes


related to matte painting

Photo manipulation and Clean Plating Fundamentals
Matte Painting Basic and the Static Camera Shot


Sites where we pay per tutorial (Gumroad, etc.)



The tutorials of Anthony Eftekhari

Good DMP tutorials that show you the latest techniques and how to do it step by step.


https://gumroad.com/anthonye

The tutorials of Eytan Zana

More concept art, but the main lines apply just as well to the DMP.

https://gumroad.com/eytanzana


Free sites and tutorials


Garrett Fry's blog

He also has a Facebook group that helps each other in DMP, it is THE technical reference for matte painting. His blog is full of technical stuff for camera projections (aka moving your matte painting). A treasure of information.
https://www.gfryart.com/blog



Other


TEXTURES! (Or can we find good textures to make DMP)


CGtexture

http://www.textures.com

Flickr (Matte Painting References)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tjframe/sets/72157605581901392/

Flickr (Matte Painting Resources)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dman3d2000/sets/72157629164518650/

Photobash.org (paying a card)

https://www.photobash.org/

Pictures of Jacek Pilarski

https://gumroad.com/jacekpilarski

Books (yes yes, it's a thing)

Digital Matte Painter Handbook

it's old, the drawings are ugly, the photoshop stuff in it is pure candy though. Full of stuff in DMP that I have never seen elsewhere but that is the basis of the trade. Still actual today. The matte painting of the castle in is also an excellent starting point if you start from scratch.

https://www.amazon.ca/Digital-Matte-Painting-Handbook/dp/0470922427/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523975893&sr=1-1&keywords=Digital+Matte+Painting+Handbook

How to draw and How to Render

Scott Robertson, a big shot of concept art, shows the basics of traditional drawings, perspective, etc. An essential.

https://www.amazon.ca/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=pd_sim_14_4?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=GWB27RDDYF5E0JG7TTY0

https://www.amazon.ca/How-Render-fundamentals-shadow-reflectivity/dp/1933492961/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=K9W1RK5K9KVWMPY14EAE

Imaginative Realism and Color and Light

James Gurney is an illustrator who specializes in realistic fantasy artwork with traditional mediums, excellent cues on light and color

https://www.amazon.ca/Imaginative-Realism-Paint-Doesnt-Exist/dp/0740785508?th=1&psc=1&source=googleshopping&locale=en-CA&tag=googcana-20&ref=pd_sl_2y2j9az9y9_e

https://www.amazon.ca/Color-Light-Guide-Realist-Painter/dp/0740797719/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=YCNYYJCTNJ4405KD1S6B

Nuke 101

We can make the projection of matte painting in Nuke or Maya. An excellent book for Nuke.

https://www.amazon.ca/Nuke-101-Professional-Compositing-Effects/dp/0321984129/ref=pd_sim_14_8?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=FNST5YS1F7464SZY3QZV

The best book on how comics work, for my money, is Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. That would be followed up by Making Comics from the same author. It's a little theory-heavy but it's amazing. I'd say it's good for 14 and up, or maybe a little younger. This would get him a fantastic background in how comics work and how to create them in general. The first book is literally used as a textbook in some college "Comics Appreciation" type classes. The coolest thing about it is that it's a comic itself, and it demonstrates the things it's talking about right there on the page.

If he's younger, and/or he really just wants to learn to draw superheroes, How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way is really good on the fundamentals. It's old-school (most inkers don't use a brush anymore, they use computers), but the fundamentals haven't changed all that much.

Here's a more modern one from DC that looks pretty good and has good reviews, though I haven't read it.

Daytripper by Gabriel Bà & Fàbio Moon

Thanks for this thread, it will be a cool occasion to advertise this beautiful book that I just finished (In French, because it's my mothertongue. The authors are Brazilian.)

The concept is very simple, but wonderfully efficient: What will be your obituary if you die today?

We follow the main character, Bràs, who shares with Kenny McCormick the fact that he dies at the end of each chapter. But, on the contrary to Kenny, he dies at a different ages in each chapter.

This allows the authors to highlight what is important at each step of the life of their character. Love, in all its forms, filial, friendship or romance, is present in each page of this book. A bit of fantasy adds to the atmosphere a little bit of tenderness and something that is from the domain of dreams...

I really enjoyed reading this book, and I left it with a renewed love for life.

We have a running experiment in the world today on the subject of Bible vs. no Bible.

Some parts of the world operate without it, other parts with it.

I'm not a historian, and am curious as to what one would say on the subject.

Going on what little I know of history, here's what it looks like to me:

Europe and the Middle East have had the "benefit" of the Bible for at least 2,000 years. These areas have had varying degrees of civilization in that time. As I understand it, officially sanctioned slavery existed in Europe until the conspicuous slave-taking and trafficking that the Vikings practiced made it a crime, in the case of Christian slaves. It is still practiced in parts of the Islamic world. Serfdom continued until the Middle Ages, and marriage-slavery of women continued until a century ago in Europe and is still practiced in parts of the Islamic world. Genocide or attempted genocide happened whenever it was religiously or politically called for, such as wiping out various kinds of heretics in the first millennium, and entire swathes of red-headed women (interestingly, red hair is apparently a marker for Neanderthal blood) around the Middle Ages, and much of the population of the so-called New World in the more recent past. Abortion was universally practiced whenever people had access to the technology, for obvious reasons, until the most recent American religious revival came along. As for the Sermon on the Mount, a collection of moral precepts basically calling for love and humility, it has occasionally inspired people (Dietrich Bonnhoefer for example) and groups of people (the Hutterites for example) to be more loving, at least to each other, and to be more humble, at least as regards some areas of personality. I think it is these teachings that Christians must mean when they say that things are better because of the Bible?

The rest of the world had not heard of the Bible until about 1500, I'm pretty sure. These areas also have had varying levels of civilization. Slavery seems to have been pretty common, but it has had more benign forms than found in Christendom/the Islamic world as well as more miserable forms. Buddhism is explicitly anti-slavery, and "the Chinese Emperor Wang Mang, a Buddhist, may have been history’s first powerful abolitionist—he outlawed the slave trade in 9 A.D." (https://www.freetheslaves.net/take-action/faith-in-action-ending-slavery/) I think you have to look at each area and tribe to find out about slavery, it's not a monolithic thing. In the same way, women had varying levels of freedom, from near-equality to levels approaching the (Bible-based) Saudi-Arabian level of oppression. Abortions were universally practiced whenever people had access to the technology, for obvious reasons. Values such as loving everyone also seem to be pretty variable, though I think calling it a primary virtue may actually be limited to Christianity until recently (is this true?). Humility, of course, is a value that any hierarchical culture demands of non-aristocrats.

What seems pretty clear to me is that until the Renaissance and Enlightenment, the lot of most Christians was dreadful, especially of women but also of men. It took humanism to make things tolerable for the majority of people. See https://www.amazon.com/Swerve-How-World-Became-Modern/dp/0393343405/ref=sr_1_1?crid=PVWLX0X7TJ2C&keywords=the+swerve+how+the+world+became+modern&qid=1566105291&s=gateway&sprefix=the+swerve+how+the+w%2Caps%2C231&sr=8-1

Today we outlaw slavery (though it is still present everywhere, especially enslavement of women, see https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/maps/#prevalence for example), we mandate certain but not all rights for women, and most of us agree at least in principle that compassion is a good idea but humility should be contingent. Wherever birth control is available, the abortion rate is relatively low. These are Enlightenment values, not Biblical ones.

I'd be interested to hear from somebody who actually knows the subject.

Awesome! Zendikar is an amazing campaign setting if you ask me. My personal notes are kind of a big mess, mainly because this is my first homebrew. But I can definitely give you some good places to start and I would be more than happy to share with you what I've done and learned in my campaign so far. We are currently 12 sessions in and having a great time. (PM for a discord link if you would like to chat)

• For starters, I would absolutely get the Zendikar art book from MTG. This really functions as a like a campaign setting book and will give you tons of ideas about how the world of Zendikar works.
  
  
• Wizards made a Planeshift for Zendikar. This is great for PC race options and some other tid bits (monster reskin ideas).
  
  
• Maps. Oh boy. Zendikar is a bit of a mess when it comes to maps. The reason? Roil likes to change the landscape constantly and there are only vague locations of things, so there are no proper maps. You can do as you like with this. I probably fret way more than I should about the actual location of each continent relative to the others. After a ton of research, I liked this map the best.
  
  
• If you want to go down the rabbit hole of Zendikar lore, read the archive trap.
  
  That should give you a good starting point. Again, I am happy to chat on Disc if you have questions or would like suggestions.

>I'm also pretty jealous when I see photographers local to me getting paid gigs, exposure and kudos for what I think are terrible photos. These are ok photos to the untrained eye (most of the time), but when I see a photo that hasn't been straightened, is over saturated or is just someone playing with the clarity slider just because they can, it just makes me a little angry.

This is why I tell people not to waste money on an "art education." The reality of the photo industry these days is that very little about success comes from your ability to create good photographs. It's an extremely frustrating characteristic of the beast that is the Photo Industry.
There will always be people out there who are better at networking and convincing others to spend money on them.

I once had a friend get very angry with me for suggesting how lucky he was to be earning 100k a year at the age of 25 in the NYC photo industry. He said it was all hard work. Bottom line is there are thousands of people who work VERY hard and are VERY good at what they do, and they will still never "make it" in the industry. It's not an assessment of your worth, skills, talent, or drive. It is simply the nature of the beast.


RE: Your creative rut...
Don't be afraid to switch gears. Take time off and avoid photography. Or dramatically switch subjects. I'm sure everyone here has been burnt out before. That is when I started landscape photography, and hiking. After about a year of not doing "real photography" I am now scheduling shoots with dancers left and right. Back at it with a vengeance, you could say.

You may also enjoy reading the following two books, which my old photo professor gave everyone in my glass upon graduating.

Creative Authenticity

Art and Fear

I could elaborate in depth on any of the things mention here, but I shant bore you. There are already too many comments to go through.

I'd say your strongest point is your ability to convey action. The leaping on page 16 is particularly well executed. You also actually have a pretty good grasp of perspective drawing with the environments! It could use a little work, but I feel like every artist could do with more practice!!

The main suggestion I could give you is to start drawing from life. I know you are heavily influenced by Japanese comics, but trust me when I say that all professional manga artists are able to draw from life. What I mean is, take a figure drawing class, or at the very least pick up this book, or any other figure drawing book really. It will help you greatly with getting proportions correct, as well as help you with understanding the internal structure of the body. By skipping learning how to draw from life, and learning to draw from looking at Manga, you're really only taking the face value. Like, have you ever used a copy machine to make a copy of a copy? The original page looks crisp and clean, but that first copy has a few spots and scratches, and then the copy of that copy has big black splotches on it, and eventually the text is completely illegible. Not to say that your art is really bad! It's actually pretty decent for your first comics! I just believe that doing some observational studies will help your work greatly!

