Bi-weekly blog #2: My biggest influence (Patreon)

Hi all. This is the second blog post of the Wooden Plank Studios Patreon page. Seeing that we haven't really promoted our Patreon yet and we currently have four Patrons, I thought it might be a good idea to write another introductory post. A post people will read in hindsight, when we have thousands of fans and Patrons. People will go "aw, that's so cute, one of the first posts! They were so SMALL back then!"

A man can dream.

Anyway, back to reality. Today I wanted to talk a bit about the kind of comics I draw by describing my biggest influence. Hopefully it'll give you some insight in what to expect in the future.

I can't remember when I started drawing. I must have been about two years old or something. For the biggest part of my life I wanted to be a comic artist. More specifically, I wanted to be a Donald Duck artist very badly (this will be an important fact later on in this blog). I cherished this dream until I was around 16 years old. Video games had become a big part of my life and lots of people told me I'd be able to make big money in the gaming industry (yeah right). So I decided to ditch my comic-artist-dreams and become a game artist. I finished game-artist school, which was a very new and weird study back then, and started Wooden Plank Studios. Recently, we decided to start these webcomics, so I had to dig up my old comic-drawing-skills that I was so fond of when I was young. It was amazing. It felt like a reunion with an old friend.

I think 9-year-old-me would be amazed with the fact that I still draw comics. Heck, even 25-year-old me is kinda amazed. I didn't think I'd ever get back to this part of my oeuvre when I plunged into games. I love it though.

When we started these webcomics, I had to open an old mental file containing everything I knew/know about drawing comics. How do dialogue balloons work? How do you pace your comics? How do you properly deliver a punchline? What's my specific visual style? Who are my biggest inspirations?

It wasn't hard to remember all this. It felt as if these memories and experiences were very excited to be "used" again. They jumped up from my mental file cabinets like mental jack-in-the-boxes. While drawing comics the past weeks, I noticed some of the more technical stuff is a bit rusty (placement of panels and optimizing readability and stuff), but I have little to no troubles figuring out how my comics are supposed to look.

This is, mainly, thanks to my all-time favorite artists and biggest inspiration: Keno Don Rosa.

For those of you who don't know Don Rosa: he is (IS, yes, he's still alive!) a Donald Duck artist, although I think it's unfair to call him that. He's more of a Scrooge McDuck artist, actually.

I can write A LOT about Don Rosa and what I love about him, but I'll save that for future blogs. Today I'll try to give you a quick summary:

Don Rosa is - in many ways - the successor to Carl Barks. Carl Barks created TONS of Donald Duck characters like the Beagle Boys, Gyro Gearloose, Magica De Spell and, of course, Scrooge McDuck and Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

Don Rosa gave these characters backstories and emotional depth. He created the Donald Duck family tree and drew a twelve-part origin story of Scrooge McDuck, called the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.

His drawing style is great. He puts so much detail in his drawings, especially compared to other (Disney) comic artists. He's a master of shading without using colors. He's got his Duck-anatomy down. His comic timing and expressions are hilarious. His stories have huge depth and a big load of fun-sauce poured right on top of them. His stories contain hundreds of small jokes, references and easter eggs that you will or will not see on your first read.

Don Rosa is an artist that doesn't hold back. He never did, and I think he never will. His comics could be a lot less full and detailed without ruining the story, but I greatly admire the fact that he still went out of his way to make his stories look amazing.

So, if I were to give you a summary of what kind of comics you can expect from me, it'd be the kind of comics Don Rosa taught me to make.

Of course, I don't draw 20-page Duck stories. I draw quick, single-page gags about games, movies, television and stuff. Still, the question "What Would Keno Do?" is always present in the back of my head. Lots of webcomic artists similar to me focus on simplicity and effective joke-delivery (white backgrounds, few colors, stuff like that). I could do that as well, but I won't. I'll draw extensive backgrounds. I'll put little jokes and references wherever I can. I'll polish my comics until there's nothing left to polish. And I hope I'll make Unca Keno proud!

- Abel