John Martz

March 8, 2011 // 3:26pm

Every Wednesday I just clear everything, sit down, and trip.

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My life is so boring that your brains are going to melt and come out of your eyes. I kind of tend to stay up late just about every night, anywhere from 12:30 a.m. to 3 a.m. I putter. I nurse old grudges. I fold origami while nursing old grudges. I think about the past. I wonder if there’s any grudges I should start.

Roz Chast - First Feed Birds, Then Procrastinate

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March 7, 2011 // 5:08pm

Yes, you’re going to write some sketches that you love and are proud of forever—your golden nuggets. But you’re also going to write some real shit nuggets. You can’t worry about it. As long as you know the difference, you can go back to panning for gold on Monday.

Tina Fey

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March 2, 2011 // 3:37pm

Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.

Studs Terkel

When the cashflow ebbs, I will revisit this quote to remind myself why I chose this lifestyle.

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February 20, 2011 // 1:01pm

There’s no real backstory, there’s no complicated explanation about why a kid is hanging out with a talking dog, there’s no theoretical limits placed on Finn and Jake’s adventures, apart from a unique set of basic, malleable physics. It just is, and that’s the kind of unrestrained, uncomplicated storytelling that makes it beautiful.

Collin David, by way of Frederator - “Why Adventure Time is the Ultimate Cartoon”

I’ve been thinking about this sort of thing a lot lately. I’m a firm believer in respecting the intelligence of your reader or audience. I also believe that not everything needs a backstory, or an explanation, or to be spelled out and telegraphed home.

I am reminded of an interview with Harold Ramis in which he explained how the studio heads wanted Groundhog Day to include a scene that explained why Bill Murray was trapped in a repeating time loop — a scene that involved a jilted ex-lover and a voodoo curse. I know, right? Obviously, this was ultimately discarded. And not only does the movie not suffer from its omission, it is a stronger and smarter movie because of it.

I recently revisited Superbrothers’ Less Talk, More Rock essay on the language of video games. It’s a thoughtful piece about how to communicate ideas and emotions effectively in games by eliminating the “disruptive talk” — the exposition, the hand-holding, and the noise. I think it’s a solid philosophy for all creative work.

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January 10, 2011 // 9:50am

When I first saw The Wizard of Oz it made a writer of me. Many years later, I began to devise the yarn that eventually became Haroun and the Sea of Stories, and felt strongly that if I could strike the right note it should be possible to write the tale in such a way as to make it of interest to adults as well as children: or, to use the phrase beloved by blurbists, to ‘children from seven to seventy’. The world of books has become a severely categorized and demarcated affair, in which children’s fiction is not only a kind of ghetto but one subdivided into writing for a number of different age groups.

Salman Rushdie, The Wizard of Oz

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October 14, 2010 // 1:14pm

I believe it has an absolute biological function. I don’t think it’s decoration, and I don’t think it’s an elective. I think it’s the corollary to our immune system, except it has something to do with regulating our moods, and our ability to be in the world — you know, be able to stand it.

Lynda Barry on drawing

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October 9, 2010 // 9:02am

If the drawing is going to be coloured mechanically […] there is usually a whiteout stage as well. I painstakingly fix up every line to make them more perfect […]

If the artwork is going to be coloured directly on the paper in watercolour, I can’t do this “fixing” stage because the artwork obviously cannot have whiteout all over it […] That means […] when I ink for watercolouring, I simply don’t make any mistakes that need whiting out. It’s a trick of the mind. If I can do this for the watercolour drawings, why can’t I do it for the mechanical method? Who knows. All I know is that if I am allowed to make mistakes I will make them — if I can’t, I won’t.

Seth, describing his process on creating a cover for The Walrus.

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October 5, 2010 // 10:40pm

Names and labels don’t matter much. Besides, there are things that cannot be said in words. So if you say them in pictures, are they not things being said? If I draw a hill that looks like a woman, it works differently than if I write ‘there’s a hill that looks like a woman.’

Jim Woodring, from a great interview at Illustration Friday

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September 29, 2010 // 3:47pm

Unfortunately, picture-drawing is considered childish, which is partly why visual thinking has taken a backseat to verbal agility. But that may be changing, because the Internet has boosted the utility of imagery.

Clive Thompson on the Power of Visual Thinking

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September 19, 2010 // 5:18pm

Ultimately, my whole approach to what I do is 95% effort and 5% talent. I really see it as a sport. You probably won’t become a tennis player if you don’t stand on the court for six hours a day and whack balls over the net. And if you do that, you have to be incredibly untalented for it not to work. But I think it’s tempting to think as a creative professional, you sit there and you’re creative. So much of it is just doing it everyday for hours.

Christoph Niemann: Short Deadlines Make You Think Straight

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September 8, 2010 // 12:26pm

We apply much of the same cognitive apparatus whether we are working online, with input from sense perception, or offline, with input from imagination.

Timothy Williamson, Reclaiming the Imagination

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September 7, 2010 // 11:20pm

Comic artists spend a lot of time working alone, and isolation is conducive to introspection and interior reverie. For me, comics and self-expression go hand in glove.

Seth, The Art of Compression: Comic Conversations

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August 20, 2010 // 4:52pm

Draw in your sketchbook right before and immediately after working on a piece.

Sam Bosma

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12:09am

People think it’s writing and drawing, but I’ve always thought of cartooning as graphic design and poetry.

James Sturm, in discussion with Scott McCloud

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John Martz

Posts tagged “quotes”