Post by tema on Jan 16, 2022 2:11:44 GMT -5
Fair warning, there's not really a point to me making this thread besides to freewrite some of my thoughts on the subject, so if you're expecting some profound essay, some deep dive into the series with seven-hundreds sources, or some long-winded takedown rant of me getting angry because by now most people know I'm probably a bitter little spitfire, then, sorry. I just want to talk for a moment about the comics.
Sheesh... the comics...
I love them.
I freakin' love these things.
The Warriors comics have always had a special place in my heart ever since they came out. I struggle with names. A lot. Despite going on-and-on about how great the expansive worldbuilding in the series is, growing up as I was reading I struggled to remember who-was-who reading the main books (sans a few main characters, but I struggled to differentiate, say, Ashpaw and Dustpaw, and if you tell me that he was Dustpelt by then, that just shows my point). So, right off the bat, the first comic series, a standalone story focusing on my favorite character Graystripe appealed to me. I picked these up right around the time Power of Three started to slog, so having a story of what my man was doing outside of this clownshow was a delightful treat. Strangely enough, this brought me a bit closer to my brother who was going through a bit of a manga phase, as we were slowly drifting apart in our interests. While we did laugh a bit about how a series complete western was calling itself a manga, I fired back by pointing at his issues of Ultimo and asked him if Stan Lee was renting an apartment in Tokyo.
I won't say that rereading the books held that deep of a meaning that I can really sit down and analyze. What you see is what you get with them, which is fantastic. I like a romp. I like being able to sit down and enjoy something for what it is. The sensation feels.... for lack of a better term "honest." Despite this, I looked at them multiple times, mostly because there was something about James L Barry's art that got me thinking at the time.
I'm not a furry. I don't like the furry communities. This isn't even like how I tell people that I don't associate with the Warriors fandom yet here I am hypocritically typing my thoughts on the series for some fans, I mean I adamantly avoid anything of that sort.
So, why was it that I was okay with a brief romance tale about two anthropomorphized cats?
Well, I came to realize a few things about character design from them as I read the Tigerstar and Sasha series.
You see, cats are very difficult to make unique. Well, okay, for cartoons you can just take a shape and add two triangles on it, but I'm not talking about that approach. I'm talking about fidelity. For all the supernatural elements the series adopts, Warriors is faithful to the idea that the cats act like cats. They are cats. They don't make a habit of picking things up with their paws, they walk on four legs, and crap in the woods. They're cats. Nothing about the design of the cats should distract from the idea that you should be able to see them in the middle of an alleyway. The Tigerstar and Sasha series adheres to this idea very strictly, as, save for some eyes, pretty much every expression on the cats is meant to work with a realistic cat muzzle [ref]. And, to be quite honest, it looks a bit rough. Because Tigerstar and Sasha uses too much detail.
Now, I like Tigerstar and Sasha. It had the gall to show a kitten drowning. That's edgy in all the right ways, but it's clear that Dan Jolley is much more experienced illustrating human characters [ref], because our bodies are suited to express emotions that humans recognize. That should go without saying, but it points to the problem where if you try to make a cat realistic, you give up some of that emotion. There must be a tradeoff.
Graystripe's Adventure, and the other Barry comics, mitigate this by both adding some degree of anthromophizing, and by relying one of my favorite things in all of art: simplicity. If you give enough details that an audience can recognize a form, you can get away with omitting some of the finer details because our brains will find a way to make it work (anyone familiar with ralphthemoviemaker's Minions video should be familiar with this idea, but due to a joke he makes while demonstrating this, I can't link the video due to forum rules). Take a look at this sample here [ref]. Graystripe's muzzle is defined, but his mouth isn't. It's given enough shape for how it would form along his mouth that we know it's a cat mouth, but the actual outlines are what we would expect from a human making this expression (this is a trick I adopted into my own cat-doodling). The face conveys a human emotion, but, other than some exaggeration, it doesn't really distract from the idea that this is a bonafide wilecat.
While we're looking at the picture of Graystripe, let's look at his design too.
