natural sequence / river

Work in progress by Gareth Hopkins

Gareth has been working on a 96-page abstracted comics narrative called "The Intercorstal." You can see all the pages completed so far here. To whet your appetite, here are small versions of pp. 10-14:



Gareth writes:

Earlier this year I worked on my own abstract comic, called 'The Intercorstal'... Naively, I thought that I was the only person who'd been attempting to combine abstracted art with a comicbook format, so to find out there was a burgeoning movement that shared my ideas is really invigorating...

I got into it by accident. I occasionally do postcard projects, where I'll hand-draw a series of 10 postcards and send them out to whoever wants them, but I'd run out of cards so sectioned off a bit of an A5 page. Once I'd filled it in, looking at it on the page, it looked a lot like a panel from a comic, so rather than cut it out, I added some more panels to the page, filled those in, and had Page 1. I thought it would be interesting to illustrate a narrative that takes place in a non-physical world -- the basic concept is that the central character accidentally slips into a gap between dimensions and is then tries to escape. But because it's between dimensions, and between time, the story's not told sequentially, and I'm not sure what even happens...

I start each page by ploting out the panels -- I try and set the rhythm for the page with those, and then fill them in bit by bit. I usually prepare three or four pages of panels before doing any actual 'drawing'. When I fill the panels, I do them out-of-order (so, I don't start top-left and work my way through). Sometimes I'll include a central background shape -- a face, or a figure, or in one case a kind of alien bag-pipe -- and then work around that.

As well as the 24 'canon' pages, there're two pages I did on A2 paper which were then cut up and sent out as Christmas cards, and two three-panel strips I did for the art magazine XOK. Now that I review my work on The Intercorstal, I don't think I've done any for a few months, because other projects took over, but I'll definitely be taking it back up again now that I'm not totally alone in my endeavours.

(When you check out Gareth's stuff on DeviantArt, make sure also to read his comments on each page)

Geopolitical animation

or data flow as abstract cartoons:



(found via John Roberson)

The ultimate abstract comic?

Daniel Dezeuze, Chassis, 1967:



Edited to add comparison to first page of Jason Overby's piece from the anthology:

teaR UP ERASE draw

TEAR ERASE DRAW

Abstract Comics Accidental - Part 1

1885 - Still Life with Bible by Vincent van Gogh:

2003 - American Splendor movie poster:

Collage abstract comics by Jeffrey Meyer

"Stepping on Cracks"


"Factory Tour"


"Draw the Pick Yourself"


"Detritus"


"Flat Creation"

(all images clickable)

While, according to Jeffrey, all the pieces here were done in the last few months, he has been at this for a long time. He writes:

I've been doing abstract comics since high school (late 80s) and had one called "Nightfall" published in CEREBUS BI-WEEKLY or whatever Sim's reprint series was called in the early 90s (?) -- no idea what issue, and I don't even have a copy of the art. That was just a one-pager with each panel getting progressively darker, filled up with Zip-A-Tone, ink, fingerprints, etc. Pretty obvious, but the important thing is that I was PAID ($150!) haha. I used to do a lot of B&W collage comics (source images photocopied repeatedly until high contrast, then cut up and pasted into panels) attempting to capture simple movements, like car wheels and painted lines on the highway, etc. but none of that stuff survives as far I know.

I tend to obssess over some of the same ideas when I watch movies:

http://www.goofbutton.com/2007/12/fuzzy_lights_1.html

http://www.goofbutton.com/2009/07/cigarette_burns.html

http://www.goofbutton.com/2009/07/cigarette_burns.html

which I'd like to use to make some sort of comics or sequential imagery at some point.

Same with this page I do:

http://stretchglitch.blogspot.com/

but right now nothing's come of that stuff except collecting the pictures.

More on Jeffrey's Flickr page and on his website.

Circles 1

click to enlarge

Villagewind

The Question

Here's another abstract plus text experiment. This one more abstract, visually than the last. Appropriated text from Google Books, appropriated images from an Alex Toth "The Question" story from 1975.

A less abstract (but more attractive) comic using a similar concept (this time with appropriated art from Jesse Marsh (like my piece in the book).

(For what it's worth, these are both part of a project I've been doing, drawing 30 comics for the 30 days of November. Some are abstract, some are not.)