comic art babble
I take back *some* of the things I said about mainstream american big-name-company comics. Not everything! But some of it. I do NOT take back the comments about how most of them have the continuity of a shredded piece of kitten plagued string being woven by monkeys, or how because of this they can't write themselves out of wet paper sacks and the plots are uninteresting and cliched, or how I personally hate nine tenths of all of the coloring jobs on the big name titles out there. Or how quickly I get tired of whatever the newest hottest upcoming art style is because everyone jumps on the bandwagon and the market is oversaturated with that style within a year (it's just as bad as hearing the same damned top 40 hits on the radio all the time until you want to puke).
BUT!
One can find a large number of professional pencilers and inkers on deviant art, posting up samples of their work *before* the colorists get ahold of it or the letterers fill it up with wordy unnecessary exposition. And the pure black and white art? Is actually very pretty. And fascinating, as they'll frequently post up "before" and "after" pictures, one of the pencils, one of the inks, side by side for comparison. And that's some damned good art, 'yo.
So, instead of ragging on all the bad, let's talk about the good.
Things I've Learned (or Hope to Learn) from Marvel and DC Artists
1) Stop being afraid of black. No, really. Black is your friend. You can do really wild and crazy dynamic things with white light and black shadow. Honest. No screentones needed.
2) It's okay to exaggerate the human figure for emphasis.
3) You *can* successfully combine manga influenced style with american superhero style. You can still lay the panels out with great graphic design, and you can pull off the hairstyles and the outfits, without sacrificing the quintessential american-ness of the character design.
4) Backgrounds are gooooood. Go wild with them. Be detailed. Then be MORE detailed! Be creative, be layered, be totally out of control! You too can draw backgrounds if you try!
5) Perspective, perspective, perspective. You're not living back in the day of the track guided single shot movie camera. Perspective goes flat very quickly, even more than soda. Change angles frequently to keep visual interest!
6) It's okay to draw thick, chunky hands. And broad, square tipped fingers. It makes them look more like guy hands and you like big square guy hands, right? It's that difference between guy hands and girly bishounen fingers. Guy hands are *hot*.
7) As a random incidental, I love artists who visually acknowledge the fact that, fabulous rack or no, no woman squeezed into spandex is going to have as much cleavage as the last generation of artists liked to make out. Because hi, spandex acts like a sports bra. They're not wearing a bikini, they're wearing solid neck down one piece swimsuits. Go watch women's diving in the olympics. Rounded chest, yes. Distinct spraypainted individual breasts? No.
8) Ditto for whoever learned, and then perpetuated, how to draw treads on shoes. Finally, they don't all look as though they're going to be slipping around on anything slick or icy! Ditto redux for details on clothing and props. And a resounding standing applause for whoever figured out that you can draw superheroes in civillian clothes and let the clothes have folds instead of being spraypainted to them.
...there is no nine.
10) Perspective. Backgrounds. Blaaaaaaaaack. Really. Honest. It'll make your compositions better. Learn it, live it, love it. Promise.
PS - The coloring I *do* like involves making most of the drawn lines go away by making the actual lines into colors that then blend in with the shades of the filled in colors. I realize this is much more time consuming than the "slap color over black line" technique which must, for sheer time constraint, be used in most comics. But it's so much *nicer* and actually complements the line art instead of being at odds with it.
PPS - Cloak, of Cloak and Dagger fame (little white chick, tall black guy, the original emo teens) has better legs than most heroines. Seriously. Every picture I've ever seen of the man (in costume, not when he's slipped into geeky Tyrone persona) he has really fabulously good, smooth, shapely (not muscle bulging) legs. Mew. I'm just saying.
BUT!
One can find a large number of professional pencilers and inkers on deviant art, posting up samples of their work *before* the colorists get ahold of it or the letterers fill it up with wordy unnecessary exposition. And the pure black and white art? Is actually very pretty. And fascinating, as they'll frequently post up "before" and "after" pictures, one of the pencils, one of the inks, side by side for comparison. And that's some damned good art, 'yo.
So, instead of ragging on all the bad, let's talk about the good.
Things I've Learned (or Hope to Learn) from Marvel and DC Artists
1) Stop being afraid of black. No, really. Black is your friend. You can do really wild and crazy dynamic things with white light and black shadow. Honest. No screentones needed.
2) It's okay to exaggerate the human figure for emphasis.
3) You *can* successfully combine manga influenced style with american superhero style. You can still lay the panels out with great graphic design, and you can pull off the hairstyles and the outfits, without sacrificing the quintessential american-ness of the character design.
4) Backgrounds are gooooood. Go wild with them. Be detailed. Then be MORE detailed! Be creative, be layered, be totally out of control! You too can draw backgrounds if you try!
5) Perspective, perspective, perspective. You're not living back in the day of the track guided single shot movie camera. Perspective goes flat very quickly, even more than soda. Change angles frequently to keep visual interest!
6) It's okay to draw thick, chunky hands. And broad, square tipped fingers. It makes them look more like guy hands and you like big square guy hands, right? It's that difference between guy hands and girly bishounen fingers. Guy hands are *hot*.
7) As a random incidental, I love artists who visually acknowledge the fact that, fabulous rack or no, no woman squeezed into spandex is going to have as much cleavage as the last generation of artists liked to make out. Because hi, spandex acts like a sports bra. They're not wearing a bikini, they're wearing solid neck down one piece swimsuits. Go watch women's diving in the olympics. Rounded chest, yes. Distinct spraypainted individual breasts? No.
8) Ditto for whoever learned, and then perpetuated, how to draw treads on shoes. Finally, they don't all look as though they're going to be slipping around on anything slick or icy! Ditto redux for details on clothing and props. And a resounding standing applause for whoever figured out that you can draw superheroes in civillian clothes and let the clothes have folds instead of being spraypainted to them.
...there is no nine.
10) Perspective. Backgrounds. Blaaaaaaaaack. Really. Honest. It'll make your compositions better. Learn it, live it, love it. Promise.
PS - The coloring I *do* like involves making most of the drawn lines go away by making the actual lines into colors that then blend in with the shades of the filled in colors. I realize this is much more time consuming than the "slap color over black line" technique which must, for sheer time constraint, be used in most comics. But it's so much *nicer* and actually complements the line art instead of being at odds with it.
PPS - Cloak, of Cloak and Dagger fame (little white chick, tall black guy, the original emo teens) has better legs than most heroines. Seriously. Every picture I've ever seen of the man (in costume, not when he's slipped into geeky Tyrone persona) he has really fabulously good, smooth, shapely (not muscle bulging) legs. Mew. I'm just saying.