What is a comic book? Comics are works that tell stories with pictures. What is a comic reader? Comic readers are people who read stories. What is a cartoonist? A cartoonist is a person who paints stories for readers. That's all. Of course, this is for the new comics.
Liu Sa, a cartoonist, has created a brand-new work "Hit Natural Enemies Twice", which has been the most popular among readers since it was published in Comic Man. Become the top work in this China's most successful comic magazine with the theme of "Story First". Interpreting Liu Sa phenomenon, we will find the key to all kinds of puzzles in China's local cartoon creation in the past decade.
What is a good story?
As a carrier of storytelling, Liu Sa is undoubtedly an artist who is proficient in this carrier.
The reason why this form of comics has not developed well in China for more than ten years is not that the form is outdated, nor is it influenced by Japanese piracy (the film has also been hit hard, but it has now recovered), but that it has forgotten a basic principle. Comics are one of the carriers of storytelling and are very popular.
From 1994 to now, chinese comic magazine has never been aware of this fundamental problem, and has not assumed the guiding responsibility it should bear. Some magazines have lost the readership on which comics depend when playing artistic style, and pushed a form that should have the largest readership to a niche toy.
As a story cartoon, I think what I should do is actually one sentence, which meets the readers' desire for genre and exceeds their expectations. No matter what kind of story you are telling, whether it is real or fictional or overhead, no matter what kind of theme you are painting, as long as you are telling a story, you must draw an incredible story, so that readers can anticipate it in reading interaction and speculate on the next plot, which makes readers can't help it. In a word, the essence of storytelling is to arouse readers' appetite, let readers find a sense of substitution in reading and meet their psychological needs. For example, in love comics, the hero and heroine will meet, which is a routine of love comics and cannot be skipped. Before reading this cartoon, readers are expecting the story and waiting for the romantic scene. If it doesn't, or if it is dull and expectations fail, they will think that this is not a good story. A real business cartoonist must accurately grasp the expectations of readers. At this point, Liu Sa is the best local cartoonist at present, and he keeps readers' appetite in telling stories.
Liu Sa is a typical cartoonist who knows readers' psychology very well.
Liu Sa's works were read for the first time, and he occasionally went to the magazine stand to watch the humor master's Little Soldier series. It's a typical humorous sketch, taking a little soldier's experience in the war as a clue and showing Liu Sa's rich humorous skills. It should be said that it is an excellent work. But as far as that work is concerned, personally speaking, Liu Sa's strong personal characteristics (which we will talk about later) have not been shown as a master of humor at this time. It can be said that Liu Sa in this period is not the Sage sought after by readers now. If time had stayed at that time, the significance of our study of Liu Sa would not have been so obvious. Judging from the current readers and market reaction, Liu Sa is not only a popular cartoonist, but also creating an experience and finding a new way for China's original cartoons.
Although Liu Sa's works still belong to the category of humorous cartoons, Liu Sa's works have gradually formed a set of very obvious characteristics that are different from traditional humorous cartoons, starting from the hip-hop genius at the comic party. First of all, it is different from the traditional comic character design which focuses on exaggeration. Liu Sa pays more attention to the beauty of characters. He absorbed Japanese painting style and used it. The image design of the characters also prepares the conditions for the transformation of his story from humorous type to story cartoon. Recently, through posting on the Internet and reading serial works, I found that Liu Sa's color style is also changing to a more beautiful style. If you have his works before 2005, you can find this very obvious change in Liu Sa. In terms of stories, this is also the place where Liu Sa works hard. Stories basically take place on campus. He is good at grasping the youthful atmosphere of campus stories. At first glance, we will find that there is not much innovation in Liu Sa's story. Basically, foreshadowing, bridge, suspense, suspense and other factors are routines, but Liu Sa connected these elements with his story line, which set off the theme of the story well. It can be said that Liu Sa is a cartoonist who knows what readers need.
China's humorous cartoons have long been better at expressing the ugly or funny faces of characters. That's understandable. For more than a decade, original story comic magazines have fallen in batches, and humorous comic magazines have little influence (referring to comic circles), but the reason why they have not fallen for decades, as Degang Guo said, "Modern people are very tired and audiences like to laugh." The previous "mainstream" story comic magazines were a little too high in style, and playing with style and doing experiments became less and less popular. Most people don't understand. The people who bought it are all comic book lovers, and the fans have a fever. It is inevitable that the magazine will go to the end.
second floor
Liu Sa is not particularly prominent in early humorous cartoons, although the story is good and interesting. However, during the period of humor masters, there were many "spoof" masters, such as Ao Youxiang, Mao Xiaole, Ayou and other big names all started from here, but they usually buried themselves in painting. As for readers who buy humor masters, I don't think they are enthusiasts or groupies. The magazine itself does not consider itself a benchmark. Although there are some good contents and columns, they also keep a low profile. A magazine that has survived for 20 years has little news and activities on the Internet, no official website and almost no comments. In 2006, it was revealed that Mao Xiaole's original comic book "Decline" serialized at a comic party sold millions of copies, which shocked the industry. At this point, humorous cartoons have entered a period of blooming, and all studios and cartoonists take humorous cartoons as a breakthrough. It can be said that today's humorous cartoon market has become a red sea. Looking back, the works of a few famous humorous cartoonists still sell well, and most of the works that follow the trend have a tragic ending. It seems that humor is not everything.
