Chris P.

As one can imagine, everything went perfectly for the noble monk, Xuanzang, on his Journey to the West. No danger or difficulty for him at all!

Journey to the West is a classic piece of literature that every person should read at least once. It’s incredible how modern and relevant a tale written in the 16th century can be today. There’s an energy and a sense of humor in the novel that folks unfamiliar with the work probably wouldn’t expect and, unsurprisingly, the work has exerted a powerful influence on other cultures, especially in Asia. So many of its hooks seem to have found their way into modern manga and anime.

The story draws upon the incredibly rich and vivid folklore and spiritual traditions present in China at the time of its writing. Its pages are filled with ogres, demons, dragons, and toaist symbolism resting cozily beside the more Indian concepts we see in Buddhism. At it’s heart, there is a spiritual message that points the reader toward the spiritual “truth” of the Buddhist philosophy and the power of enlightenment, but it does so in a uniquely Chinese way with an impressive array of bells and whistles. Journey to the West is, without a doubt, a novel and not a spiritual text representative of any particular philosophy, but it is deeply concerned with all things spiritual. On the flip side, the book is infinitely entertaining as well.

The story, if you’ve never read it, revolves around the journey made by the Buddhist monk, Xuanzang, to India on his sacred duty to retrieve the sutras and bring enlightenment to the ignorant and sinful people of the south. Though Xuanzang is spiritually strong and a devout disciple following in the footsteps of the Buddha himself, he is not a physically tough or shrewd individual. The book paints a picture of him as a kind and fairly gentle person with a trusting nature. He makes frequent mistakes in judging the characters of those he meets and puts himself at considerable risk as a result, threatening the entire journey.

Luckily for Xuanzang, the Buddha sees fit to grant him strong and clever companions, chiefly the king of the monkeys, Sun Wukong. Wukong is such a powerful figure in the story that he actually overshadows everything else in the tale and, it can be argued that his particular journey (both in his physical travels with the monk and his spiritual growth) is far more important than anything else that happens. The monkey king is so hugely entertaining that he has become an icon, making appearances in movies, television series, comic books, video games, and theater.

Though they may be secondary to the legendary Wukong, the other companions chosen by Guanyin to escort the noble monk are seemingly just as silly. Rather than picking strong and brave companions, Guanyin makes some truly odd choices. We are introduced, fairly early on, to Zhu Bajie, or Pigsy, a strange pig-man with insatiable appetites for food and sex, though he is also a brave and loyal fighter. Soon after, the companions come across Sha Wujing (also known as Sandy) a man-eating ogre who is actually the most stable and dependent member of the group. The least important character is a strange horse that happens to be a transformed Dragon King, though he doesn’t have much of a role in the story since he does not speak.

While we can look at the story and laugh at how strange these choices seem, it results in a very Buddhist ending. It is the difficulties these fellows face and the suffering that they endure on their journey that leads all to enlightenment, a result they could not have hoped for on their own. There is a secondary (and more subtle) message that even though suffering happens and disaster may strike, it is all according to the will of the universe (or the Buddha) and that without facing these difficulties, one cannot hope to achieve spiritual knowledge.

If you’ve never read the story, I highly recommend it. There are many wonderful translations nowadays and it’s a fantastic read as well as a great introduction to Chinese folklore and mythology!

agoodcartoon:

Rather than slamming the door in their face, immigrants seeking shelter should be treated like guests. A good cartoon.

bigfatbug:

hi everybody, recently i’ve been seeing a lot of people around the internet talking about experiencing drawing related pain

it feels like the right time to publicly recommend this extremely informative and well-researched minicomic by kriota willberg. i carry a copy with me everywhere and tell friends about it all the time because it is super helpful and has helped me unlearn some bad drawing habits and learn plenty of healthy new ones!

in 60 pages it covers

• drawing positions that lessen stress on your muscles
• a wide variety of easy exercises (and sample routines)
• small lifestyle changes you can make to keep healthy
• and when to tell if prevention isn’t enough and you need to see a doctor

you can buy it HERE and HERE. it’s very thorough, the author knows a lot about muscles and the body as well as about the specifics of drawing and it really shows. even if you haven’t experienced drawing pain yet, integrating this stuff into your routine is a good way to start taking preventative measures

stay safe and healthy everyone!

i just bought this and i cant wait for it to arrive. its so important to take care of your body to prevent strain!!

Women have an unfair advantage in business because they can get to the top in much fewer steps. An MRA cartoon.
- credit to Poopy Palpy

Summer time witches!

the story of that one immortal beast god and all the weird things that followed him home despite his best efforts

Some nostalgia anime doodles from Thursday. I remember how I used to stay up way too late reading Inuyasha AU fanfiction on the weekends as a teen. I was COOL B)

>>>>FULL SIZE<<<<<<

Suffer no pretenders to the throne

Another Chuck Asay Classic: Obama’s death and/or return as Obama the White would go a huge way toward generating republican goodwill. A Tolkien cartoon.