The next major thing you should work on is the writing. I get that his blindfold is what keeps his demons at bay, but by starting the comic off with the central character punching a guy's body in two, and then ripping another guy's arm off... it makes me not care about the character. I feel like if you would have shown the readers that he was a kind person, by like, helping the elderly, or defending his father or something, then I'd be like, "Why is this sweet kid suddenly a vicious murderer?" But since you didn't I was like, "Is this a violent comic for the sake of drawing a violent comic?" Therefore, when the dad was brought in to be killed, he started talking about how innocent the kid was, which is the exact opposite of my first impression. Also, why did they kill the dad? Why, then, did they let evil demon kid live, only to exile him? Wouldn't killing Kai solve all of their problems?

Anyway, I feel like you have potential, mainly because you were actually able to produce this much work! Do you have any idea how many people say they want to make comics but pale at the sight of how much work it is? You are a hard worker, and I know that you will be able to persevere and evolve into something so much better than you already are! On that note, buy Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. It will change your life. I'm being 100% serious here. McCloud is not only the go-to comics theorist, but he was also one of the first professional Americans to see the potential of drawing comics influenced by the Japanese! Once you have devoured this book, because you will want more, buy Making Comics, also by Scott McCloud. While Understanding dissects the medium and explains things you never would have thought about before, Making Comics applies those thoughts into a school-like setting.

tl;dr: It's good, but could be much better. Worship Scott McCloud.

Obviously, reading the entire series several times isn't a practical idea. And, there's far too much breadth and depth to the world to give you a useful crash course in a reddit comment or two. So, here are a few suggestions:

• Ask your friend about the characters they want to play, when relative to the main story, and what part(s) of the world they're most interested in exploring. This will give you some areas to focus on in more detail.
  
• Consider reading a couple of the books if you can make the time. The natural place to start would be The Eye of the World which is full of detail and world-building. However, the plot is very tightly focused and you might not get enough of the big picture to construct a good campaign experience.
  
  • Another option would be to jump ahead to books 3, 4, and 5 (The Dragon Reborn, Shadow Rising, and The Fires of Heaven). The scope is substantially wider and you'll see a lot more of the world, cultures, and different regions. Crucially, you'll get some time in the White Tower, which is the single most important political institution. These earlier books are more accessible, Jordan does more recapping in the narration, and there are fewer minor POV characters than later in the series. Plus, reading some of these will give you a much more nuanced feel for the world than reading synopses and Wiki entries.
    
  • I would also consider reading the New Spring novella. It's considerably shorter than any of the other works and gives you a unique view on the world outside of the context of the main story line. If any of the players is playing an Aes Sedai or a character connected to the White Tower (a warder, expelled novice, etc.) this book is a must read for you.
    
• The audiobooks are truly EXCELLENT. Getting all 15 (induing New Spring) could be somewhat costly, but if you can find some at local libraries and pick up others on audible, it would be a good way to immerse yourself in the world. If I were in your shoes, I would listen to them frequently as you run the campaign, dipping in and out of different books after you finish the series on the first go.
  
  Some other resources for you to consider:
  
  
• The Wiki is OK. It's somewhat mixed in its detail and seems to be more detailed on the individual characters, which is likely less useful for your needs.
  
• Leigh Butler's ReRead of the series on Tor.com is good. She does a brief chapter-by-chapter synopsis of each book, so you'll get all the main plot and character points, although you'll of course miss out on the details of the world building and texture. Plus, it's written for someone who's read the series. Nonetheless, it might be worth checking out for you.
  
• The two published reference books might also be worth getting your hands on.
  
  • I highly recommend reading The World of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time (aka the White Book or the big book of bad art). It's organized thematically and will cover a lot of background detail of the world: Nations, history, some politics, etc. Unfortunately, it's not comprehensive as it was written part way through the series.
    
  • The Wheel of Time Companion was published after the series was finished. It's organized alphabetically and draws from Jordan's notes as well as the published works. You might well find it a good reference for different places, ideas, and items, but for learning about the world overall, I think you'll be better served by starting with the white book.
    
    Hope this helps!
    

I think it's a bit difficult and unfair for me to comment based on one painting alone. Do you have any sketches (line drawing, preferably) of this painting, or anything that showcase what you can do so far? Almost everyone will suggest we start designing anything in line sketches, especially if learning, so I'm interested to see what you got :D

Edit: Since you're looking for advice on how to start, I'll just say a few things that might be able to help you start.

(1) Drawing, imo, is the very foundation of all art. I think before you start painting, you should start drawing first! Here are a few links that may help you start with drawing:

• Art Fundamentals (Free, and pretty good)
  
• Foundation Group (Paid, but pretty good)
  
• Ctrl+Paint (Free and Paid. Both are pretty good)
  
  (2) I suggest you follow an art school's course outline so you can progress pretty well. Feng Zhu Design School has an outline that they use for their students to learn how to do concept art in 1 year (16 hours per day). You can also download a detailed version of what they offer in their course, then you can have an idea on what each component means.
  
  
• FZD Course Outline
  
  (3) There are also a few books that would be really useful to you when learning how to draw and render. These are supposedly the best on the internet (I only have two, the first two books in the list) Here they are:
  
  
• How to Draw
  
• How to Render
  
• Figure Drawing
  
• Color and Light
  
• Imaginative Realism
  
  I think those are all I have for you now. I'm not in any way a professional artist (I'm currently studying Industrial Design), but I think the above things I've mentioned should prove useful to you. If you have any questions, you can send me a PM :D Work hard and practise every day!

No problem! Here are a couple of books that might help you along, if you haven't already gotten a hold of them! :)

All Yesterdays, a wonderfully provocative book that challenges common paleoart tropes.

The Paleoart of Julius Csontonyi is awesome. Most of his artwork can be found online, but it's nice to have it there in your hands. I won't go so far as to say Csotonyi is the modern day Charles R. Knight, but he's rapidly gaining that reputation.

Predatory Dinosaurs of the World by Gregory S. Paul. Modern paleoart owes a lot to Paul's work, even if his attention to anatomical detail resulted in dinosaurs that are just a bit too lithe.

Finally, we have William Stout's The New Dinosaurs. Yes, at times Stout makes his dinos look downright emaciated, but his comic-book-y style and portrayal of dinosaur behavior is a bit prescient of "All Yesterdays," and I can't help but associate his work with those wonderfully cheesy 1980s dino documentaries with Gary Owens, and that catchy theme music.

And once again, good luck!

It also depends on what's important to you. I like heavy charaterization, surprises in plot, great art and not knowing if the end will be happy or not. Life isn't all roses, so I don't want everything I read to be all happy happy joy joy.

series:
Locke and Key - my current fav - some horror
Stangers in Paradise - fun and serious drama
Irredeemable - disturbing

One book: Daytripper thoughtful
The Pro - funny
Two-Step - funny
No Hero - a bit disturbing

Yeah that's a bullshit answer. Most people give crap answers anyway, you're better off not paying any attention to them.

It definitely stings when you work hard on something and post it and it gets no attention. In fact I went through that exact thing with a track recently. My best piece of advice, work hard. Don't burn yourself out, but really focus on getting those ideas down and pushing your comfort zone. Don't feel the need to release everything you make. Sit on it for a while, move on to something else, come back to it. If you're still really feeling it, post it. Otherwise leave it be. I know it can feel like one massive race at times with people creating tons and tons of art that people love and it hurts to see that and come to the realization you're pretty far off from there. But run your own race. Measure yourself with how well you've improved compared to yourself in the past, not successful people.

I know this gets posted A TON, but this ira glass video is so spot on. ira glass

And this book has really helped me out

If you want to bounce ideas or talk about creative roadblocks like these feel free to message me anytime. This stuff can get really isolating and depressing fast. Even more so if you don't have people in your life that understand the passion behind your artistic pursuits. When it comes to artists a lot of people are ignorant about how much blood, sweat, and tears goes into that work. That's why you have to shut out the opinions of people who aren't on the same level as you.

If you have a lot a lot of money, figure out a way to import the trilogy edition of the Dark Souls remaster from Japan. I think it may only be for PS4 but it comes with all the games and a lot of great goodies. Otherwise if money is tighter there are some amazing Art Books (design works) you can buy online. Dark Souls 1 to 3 (3 comes out in August) with some absolutely stunning artwork from the game.

• https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Souls-Design-Works-Software/dp/1926778898/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521814296&sr=8-1&keywords=Dark+Souls+Art
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Souls-II-Design-Works/dp/1927925568/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521814305&sr=1-1&keywords=Dark+Souls+2+Art
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Souls-III-Design-Works/dp/177294064X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521814383&sr=1-1&keywords=Dark+Souls+3+Art
  
  Some other neat ideas if he does not already have them would be the Dark Souls 2 & 3 Collectors Edition. Now these do break the bank at around $200-300 a piece (I think you can buy both for $400 USD combined) but the statues they come with are absolutely beautiful.
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Souls-II-Collectors-PlayStation-3/dp/B00F6YD2FK/ref=sr_1_2?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1521814448&sr=1-2&keywords=dark%2Bsouls%2B3%2Bcollectors%2Bedition&th=1
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Souls-III-Collectors-PlayStation-4/dp/B0191J0SE8/ref=sr_1_1?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1521814448&sr=1-1&keywords=dark%2Bsouls%2B3%2Bcollectors%2Bedition&th=1

Your skills to 'show, not tell' will become more essential. As the previous comment said, you are going to lose most of the 1st person POV prose accommodates (and even if some of it is retained....compare something like Fight Club the novel, to Fight Club the movie or Fight Club 2 the graphic novel....still considerable differences once visuals come into play.). Even dialogue can be a bit of a sticking point - it depends on the genre you're writing for as how much room you have before audiences start to get bored.

If you're writing for film/animation - consider learning about basic camera movements and shot framing (ie ECU, CU, WS, rules like the 180 degree rule). Watch videos on film analysis, one of my favorites is the Every Frame a Painting channel on YT, but there are other series/videos out there that aren't completely boring (and some that go very extensively into worldwide film history, such as A Story of Film: An Odyssey which is streaming on Hulu at the moment, used to be on Netflix)

Animation is a little trickier as a lot of writing is actually done in the storyboard phase (so is more art oriented), but a classic there is Disney's The Illusion of Life book as a starting point even for non-artists.

If you're writing for graphic novels: My favorite beginner reference is the DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics, with Will Eisner being another classic author on the genre. Brian Michael Bendis did a book that's pretty good too.

Likewise, stage plays, radio plays, have their own sets of tips and industry tricks, but I'm not as knowledgeable on those topics to offer suggestions. Good luck and have fun!

Hello! Would love good resources for Disney-style art, if you could spare those.


Here are some of the best things I've found for comic art

How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way A classic. Can be bought used for next to nothing. My only gripe is that it moves very fast and superficially

Incredible Comics with Tom Nguyen: He has a really clean style. Communicates a lot with very few lines. Excellent resource.


How to Draw: Heroic Anatomy More advanced resource. Uses a lot more lines and shading.


Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels How to construct the actual comic panels and books

Sister Wendy's Story of Painting by Wendy Beckett is a nice one. I've had it for years and enjoy looking through it every once in a while.

A nice quote for no reason at all: "The story of painting is one that is immensely rich in meaning, yet its value is all too often hidden from us by the complexities of historians. We must forget the densities of 'history' and simply surrender to the wonder of the story." -Sister Wendy Beckett

The Illustrated History of Art by David Piper is another that was gifted to me that I enjoy immensely.

