Art 22

Right, webcomics. I guess I'll begin with my favourite webcomic artist and writer, the wonderful Evan Dahm. As far as I know, he's produced two quite good webcomics, Rice Boy and Order of Tales (both available in book form wooh), and is working on a third, Vattu. His style is kind of... smooth and clean, with thick lines and well-defined figures. The frames are easy to read, so to speak - not overcrowded. The colours (when the work contains colour) are very smooth, I'm guessing computer-applied, but I could be wrong. The black and white work is a little scratchier, but still with the same clarity as the coloured work. Overall there's a kind of... I don't know how else to say it, but a kind of painted-on thickness that, in combination with the stories, I find very appealing. Note, there aren't any visible brush-strokes or anything. "Painted-on" is more of a feel I get from the work rather than an indication of the process involved in making it.

Rice Boy... I really fell in love with Rice Boy. A kind of Jungian tale of friendship and bravery and dark deeds and corruption and sacrifice and nobility and all that other amazing stuff that make up good stories. Full of strange-nesses that feel familiar. I guess what I really like about it, above and beyond the art (which is fantastic and lovely), is the movement of the story. The twists and turns it takes, the archetypal characters and themes hidden in weird forms. It resonated - that sense of familiarity again - deeply within me.
What really caught, me though, was the sheer strangeness of the landscapes and the creatures within them. The art, solid and in full colour, brings to mind a lucid dream - everything is weird and outlandish, but hypervivid and somehow very much where it's supposed to be. Despite the general bizzare-ness (bizzarity?) of the scenes, it didn't feel unnatural or at all wrong - almost the opposite, as though those shapes (again as I've found in lucid dreams) were more real, or maybe more true, than what we can generally see. There's also a simplicity, or maybe more of a clean-ness, to the designs that I really like.

Rice boy at dusk.
A tiny piece of fanart that I'm actually a bit embarrassed of.
The real one's not nearly as wobbly.