Liu Sa's outstanding point is that when pure humorous cartoons were all the rage, he clearly saw the bottleneck of humorous cartoons and realized that the real core and future trend of commercial cartoons should be story cartoons. In his work "Little Hip-hop Genius", he began to seek novelty and change.
First of all, I think he was cautious at first, especially in the previous few times, and he still wavered between "humor" and "story" In the first story, the protagonist's fear of girls was deliberately explained, which opened the story, and the story was fooled and misunderstood. At this time, hip-hop genius is still a work with a good sense of humor. The real watershed should begin with the debut of Shangguan Shuai in the ninth sentence.
With the appearance of Shangguan Shuai, Liu Sa established his first complex character, an image different from humorous cartoons, and also established a framework for the love in the four corners behind. The wonderful story begins here. There are many classic scenes in the story, especially the duet between Shangguan Shuai and GiGi is very attractive, which depicts a cool handsome guy's affection for simple machine MM, and all this is done in a humorous atmosphere. After reading it, he was surrounded by a warm feeling, which made him feel smooth, relaxed, funny and warm. Compared with the story between Shangguanshuai and Kiki, Mao Mengxiao's feelings for Ge Qiqi and Ge Qiqi's feelings for Shangguan Shuai are relatively inferior. It's not that the story is bad, but that the reader thought it would be handled like this from the beginning and lacked some surprises.
After the story, through Shangguan Shuai's father, Shangguan Shuai's character is further portrayed, which makes his feelings for Kiki more convincing, thus turning a campus funny cartoon into a sci-fi adventure suspense cartoon. Emotional drama has become the most popular and concerned theme for readers, while funny humor has become one of the many attractive elements of the work. Liu Sa undoubtedly found a new way and a blue ocean from humorous cartoonists. This has found some new ideas for the following authors. There are many such plots in his works, and Liu Sa fully considered the readers' expectations in the design of the stories. At present, many readers regard Liu Sa's works as love cartoons on the campus of youth, and their expectations for the works include the encounter between the hero and heroine, all kinds of misunderstandings, the obstruction of the supporting actor, the role's past and so on. In these respects, Liu Sa can not only conform to the convention, but also find a novel explanation under the conventional framework.
The significance of bumping into natural enemies twice to local originality: the core of new comics is plot comics.
Encounter with Natural Enemies Secondary Form is a milestone in Liu Sa's creative career. In the process of creating this work for the readers of comic guests, he made careful preparation and research for half a year. In Liu Sa's own words, Coleman represents the future of China's new comics, which coincides with the direction he has been exploring for many years. The positioning of the publication and the competition between the works of the previous publication required by high-quality editors laid a certain foundation for the success of his works.
Speaking of creative gossip, Liu Sa and his wife, a talented woman from Peking University, have discussed countless schemes in cafes and study rooms at home for the originality, script, lens, framework, plot evolution and rhythm of this story. It is in this fierce discussion and collision that "Hit Natural Enemy Twice" accurately captures the reader's reading expectation and the wonderful story, and it is very funny every time. Afterwards, Liu Sa also devoted himself to it. He made a data analysis on the effect of the cartoon! Liu Sa's persistence in creation is worth learning and learning from all cartoonists.
Mention Liu Sa.
Liu Sa's success proves that more practical cartoonists are replacing "cartoonists". They are welcomed by readers with novel works that meet expectations. As an editor, we should help newcomers to establish their own style and grasp readers' expectations more accurately. Because readers' expectations are also changing, editors and authors need to constantly adjust their styles and absorb new knowledge. Learning from Liu Sa is not learning from his style. It is not a good thing for many people to imitate a successful business model, but to learn from his precise grasp of readers' psychology. In that way, no matter whether your style is girl, teenager, reasoning or humor, there is a possibility of success.
Therefore, Liu Sa's enlightenment can be summarized in one sentence: cartoonists tell stories in the form of paintings, and excellent cartoonists tell good stories, which cannot be separated from the word story. A good cartoonist is by no means a person who creates several paintings or shows them at comic exhibitions. Telling readers a good story wholeheartedly is the only thing that chinese comic family of our generation should do.
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It should be this.