Here are a few more that I've picked up at yard sales and thrift shops: A Treasury of Art Masterpieces: From the Renaissance to Present Day by Thomas Craven and Art of Ancient Greece by Claude Laisne.

And more for fun than for art history, though it does qualify, I suppose, is Masters of Deception: Escher, Dali, and the Artists of Optical Illusion by Al Seckel. It's a lot of fun to look through and a great conversation starter with its full page artworks.

OK, I get asked this type of question a lot so I have some pre-fab answers for you:

>Someone asked me about teaching yourself art (which is the way I learned) I thought I would share my replay in case It might be helpful to some of you.

>Fundamentals (walk before you run):

>How to draw http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933492732/ref=oh_details_o08_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 $30
Figure drawing for all its worth http://www.amazon.com/Figure-Drawing-All-Its-Worth/dp/0857680986/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401411454&sr=1-1&keywords=figure+drawing+for+all+it%27s+worth $25
Color and Light (this book blew my mind) http://www.amazon.com/Color-Light-Guide-Realist-Painter/dp/0740797719/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401411299&sr=1-1&keywords=color+and+light $15
Imaginative Realism http://www.amazon.com/Imaginative-Realism-Paint-Doesnt-Exist/dp/0740785508/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y $15

>Digital Painting:

>Digital Painting Techniques 1 – 6 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=digital+painting+techniques+&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Adigital+painting+techniques+ About $35 each = $210 total

>Also pick up some art books for games like Halo or Assassin’s Creed. There’s lots of great concept work in there to give you an idea of what to pros do.

>Visual design:

>Picture This (a very simple explanation on how all the components of a scene can tell a story) http://www.amazon.com/Picture-This-How-Pictures-Work/dp/1587170302/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401412344&sr=1-1&keywords=picture+this $15
Essentials of Visual Communication (A detailed breakdown on how the human brain consumes an image and how you can use this knowledge to best communicate your ideas) http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Visual-Communication-Bo-Bergström/dp/1856695778/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401412394&sr=1-1&keywords=Essentials+of+Visual+Communication $30

>Structured Education:

>Digital Tutors (Perfect for learning a program) http://www.digitaltutors.com/11/index.php $50 a month or $515 a year
Ctrl+Paint http://www.ctrlpaint.com/ Free
CGMaster Academy https://www.youtube.com/user/CGMWORKSHOPS/videos?view=0&flow=grid

>Also I wrote on my blog “Become a better Artist Overnight” http://garretaj.blogspot.com/2012/12/how-to-become-better-artist-overnight.html where I take you through tried and true techniques on how to do focused learning revolving your sleep pattern. This is the way I did it (and still do it)

>Communities a must for getting feedback and ideas:

>http://conceptartworld.com/
>http://www.artstation.com/

>https://www.facebook.com/groups/400586640025350/
>https://www.facebook.com/groups/221278101324638/
>https://www.facebook.com/groups/awesomehorse/

>The final thing is you. You have to really want this, it’s not easy. Don’t buy this stuff or go to an expensive art school because you think it’s some kind of shortcut. The focus here is not becoming a good artist, but becoming a good student. Learn how to learn effectively, learn how to love learning, bust your ass, and always work on improving yourself.

>Do that and nothing can stop you. Or don’t.

Hope this helps

Judging by the competitiveness for jobs in the game industry you got to stand out.
If you haven't read it, read On Becoming a Game Writer.

General steps to stand out:

• Become a personal brand. Start a blog, twitter, be active on mailing lists, etc.
  
• If there are less than 50 - 100 books on game writing, read them (or stop if you can't learn anything about game writing anymore)
  
• Read all the classics on writing, take writing courses
  
• Read books on how to improve as an artist (like Art & Fear, Steal Like an Artist, etc.)
  
• Read books about story writing / telling
  
• Learn about about communication & marketing (this will help you to get the word out and a job)
  
• Blog about your journey, start talking about the books, principles you learned; maybe get interviews with other game writers;
  
• Read blog post / articles about game writing (e.g. google "game writing", read the first 30 - 100 pages) & start following blogs
  
• Apply your knowledge, e.g. analyze game plots or game writing
  
• Write, write, write. Produce something. (see *)
  
• Create games - there are so many programmers out there who just love to make a game, contact them, make it happen
  
• Connect to the industry - ask for advice, invite somebody to dinner, be a nice guy
  
• Publish your work. Get honest feedback, this is the best way to improve even if it hurts.
  
  
  Summary Be so good that they can't ignore you.
  
  
  * There's a great story in Art & Fear about a pottery course. The students were divided into two groups. One group got judged on the quality of their vase, they other on the quantity. Which one produced the better vases? The second one.

This is great. Hands are such a pain to draw well and you've done a great job. The story is relatable to anyone who's been high and experienced how weird your body is if you really think about it. 10/10, would read again.

If you're serious about moving from single illustrations to sequential art there are a lot of books and sites out there to help.


Fundamentals

Scott McCloud

Will Eisner


Writing

Jim Zub


Coloring

K Michael Russell


These are just a few. This may not be a popular opinion here but bittorent is your friend. Use it to torrent Photoshop, Manga Studio, and any drawing books you're interested in. Then you need to ask yourself what your end goal is. Printed comics? Web comics?

I've changed my workflow from originally doing everything with paper and pens to involving more digital elements during the process. It's made working quicker and most people want to consume comics on their laptop or tablet which means you'll end up converting to digital at some point in the future anyway.

Here's some examples of my stuff. I'm still learning so there's a lot here I'm embarrassed to show but it might be helpful context.

Web comic done with pencils and inks on paper then scanned. I did this for a year and you can see how much better my art gets towards the end from practicing every day. I wish I would have kept it up.

First try coloring something digitally.

Here's the second try doing a longer format comic. K Michael Russell's videos are awesome for learning the basics of coloring. Here's what the layers look like broken apart.

You can get a scanner relatively cheap, here's the one I use. The downside of a small scanner means you need to draw on paper smaller than 11x17 or draw on large paper and scan it in piece by piece.

I also moved to a Wacom tablet for inking/coloring. My next comic will be posted soon and was done 100% digital. I'm not in love with how it turned out but it helped me learn what you and can and can't do on a drawing tablet.

Hopefully some of this is helpful.

this is completely out of the rules so I guess I'm not really entering because it's twice the price you're looking for but I want you/people to see this haha tetris light it is so cool, you can move the pieces around...adfjaidhfadhd

something in the price range: Daytripper one of my favorite graphic novels ever, it is gorgeous and beautiful and intelligent and I wish I had a copy of my own. :) Also: the wifred costume in your wishlist...holy hell, I wish I was rich so I could buy that for you and I could be ryan (the girl version) and you could follow me around and destroy my life.

IMO, the best way to start drawing is with a pad of unlined paper and mechanical pencil.

But if you want software: GIMP is free (yay), Photoshop is the well-known standard (and these videos are good), PaintToolSai feels more natural to draw with, and I just started using Mischief (which has a natural drawing feel, infinite canvas, and vector-based). My recommendation is Sai, since it's cheap, easy, and fun to use.

To learn how to draw people, start working through the Loomis books, beginning with Fun with a Pencil. A classic for learning how to 'see' like an artist is Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. And when you start to feel frustrated with your work, turn to Art & Fear and Daring Greatly.

Let me know if you have any questions, and good luck with your art journey :)

Buying a book is not about obtaining a possession, but securing a portal.

Maus is one I've been looking for around my town. I'm super interested in the Holocaust and the fact they made a graphic novel using mice is super cool!!

Scott McCloud is one of the standards, definitely start there! Here's a list of some of the more granular/weird ones that are on my shelves:

• Panel Discussions (lots of great topics like page breakdown, pacing, using your gutters, etc)
  
• The Will Eisner Books (Comics & Sequential Art, Graphic Narrative and Storytelling, Expressive Anatomy. I've only read the 1st two, but they're fascinating looks at the older-style black and white layouts, with lots of good tips)
  
  • ***these use examples from Eisner's life, so 1930s-2005. The older ones are less-than-politically-correct, and the publisher addresses it in the forward, but still, CW.
    
• Wonderbook (this is just FUN fiction writing theory, written by the guy who did Annihilation)
  
• The Comics Journal (you can subscribe to this at your local comic book store through Diamond. Full of industry talk!)

I like your colors. The site design is nice at well. Actually, the whole thing bespeaks great visual care. I think you might want to try using more subtle gestures to express emotion. Every feeling being conveyed as a full-body gesture can get exhausting for the reader in such rapid succession. Even something as subtle as the fluttering of an eye can convey emotion.


You're probably having problems with font size because you're using too much text. If you want to retain all of that information, like jokes and action and drama, etc. then you need to spread it out over more pages.


As for panels, interesting and organic paneling tends to come from interplay with the subject - like if your character is walking through the forest, then you can have long, narrow panels to evoke the feeling of a forest. Google some of Eisner's pages and Little Nemo to get more of what I mean.


Oh also, you have a nice book background frame, but you don't need to be constrained by paper sizing conventions on the internet. Paintings aren't done on a uniformly-sized canvas - comics don't have to be either! It's tempting to give yourself guidelines, but don't let that stand in the way of your art.


Last of all: don't worry! Very few people start off as good at anything, especially comics. Scott McCloud said you're a real comic author only after your first 100 pages. That's because you will get better over time and start to understand your own work better. Especially if you work hard and study.

Oh, I wanna try too:
>Are there different "branches" of Buddhism, sort of like in Christianity?

• The Schools of Buddhism
  
• Differences between the schools
  
  >Who was The Buddha?
  
  
• PBS documentary on The Buddha
  
• BBC documentary on The Buddha
  
• Buddha Nature
  
  > why is there prayer in Buddhism? How is Buddhist prayer different than, say, Christian and Islamic prayer?
  
  
• IIRC only a few sects actually 'pray' in the classical sense, otherwise it's simply paying homage; showing respect, saying thanks.
  
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puja_(Buddhism)
  
• Paying Homage
  
  >Do Buddhists go to temples on a certain day of the week like Christians? Is there a ritualistic process on what is done each day?
  
  
• This depends on the hours your local temple/center holds. However there are 'typical hours', once in the 'morning', once in the 'afternoon', and once in the 'evening'.
  
• Ritualistic processes will depend upon the culture of the school of Buddhism you subscribe to.
  
  > If I call my local Buddhist temple or meditation center, would someone there be willing to talk to me over the phone and introduce me in real life to what Buddhism is?
  
  
• They may be busy, and ask you to come back later.
  
• Some zen schools will turn you away outright to test your resolve. (This is wrong, see /u/Gundi9's comment bellow.)
  
  > Basically, I would really appreciate it if you could explain to me what Buddhism means to you, what your daily Buddhist lifestyle is, and how it affects you.
  
  
• I meditate, keep the 4 noble truths at the forefront of my attention and make a concerted effort to stay on the 8 fold path.
  
  Also, here are some books:
  
  
• The Dhammapada
  
• The Dhammapada is so ubiquitous i'm certain you can find versions of it online for free.
  