Fionna got an update for tonight’s episode, The Prince Who Wanted Everything!

This was a really fun thang. Above are the post-it drawings I had done before we applied notes, revisions and clean up to create the final product!

You’ve likely heard that Facebook is extending its tracking. On June 12 the company said in a blog post that it would expand its tracking to “include information from some of the websites and apps you use.” This means that if you’re looking around the web for a certain product, Facebook will be there to know that it should target ads related to that product back to you.

The issue has been predictably contentious, not the least of which because Facebook decided to stop honoring Do Not Track. To their credit, however, the social media giant provided users with instructions on how to opt out of tracking. But that approach relies on a cookie, which means: you’d have to apply it to every browser on every device you own; it may expire when you least expect it; and if you clear out your cookies you have to reapply.

But … we’ve got you covered: you can disable all social media buttons with Adblock Plus.

If you do not want Facebook peering into your browsing habits, just enable the social media tracking blocker in Adblock Plus. To do so, click the link that says “open this dialogue,” whereupon you will see the following screen. Now just click the Add button to apply the preloaded filter list.

Your screen should now look like the one below, with “Fanboy’s Social Blocking List” enabled.

While you can go the route recommended by Facebook, why would you take the circuitous, temporary path? Bottom line: if you don’t want Facebook to follow you, our solution is direct, simple and permanent.

royalboiler:

Xurxo sent a revised version of the"Brief Manual for Cartoonists" by Moebius" Xurxo’s Tumbr here

• I reviewed this thing and re translated a lot of it as well as corrected stuff from the auto correct and my own rushed mistakes.
  some points are more clear now and some remain ambiguous, they also are unclear on the spanish version. 
  it’d be great to listen to how he actually said all these things, as some of them have clearly a colloquial humour element, for the crowd; like the stuff about editor demanding higher body counts, readers not buying books with poorly drawn women, grinning superheroes, aikido or jodorowsky’s dead horse allegation … which is something he did often speaking in public. 
  
