Experience Experiment

Abigail Halpin has been doing a webcomic experiment called A Thousand Cups of Coffee throughout 2011; she's trying to post one new webcomic a week for the entire year. Which might not sound like a big deal when weighed against the folks who do it daily, but she's an illustrator by trade and I don't know what else she's got going on in her life. It was her challenge to herself, so I'll take her word that it is indeed something of a challenge for her.

In any event, here's what she posted today...

As you might guess, hers is a diary comic. Just little slices out of her life that she's captured in comic form. They're generally pleasant, fairly quiet pieces. Well done, but not really innovative. (That's not meant as a complaint, just an observation!)

But look again at today's strip. The yarn she's knitting winds its way out of the panel and down to the ball in the next. But then Halpin also morphs the yarn into the song lyrics she's listening to. It's not necessary to the structure of the comic, but provides a nice extra beat to it.

It's a nice, clever piece of sequential art that I don't think she would've thought of 11 months ago. I think it's the type of solution that comes from practicing the same thing over a long period of time. I think it's the main reason why, when asked how start a webcomic, many creators will just tell you to just do it.

There's a lot to be said for education and training and mentors and all of the formalized processes that can help people learn, but there's also a lot to be said for learning by doing. Experience is, after all, one of the best teachers.

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