This was a standalone 4 part series with a slightly different tone than what I’d done before. It started with a blend of illustration and photography, trying to find new ways to use the more conventional techniques that had been developed in webcomics, such as trails and the metapanel. I was trying to use two …
For the last year or so I’ve been writing a newsletter. This Sorry Spacesuit it’s called, and it’s been a great way for me to figure out some things about myself and my goals as an artist, my process and my values. I’ve made some great friends with it and had wonderful in-depth conversations about …
It took a while to find all the loose files that make up this comic, originally published at the end of 2001. But now this quirky little parable is back online. I remember being influenced by Scott McCloud’s “trails,” used to great visual effect in his early comic Porphyria’s Lover. Many of the Halycon comics feature these same visual …
There was a subset of The Halcyon Years which tried to blend music and webomics. It was called “The Synesthesia Drive-In” and was a collaboration between myself and close friend Nichlaus Von Hulsebus, who is now the front man for our own Hang Dog Expression. “Dead Baby Army” was the last of these, and draws upon a narrative that was …
“Up” is the final piece in Directions. Trying to get a webpage to scroll up is difficult, so I went the route of having the viewer position themselves on the page. Kind of a cheap trick when you think about it. But back then, I was no html expert! Funnily enough, the original page had plenty of …
Probably the most absurdist Directions installment. I’m pretty sure I smashed together a dream and a joke my father in law once told me. And although the joke is great and the dream is unsettling, the narrative wasn’t the point. From a formal perspective, if you access all 3 of the interactive elements in the comic, you …
“Down” was the most straightforward installment in Directions. It’s a regular vertical scroller dealing with artistic frustration. I think the real interest lies in the metapanel, an open composition of photo collage that bleeds into the background. I enjoy the palette, the sickly mustard which rolls into warm oranges, and balances out the complimentary blue in the center of …
“Left” was the most problematic of the Directions installments. The biggest difficulty was in making a comic that reads from right to left. It’s counter intuitive for sure. Also pretty much all of the internet, from code-writing to browser rendering, is based on top-right orientation. So I employed a few tricks back then to make it work. Unfortunately, …
So there used to be this thing called Bitpass. When it was originally launched, it focused pretty heavily on monetizing webcomics. I was invited to be a beta tester of their system and create content for sale. This was 2003 and although it seems somewhat silly now, there was very little movement in terms of an easy …
The Halcyon Years was a series of short infinite canvas comics, some of which included early experiments with interactive elements. This installment was a typical vertical scroller, but it was constructed in reverse like the previous HY installment “Go Figure”. I came across some lovely photos at abandoned-places.com and started to use Poser to constructs scenes …
Read more “The Halcyon Years “Sleeping Dark Things” – (2001)”
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