I just realized that I do know other smaller comic artists I can bother to let me do this on something with different art styles, formatting, and conventions for variety (so there will be a few other artists too.)
As noted, because this is meant to be an example that can be followed, I will be going through the steps as outlined in my main "How-To Do An Analysis" post with respect to the last two pages of the most recent Recalled AU update.
If you don't know the Recalled Comic at all, that's fine! This is part of the exercise, as I will be explaining this comic as if it were a blind read in many respects. Sometimes you will have to analyze a document you have very little outside knowledge of prior to access, too! Come learn with me (and check out the comic after if it sounds fun.)
(As with the others, click to the original in case I did any edits to this after the fact.)
(Remember: link to the original source so other people can pull it up and confirm what you gave them!)
So, now with a new comic to study (one that may be a blind read for some of you!), let's start!
1. What is our OVERT (clear and obvious) information?
We are outside at a building, in an area with grassy fields and rocky hills as the boundaries. The building isn't particularly visible here, but does give us a setting detail that this is a place where people are. Some backgrounds are just colours.
We have one party coming to join the people at the building. They are riding and meet up with a group who was already there.
The two groups are dressed well, nobody's injured, but one does pull out an unusual item on the first page of our selection to check something before approaching the others.
The groups speak, largely covering first time introductions between themselves. One speaker uses sign language.
2. What are our INTERACTIONS?
People are traveling across distance on horseback, dismounting, and approaching the building where the others are. Part of the riding group is occupied tending to the horses.
The group already at the stable are standing very close together prior to being approached: those four are already known to each other, and may have been speaking or something like it prior to this page.
The main focus of the riding group (Wild, in the green poncho) pulls out a yellow ball to use to check something significant enough to take up a solid third of the first page.
Wild greets the others and draws two of the four away to introduce them to his own group, before addressing the merchants directly himself.
3. What ACTIONS or EVENTS happen here?
We have an arrival, and a meeting between two groups of people: Wild leads one group, and the other consists of two merchants and two others (Twilight and Wind.) The others in Wild's group aren't important at this moment, so they remain with the horses as largely background detail.
Wild is using an item to confirm something on the first page. Familiarity with the AU would tell you what exactly it was, but even without knowing that we can see from it's placement (dead center of both panel AND page) that it's very important to the subsequent action that follows.
Communication is established, not just as a first introduction but "can we communicate at all?" given the context of Wild using sign language exclusively to speak to the others.
Wild says the majority of the dialogue here: he's approaching the others, introducing himself, reveals he already knows who they are, and actively (including physical action, portrayed as cute rather than violent) separating Twilight and Wind from the merchants.
Wild's demeanour through all of this is bright, cheerful and friendly, emphasized by the solid colour backgrounds for some of (specifically!) his panels.
4. What is IMPLIED by the information here?
(Remember: you cannot cover everything a scene contains at once. You need to choose what you focus on in any given moment, in order to be able to write something comprehensible in a given space.)
This is obviously a first meeting of some of the parties involved here: indeed, the fact that in the middle panel of the first page we see Wild check the yellow ball, with Wind and Twilight in the background (ahead of him), we can infer even without knowing the action of Recalled as a whole that he was looking for them, specifically and is delighted (by all of his expressions and behaviour) to have found them.
Wild immediately goes up and introduces himself: he's not shy. He was trotting his horse (not walking) so he was first to reach them. He dismounts and leaves its care to someone else in his group to confirm their identities instead, and walks right up to Twilight to ask "Do you know sign?"
However, Wild doesn't dwell on the two people he just met: he actually diverts them onto others in his party right away ("You two Links will want to talk with Captain. He and my Zelda will explain...")
This seems at odds with the amount of excitement he displays elsewhere in the page. This implies heavily that something else is coming in between him and wanting to explain. It's not obvious from the information on these pages alone (or, indeed, in this update) why he might do that.
If he was wanting to escape social interaction, then the fact that he diverts to immediately address the two merchants who were originally with the Links he just met seems odd. If he didn't want to talk, why not simply step away? Is there something they're selling he needs?
This is the kind of page set where it's fairly obvious that you're missing something once you dig into it. Hence, in this case, step Five really is needed to figure out what context is missing in order to make full sense of the events at hand.
5. How does this CONNECT to previous or subsequent information?
So, the yellow ball in Recalled was the first thing that set this whole set of events in motion. You have to drop all the way back to the prologue and first part to begin to understand how it came about as an item--
(Remember: when connecting to other pieces of work in a series, again: It's helpful to include links to direct people to where you want them to go so they can assess the information you are pulling together for themselves and join in.)
--But this page essentially tells you all of that by itself: Wild pulls out the yellow ball to look at the arrows. That confirms that the two men before him are more Links simply by looking at it, information we already assessed just from the page set up itself.
Wind and Twilight are therefore new to the group being collected, and Wild is of course delighted to meet them. However, he diverts them to Captain and his Zelda and redirects to the merchants that Twilight and Wind had been accompanying. Why is that? While he is frequently not the main person doing the explaining anywhere else in the comic, he's more frequently up a tree or off cooking than engaging with others.
