My Masters Year: Stickmen, white space, and the internet

Stickmen, stickmen, stickmen... They are all over my comics. Why? Well one answer is because I can't draw anything else... but I asked myself a quite important question: if I could draw other things, would I? No. I would not. I like drawing stickmen, and they are an essential part of my comic book design. They fit into my storytelling, my use of grids and my experimentations, especially with white spaces and photographies.

Stickmen, and basic drawings seem to be part of this new era of webcomics. With the internet as the biggest publishing medium in the world, the democratisation of software through piracy and the low cost of hardware, anyone can pick up a graphics tablet, do a stickman, and narrate away in comic book format. Despite the basic artwork, these comics work because the stories and the design go hand in hand with the stickmen.

xkcd are very popular:

And white ninja has had quite a success:

And Cyanide & Happiness just had a book published as a compilation of their best comics:

Would these work as well if they didn't have low quality drawings? I don't think so. The artwork, the simplicity and the white space is what makes these comics loveable. The comedy and the joke is told as much by the appearance of the characters as by the action development (grid/layout) as by the text.

"The visual representation of the characters will of course, depend on the artists inherent style. This can mean that the design may consist of anything from a stick figure to a fully rendered or photo-realistically painted character." Gary Spencer Millidge, Comic Book Design, p.16, Watson Gutwill: New York, 2009.

Lewis Trondheim, a very well know and respected French comic book artist, which has done such things as A.L.I.E.E.E.N. that has been translated into English, as well as the cat symbol of the Festival de la BD d'Agoulème, the Trondheim cat; has always had a style described as "pared-down cartooning to design different-looking extraterrestial monsters with just a few lines" (p.17, Millidge, G.S., 2009)

Above: A.L.I.E.E.E.N. and The Angoulème Cat by Tronheim.

On the simple character design and comedy side of things, others have managed to become quite well know on good design through comedy, good writting, and great and simple characters.

Simon's Cat, by Simon Tofeild, has just had a book of short comics published, but the cat initially started as short videos on YouTube:

Garry Larson's The Far Side doesn't need any introduction:

And Andy Riley's Suicidal Rabbits (The Bunny Suicides) born and bred in the U.K. are a endless source of joy and he is described as the British Gary larson: