I figured I’d upload a relatively high quality (read: non-camera) version of these since they’re a) free, b) intended to be available on the internet, and c) should at least include the credits page if passed around.
And finally Holland is finished! We’ve also reached the epilogue stretch goal and that’s exciting!! There’s still one more stretch goal that would be super fun, though, so let’s go for broke in the final 8 hours ;)
We’re hosting a Kickstarter to fund the printing of Volume 3 of Strays! We just reached funding yesterday, but we’re still hoping to hit some of those stretch goals too ;)
One thing I don’t undertand in comics is characters talking with their mouths closed. You see it all the time in mainstream books. I’m certain there’s a point when I was drawing comics that I flipped from not even thinking about the closed mouth talkers (my early stuff is full of them) to really hating them. It completely punctures the reality of a panel for me if someone’s talking with their mouth closed.
truth. i always try to make my mouth shapes logical.
My odd art choice i mainstream comics is people talking as they’re kissing. That’s just rude, in my experience, and it ends up all mumbly.
This never really bothered me. That panel of the character talking is just a snapshot; a slice of the seconds it takes them to get out whatever they’re saying.
Imagine you have a character saying: “My name is Bob.” Well, what part of the sentence are you going to use to inform how you draw their mouth? The lip curled into the nose to shape the ‘n’? The lips pursed and cheeks puffed to form the ‘b’? The compressed lips of the ‘m’ in ‘my’ or the wide open mouth of the vowel that follows? Or will you do the closed mouth second of time before or after the phrase?
To me, any of those are valid because they’re part of the slice of time that panel is illustrating. A character with a speech bubble and a closed mouth in a panel isn’t “talking with their mouth closed.” The artist has just picked that fraction of a second in their physical act of speaking where their mouth is not hanging open.
It’s like any physical action, like a punch, say. Often it works better to show the wind-up, and then the effect, and not the fist hitting face itself. Does this mean the punch didn’t happen because you didn’t see it?
Anyway, I think a closed mouth is valid in a panel for a speaking character, especially if it adds to the expression you’re going for. Why take that option out of your toolbox for no good reason?
People seem bothered by this more and more lately. I have to agree that it’s a viable option for an artist. It can help add a little variety to speaking scenes, and a closed mouth can be just as expressive as an open one.
But I think it should be used sparingly. I’ve read a few comics where 95% of the time the mouth is closed when speaking (in a complete reversal of the norm) and it becomes uncomfortably blatant and distracting. As long as it’s not overused, I don’t see why it should be avoided.
Though, I suppose it could also depend on what is being said. In this particular example image there’s really no sound that requires the lips to be closed (such as an M or a B) so the visual is subconsciously clashing with the dialogue.