It's a bit overdone, but there's two things I want to say about it. Foremost, it's not a new design. I don't know if it was intentionally set up to be a homage, but it looks a lot like this fanon design. Now, I know a lot of people here are going to recognize what that's from, but since this series has gone on for so long and transgressed internet generations, not everyone is going to know. That image is from a web animation series called SSS Warrior Cats, a very primitive web cartoon series done by amateurs near the start of Youtube's boom. The series was rough, tried way too hard to be anime (it even used Naruto music), it was cringe as hell, and we loved it because we were 14 year olds, and having our pure dumb fun was more important than any armchair psycho-analytical deconstruction revisionist bullcrap that seems to plague every fandom today. Ultimately the experience helped prove that amateurs could push out content on Youtube in parallel to the burgeoning scene growing from Newgrounds, and once the Multiple Animator Project became a thing, the fandom dominated the Youtube animation scene. I'm not talking about the jokers that would post hypercammed rips of Newgrounds, I mean for original content. Warrior Cats was a freakin' powerhouse behind the Youtube animation scene, and even today the fandom still has a reputation of putting out good animation despite being overshadowed by newer parody topics and original dedicated projects.
Now, again, I'm not saying that Barry knew about the design. For all I know he wanted to pay homage to the series, but, more likely, it was because of my next comment. It's hard to design a cat. Remember what I said about fidelity? Well, turns out that trying to make a cat distinct while keeping it close to a wildcat is a very limiting task. Forget about colors. Colors do not make a design. The most important part of a character's design is their shape, or rather, their silhouette. You can put in all the technocolors you want on a character, but if they look like another but with a different coat of paint, your audience is going to struggle to differentiate them (and, no, adding different clothes is not a fix for this problem, you need more than that). This is also why a lot of anime characters have wild unrealistic hairstyles.
There aren't too many shapes you can work with for a cat. Unless you're really into cat-fancying, most people can't tell a cat apart except by fur length. Don't hit me up with "but some breeds like the Burmese have a stalkier build when you compare them to other breeds like the Cornish Rex," because you're preaching to the choir on that one, and more importantly, this point is questionable when talking about wildcats without any specification for pedigree beyond a few broad traits shared among common members of a Clan (such as RiverClan cats tending to have sleeker pelts, or ThunderClan cats generally being larger).
This is something that I'm learning the hard way with trying to design some cats for a game. A cat character's design, when it's not explicitly aiming to be a breed or build, must have some elements that can distinguish it from other in order to be recognizable, and even then an artist should still be considerate that these distinctions are... well... distinct. Adding certain design elements to a character won't make it distinct if you find yourself reusing similar elements on another. The comics even slip up at this. Look at Petunia [ref]. She looks very similar to Yellowfang [ref]. Because both characters are depicted as longhaired elderly she-cats. There's not really much for me to distinguish Petunia's design in the comic as more than "Yellowfang but in WarriorClan," but her character is so much more than that.
I suppose bringing attention to their faces, and that silly 'eyeliner' bit on them (I really really don't care for it) should lead me into some of the expressions but... well... I don't have words for it. They're great. They're exploitable. I made Eggman's Announcement except with panels from a Winds of Change, and it worked too well (last time I posted it here it was deleted, so take my word for it). It's great. Seeing sass, rage, disbelief... all of it is fun stuff for our favorite characters. I'm glad the comics aren't as bloody as the books; it would distract from the fun that evidently went into drawing some of these goofy expressions.
Just look at my avatar. Look at that pouting little edgy gremlin of a cat. I know, this is the first time I mentioned the Rise of Scourge and Kurkoski's art, but I don't have much to add about that one because it's more greatness with some very imposing perspective shots and angle work. Man, Rise of Scourge is great for showing off a sense of scale. Some of it's subtle, like the introduction when Tiny states his name, and we get the camera looking down on him, the consistent Dutch angles for his mother to show how he has the rest of his family lording over him... all of that gets reversed over the course of the comic until near the end, with us seeing Tigerstar and Boulder walking into the alleyway, the camera looking down on them because we know that everything is falling into Scourge's favor, leading up to the climax, and the last panel. The last panel, in which we see a reprisal of the camera looking down on Scourge, because we know how the story ends beyond his moment of triumph, but even then, we have him staring up at the camera, claws extended and him screaming in defiance at his most powerful. Daaaaaaaaamn. Good stuff right there.
There's not much more I can say on that one, but that's mostly because I've rambled long enough and don't know where I'm going with all of this, so I'm cutting it off here. That was fun to write.
Sheesh... the comics...
I love them.
I freakin' love these things.
The Warriors comics have always had a special place in my heart ever since they came out. I struggle with names. A lot. Despite going on-and-on about how great the expansive worldbuilding in the series is, growing up as I was reading I struggled to remember who-was-who reading the main books (sans a few main characters, but I struggled to differentiate, say, Ashpaw and Dustpaw, and if you tell me that he was Dustpelt by then, that just shows my point). So, right off the bat, the first comic series, a standalone story focusing on my favorite character Graystripe appealed to me. I picked these up right around the time Power of Three started to slog, so having a story of what my man was doing outside of this clownshow was a delightful treat. Strangely enough, this brought me a bit closer to my brother who was going through a bit of a manga phase, as we were slowly drifting apart in our interests. While we did laugh a bit about how a series complete western was calling itself a manga, I fired back by pointing at his issues of Ultimo and asked him if Stan Lee was renting an apartment in Tokyo.
I won't say that rereading the books held that deep of a meaning that I can really sit down and analyze. What you see is what you get with them, which is fantastic. I like a romp. I like being able to sit down and enjoy something for what it is. The sensation feels.... for lack of a better term "honest." Despite this, I looked at them multiple times, mostly because there was something about James L Barry's art that got me thinking at the time.
I'm not a furry. I don't like the furry communities. This isn't even like how I tell people that I don't associate with the Warriors fandom yet here I am hypocritically typing my thoughts on the series for some fans, I mean I adamantly avoid anything of that sort.
So, why was it that I was okay with a brief romance tale about two anthropomorphized cats?
Well, I came to realize a few things about character design from them as I read the Tigerstar and Sasha series.
You see, cats are very difficult to make unique. Well, okay, for cartoons you can just take a shape and add two triangles on it, but I'm not talking about that approach. I'm talking about fidelity. For all the supernatural elements the series adopts, Warriors is faithful to the idea that the cats act like cats. They are cats. They don't make a habit of picking things up with their paws, they walk on four legs, and crap in the woods. They're cats. Nothing about the design of the cats should distract from the idea that you should be able to see them in the middle of an alleyway. The Tigerstar and Sasha series adheres to this idea very strictly, as, save for some eyes, pretty much every expression on the cats is meant to work with a realistic cat muzzle [ref]. And, to be quite honest, it looks a bit rough. Because Tigerstar and Sasha uses too much detail.
Now, I like Tigerstar and Sasha. It had the gall to show a kitten drowning. That's edgy in all the right ways, but it's clear that Dan Jolley is much more experienced illustrating human characters [ref], because our bodies are suited to express emotions that humans recognize. That should go without saying, but it points to the problem where if you try to make a cat realistic, you give up some of that emotion. There must be a tradeoff.
Graystripe's Adventure, and the other Barry comics, mitigate this by both adding some degree of anthromophizing, and by relying one of my favorite things in all of art: simplicity. If you give enough details that an audience can recognize a form, you can get away with omitting some of the finer details because our brains will find a way to make it work (anyone familiar with ralphthemoviemaker's Minions video should be familiar with this idea, but due to a joke he makes while demonstrating this, I can't link the video due to forum rules). Take a look at this sample here [ref]. Graystripe's muzzle is defined, but his mouth isn't. It's given enough shape for how it would form along his mouth that we know it's a cat mouth, but the actual outlines are what we would expect from a human making this expression (this is a trick I adopted into my own cat-doodling). The face conveys a human emotion, but, other than some exaggeration, it doesn't really distract from the idea that this is a bonafide wilecat.
While we're looking at the picture of Graystripe, let's look at his design too.
