What, you thought you got rid of me? Nope, told you I'd be back.  So thus, I are starting a new monthly ongoing series, which I've entitled Tales from the Ashcan.  Why?  Well, in animation and artistic terms, the ashcans (officially, ashcan art) are the rough sketches that you do for fun or just for practice, the ones that never really get into the final work.  Nowadays, we'd call them "roughs", "bonus art" or "Dead Piro Days."  

Tales from the Ashcan will be just an ongoing thing as I document Megami Studios' steps going forward in the wide world of being both protaku mangaka and fantrepreneurs with a business.  Sometimes we'll talk about that.  Other times, I may just rant to get something out in the open.  Still other times, I might interview another artist to let them give their points of view on how things are.  And then there will be the days when we just go off piste and I'll let someone else do the talking, as my lovely wife has done today. 

Take it away, Ayne.

I once noted when someone insisted that you should never cover up your figures. But it was never explained why you shouldn't.  I'm going to be bold and suggest that this is wrong.  That assumption gives you a glimpse into the mind of an artist: we typically think it's our art that readers are coming to our pages for.  However, most webcomics out there prove that's not the case. (Homestuck, anyone?)  Visitors are coming for the story.  My fellow artists…we're actually the less-important part of this equation.

That's hardly to say that we're a third wheel and that you can slack off in your art.  You'd be amazed at what the reader who never went to art school can pick up on. (In fact, I'm going to be controversial again and suggest that the art school critique is generally not quite as useful to comic artists as that of Joe the Maths Major, since art school students are overtrained to pick out the flaws and what we as comic artists are only trying to avoid is messing up the average reader's willing suspension of disbelief) But instead of fussing over one throwaway panel, (and yes I am a complete hypocrite in this regard) what a comic artist or mangaka needs to focus on is "Does this interfere with the story and the intended reaction?"  If it doesn't, hakuna matata!  You need to get to that next page already.

In other words, if you need to cover up that figure in order to get your dialogue all printed out, DOO EEET.  Trust me, no one save an art school student is going to be admiring your perfectly-drawn figure for longer than it takes to read the speech bubble.  That fact is what makes the transition from artbook-style, DeviantArt celebrities to comic artists so difficult.  (Remember: the best portrait artist might turn out to be an awful comic artist!) It's imperative that you, the aspiring comic artist, start thinking like a writer.  Your comic will live and die not by your art, but by your storytelling.

- Ayne