Why, then, does he speak to the merchants Wind and Twilight were with, and why did he usher the Links away before doing so? Nothing in the pages we have explains this.
But the last page of this update does. Specifically, the hands in the handshake...
you can answer this privately or publicly, or not at all; whatever you prefer. A friend and I are trying to set up to do our very first table in an artists' alley at a small local con and I'm SUPER nervous! Do you have any pointers/advice for a newbie?
So I read your ask to @dadhoc, and the first thing they said was ‘believe in yourself, because nobody else will,’ which is true. Then we started thinking about practical advice:
Try setting up your table beforehand, at home. If you have a 6′ table (the most common size), set up your stuff on a table at home and make sure you can see the things that you want people to see. They won’t buy what they can’t see.
Depending on how much stuff you have to bring, and if you intend to do more shows, consider a hand truck or rolling wagon. (The link goes to the one we use, it’s really useful and collapses really small.) You’ll thank me, if you have a lot to carry.
Find the bathroom the minute you get to the con, and also, consider packing your snacks and lunches. Nothing eats into your profits faster than eating from food trucks and ordering from DoorDash or whatever.
Make sure you have your load-in information from the con somewhere easy to get to, especially any verification numbers or QR codes. You don’t want to be fumbling for your ticket on your phone, if there’s a QR code or ticket to check in, it’s easier to print it out and keep it on you.
Make sure you know exactly what time load-in starts and get there then, especially if you’ve never set up a table for your art before.
Introduce yourself to the tables to your right and left. Help people if you can. The community is a lot smaller than you think, and being awesome means people will refer others to you, will tell you about other shows, will ask you to come to other shows they’re running. Being a shithead will make getting future shows much harder.
Create a ‘show bag’ that has everything you need to run your table in it. Think about being stuck in one place for hours and hours, and not being able to run out to CVS or whatever. Our show bag has our cash bag with our credit card reader, lip balm (MUST HAVE, you will be talking A LOT), small diabetic-friendly snacks, a small bottle of hand lotion (your hands will dry out faster than you think), water bottles, pens, Sharpies, index cards (for ad hoc signs), menstrual supplies, a first aid kit, a medication kit with one round of meds for each of us in case we get delayed or forget to take our meds running out the door in the morning, and extra business cards. Oh, and duct tape. I need to put another roll of duct tape in our show bag, actually.
Bring more business cards than you think you’ll need. Seriously.
Make sure you know whether or not the con is providing chairs. You don’t want to stand all day because you missed the line where it said your table doesn’t come with chairs.
Look at Home Depot for cheap display options. You don’t need to spend a million dollars on shelving or display stuff. The shelves we use to display our heating pads at shows cost $10 each at Home Depot. (And plus, that way, you’re not mad when something breaks. And shit will break.)
Do you have wifi at the con? Make sure! Otherwise you’ll need to be sure you have signal on your phone so you can run credit cards.
Get an external battery for your phone, and make sure it’s charged. You need that sucker to run credit cards. (By the way, do you have Square, or another credit card setup? If you intend to do multiple shows, having one = must. People don’t carry cash, you’ll lose sales.)
Agree ahead of time who’s responsible for bringing/setting up/tearing down what. You’ll argue a lot less when you’re stressed if you’ve discussed it beforehand.
Buy a cloth tablecloth. Plastic ones look tacky, and if you do more shows, you’ll want one that can hold up. Picking one up on clearance from Target usually works. For a long time we used a Hanukkah one because it had Stars of David on it, and I got it for like $5 on clearance in January.
If it’s a multi-day event, think about what you’re comfortable leaving on-site, based on the security. You don’t necessarily want to carry everything out every day if the area is being locked up or has security, but no matter how good the security is, I’m not leaving our patch box or pin boxes on site. they always come with.
If you’re in a state that has sales tax, make sure you are set up properly for that, especially if you’re taking credit card payments. We’ve had people from NJ dept of revenue randomly pop up at some of our shows. It’s annoying, but they do it.
Smile at everyone, says @dadhoc. (Yes, even the assholes, says me. It makes them angrier. Smile, but don’t take shit.)
That’s pretty much everything I can think of. Good luck! Let us know how you do!
hey does anyone actually use their drafts to save in-progress posts? i only use it to save stuff for later, and i’m curious to see if anyone uses it for its intended purpose
by Sabrina Garibian posted in Life & Home Just in case you needed to know, you know, how to get navy blue permanent marker off a wood table, I now know how. In the blink of an eye, someone in my house had taken a very permanent Sharpie and drew a very long squiggly line... Read more » Want to get the full story? Click on the headline above. And thanks for reading the BabyCenter Blog. http://bit.ly/1htl6Au
Sleep more. If you can. Bc lack of sleep is one of the main reasons of being stressed. But seriously, let’s be real, no one has time for 10 HOURS of sleep. Coffee is your best friend, just saying. .-.