• The 8 Fold Path
  
• Also, see our sidebar, it says things I didn't, and probably says the things I did say so much more gooderbetter.
  
  TADA!
  
  

I'm gonna disagree with a lot of people and tell you to not buy Understanding Comics. I mean, you can, I don't disagree with most of what he teaches, but I disagree with his results. Perhaps it's one of those 'good in theory, terrible in practice' things. The Sculptor, his latest (?) book uses his UC technique 100% and while it makes for an easy read, it's visually boring and the story is just one unbelievable trope after another, complete garbage.

I'm also not going to tell you to copy other comic artists, that's a very common mistake in comics. When you copy other comic artists you learn their mistakes, or shortcuts, or cheats. I still find after I've drawn a page I'll go back and see where I unintentionally swiped a pose or technique from John Buscema (How to make Comics the Marvel Way had a big influence on me as a teenager, which is who it was made for).

For figure drawing you want George Bridgeman. His figure drawing techniques are the foundation for pretty much every other great illustrator in the last 100 years.

Another good source is Burne Hogarth (Dynamic Anatomy, Dynamic Figure Drawing) his stuff is more action and hero based, but his lessons are sound. He founded what became the School of Visual Arts. These were my first art books when I was a teenager, and they still hold up.

For storytelling, I go for Will Eisner's Graphic Storytelling and the Visual Narrative, Sequential Art Principles and throw in Expressive Anatomy, because, why not?

David Chelsea's Perspective for Comic Artists is great, because it teaches you exactly how to do correct perspective, then in the last chapter he tells you how to cheat at all of it.

For classes, take a look at the horribly designed website for http://comicsworkbook.com/ it's run by a guy, Frank Santoro, who's actually not one of my favorite artists, but he knows his shit, for sure, and he's a helluva nice guy who loves comics 100%. I think his full online class is $500 and he runs it twice a year, I think. Also look in your area for a college or art store that might have figure drawing classes, they are invaluable.

This is looking really good! Keep it up!

I highly recommend you check out these books... they are something I wish I had read (or been available) when I was your age.

1)Color and Light: A guide for the realist painter

2)Imaginative Realism

These two books do a really good job of explaining some practical 'rules' for painting. You do not always have to follow them, but you should for sure know them and learn them.

3)Dynamic Light and Shade
This is just a book that is full of really great black and white drawings that that show how much can be expressed without any color. It is a great book to study from and to try copying images from.

I would buy land and books.

With the land, I would set up ecovillages, and I would (also) set aside vast areas where the plants and animals would be able to rejuvenate uninhibited.

I would find like-minded people, and I would ultimately try to integrate them into the enviornment with the wolves and the buffalo and the other animals. Humans can, and have been, ecologically sustainable organisms in natural environments. Not all agriculture is bad. Many Native American groups practiced agriculture in harmony with the rest of the environment.

I am also not against technology. A bow and arrow is technology, any tool that people use is technology. I am, however, against plastics and other harmful chemicals.

I would also build an army with the people who come to live on my land. There is no shortage of people - homeless people, high-school and college dropouts, homeless children, the unemployed, environmentalists, and lots of people I talk to IRL would be down for this idea.

I would learn assorted martial arts, I would teach them to others, and I would have the others teach them to more people, and we would spend a lot of time on it. This would be both for the health benefits and the self-defense benefits. It would be an army of ninjas, who also grow their own food and are self-sustaining. This will be great in case of societal failure or economic collapse. I would also teach/learn as many natural survival skills as I can. The goal of the army would be to establish peace and not wars, and to help people achieve independence (from money, oil, and industry) while also keeping a healthy relationship with the environment and the other animals.

We would also care for our children. We would raise them to be physically healthy and open-minded. We would not overshelter them, or put taboos on their sexuality, and we would make it the job of the entire community (especially the elders) to educate and take care of them. We will not over-shelter them or raise them to be weak. We will teach them how to socialize with each other in healthy ways, in an open, nurturing, loving environment. We'll also make it official policy that everything we do is done with the well-being of the next seven generations in mind.

There are also some books that I would want to buy and distribute. They include Circle of Life Traditional Teachings of Native American Elders, by James David Audlin, The Other Side of Eden, by Hugh Brody, The Conversations with God trilogy, by Neale Donald Walsch, The Art of Shen Ku, by Zeek, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, by Thom Hartmann, A Practical Guide to Setting Up Ecovillages and Intentional Communities, by Diana Leafe Christian, and I'm sure there's lots of other good ones. You should really conduct your own search, but I feel all the ones I've listed have valuable information and the power to change the ideas of large groups of people. Anything on Native American culture, history, and philosophy, or on organic gardening, or self-sustainability in general. I might even set up my own bookstore or library, now that I think about it, and make more money. I'm definitley not against making money, because everyone in our world believes in money and money is power in our society.

Not sure you're going to find anything better than Watchmen. However here are a few thoughts...

• [Miracleman] (http://www.amazon.com/Miracleman-1/dp/B002D9MQS0/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342221492&sr=1-7&keywords=miracleman). This is also by Alan Moore. One of the greatest superhero stories ever told. Alan Moore started it and Neil Gaiman came close to finishing it, but never did due to copy-write issues.
  
• [Ronin] (http://www.amazon.com/Frank-Millers-Ronin-Miller/dp/0930289218). By Frank Miller. Combines Sci-Fi and Samurai comics. I don't really understand the ending, but the journey is great.
  
• [Lone Wolf & Cub] (http://www.amazon.com/Lone-Wolf-Cub-Assassins-Horse/dp/1569715025). Without a doubt the most epic comic book ever written. Probably the most influential manga that most people have never heard of. A true work of art. This is Frank Miller's favorite manga. Also, an influence on Quentin Tarantino! The authors are Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima. Spans 26 volumes. By the end you will feel that you have graduated with a degree in ancient Japan (well almost!). Poetic, violent and a little spiritual (at least if you like Zen Buddhism).
  
• [Maus I and II] (http://www.amazon.com/Maus-Survivors-Father-Bleeds-History/dp/0394747232). This is Art Spiegleman's conversation with his father about the Holocaust. It is part survivor's tale and part story of a son trying to understand his father's history and also his own.
  
  I heard today that all good stories should ask the question "who am I"? All 4 stories I have recommended do that.
  

Only 5~ months ago did I decide to get serious about improving my art in my free time. For most of my life I only doodled occasionally. So I thought I would describe my plan of action with books and resources that I will likely be using. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

My process will be basics of construction-> perspective -> figure drawing -> digital art and rendering. Approximately 45% will be improving, 45% will be doing what I want for fun and 10% will be a daily sketch(this subreddit) that takes anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour to complete. for fun I will be doing anything from digital to water color.

Construction and perspective: First I am starting my art journey by completing draw a box . Next I will go through Marshall Vandruff's Linear Perspective Videos and Perspective Made Easy simultaneously while referencing with how to draw by Scott Robertson. Briefly I will gloss at Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain or keys to drawing pulling ideas of where I might find weakness.

Figure drawing: Once those are finished, I will begin my figure drawing phase. I will move onto free proko subsided with loomis books such as this, other photo references sites like http://reference.sketchdaily.net/en and Figure Drawing: Design and Invention. I will also reference Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist and maybe more depending on my budget.

digital art and rendering: For the final stage of my journey, I will venture into ctrlpaint. Simultaneously I will be reading How to Render, Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist and Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter

After that.... I don't know. We will see were I am in a year.

I think "The Swerve" by Greenblatt is one of the most popular books on Epicureanism, though there are plenty:

https://www.amazon.com/Swerve-How-World-Became-Modern/dp/0393343405

I'd also recommend reading some Epicurus if you are interested. Not many texts out of his large collection have survived, but there are a few, and they are very illuminating, especially on the ethical side of his philosophy, which Lucretius does not tend to discuss at great length:

http://www.epicurus.net/

I'd especially recommend the Letter to Menoeceus.

If you've got the time and resources to spare, try making maquettes. You can get modeling clay fairly cheap, and it can be incredibly helpful to throw together a quick maquette, chuck it under a lamp, and see what happens with the light.

If you want a great pair of books on light and form by a master painter, check out James Gurney's Color and Light and Imaginative Realism. His blog is worth a read as well, it's always informative and interesting.

If you want a more technical approach to lighting, How to Render is a fantastic technical examination of how light behaves on various surfaces. The associated How to Draw is an excellent technical book on perspective. Both are a bit dry and clinical, but quite excellent.

Anything by Andrew Loomis is also well worth picking up.

I don't read a lot of action-y graphic novels, so I can't really help you with finding more stuff like Watchmen, Wanted, etc. (However, you have to promise me you'll read Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns.)

But I can recommend more laid-back graphic novels if you're ever in the mood for something different! Give American Born Chinese, Anya's Ghost, or Daytripper a shot sometime.

Persepolis and Maus are also graphic novel must reads, no matter what genre you usually favor. And Scott Pilgrim was super popular recently, with great cause.

And, if you're willing to settle down for a long haul and read your comics backwards, I really can't recommend Fullmetal Alchemist enough. 27 volumes, but it's the best action series I've ever read and one of my all-time favorites of any sort of media. Check out a stack of it from the library and you'll fly right through it. That's what I did one afternoon, and my time has never been better spent.

Edit: More suggestions, typos.

I'm a comic book artist that went to school for it, still aspiring.

For understanding things like panel layout, pacing in comics, etc, check out Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and Making Comics are pretty good for helping both artist and non-artist get what makes comics comics. Knowing how to create the visual comic, even if you can't draw, will help you direct your script.

Also, there is no official, streamlined way to write a comic script. Just make sure you put in all the necessary details while keeping things clear for the artist. Like if there's a bad guy with a secret weapon, make sure the artist knows that the moment he shows up so the artist can plan for it. And unless you're planning for a particular effect, don't make a guy do more than one thing in a panel.

You are not writing a story or a novel, you are writing a set of instructions for an artist and nobody will really see the script. I've seen scripts say things along the lines of, "The detective removes his hat, revealing a masculine, sexy face, like (insert actor here)".

It's also important to know about comic book panel layouts and whatnot because often it's acceptable for the writer to give the artist a drawing of a suggested layout.

Step 1. LOOK at the art.

It sounds like you're doing this, that's great! The artist probably spent 2–10 hours on that one page, I'm sure they'd like it if people did more than glance at it. You might find it useful if you pay attention to these things in particular: shapes, how lighting works (the shadows, shading, and highlights), line width, composition and layout, foreground/background and perspective, anatomy and proportions (which can be unrealistic and still look good), textures and effects.

Take a look at through the Escher Girls tumblr if you want to see what inaccurate anatomy can do to otherwise skilled artwork.

Step 2. Learn about what goes into artwork. For comics, manga, and other sequential art in particular, I HIGHLY recommend reading Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. It is not a how-to-draw book. It's also well worth your time, and odds are good you can find it at your local library if you live in an native English-speaking country. The sequel, Making Comics, is also really good.

Step 3. Keep looking at the art for multiple series, over time eventually you'll start to notice what works and what doesn't, when rules are broken to good effect and when they really should've listened.

On typography:

• The Elements of Typographic Style, the Bible of Typography.
  
