Tyler Sticka

Graphic Storytelling in Old Media

I have no idea how this eluded me the past four months. Christopher Knaus (@gniP_gnoP on Twitter) devoted a portion of his notebook to swiftly sketching nifty visual notes of various WebVisions presentations.

Although Chris “found it hard to do visual notes for a presentation about cartoons,” I thought he did an excellent job capturing some of the key messages of my Graphic Storytelling presentation. Enjoy!

Beauty and Wonder in Silver Falls, Oregon

I’m not what you’d call a real nature lover. My lifelong allergies to all manner of pollen and plant life have instilled in me an attitude of indifference towards your average photosynthesizing soil sucker. While I may never learn to love the experience of roughing it amongst the moss and slugs, places like Silver Falls State Park in Silverton, Oregon overwhelm visitors with visual delight and subsequent inspiration.

The waterfalls are spectacular to behold and often massive in scope. You hear them long before they emerge in sight along the trail.

Walking behind the waterfall is a treat, not solely for the unique perspective it offers but also for the often breathtaking view of a vibrant landscape invigorated by the constant barrage of H₂O.

Smaller aesthetic goodies await those who look around them during the hike. The unique shapes of twisted and gangly tree trunks, perhaps formed around their fallen brethren decades or centuries ago, provide plenty of fuel for the imagination. There is never an advertisement or billboard within eyeshot, no branding these discoveries; they belong to everyone and no one.

Occasionally a trail will offer the chance to stand near the base of a fall. In these instances you may feel overwhelmed by your own diminutive stature, but the sensation is oddly liberating.

While I cannot claim to have completely retreated from civilization (our cabin had heating and linen service, not unlike those enjoyed by the late “Grizzly” Adams), I would recommend the excursion to all interested parties. The imagery you absorb and, more importantly, the bonds you form with your fellow travelers will more than make up for your drive.

More photos and video

Google Wave will move our industry

Are you a designer? A web or tech geek? You have no excuse to avoid watching the introduction of Google Wave. To quote my good friend Matt Lohkamp, “just watch the first 15 minutes, then see if you can stop.”

At least two of my presentations (and a fair amount of my college lectures) have included the assertion that the web is still in an early, pupa-like stage. Email is a classic example of this: an impressively prevalent new media standard based almost entirely on the constraints of dead wood pulp traversing the globe on planes, trains and automobiles.

Wave excites me because it sheds those pre-conceived notions of written communication in order to take advantage of the web’s unique strengths. It is truly an infinite canvas project at heart, free from the bindings of “messages” and “inboxes.” In the spirit of Google’s flagship search product, Wave gets out of the way. It allows us to simply talk to each other.

As amazing, fluid and instantaneous as the default interface appears to be, the commitment to introduce Wave as an open standard is a far greater and more important statement. Google’s first level of ubiquity came with their efficient, fast and relevant search. They pushed it further with the introduction of extensible services which continue to organize our information in increasingly intuitive and exciting ways. I am truly impressed at the level of objectivity and foresight required to acknowledge the only barrier between them and world domination: themselves.

I’ve often heard that the increasing prevalance of Facebook and MySpace messaging may reveal email’s successor, but we may have failed to see the forest through the trees. The future is a standard of communication that exists in and apart from all our communication services, that accomodates our Grandma’s desire to share photos with the same appropriateness as our IT manager’s requirement of easily-managed, secure and efficient collaboration tools.

I normally reserve judgment of a product until I’ve used it myself, and I realize this entry must have an air of naiveté, but I can’t help it! For all my hyperbole, I confess to being an email codger who relies on a combination of Mozilla Thunderbird and Gmail born from a distrust of pure cloud communication. Fifteen minutes into this presentation, I was ready to abandon all of that.

The truth is, I want to be using Wave right now. Will you join me later this year?

(Apologies to Engadget for the movie reference.)

What cartooning can mean to kids

Cartooning means something different to me now than when I was a kid. Today, I could talk for hours about the techniques and achievements of hundreds of cartoonists. I might actually critique cartoons, dissecting every detail from line weights to sweat droplets. But as a kid, none of that really mattered.