It's a bit overdone, but there's two things I want to say about it. Foremost, it's not a new design. I don't know if it was intentionally set up to be a homage, but it looks a lot like this fanon design. Now, I know a lot of people here are going to recognize what that's from, but since this series has gone on for so long and transgressed internet generations, not everyone is going to know. That image is from a web animation series called SSS Warrior Cats, a very primitive web cartoon series done by amateurs near the start of Youtube's boom. The series was rough, tried way too hard to be anime (it even used Naruto music), it was cringe as hell, and we loved it because we were 14 year olds, and having our pure dumb fun was more important than any armchair psycho-analytical deconstruction revisionist bullcrap that seems to plague every fandom today. Ultimately the experience helped prove that amateurs could push out content on Youtube in parallel to the burgeoning scene growing from Newgrounds, and once the Multiple Animator Project became a thing, the fandom dominated the Youtube animation scene. I'm not talking about the jokers that would post hypercammed rips of Newgrounds, I mean for original content. Warrior Cats was a freakin' powerhouse behind the Youtube animation scene, and even today the fandom still has a reputation of putting out good animation despite being overshadowed by newer parody topics and original dedicated projects.
Now, again, I'm not saying that Barry knew about the design. For all I know he wanted to pay homage to the series, but, more likely, it was because of my next comment. It's hard to design a cat. Remember what I said about fidelity? Well, turns out that trying to make a cat distinct while keeping it close to a wildcat is a very limiting task. Forget about colors. Colors do not make a design. The most important part of a character's design is their shape, or rather, their silhouette. You can put in all the technocolors you want on a character, but if they look like another but with a different coat of paint, your audience is going to struggle to differentiate them (and, no, adding different clothes is not a fix for this problem, you need more than that). This is also why a lot of anime characters have wild unrealistic hairstyles.
There aren't too many shapes you can work with for a cat. Unless you're really into cat-fancying, most people can't tell a cat apart except by fur length. Don't hit me up with "but some breeds like the Burmese have a stalkier build when you compare them to other breeds like the Cornish Rex," because you're preaching to the choir on that one, and more importantly, this point is questionable when talking about wildcats without any specification for pedigree beyond a few broad traits shared among common members of a Clan (such as RiverClan cats tending to have sleeker pelts, or ThunderClan cats generally being larger).
This is something that I'm learning the hard way with trying to design some cats for a game. A cat character's design, when it's not explicitly aiming to be a breed or build, must have some elements that can distinguish it from other in order to be recognizable, and even then an artist should still be considerate that these distinctions are... well... distinct. Adding certain design elements to a character won't make it distinct if you find yourself reusing similar elements on another. The comics even slip up at this. Look at Petunia [ref]. She looks very similar to Yellowfang [ref]. Because both characters are depicted as longhaired elderly she-cats. There's not really much for me to distinguish Petunia's design in the comic as more than "Yellowfang but in WarriorClan," but her character is so much more than that.
I suppose bringing attention to their faces, and that silly 'eyeliner' bit on them (I really really don't care for it) should lead me into some of the expressions but... well... I don't have words for it. They're great. They're exploitable. I made Eggman's Announcement except with panels from a Winds of Change, and it worked too well (last time I posted it here it was deleted, so take my word for it). It's great. Seeing sass, rage, disbelief... all of it is fun stuff for our favorite characters. I'm glad the comics aren't as bloody as the books; it would distract from the fun that evidently went into drawing some of these goofy expressions.
Just look at my avatar. Look at that pouting little edgy gremlin of a cat. I know, this is the first time I mentioned the Rise of Scourge and Kurkoski's art, but I don't have much to add about that one because it's more greatness with some very imposing perspective shots and angle work. Man, Rise of Scourge is great for showing off a sense of scale. Some of it's subtle, like the introduction when Tiny states his name, and we get the camera looking down on him, the consistent Dutch angles for his mother to show how he has the rest of his family lording over him... all of that gets reversed over the course of the comic until near the end, with us seeing Tigerstar and Boulder walking into the alleyway, the camera looking down on them because we know that everything is falling into Scourge's favor, leading up to the climax, and the last panel. The last panel, in which we see a reprisal of the camera looking down on Scourge, because we know how the story ends beyond his moment of triumph, but even then, we have him staring up at the camera, claws extended and him screaming in defiance at his most powerful. Daaaaaaaaamn. Good stuff right there.
There's not much more I can say on that one, but that's mostly because I've rambled long enough and don't know where I'm going with all of this, so I'm cutting it off here. That was fun to write.