  "Brief Manual for Cartoonists" by Moebius
• 1. When drawing (by drawing), one must cleanse oneself of profound feelings; hate, happiness, ambition, etc.
• 2. It’s important to educate the hand, attain obedience, to fulfil our ideas; But we must be careful with perfection. To much perfection and too much speed, as well as their opposites are dangerous. 
• When there is to much ease (looseness, fluidity), as on instant drawings, aside from there being mistakes, there’s no will of the spirit but only the body.
• 3. Perspective is of sum importance, it is a law of manipulation in the good sense of the word, to hypnotise the reader. 
• It’s recommended to work on real spaces (directly from reality), more that with photographs, to exercise our reading of perspective.
• 4. Another thing to be learnt with affection is the study of the human body, the positions, the types, the expressions, the architecture of bodies, the difference between people. 
• Drawing is very different when it comes to a male or a female; because in the male you can change the lines a little, there are some imprecisions that it can support to have. But with the female precision must be perfect, if not it may become ugly or look upset. then they wont buy our book! 
• For the reader to believe the story, the characters must have life and a personality of their own, gestures that come from their character, from their diseases (illnesses); 
• The body transforms with life and there’s a message within the structure, in the distribution of fat, in every muscle, in every crease of the face and the body. 
• It is a study of life.
• 5. When a story is being made one can start without knowing everything, but making annotations (in the actual story) about the particular world of that story. That way the reader recognises himself and becomes interested (invested). 
• When a character dies in a cartoon, and such character does not have a story drawn in his face, in his body, in his attire, the reader does not care, there’s no emotion; Then the editors say: ”Your story is worthless! There’s only one dead guy and I need 20 or 30 dead guys for it to work!”. But that is not true, if the dead, or the wounded or the ill or whomever is in trouble has a real personality that comes from study, from the artists capacity for observation, emotion will emerge (empathy). 
• In these studies an attention for others is also developed, a compassion and a love for humanity (mankind).
• It is very important for the development of an artist; If he wants to be a mirror, he must contain inside its consciousness the whole world, a mirror that sees (looks at) everything.
• 6. Jodorowsky says that I don’t like to draw dead horses. It’s very difficult. It’s very difficult to draw a body that sleeps, that’s abandoned, because in comics action is always being studied. it’s easier to draw people fighting, thats why Americans draw superheroes. 
• It’s more difficult to draw people talking, because there are a series of movements, very small, but that have a significance, and that accounts for (costs) more, because it requires a love, an attention to the other, to the little things that speak about personality, about life. 
• The superheroes have no personality, all of them have the same gestures and movements (pantomimes ferocity, running and fighting)
• 7. Equally important is the clothing of the characters, the state they’re in, the materials and the textures are a vision of their experiences, of their lives, of their situation within the adventure, that can say a lot with out words. 
• In a dress there are a thousand folds;  2 or 3 must be chosen, but the good ones.
• 8. The style, the stylistic continuity of an artist is symbolic, it can be read like the tarot. 
• I chose, as a joke, the name Moebius, when I was 22, but in truth (in reality) there is a significance to that. If you bring a t-shirt with a Don Quixote, that speaks to me of who you are. 
• In my case, I give importance to a type of drawing of relative simplicity, in this way subtle indications can be made.
• 9. When an artist, a drawing artist goes out on the street, he does not see the same things other people see (normal people). What he sees is documentation about the way of life, about the people.
• 10. Another important element is composition. Composition on our stories must be studied, because a page or a painting, is a face that looks towards (faces) the reader and that tells him something. It’s not a succession of panels with out meaning. 
• There are full panels and empty ones, others that have a vertical dynamism or a horizontal one and in all of that there is an intention. The vertical excites (cheers); the horizontal calms, an oblique to the right , for us westerners (western readers), represents the action that heads towards the future; an oblique to the left directs the action toward the past. Points (points of attention) represent a dispersion of energy. Something placed in the middle focalises the energy and the attention, it concentrates.
• These are basic symbols for reading, that exert a fascination, a hypnosis (over the reader). 
• A awareness must be had about rhythm; set a trap for the reader to fall into and he falls, gets lost and moves inside it with pleasure, because there’s life (inside the trap). 
• The great painters must be studied, the ones that speak with their paintings, of any school or period, that does not matter, and they must be seen (studied) with that preoccupation for physical composition, but also emotional. In what way the combination of lines by that artist touches us directly in the heart.
• 11. Narration must harmonise with the drawing. There must be a visual rhythm even from the placement of words, plot must correctly manoeuvre cadence (tone), to compress or expand time. 
• Must be careful with the election (casting) and the direction of characters. Utilise them as a film director and study all the different takes.
• 12. Careful with the devastating influence of north american comics in Mexico, because they only study a little anatomy, dynamic composition, the monsters, the fights, the screams and teeth (grin). 
• I like them as well, but there are many other possibilities that must be explored.
• 13. There’s a connection between music and drawing. But that depends also on the personality and the moment. 
• For around 10 years I’ve been working in silence, and for me the music is rhythm of the lines (the music he listens to).
• To draw is sometimes to hunt for findings; an exact (fair, just) line is an orgasm!
• 14. Color is a language that the artist (drawing artist) uses to manipulate the readers attention and to create beauty. There’s objective and subjective color, the emotional states (moods) of the characters influence the coloring and lighting can change from one panel to the next, depending on the space being represented and the time of the day. 
• The language of color must be studied with attention.
• 15. At the beginning of a career, specially, one should attempt to create short stories but of a very high quality. There’s a better chance to finish them successfully and place them on books (anthologies) or with editors.
• 16. There are times when knowingly we head to failure, we choose a theme (subject), an extension (page length), a technique that does not suit us (convene). 
• Must not complain afterwards.
• 17. When new pages are sent to the editors and are rejected, we should ask for the reasons. This reasons for failure must be studied and learn. 
• It’s not about the struggle, with our limitations or with public or the publishers. It’s more about treating it like in aikido; the strength (power) of who charges is used to knock him with a minimum effort.
• 18. Now it is possible to find readers in any part of the planet. We must have this present. 
• To begin with, drawing is a way of personal communication, but this does not imply that the artist must envelop himself in his own bubble; it’s communication with the beings closest to us, with oneself, but also with unknown people. 
• Drawing is a medium to communicate with the great family that we have not met, the public, the world.
• Mexico, August 18th 1996 compiled by Perez Ruiz
  
  
  link to the original article in spanish
  http://www.jornada.unam.mx/1996/08/18/sem-moebius.html

“hello 911, i want to report a domestic situation. my unborn child is kicking the heck out of my wife’s insides”

littlefroggies:

I think I’m almost done with this… but its hard to say, I never know when coloring is “done” enough. Bleehh! Coloring is such a challenge.

Doooooope! Dope. Dope. Dope. DOPE! Dope.

chriscopelandart:

Jake Wyatt http://jakewyattriot.tumblr.com/ has an amazing short comic called “Necropolis”. He is amazing, so his characters are amazing and so on and so fourth, i decided to end my work day drawing the character…..Fun.

YEAH I got some Copeland art. Love the seams on them gloves.

every. damn. day.

tobyjones:

Death

this is literally how i deal with this problem

i guess all we can do is hope for the best! fingers crossed

Walking Gods cast (or at least some of ‘em).  photoshop.

Whoops, this slowly appeared over the course of the past week.  A lot of these guys I haven’t drawn in literally years.  For those curious, Noalle is a sibyl and Kaia’s friend.  Haldae is a scary dragon.  Círran is a flower farmer.  Oria is the god of the harvest. (more information about this story here)

If the CUTTINGS kickstarter hits its next goal (adding SIXTEEN pages of content), there’s a really good chance this’ll be included in the book!  It only has 8 days to go, aaa!  Thank you so much again to everyone who’s supported the project!!