• Thinking with Type, a nice overview of how type works.
  
• Detail in Typography, on the finer points of type.
  
  On grids:
  
  
• Raster Systeme, by the eminent expert of the Swiss School.
  
• Making and Breaking the Grid, a modern update on the timeless grid.
  
  On colour:
  
  
• The Art of Color, a classic on color.
  
• Interaction of Color, another classic text on color (theory).
  
  On usability:
  
  
• Don't Make Me Think, a classic on web usability.
  
• The Design of Everyday Things, a general usability Urtext.
  
• Understanding Comics, a great primer from an unlikely field.
  
  On information design:
  
  
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, the master at work.
  
  On inspiration:
  
  
• How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer, inspiration from the field.
  
• How to Be a Graphic Designer without Losing Your Soul
  
  On theory:
  
  
• What is a designer, philosophical musings, existential questions.
  
• Graphic Design Theory: Readings from the Field, theoretical backgrounds on the craft.
  
  On history:
  
  
• Meggs' History of Graphic Design, a canonical classic.
  
• Graphic Design: A New History, an alternative narrative.
  
  Monographs:
  
  
• From Lascaux to Brooklyn, the inimitable Paul Rand.
  
• Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design, the art of Saul Bass.
  
• Tibor Kalman, Perverse Optimist, the exceptional work of Mr Kalman.

Surely you've heard the term "late bloomer." Photography is fucking hard and it takes years to actually get good at it. If you put in the time and love it, it will love you back. Get this book because it was made for people like you (and me): Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland. Get it. Read it. You'll be happy you did.

What a lovely idea! For me, it's been fun testing out materials and finding what I like to use. Depending on her media interests, here's what I'd recommend thinking about:

A Brush Pen (especially for cartooning on the go!):
http://www.amazon.com/Pentel-Pocket-Brush-Refills-GFKP3BPA/dp/B002LJRKN8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448983878&sr=8-1&keywords=cartooning+brush

A Nice Brush:
http://www.amazon.com/Winsor-Newton-Kolinsky-Pointed-Brushes/dp/B0013E68TO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448984196&sr=8-1&keywords=Windsor-Newton+Series+7+sable+%232

Some Ink:
http://www.amazon.com/Speedball-2-Ounce-India-Super-Black/dp/B0007ZJ8TM/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1448983937&sr=8-3&keywords=ink+cartooning

A Brush Cleaner:
http://www.amazon.com/General-Pencil-Company-Masters-Preserver/dp/B0009RRT9Y/ref=pd_sim_201_12?ie=UTF8&dpID=512oIauSQjL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR149%2C160_&refRID=1J5XTFQ5TBWPSS5E39AV

An Ames Lettering Guide:
http://www.amazon.com/Alvin-Ames-Lettering-Guide-AL666/dp/B001DNAHRO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448984324&sr=8-1&keywords=AMES+LETTERING+GUIDE

A copy of Making Comics by Scott McCloud (SO useful!):
http://www.amazon.com/Making-Comics-Storytelling-Secrets-Graphic/dp/0060780940/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1448984007&sr=8-13&keywords=cartooning

• The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
  
  
• Stop Stealing Sheep & find our how type works 3rd Edition by Erik Spiekermann, this one is a super easy read but a great book.
  
  
• Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton, I have the 2nd Edition
  
  
• Making and Breaking the Grid by Timothy Samara
  
  
• Typographic Design: Form and Communication by Rob Carter, Ben Day, Philip Meggs. I have the 4th edition but I think most are okay. This is a good general typography textbook.
  
  
• Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks by Keith Houston
  
  I can't give suggestions on hand-lettering books yet as the few I have read weren't good...so I'm trying to find better ones. But check out Louise Fili and Jessica Hische for inspiration and of course Paula Scher and Sagmeister.
  
  There are many other books so I welcome others to chime in and add their suggestions.

I have more advice but I am currently at work. For the time being I would like to once again recommend Robert Henri's "The Art Spirit". It's not specifically aimed toward any type of art but it's an awesome source of inspiration for the budding artist! I will jump back in with specific drawing advice this evening. :)

This is amazing. I would love to try to convince him he must be color blind or something, while insisting that black people are literally black, and white people are literally white, and he must be seeing something different. A spin-off of the classic mildly-stoned-deep-thought, “how do we know that what I call ‘red’ and what you call ‘red’ actually look the same? We only know what ‘red’ is because we’re taught certain things are ‘red’, like fire trucks and apples. Maybe color is a social construct!”

Which reminds me of a Radiolab podcast about color I heard a few months back, and the mystery of Homer’s “wine-dark sea”- supposedly there’s no mention of color blue in neither the Iliad or the Odyssey . Plus, is the sky really blue?

Now seems like a good time for me to finally read a book about the history of color that’s been on my Kindle for months. That Top Mind who just has apparently just discovered color has inspired me!

These are fantastic as always. If you liked Vertumnus, check out Masters of Deception, a great collection of Arcimboldo's work, plus a bunch of Dali's, Escher's and other amazing pieces. Its where I first saw that piece, have had it on my shelf for years and have taken a lot of inspiration from it.

http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Deception-Artists-Optical-Illusion/dp/140275101X

get this book it's similar to a "mutus liber" (mute book) in that it tells the history of western esotericism in pictures but there is on average 1/4 page small print commentary on most pictures.

Art history gets close to the history of civilization from the weird perspective but if your not careful about your texts, the occult will be studiously left out. The renaissance was a blaze of occult Anamnesis that was quickly squelched via Protestant appropriation (Rosicrucians) and swept back under the magic rug of materialist history.

Also a fun exercise is learning to write/draw with your "wrong hand". Force yourself to write a few sentences everyday with the hand you do not write with. Eventually the script will get smaller and smaller until you have total control. May take a few weeks but it's quicker than you think. Need to do it everyday though.

What happens (IMO) is that you start rewiring your brain a bit.

Once your good at writing with your wrong hand, practice sketching with it as well.

I did a sketch of an eagle once with both hands at the same time and I did the right side with my right hand and the left with my left. It looked pretty good and you couldn't tell which was which. Sadly I let this practice go (I'm not an artist) but I can still write with my wrong hand.

You can always pitch to Frederator. Here are some guidelines - http://cartoonhangover.com/gocartoons/

For aspiring animators, we recommend this tremendous post from Daniel Schier about getting into the business:

http://waveybrain.tumblr.com/post/8165951350/tips-for-the-aspiring-professional-animation-artist

I highly recommend buying and dissecting this book, Scott McCloud's Making Comics - http://www.amazon.com/Making-Comics-Storytelling-Secrets-Graphic/dp/0060780940/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1464296435&sr=8-1&keywords=scott+mccloud+making+comics

And in this day age, you can (and are expected to) show that your ideas are potent by doing them, posting them, and sharing them. It isn't enough to have an awesome pitch bible. Make .gifs of the characters doing lines, upload regularly, share them with like-minded people. If they are good, people will share them and you can build your fan base. Pusheen or Homestuck are good examples of people going it alone at first without the hassle of people telling your that you are wrong.

Thanks for posting that! I recognize a lot of those illustrations from this book called "Alchemy & Mysticism" by Alexander Roob. Have you ever seen that one? It's a really amazing collection of artworks. I wish it were a little larger, but it's a great resources nonetheless, and it was really affordable. The hardcover sells on amazon for less than $20. Well worth a purchase if you into such things!

*edit - here is the link:
https://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Mysticism-Alexander-Roob/dp/3836549360/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526840172&sr=1-1&keywords=alchemy+and+mysticism+alexander+roob&dpID=5168YyiXUkL&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

Sup LazyJ507. It looks like nobody's really given you any tips yet, so I'll try, and see if this helps at all.

Work on drawing.
By that I mean draw from life. Often. Get a sketchbook and go out and draw a whole lot. Draw your family, your friends, your classmates, etc. Studying anatomy helps a lot! The real meat for drawing figures is in learning what things are SUPPOSED to look like. Try to find some life drawing classes.

Read a lot.
And by this I mean reading lots of comics. Read lots of comics and read lots of books about comics. See what you like and try to emulate--NOT COPY-- things that you think are awesome. I recommend checking out Scott McCloud's Making Comics and Understanding Comics. Also, check out Will Eisner's books: Comics And Sequential Art, Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative and Expressive Anatomy have helped me tons. It's awesome seeing professionals in the comics world give you tips and visuals that help you learn. Also, read novels, watch cartoons, watch movies, play video games. Find the aspects that you like about each and see how you can connect that to making comics. Comics are a pretty limitless medium.

As for this comic specifically, work on size, spacing, lettering, panel layouts, and black-and-white balance. And maybe comedic timing, but that's more in the writing area.

I can't really think of any more tips, but if you're wondering about anything else, go ahead and ask.

(i'm a sequential arts student a bluh bluh bluh)

Drawing on the right side of the brain is a good start, there's a reason people keep on recommending it for you!



Andrew Loomis's books is also good (all free there in digital form)

Constructive Anatomy by George Bridgeman

Imaginative realism by James Gurney more about painting and finishing, better for more advanced stuff.


Other than that, just draw things! Just anything and everything, it will help!

The Strike at Shayol Ghul details Lews Therins attempt to shut the bore.

Speaking of the Strike at Shayol Ghul, there is The World of Robert Jordan's a Wheel of Time also known affectionetly as the Big White Book (BWB) or Big Book of Bad Art (BBBA). It delves into a lot about cultures, features write ups of each forsaken, pokes fun at the covers and includes the entire text of Strike.

There was a short story called New Spring included in Robert Silverberg's Legends, this was later expanded into the novella New Spring

The short story about Bao is not considered connanical and is included in the short story collection Unfettered

Eye of the world was re-released for a YA market in two parts with a new prologue Ravens

The Interview Database, just click a topic that looks intresting and prepare to lose a day or two

The Wheel of Time FAQ back in the mists of time (late 90's early aughts) this was the best resource for all things WoT related. It hasn't been significantly updated since about book 10 (i mean, yes there were updates, but nothing on the scale and detail that it used to get). Gives great insight into what the fandom was pulling its hair out about during the two years+ between books. Also, some of the info is evergreen like historical references etc.

There was a terrible video game that has almost zero to do with the series.

There was a d20 based D&D rule set released and a adventure that explained how Taim got to Rand in time to rescue himat Dumai's Wells. RJ later came out and said that this was completely made up by the authors of the module and had nothing to do with the series, which was a BIG clue about Taim's allegiance.

I feel like im missing something, but I can't put my finger on it, so I will leave you with a random fact that you should know

Tar Valon is a vagina

1. Look at other photographers and work... study it. Figure out what works for you and what doesn't. Go to museums, galleries, and exhibitions.
   
   
2. Spend time figuring out what kind of photography you want to make and why you want to make it.
   
   
3. Get a notebook. Write about 1 and 2 as well as ideas of photos you want to make and what you want them to say. Having an idea in your head it one thing but our brains jump from thought A to thought G and we don't notice because the mind is very good at filling in the gaps.
   
   
4. Keep building technique but focus on doing so by defining the problems you have and what knowledge will allow you to create the photograph you want to make.
   