Over the years I’ve volunteered at grade schools demonstrating and teaching the fun of drawing silly pictures. I preach the same philosophy that was imparted to me many years back, when Flying Rhino co-founder Ray Nelson visited my school:

“The only rule of cartooning is: There are no rules.”

I can’t overestimate the importance of this statement. A child’s curriculum is full to the brim with “you musts”:

• You must stay inside till recess.
• You must get four from two and two.
• You must color inside the lines.

We’re inundated with comprehension without a proportionate amount of exploration. But what good is understanding without context, without relevance, without stretching the boundaries of what is or isn’t correct?

There are no rules:

• Why can’t a cat be neon green?
• Why can’t an elephant water ski?
• Why can’t Venus be inhabited by squid-rhino creatures?

These are some of the questions I answered on notebook pages, typing paper and Magna-Doodles every single day of my public school career. They’re the sort of questions which tap into every child’s boundless well of imagination.

While imagination may seem less quantifiable an aptitude than mathematics, history or athletics, it is our most important trait as a species. Every child that puts pen to paper and explores the possibilities therein carries with them a spark that moves generations.

• Why can’t we speak across great distances?
• Why can’t we access all the world’s information for free?
• Why can’t we travel to other planets?

Why not? There are no rules.

(Pictures taken May 1 at Imlay Elementary School’s annual art auction event)

Art as conversation and the power of cartooning

I was grinning ear-to-ear as I walked up to Sergio Aragonés at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, opened the souvenir book to a page of the Groo 25th Anniversary section and proudly proclaimed “I drew this.”

Sergio was one of the first cartoonists I had been exposed to outside the traditional newspaper page, initially by my father who helped me a acquire a second-hand copy of the paperback In MAD We Trust! While many of my tastes have changed since, I’ve never lost my love for Sergio’s deceptively economic line work and an impeccable ability to distill basic human nature and emotion to its most effective (and humorous) form.

Cartooning is powerful and possesses a uniquely universal resonance because it focuses on the important aspects of an object and omits what isn’t relatable. As Scott McCloud said in his fantastic book Understanding Comics, “By stripping down an image to its essential ‘meaning,’ an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t.”

Though my opinions are constantly evolving, I’ve recently noticed that this philosophy carries through all aspects of the aesthetic works I enjoy. While I can admire the craft evident in representational artworks (especially that of David and da Vinci), I gravitate much more powerfully toward modern art movements such as impressionism, cubism, expressionism, futurism and modernism itself. While I attempt to maintain a fairly eclectic collection of music, I am hopelessly enthralled with rock and roll.

What do cartooning and animation in visual entertainment, modernism in art and design and rock and roll in music all have in common? All three respect a conversational view of art and communication. Purely representational works are mind-blowing for the events they describe and their impeccable level of detail, but they allow little room for personal interpretation. On the opposite side of the spectrum, more arbitrary works operating on pure expressiveness provide little foothold for comprehension. Conversational artworks are those possessing enough elements to interest, inform and/or enlighten the viewer, but with enough mystique that the audience might impart their own experiences and insight.

Like any good conversation, the best art is give and take. Of course, I maintain the prerogative to change my mind.

Yellowstone, nature and perspective

Two weeks ago, I stood at a vantage point aptly labeled “Artist’s Peak” in Yellowstone National Park. I looked out over the winding water, following it backwards with my eyes to the magnificent, billowing waterfall rich with strokes of white and green. I saw the shape of it’s path, cut over millions of years into the gold canyon rock, supporting any tree stubborn enough to endure the steeps lope. I shifted my viewpoint multiple times in an attempt to throw off the balance of the landscape, the color, the composition, and failed to do so. I couldn’t help but feel completely humbled by the splendor of the scene laid before me without the touch of human hand.

Today, I sat at a desk above a sketchbook rapidly brainstorming concepts for a logo I’ve been commissioned to redesign, and the sights continue to fuel me.

All creative professionals grapple with the challenge of conjuring divergent thinking on cue. It is potentially the most mysterious aspect of aesthetic professions, but that enigmatic quality is typically what keeps us insatiable creatives from turning the other direction and pursuing a more reasonable occupation. However, to avoid stagnation we must continue to hone our ability to observe and subsequently transform and synthesize sensory stimuli.

