Friday, September 08, 2006

Screw the last post.

DUMB post. Who am I to think I shouldn't be working on backgrounds AND lively characters? I don't even have a style. I should be working on all my drawing skills and seeing what comes out of the mix at the end. It's all about (*sigh*) work.

Dynamic drawings

Not MY dynamic drawings. But Stuart Immonen. He's the penciler for NEXTWAVE: Agents of H.A.T.E. It's a fantastic book written by Warren Ellis that, incidently stars Monica Rambeau as the leader of a group of superheroes. Immonen and Ellis' Monica is better then my redesign (earlier post) and much better then any treatment she's gotten before. But I'm off track.

Dynamic drawing. Stuart Immonen.

I realized something when I was reading Nextwave, namely that Immonen is not big on backgrounds at all. Often, there is no background and when there is, it's not piled up with jaw dropping detail. I think that's because his people are so active. His characters are always moving or expressing something with their faces. Who needs background when the characters are so full of life?

What I think is that to tell a story in panels the background can play as much a role as the characters at times. When that's the case you don't need characters who are expressive. But if you lay off the background, you've got to make up for it in how you portray your people.

One of my problems with penciling is I don't do backgrounds. The detail bores me. Which is not a good admission to make, I know, but it's a lot of work. But my characters aren't dynamic either. They're static, they sit on the page and pose. Either I've got to buckle down and work on backgrounds or I've got to buckle down and get to work on drawing more characters in action. Since styles like imminence appeal to me, I think I'll have to work on the action bit.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Look at that body!

I mean seriously, check this girl out! Her face is questionable but everything about her pose is solid. I like!

The only thing I don't like is the quality of the scans. I've got a cheap little Lexmark All-in-one but it doesn't really show much detail on my pencils. A new scanner is NOWHERE in our budget however so I think I may just have to do bigger pencils.

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Muscle Men

Men have generally been harder for me to draw. All the muscles (a requirement for comic book men), the bumps, the lack of familiar curves... Women seem easy because the lines are longer and gentler. Or at least that's been my excuse. I sat down this morning with some paper and websites with nude men (whoo hoo!) and found something out.

When you actually sit down and put some work into drawing men it's not hard. Men, wonderfully enough, have beautiful lines too and are very similar to women. Who would have thunk it? I mean, it's almost like men and women are from the same species or something! The hips have the same bones, the breast tissue connects with the same lines. I can do men.

Draw men I should say. eep.

The only problem with finding reference photos to work off on the internet is that the vast majority is porn. The poses, male and female, are seductive or downright dirty and not good at all for comic book reference. Well, okay, Greg Land and all the 'bad girl' artists might disagree but *I* don't think they make good reference pics.

Anyhow, a sampling of torsos and faces below. I've got to work on legs too as I have a real problem getting them right in relation to a body. I'm quite happy with the sketches though.
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