   
5. Travel. This is a bit optional and it's usefulness (and where to travel to) varies depending on what kind of photographs you want to make. But I find at the very least getting out of your comfort zone often helps the process of development. There are several photographers who offer workshops, traveling to such a workshop will give you a different geography and find instructors that you want to emulate or learn from.
   
   
6. See if you can find a place for critique... having to put your work up, hear what others have to say, and on some level defend what you are trying to say is scary but it's important for growth. Local Photoclubs are a start, local community art classes will push with a little more pressure.
   
   Books: Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, Critcizing Photographs by Terry Barrett (you can find previous additions used a lot cheaper), and On Photography by Susan Sontag.

I put this a little lower, but I'm not opposed to dropping it up here too...

• Daytripper by Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon. This book is amazing, and well worth a read.
  
  
• Drinking at The Movies by Julia Wertz. A great little series of quick stories about moving to New York City from San Francisco. So good it should be criminal.
  
  
• The Killer by Matz and Luc Jacamon. A surprisingly gripping little story about a contract killer. The art reminds you of some of the classic Tintin stories. As James Franco might say between bong hits, it's soooooooo gooooood.
  
  
• Incognegro by Mat Johnson. The story of a light-skinned black reporter from the North that travels to the South to expose the stories of lynchings in the South. It's amazing. Actually anything by Mat Johnson is equally wonderful.
  
  
  I also forgot to mention that Alex Robinson's work (Box Office Poison, Too Cool 2 B Forgotten, Tricked) is so good that I wish I could get it pregnant.

Not a subreddit, but this 'speculative paleoart' is pretty much defined by All Yesterdays: Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals (which your article actually references at the bottom).

There's also an awesome 99% Invisible podcast about All Yesterdays that you should definitely check out!

• Planeswalker's Guide to Kaladesh
  
• The Art of Magic: the Gathering - Zendikar
  
• The Art of Magic: The Gathering - Kaladesh (Releases January 3, 2017)
  
  There are other nuggets of worldbuilding in the Kaladesh block stories (KLD, AER) and Battle for Zendikar block stories (BFZ, OGW), as well as flavor texts from the blocks and small stuff like the Consulate ARG account but not exactly necessary for D&D if you want to have more creative freedom. Enjoy!

I'm a newbie as well, so take my words with a grain or two of salt. I've been working at it for about as long as you have. Everyone trying to follow an artistic pursuit of any kind struggles with that, and it never goes away neither, as the more you know the more you are aware of what you don't know.

Now keep in mind that, just like me, it sounds like you are still working on your fundamentals. Its easy to get discouraged at this stage (heck I know I am right now, as I keep trying to draw plants and feels like i'm hitting my head against a wall) because you are basically learning how to (visually) talk and listen. Its frustrating when one can't express oneself, we are basically at "gugugaga moma?" stage. Learning to visualize 3d forms in 2d space, being able to see the information that you need from the subject that you are examining, being able to break complex forms into simple primaries, being aware of flow within 3d space, etc, these are the things you should be looking for progress in as that has been your focus with the boxes, organic shapes and even the figure drawing stuff I would think. Pretty pictures will come easy after that skill is comfortably under your belt.

Saying that, I try to categorize my progress in 2 ways. Mechanical and Conceptual. Mechanical skills progress is slow but progressive, all it takes is conscious repetition (conscious as in not in autopilot, you don't learn anything if you are not aware of what you are doing), Conceptual thou... that is what gives you the headaches as it often requires you to change how you think, progress in this is far more sporadic, but when it comes its explosive and completely changes how your art work looks. It takes not repetition, but analysis, reflection and study.

This is a good book that address the struggle : Art & Fear

>You have no idea.

I have every idea. Everyone goes through this in art. Every. One. There is a wonderful book out there called Art & Fear which goes over... Art and Fear. It is short, an easy read, and really quite helpful for learning how we approach art and what this does and the role fear plays. If you've got a library card or $10 I really recommend it.

It does you no good to try and get things perfect the very first time. They won't be. Accept mistakes as a foundation for the future. Look at the undersketch guide and play around with seeking marks out. A clean piece of paper means nothing as far as learning art goes.

I think you should lean on the fundamentals of Buddhist practice:

• work on understanding the Four Noble Truths
  
• re-read about the Noble Eightfold Path (also available in print)
  
• and work on maintaining a daily meditation habit.
  
  It sounds like you are setting up a sin/sinner system around masturbation and pornography and are looking to be saved. You are not bad or a sinner. Drop this mode of thinking. Plenty of people don't masturbate or consume porn and are not enlightened in the classical Buddhist sense. It's not the point of the path. (Perhaps a byproduct but there are many of those.)
  
  It's most helpful when looking thoughts and behaviors to consider what is skillful and what is unskillful. Skillful behaviors promote wholesome mind states. Unskillful behaviors spring from greed/hatred/delusion and generally lead to unwholesome mind states. So you need to work on cultivating the good and avoiding the unwholesome.
  
  Something I've found helpful when about to do something unskillful is to reflect:
  
  >This leads to my own affliction or to the affliction of others or to the affliction of both.
  >
  >It obstructs discernment, promotes vexation, & does not lead to Unbinding.
  
  https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.019.than.html

Art books! My parents got me Masters of Deception as a stocking stuffer one year for Christmas and I've been waiting to have my own coffee table to put it on.

I also just bought Sorted Books a couple weekends ago (and got it signed by the artist), which I think would make an awesome one.

One year for Christmas I bought my best friend all the PostSecret books that had been made up until then and she still keeps them on her coffee table. We still like thumbing through them every now and then.

FORCE YOURSELF.

I'm on day um... 63 I think? I don't have my sketchbook on me at the moment, but I was challenged by a friend to do one drawing a day. No restrictions on content or detail. Just had to be in pen, and had to be daily. So far it's been FANTASTIC to just be in a position of "well, I don't wanna draw today, but I gotta get this done before I go to bed." It really beats the fear of a blank page out of you when you know that you MUST draw today, even if it's just abstract polygons.

Another recommendation is Art and Fear. It discusses what you're feeling on a very high level (it doesn't talk about technique at all, just things like motivation around the creative mind and thought process) and the book itself is short.

Last time I tried to give advice on drawings the person got upset and quit reddit, soooo, please don't do that. My suggestion if you're absolutely serious about drawing is to absolutely learn the fundamentals.

Fun With A Pencil: How Everybody Can Easily Learn to Draw https://www.amazon.com/dp/0857687603/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ijZZDbCWDFEAQ

Drawing the Head and Hands https://www.amazon.com/dp/0857680978/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_AjZZDb0B3RBPF

Figure Drawing for All It's Worth https://www.amazon.com/dp/0857680986/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_OjZZDbW37G79H

Successful Drawing https://www.amazon.com/dp/0857687611/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_4jZZDb95Z0W96

Creative Illustration https://www.amazon.com/dp/1845769287/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ikZZDbFRJYAJD

And after the basics


Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist (Volume 1) (James Gurney Art) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0740785508/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_alZZDbZW0Y1P4


Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter (Volume 2) (James Gurney Art) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0740797719/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_DlZZDb676AWT6



It doesn't matter what medium you use, learning how to draw and understanding what you're doing will help out the most.

conceptart.org has some good stuff, they make DVDs too. You could probably pirate them, were you a person of low moral fiber.

There are some good books out there too, which you can probably get from the local library. You might need to use interlibrary loan though, my local libraries have a poor selection of art books, but there isn't anything they haven't been able to find at another library.

Color in Contemporary Painting

The Art of Color

Mastering Composition

Abstraction in Art and Nature

The Art Spirit

Some people don't care about theory, but personally I find it inspiring. Art in Theory 1900-1990 is a good collection of writings by artists, critics, and the like. If you're weak on art history you might want to study some of that first, History of Modern Art is pretty good.

Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay is a worldwide travelogue of pigments and dyes. Fascinating and fun, definitely my favorite painter book so far.

Inspiration is overrated. What you need is to get into the habit of exercising your fingers so your ideas can flow.

From Art and Fear:

> The ceramics teacher announced he was dividing his class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right graded solely on its quality.

> His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would weigh the work of the “quantity” group: 50 pounds of pots rated an A, 40 pounds a B, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an A.

> Well, come grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity!

> It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

Second tip from The Artist's way. Every morning write 2 pages of anything that comes to your mind. Anything. If it's nothing, then write 'nothing' until you fill 2 pages. According to the author this is one of the best way to shut your inner critic and start producing art.

I really recommend you find those 2 books and read them. They helped me immensely.

yay let's all be nice for the sake of being nice, you should take all criticism on board, just don't take it to heart, if you're creating something for yourself you shouldn't really care about the approval of others. read this : http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0961454733/?tag=hydra0b-21&hvadid=9556644669&ref=asc_df_0961454733

I missed the whole two souls thing on my first read through as well. Slayer was a very confusing character.

As for a “history” there is the Wheel of Time Companion book which has a loooot of really cool info. It’s basically an encyclopedia but it has stuff like all the old tongue words translated and it mentions the power levels of every Aes Sedai.

There’s also the World of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time which might be closer to what you’re looking for. It doesn’t include as much info, and it came out before the series was finished I think. But it gives a really good overview of Randland and the past. It breaks down the different nations, factions, age of legends, etc. i highly recommend both if you love WoT (though the artwork in the latter book is... questionable. I do like some of it, but some is horrendous imo).

Edit: I have both btw so feel free to ask any questions or if you want a little sneak peak I can pm you some pics of them.

The book is The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. The writer kind of exaggerates the significance of both Poggio and Lucretius but it is really engaging and gives you a good idea of the precariously fine line many humanists walked in adhering to the Church and pursuing intellectual advancement.

On my summer reading list, I have:

• Player Piano
  
  
• Lolita (re-reading. Nabokov's use of language is sublime)
  
  
• The Swerve: How The World Became Modern
  
  
• The Conquest of the Incas
  
  
• Let The Great World Spin
  
  
• Theodore Rex
  
  
  I'm currently half way through The Conquest of the Incas. If anyone has interest in the Spanish invasion of Mesoamerica, I highly recommend it. It's a very vivid account of the political games Pizarro and his generals played to take over the Inca empire and solidify their grip in the New World.

Basics Design: Layout


Basics Design: Typography


Basics Design: Design Thinking


Basics Design: Image


Basics Design: Colour


Basics Design: Grids


Thinking With Type


Making and Breaking the Grid


Grid Systems Principles


The next few aren't so much technique books but are good reads.

Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design

Damn Good Advice: For People With Talent

The Vignelli Canon

It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be

• Item which would most make me seem like an old posh Englishman maybe a little bit, or not at all. They shower, right? - Home WL
  
  
• Most "oh god, I would never be seen with this in public" looking item - Woof WL
  
  
• Most phallic looking item - Woof WL
  
  
• Most geeky item - Silly Fun WL
  
  
• Item which would most help me achieve a goal - Books WL
  
  
• Best item to bring to a deserted island? Food. - Holiday WL

Was search for the Yanis capitalism/democracy post & returned here instead. Reading the article, i couldn't get past this near the opening:

>Karl Marx, a 29-year-old philosopher with a taste for epicurean hedonism and Hegelian rationality

Which led down a few rabbit holes... His dissertation was on Epicureanism, which isn't mere foodie-ism, and there were some interesting bits on hedonism in the mix. Quite a clever quip from Yanis...

edit to add a few leads:
http://epicurus.today/epicureanism-after-epicurus-the-influence-of-epicurus-on-western-thought/
(notes "Marx wrote his doctoral thesis on Epicurus. Marx saw Epicurus as a kindred rebel spirit. Thus Epicurus sought to overthrow the philosophy of Aristotle, just as the post-Hegelians — including the young Marx–rose up against Hegel." -- so maybe Yanis wasn't quite on point about Marx being rationally Hegelian? hm.)

This book looks super interesting: https://www.amazon.com/Swerve-How-World-Became-Modern/dp/0393343405

Also, this argues against the hedonism label:

https://np.reddit.com/r/DebateCommunism/comments/1uvl9n/does_marxist_thought_promote_hedonism_does_it/cem7w8w/?context=3

OH! I absolutely adore art books ( specially fantasy/concept art ). That does seem like the perfect place to start!
Link for the curious - http://www.amazon.com/Art-Magic-Gathering-Zendikar/dp/142158249X

I used to be an art zero, had the worst stick figures on the planet and I've had several shows in galleries. I knew someone who's hands permanently shook but was a kick ass painter and you'd wonder if other people were safe when she used an x-acto knife..

You need three things:

1. A mentor who can give you tips. That or youtube.
   
   
2. Practice. My god, the practice. I went through an art degree... oil painting? 1 painting a week... for 16 weeks. For two semesters (32 weeks total). Shoot a roll of film and develop it a week for 3 semesters (48 weeks). Drawing, 2 semesters, 3 drawings a week. Lots of practice.
   
   
3. Critique. I cannot emphasize enough how important a good critique is for helping you grow as an artist. Start posting to /r/ArtCrit
   
   Additionally, your inner artist like a child. A child, to reach it's maximum potential, must always be challenged, must always play (that's a child's job), must be protected from the assholes of the world, and must not be given false, positive encouragement (they need to be told when they're not doing well enough... no trophies for the losers). You must practice. Don't ask your friends and family for art advice or critique. Ever. People who don't support you should not see your art. (Read The Artist's Way, Art & Fear, and The Art Spirit)
   
   Ninja edit: Do not be afraid to use projectors and lightboxes until you get a firmer grasp on proportions and compositions.

I burned my guru hat a long time ago. :) There are many more deserving people around here. I'm just loud af.

I do really hope you find something useful in there. Here's one more that might directly appeal to you.

Edit: Okay, I've broken one of my own rules of acknowledgment. Thanks for the prasie. :)

That's awesome... I had few interesting books assigned in HS. I think Beowulf and Slaughterhouse Five were the two that I really enjoyed. I had a 20th Century Lit class in college that assigned the first volume of Art Spiegelman's Maus. That's a great choice for a literary graphic novel, too, if you ever seek to mix it up.

"What Makes You Not a Buddhist" by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse is a great intro to Buddhist ideas. It can be read for free on scribd without logging in. If you like it, consider buying it to support the author.

Another common suggestion is Way to the End of Suffering by Bikkhu Bodhi.

/r/TheMakingOfGames specializes in behind the scenes features for games, and often lists books like these. There's an alphabetical listing of all submissions that you can press CTRL-F on and search for your favorite game.

Dark Souls: Design Works is an art book about From Software's action RPG that also features interviews with the developers. The interviews can be read online, which is convenient since the book is out of print.

Super Mario Bros 3 - A Japanese children's book on how video games are made, with a focus on this 1988 Famicom/NES classic and including many pictures of old development hardware and Nintendo employees (includes original Japanese scans and English translations).

Street Fighter 2 - Polygon article giving an oral history from some of the original Capcom developers.

Crash Bandicoot - Making of article written by Andy Gavin, founder and former lead programmer of Naughty Dog.

Warcraft: Orcs and Humans - Stories about the development of the first Warcraft RTS game by Patrick Wyatt, former lead programmer at Blizzard.

StarCraft - Various making of articles by Patrick Wyatt.

GoldenEye 007 - Four members of the development team recount the making of.

BioShock Infinite - Wired magazine article published in 2012 about Irrational Games' ambition, a description of their offices and Ken Levine's demanding nature as the director of the project.

BioShock Infinite - Polygon article on the final years of Irrational Games, according to those who were there.

Defense Grid 2 - Polygon multiple-part article series on developer Hidden Path's journey to making the game and insight into the business deals that happen during a game's development.

Gamasutra Dirty Coding Tips article about nine real-world examples of dirty programming hacks and shortcuts to fix baffling bugs.

Gamasutra Dirty Coding Tips article #2 with nine more real-world examples of dirty programming hacks and shortcuts to fix baffling bugs.

The Art of Atari: From Pixels to Paintbrush - This book hasn't been released yet, but I'm keeping an eye on it. It's about the evocative box covers of Atari games.

38 Studios - Article and ex-employee post on the demise of this Rhode Island-based studio started by former baseball player Curt Schilling and that was developing an MMO codenamed Project Copernicus inspired by Curt's love of EverQuest.



Atari [NSFW] - Playboy article titled "Sex, Drugs, & Video Games: The Rise and Fall of Atari" profiling Atari founder Nolan Bushnell and written by author David Kushner, who wrote Masters of Doom.

A couple behind the scenes ebooks by Geoff Keighley (HL2 and MGS2 are free, the rest cost a few dollars):

• Half-Life 2
  
  
• Metal Gear Solid 2
  
  
• Mass Effect 3
  
  
• Portal 2
  
  
• Titanfall

The Art of Game Design - Jesse Schell is very very good.

Game AI (Millington and Funge new edition iirc) is very very good.

Some non-game-design books that are very useful for those doing game design:

Scott McLoud: Making Comics (the other two in the series are good but the section on plot, characterization, and development in this one is great)

Donald Norman: The Design of Everyday Things. (How design works and how people interact with technology and...)

Christopher Alexander et al A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, and Construction (Thinking about scale and design elements and modularity and...)

Kevin Lynch: The Image of the City (How do urban spaces work - essential if your game is set in a city - how do people actually navigate)

Polti: The 36 Dramatic Situations (old, quirky, examines how there are really only a few human plots)

Matt Frederick: 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School (how to think about and execute simple art, improve your design sense, ...)

Nice job! And thanks for sharing.

Is this the book you're reading? Is it good for a modern audience? https://www.amazon.com/Noble-Eightfold-Path-Way-Suffering/dp/192870607X/

Great Fantastic, thanks for pointing that out!

But what i'm thinking of is a publishable pdf with pictures, one that you could put on a torrent and spread all over the internet. A book similar to what I have in mind is "The Art of Shen Ku - By Zeek"

https://www.amazon.com/Art-Shen-Ku-Intergalactic-Universe/dp/0399527257

I know how you feel, it’s really difficult to put yourself out there. Creations are intimate expressions of the self. Erykah badus quote “Now keep in mind that I’m an artist and I’m sensitive about my shit” always reminds me that sensitivities ARE vulnerabilities. You are being vulnerable. You have to give yourself the credit where it’s due. I think the issue is fear like how you say you’re terrified- fear of rejection, fear of being misinderstood, fear of the feeling of exposure. The book I linked might help you. Your analysis of yourself is great, but also too harsh. One thing that you can change and that you do have control over with enough discipline are your thoughts. Get out of your head, as lame as that sounds. Really though, no one can do it but you. Positive thinking practices will help you, whether it’s clearing your thoughts through meditation or exercise, positive affirmations, or just really shutting your pervasive and invasive thoughts down. Use that strong mental energy you have that you’re using against yourself and put it into your work and what you love.

another thing I would add to your chart though is it having your moon in the tenth house. Something more for you to research and reflect on. When you’re in the public eye, you can get emotional, negative or positive emotions. There are ways around this. There are many artists who stay in the background and let their work speak for themselves. I know a big part of being an artist in a way is selling yourself, but really the people you need to sell yourself to are the people who are going to display your work. You can still be your low key public version of yourself in the art world and have your work shine.

https://www.amazon.com/Art-Fear-Observations-Rewards-Artmaking/dp/0961454733

Ah, De Rerum Natura! I have fond memories of reading that book back in college. One of our classics professors did a translation of the work.

There's actually a book by Stephen Greenblatt written about "On the Nature of the Universe" and its rediscovery during the Renaissance.

Edit: Found it! And it actually won a Pulitzer Prize! http://www.amazon.com/The-Swerve-World-Became-Modern/dp/0393343405

James Gurney's books are great. There's a couple ugly links for you.
http://www.amazon.com/Color-Light-Guide-Realist-Painter/dp/0740797719

http://www.amazon.com/Imaginative-Realism-Paint-Doesnt-Exist/dp/0740785508/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=010WGMHA6E5MNR6W03RW

Following artists on facebook has helped me more than anything. Well not more than putting in the time and effort to improve of course. Anyway, professionals are always posting advice and links to valuable resources. Its worth looking for artists that you like and seeing what their process is and how they solve artistic problems.

Rebel Without a Crew by Robert Rodriguez is pretty great.

Not as film related bur more related to the artistic process is Art and Fear. I highly recommend this to everybody I talk about art with. It's a great book to take notes in and destroy with highlighters.

Making and breaking the grid is more general in its approach - it focuses on what a good layout is. It's all about how layout can convey your message in the best way possible - whatever your medium is.

It's not specifically about magazines but it has good hints and pointers on how to make your layout right for the message you are conveying.

For me it has been a like a bible in my studies.

I haven't had a chance to look at it myself, but The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time was released a number of years ago. It sounds like it might be the sort of thing you are looking for.

I agree though that it would be nice to have more books to build on the lore.

I recieved this book as a gift and found it to be incredibly helpful. If you're looking for a really thorough rundown of the entire process, I definitely recommend it.

A great book that actually illustrates (hah!) this point is All Yesterdays. It shows how much of our prehistoric artwork is speculative, and how we have a tendency to "shrink wrap" animals. The end of it shows some amazing work on how we'd reconstruct live animals from fossils today to underscore the point.

Do you read comics? If not, head down to the library and check out a variety of them. Graphic novels and TPB's will vary in length, some shorter ones are fewer than 50 pages. Some longer ones are over 1000.

Browse Kickstarter. I'm not a huge fan of most of the campaigns on there, but a lot of them get funded, you can see from those campaigns what it takes to get what you want done.

r/comicbookcollabs is a good place to look for an artist, or deviantart, or comic book forums. You MIGHT be able to work out a partial residual deal, but expect to come out of pocket for your project to the tune of around $100 per page.

If you're not familiar with scripting comics you should get your hands on some comic book scripts to see how they pace a page, a chapter, a single issue, a book, ect. You might be fine publishing your first chapter at around 20 pages, you might want to do a short graphic novel at 50+ pages.
Here's some books you should check out

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Comics-Invisible-Scott-McCloud/dp/006097625X

https://www.amazon.com/Comics-Sequential-Art-Principles-Instructional/dp/0393331261

Geisel was pretty heavily in the tank for FDR and backed his policies pretty blindly. Or maybe it was the editorial slant of the left leaning newspaper he worked at at the time. Anyways, this cartoon backs FDR's Japanese internment policy.

