I thought it'd be fun to try my hand at Somadis. I took a couple liberties with the design but I think it came out OK.

This seems like a great resource to have here. Are you guys planning on doing a curvilinear perspective tutorial, too? I couldn't help but notice that the second and third to last examples in the 3 point tutorial (the ones where the object crosses the horizon) would look much better in either 2 point or curvilinear perspective.

Quote from: spaceninja on Dec 23, 2008, 03:10 PM

For example, in the case of the comics code the industry wasn't responsible for puritanical 1950s society and the moral panic surrounding comics that arose from it.

Just look at the sales they were making, society was not puritanical. Their audience was not puritanical. A few stupid people who didn't even know anything about comics were making a lot of commotion, and the industry over reacted to them.

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What should they have done? Taken a defiant stance and provoked government regulation that would have been even more stringent?

The government likely would have done nothing, the industry thought they would save sales to young people by appearing to care and make "safe" comics that parents would approve of, but in turn lost their adult audience which a big was a big mistake in the long run, and something that would hurt them even more later  (for instance, an adult audience, if it had been maintained would not have suffered as much when video games became popular compared to the youth audience.)

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The code probably could have been phased out more quickly, but it couldn't have been avoided entirely no matter how wisely the situation was handled.

The code never had to exist.  It could have been phased out immediately, but they were trying to use it as a sales tool - and that's also why it existed for such a long time.  They said we'll put the "seal of approval" on our comics, parents will see they're approved and safe, distributors will see they're approved and safe, and they'll keep buying them.  It was their way of negating the paranoia that had been created with Seduction of the Innocent.
There have been parallels in other industries too, an even more shallow exampled of which was the "BMA 6" sticker American bicycle companies used to put on their bicycles.  The sticker claimed that the bicycles were inspected for safety and quality - it appeared on bicycles made by companies that belonged to the BMA, and no others.  So salespeople could point out that the Huffy, Iverson, etc. were "approved" and "inspected" but the imported bicycles weren't (they did not have a sticker, not because they were unsafe, but because they were not made by companies in the BMA).  It was a sales gimmick, and like the comics code was created by the industry itself.  It did not make their bicycles any better - it just made them "approved" and thus apparently safer in the eyes of the consumer.  The CCA was basically the same gimmick, but in the long run ended up hurting the industry.

Actually there's another interesting parallel between these industries, at about the same time comic companies gave up on adult readers, so did bicycle companies.  They stopped making finer machines and started making sloppier ones because they thought only children would ride bicycles (and children don't care whether a frame is brazed or cheaply welded, or if the bike weighs a ton).  So when bicycle riding as a sport became popular in the 70s, they were caught with outdated poorly designed products that were of no interest to adults - and foreign companies had exactly what the market they were ignoring wanted. 

Sorry to continue a derail that no one else likely cares about, but I got back from the holidays and have a few more things to say.

It simply isn't true that the comics industry created the code happily and without coercion. The code was a response to not just Wertham's book but to the televised senate hearings on comics and juvenile delinquency where industry leaders tried to defend their comics and were publicly excoriated. The hearings concluded that the industry needed to self regulate. When the senate tells you to self regulate while their constituents are literally burning comics it's not just friendly advice. Many states and cities had already banned crime and horror comics, so regulation was not just a theoretical concern and had already begun to hamstring the industry. Aside from that, you yourself mention that the industry did this in part to please distributors. A business where the product will not be distributed cannot function, and distributors and retailers refusing to carry objectionable comics was a mortal threat to publishers and part of the reason the code remained important long after the moral panic subsided.

Here's an article on the subject I found interesting:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/03/31/080331crbo_books_menand?currentPage=all

I understand your analogy to safety licensing in bikes, and licensing is certainly a common means for producers to both instill confidence in their product and exclude competition, but the situation with comics was very different in that the code was created under severe duress. It was a boon for companies that only published inoffensive comics, and I'm sure they were delighted with what happened and did all they could to encourage it, but the code drove many publishers out of business and hurt even more. To say the industry as a whole created the code to out of the misguided belief that the they would become more successful only selling inoffensive fare to children is a very hard sell and I really doubt that the code, or at least such a restrictive code, would have been created if not for the enormous furor and threat of legislation.

Mike Richards is an asshole.   Nobody would know WTF Gantz was if there hadn't already been a million people reading it online before darkhorse snatched up the rights.

There's similiar sentiment in the recording industry, where the companies don't seem to get that their sales suffer because of the truly epic quanitites of shit they try to pass off as music these days - they then say it's because people download stuff off of the internet.  Interestingly there was an article about a year or so ago about a shop in Denver where the owner said he believe's he's gotten more business because of sharing/pirating instead of in spite of it.  He claims it's basically free advertising, people download crummy MP3s off the internet, decide they like the music and come in to buy the real recording.
It's kind of like how I go to the library, find a book I like then buy a copy for myself if I think it's worth it.

The comic industry has unloaded heaps of shit on the public, and ignored/abandoned potential markets.  That's why sales today are miniscule compared to what they were decades ago.
It's too bad the automakers can't claim their current state is because people have been downloading cars off of the internet...  and not just that they've been producing the same old shit over and over again while overseas competitors have pursued new technologies and markets.

That's ridiculous. The "try before you buy" aspect of freely available media, be it music or comics, can't compare to the loss of sales from a completely free alternative. With regard to music, people have a limited amount of disposable income so there's only so much more music they can buy, even if they are able to find more music they like. The preview aspect cuts the other way, too: the ability to preview music and buy songs individually allows people to avoid paying for things they don't want. That's not even considering the many people who simply choose not to pay for music at all, or only buy the music they really, really like.

Share of music purchases by age group, pink is youngest and the dark teal that is above all the others for the second half is oldest:


Unless you think music suddenly went to shit in 1999 it's hard to explain share of purchases dropping for the young and rising for the old with anything other than music piracy. Tech-savvy youngsters learned about it quickly and knew how to use computers, but  older people were set in their ways and continued to buy physical media. It wasn't older people buying more, overall sales started declining in 1999 as well.

Also, people have been saying new music sucks for decades and the constant is not that music quality is in permanent free fall but that tastes change and people judge older music selectively, by the songs that keep getting played years later, and forget all the shit that no one liked because it doesn't get played anymore.

Comics sales are similarly hurt by freely available substitutes online like scanlations. Additionally, alternate media have become more competitive, putting pressure on the comic market. In the heyday of comics in the 40s the media alternatives were books, movies, and radio. Since then television was invented and programming has increased both in quantity and quality. Home video makes it much easier and cheaper to watch movies. Video games take up a lot of kids' leisure time, and adults as well now. Comics used to be cheap entertainment for kids but today there are many alternatives to fill that niche.

What do you mean by "heaps of shit", anyway? What are the markets the comic industry has ignored or abandoned?

but aside from the fact that i said i smoke me and Kid a re two different ppl we dont tell you we smoke b/c we think you care its simply a fact

Lots of things are facts. I have a labor economics textbook in my lap right now. Does that matter to you? Is there any reason I should tell you? No. You don't need to tell everyone every banal detail of your boring life.

I don't think the colors in that picture work well. Just superimposing color on value is never going to give you a good result. You need to vary hue and saturation with value.

Here's a rough example of what I mean.

Durham, 'bout 30 miles NE from Manchester. Anyway, New Hampshirites UNITE!