A still from the PlayStation 2 game “Shadow of the Colossus”, baring resemblance to a the real-life male bison.

Pablo Picasso famously said “Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.” While this idea is often and easily abused, it is entirely sound; creative people are always taking ideas and making them their own. The concept is a celebration of the observation and transformation skills in our mind’s toolbox, and it gains effectiveness the wider we cast our observational net.

I visited a gallery in Cody, Wyoming called Traces of Light, showcasing the nature photography of husband-and-wife Jim Wilson and Leslie Slater-Wilson. All of the photographs were stunning in their beauty and attention to the dichotomy between subtlety and magnificence, but what struck me the most was a collection taken of crimson, cavernous formations.

Jim Wilson’s photograph “Rushing Water’s Design” looks as though it could have inspired the sweeping pathways of Apple’s default Mac wallpapers.

The intricate, fluid designs of the canyon walls possess a thrilling combination of spontaneity and calculated balance, with extraordinary color that gives the imagery an ethereal quality.

The world needs artists like Jim and Leslie, not solely for their amazing work, but to remind us that inspiration is everywhere, so long as we maintain our curiosity for it.

Alternative Inspiration: interactivity beyond the web

I have a confession to make: I love web design minutiae. My Netvibes is full to the brim with feeds subscribing to every aspect of the ever-growing series of tubes, from upcoming document types undergoing constant revision to the latest means of thwarting Internet Explorer’s troubling box model. One of my favorite elements of this industry is the continuous sea of progress, but I can only enjoy it having reached a very important realization.

The average user really doesn’t care. The user cares about two things primarily, and it’s these two questions that the devoted web designer must concern themselves with over every step of the process:

• Does it work?
• Does it affect its intended audience?

We are accustomed to the concept of web design as a sandbox, a singular craft operating under an exclusive set of rules, flaws and conventions. These elements are extremely important and not to be marginalized, but otherwise passionate designers run the risk of drowning in them at the expense of the user experience. For this reason (and possibly those of sanity), I find that looking beyond the internet for interactive inspiration can be a rewarding experience.

I’m a big fan of rock and roll. While I love the concept of digital distribution, I still buy CDs for the permanence and the frequency range. Its no secret that the quality of album art has been in decline since vinyl fell from the mainstream, but recently there has been a concentrated effort to deliver something special to the common consumer. Though this packaging generally involves little more than paper, cardboard and/or a jewel case, it is still unquestionably interactive.

Paul McCartney’s new album “Memory Almost Full” was released this week, and while I have yet to listen to the record I can attest that the deluxe edition’s packaging is superb. Encased in a cardboard, digipak-style case roughly the size of a typical DVD case, the box opens up through a series of simple flaps moving in opposite directions. Though the construction is as straightforward as you can get, the experience is satisfying; pink, serif words on subtly-textured black reveal themselves only when the flaps are overlapped, dissipating to reveal the next word in the title until the album itself is presented to you. Though the process is simple and linear, it succeeds as a very basic example of interactive animation with nothing but folded cardboard.

“Friend and Foe” is the Portland-based group Menomena’s latest record, and it’s a beauty. Illustrated by Eisner-award-winning cartoonist Craig Thompson (also Portland-based), the album features an intricate, interweaving series of cartoons on a die-cut booklet. The compact disc within contains a series of various eyes and images, allowing you to turn the disc in it’s case to alter the cover art as it shows through the die-cut spaces. The fun is multiplied when you take into account that the booklet folds out for four possible scenes. I love the music, but I was happy I bought the album from the moment I took the shrinkwrap off. The passion and dedication for the construction exudes from every inch of the art, making it easily one of the most creative, well-executed CD packages I’ve ever seen.

Another obvious example would be the “do-it-yourself” packaging for Beck’s “The Information,” but after Wired has devoted a cover to something I consider it standard interactive design canon. Album artwork is just one of a myriad of art, design and entertainment niches that serves to remind me that computer-based aesthetics are not an island, but affect and are affected by traditional aesthetics to the point where such labels are rendered ineffectual. It’s also great to dance to.