This is an interesting book if you want to see more of this stuff.

The book Making Comics by Scott McCloud is great for any comic newbies, or even more experienced folks. Very insightful and fun to read even if you never follow the advice. Probably can find it cheaper than on amazon with a little digging.

Having worked in advertising now for a good 10 years, and being a Dr. Seuss fan (because at one point I was a child), this book is a must have. It reminds me of that other awesome Seuss-related book, "Dr. Seuss Goes to War." It's about the work he did for the Army during WWII.

Although not Dark Souls 2 specific, a true Dark Souls fan would love to get the Design Works book: http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Souls-M-Kirie-Hayashi/dp/1926778898/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407172279&sr=8-1&keywords=dark+souls+design+works

Learn from the masters.

• Comics and Sequential Art: Principles and Practices by Will Eisner
  
• Making Comics by Scott McCloud
  
• Alan Moore's Writing For Comics
  
• Words for Pictures by Brian Bendis
  
• Framed Ink: Drawing and Composition for Visual Storytellers by Marcos Mateau-Mestre
  
• Foundations in Comic Book Art by John Paul Lowe
  
• The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing Comics by Comfort Love and Adam Withers

Here's a few off the top of my head!

• Stitches
  
  
• Blankets
  
• Maus
  
• Locke and Key
  
• Saga
  
• Y: The Last Man
  
  Sooo many others, but this is good starter list. Fair warning: I have not read these with an eye as to what would be appropriate in a Christian environment. I am fairly certain that Stitches, Maus, and Locke and Key are all "safe."
  
  Edit: Eff it here are some more.
  
  
• Transmetropolitan
  
  
• DMZ
  
  
• Ex Machina
  
  
• The Walking Dead
  
  You have already mentioned all of my other would be suggestions. :)

I started this one as a gag on facebook when I was running a kickstarter for a painting. https://seanstastny.com/ i did a bunch of little ads and jokes and designed a few stickers and things like that. enough people liked so I added it as a stretch goal and got a few made.

The company I ordered my patches from is https://www.thestudio.com/. I just sent them my designs and a month later patches, stickers and postcards show up on my doorstep. There are a quite a few PoD places that can do patches so get quotes if you are going to get them made to sell.

Design wise the patch is a riff on the NASA EVA mission patch. It is on all the space walk suits so I knew I wanted something that was similar. I had done the original drawing and shown it to a few people and some wondered what his legs looked like. So I decided to riff on the original patches influences and make my own Vitruvian Cthulu thing.

I think the thing to pay attention to most for a patch is the size and line weight of your drawing. Thread has a thickness that you have to pay attention to. so your design cant be crowded or over complicated. Some times its an advantage to have things jumbled together and sometimes it looks terrible. For example the NASA part of the suit is mostly unreadable at that size, but i wanted a splash of red in the center to tie the red bounding box into the drawing.

I dont know any books on patch design but for any image making that tells a story I highly recommend James Gurneys Imaginative Realism and Color and Light.

There is a lot of lore and worldbuilding in The Art of Magic: The Gathering - Zendikar. There is also a corresponding book coming out for kaladesh soon, as shown by this thread. If you are looking for something Pre-Eldrazi, there is also A Planeswalker's Guide to Zendikar.

I hope this helps and good luck!

The image is from a book called All Yesterdays. Some of the authors' associates have posted it on their blog, so hopefully it's ok for me to post it here. The artist himself is C.M. Kosemen, more of his work can be seen here and here. The other 2 authors are Darren Naish, author of the fabulous Tetrapod Zoology blog and John Conway, his paleoart is pretty good.

Two things that is very helpful is to know type and grids.


On typography my favorite is: The Elements of Typographic Style

Another good one is Stop Stealing Sheep


For grids, I like this one: Grid Systems in Graphic Design

Making and Breaking the Grid
is not too bad either.

Since you mentioned Childrens Books, would Dr. Seuss be a worthwhile addition to your collection? He also has more mature readings too. I also just saw your antique portion....WOWSERS that added an entirely new aspect to the way I want to collect! Printings are one thing but a Bible from the late 1800's? I nearly teared up man and Im not even religious lol. I see you still have a ways to go...Have fun on your journey!!

If you have "a large amount of time and experience under [your] belt with graphic design," I'm curious as to how you've never learned about bleeds, color spaces, and typography? They're fairly fundamental. You're also going to need to learn more than Photoshop. If you want to seriously do print design, you're going to need to know indesign and illustrator as well.

The Elements of Typographic Style

Thinking with Type

Making and Breaking the Grid


Stuff like color spaces and bleeds I learned in design school. I'm not sure if there would be books that cover it because it's so basic. You're probably better off finding out about that kind of stuff online...or going to school to study graphic design.

Here's a basic explanation:

Bleeds: When you print a document commercially, if you want images to go all the way up to the edge of the page (bleed), you need to set up your files properly. If you're printing a document with "bleed," you're printing a size that's actually larger than the final product will be, then trimming off the excess. This ensures that you don't end up with little white edges on your paper where the trim wasn't exactly precise. The industry standard for bleed is .125 inches, though if you're using a lower quality printer, you may want to use more.

Color spaces: Light has three primary colors: Red, Green, and Blue. Therefore, devices which process light (such as digital cameras, smart-phone displays, computer monitors, etc) do so in RGB. If you are creating a file that is going to be consumed digitally, you're going to want to set it up in RGB.

Printers interpret color in CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key [Black]). They do this by breaking images down into halftone screens, which are in essence a configuration of dots of CMYK. From a distance, our eyes perceive these dots as a wide range of colors. If you are setting up a file that you intend on printing, it should be in CMYK.

lol, comics are just pictures and words. there are plenty of non-fiction comics in the world

by discounting the medium you are making yourself sound ignorant. you should probably buy what i linked you to, it could save your intellect.

also, you didn't address my comment about pitting two (real or perceived) groups against one another.

Not really a non-fiction book, more of a biographical/memoir/graphic novel, but still interesting and worthwhile: Maus I and Maus II.

(Author interviews his jewish father about his experiences before, during and after WWII and re-tells the story using animals symbolically. For example: Jews are depicted as mice, Nazis are depicted as cats.)

Honestly, one of the best places to start is:
https://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Mysticism-Alexander-Roob/dp/3836549360/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1537747469&sr=8-8&keywords=alchemy

He references most everyone you need to know, and you can follow up. Plus he's really focusing on an important part of the Alchemical tradition and it's transmission: the visuals. Where the guys creating these visuals alchemists? Maybe not in all cases, though it would be hard to do any of them with no understanding, but in many cases- definitely.
This is one of the main sources of Alchemical tradition, and you'll see very little that indicates that you are trying to turn lead into gold, but a lot conveying that you are taking metaphorical lead and turning it into gold. Spiritual lead into gold. Human lead into gold.

The book is called Masters of Deception and I adore it. If you want to see another amazing artist from that book look up John Pugh the muralist.

This is prob the wrong sub to ask this but let me try and give you some more info as someone who has worked on comics in the past.

If you are looking how comics are professionally made usually it’s a team of a few people with the jobs of writing, penciling, inking, coloring, and lettering split up. If you wanna take on all of that on your own it’s not impossible, most webcomic artists do it all but those are very different than comic books.

To be honest if it’s just for yourself you don’t even have to get any drawing apps. You can collage images you find online to make a story or just draw simple drawing on printer paper and put that together. See if it’s something you enjoy before dropping a bunch of money on software or art supplies.

If you are really really looking into getting into comic book making I’d suggest buying the book Making Comics

This website is based off of Scott McCloud's facial expression explanation from his book Making Comics and seems to be what you are looking for. It doesn't give you the words, but it can help you visualize your character's emotions and give your own spin to describing them. I hope this helps!

These scrolls are a really big deal. IIRC, only the outer layer was carbonized, which meant that some of the writing is preserved in the interior layers. Some fragments from finds like this were what brought the ancient work "De Rerum Natura" (On the Nature of Things) to the attention of early scholars.

According to Greenblatt in The Swerve, the rediscovery of this work is what kicked off much of the secular/scientific turn in European history.

I read the Swerve a while back and I'm currently reading a translation of De Rerum Natura when I'm on the shitter, and it's utterly fascinating. It's an epic poem that basically lays out the vision of a secular/scientific view of the universe. It's one of those works (like the dome of the Pantheon, etc.) which makes clear how much was lost in the fall of the Roman Empire.

Congratulations! Check out The Wheel of Time Companion, The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, and the canonical (and non-canonical) short stories! And if you haven't already, peruse http://www.encyclopaedia-wot.org/ - it has good chapter synopses and links between parts of the story.

La design nu pot sa zic ca ma pricep prea tare, dar domeniul ma preocupa din ce in ce mai mult. Thinking with type si The Elements of Typographic Style, The Design of Everyday Things, Grid Systems in Graphic Design, Making and Breaking the Grid: A Graphic Design Layout Workshop si Don't Make Me Think sunt cartile care mi-au placut/din care am invatat cel mai mult, dar sunt clasice asa ca banuiesc ca stii de ele.

Honestly if you don't know what they need from asking them, a gift card to Amazon. I'd much rather have that and spend it on what I need or whatever G.A.S. tells me I need than to receive a piece of kit that I didn't choose. I don't mean to sound rude, it's just that I rather prefer researching and choosing my own gear.

If you absolutely must, though, I recommend a book.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1907708952/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0817439390/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0961454733/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159711247X/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312420099/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Or a notebook for taking notes while out shooting, scouting, etc.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/8883701127/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

This is a one hour lecture by an award winning, Harvard professor on an Epicurean, Lucretius: Stephen Greenblatt on Lucretius and his intolerable ideas. I've watched it twice and will read his book, The Swerve.

If we're talking about books about comics I must mention that Scott McCloud has another book: Making Comics (It's not as great as Understanding Comics, while I'd have to own Understanding, Making is more of a checkout from the library once sort of book) and then there are the books by legendary cartoonist Will Eisner: here's the first one

Sorry to go off topic but I love all those books soooooo much! Had to give them a mention!

Amazon is a good start. This book is Mircea Eliade could be a title and if you like visuals, buy Alchemy & Mysticism, 576 pages with color images and some explanation. From there on, try to see what it is that interests you.

Great description. I see someone who has seen successes and just as many failures, but still continues on with his life's work. He looks like someone who has seen enough to know when to keep his mouth shut and just observe. This image makes me think and art that does this is worth something.

Struggling with the worth of your art is the price we pay for making art. A good book on the subject (required reading from an old art teacher): https://www.amazon.com/Art-Fear-Observations-Rewards-Artmaking/dp/0961454733

>Help a girl out, trying to get laid for father's day

Uhhhhhhhh.......

>and my husband loves Dark Souls

Oh, whew.

Perhaps one of the Design Works books? I don't own one myself, but I've heard/read very good things about them. There's one for each of the Dark Souls games.

I got Alchemy & Mysticism by Alexander Roob! Have yet to read it, but beautiful pictures!