Ink on the original pencils?

art by Jack Kirby, © DC

Brittany emailed me asking me to clarify what I had said about inking on the originals. Here's my reply:

Hi, Brittany,

You can ink on your originals. It's just very important that you get good xeroxes of them first.

If you don't want to ink the originals, so that you can show both original pencils and inks side by side, then you need to get a scan of your pencils and use Photoshop to make it so that the black lines are blue. You need to have the info palette visible, with CMYK selected in the Info Palette Options. Then in the pulldown menus, select Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation. Put Hue slider to the middle of the scale (not critical to hit an exact number), Saturation to 100, and Lightness to whatever level will make very darkest area is no more that 60% cyan (C). This lays down a pretty heavy blue, one that doesn't quite pick up as black on MY scanner when I scan the inks in bitmap mode (which is how inks are best scanned). You would want to go a lot lighter to get the look, for example, of the inking-exercise boards with the waves, trees and so on that Mick Gray does for his kids. The original will look cleaner if you go for that lighter blue too. But you do want it dark enough to see the details! And be sure to ink with your xerox of the pencils nearby.

You'll need to get it printed out on an 11x17 printer. Most can handle 2-ply bristol just fine. There is even a thick paper setting on some printers, either in the Print dialog box or on the machine itself. Such a printer is a great thing to have, and they are about a tenth the price they were several years ago.

JH

Demo of reflections set up

Oooops-- I meant to post this to my Drawing from the Imagination blog. Comics students may ignore this. 

Note that, as always with 2-point, you must have one or both VPs well outside the borders of the final composition, and neither should be more than a little bit inside the picture, ever.
The oval mirror idea I suggest in the video is not a good idea for this assignment because you have to show three objects in addition to the queen. "Dean of Perspective" Joko suggested to me once that if you draw the reflected objects in the mirror first and then use the methods in the module to place and scale the actual objects in the real world, you can eliminate any trial and error.
Sorry for the video quality. It looks much better playing on my Mac than through the Blogger interface for some reason. I think you can still follow it though.

Here's an impressive version of this assignment by a past student. Sure, it's kinda lame that the room isn't reflected in the mirror (I told you that was a common failing), but she had drawn everything else (except for the head) so beautifully that I let it pass.

This, btw, is the sort of super-competence, like Chad Weatherford's Civil War drawing last week, that entitles you to a certain amount of rule-breaking. If you're not making fairly steady A's, just do the assignment as written, please...

JH

What to watch for in clothing folds

Here are a couple new videos to help put you touch with the mechanics and aesthetics of drawing clothing folds. Then, a magnificent new illustration by the immensely talented and personable Andy Kuhn. It shows how, once you have some feel for the mechanics of folds and know how to make them follow the form, you can beautifully describe clothes just with outlines, buttons and the shadows under the rolls. Notice how nicely, in this minimalist style, the square ends of the lines serve as those "turnarounds" when a roll doubles back going into a "Y"and the shadow under it stops. Wow!


JH

Rad How-To Blog

This drawing blog, done by a guy named Rad, has got me thinking: Do I teach too much by picking on people's common misperceptions about how body parts are formed? Does that approach favor surface result too much over process and understanding? And if so, am I short-changing you guys by teaching in a more superficial way than I ought to?

Or, on the other hand, would a deeper approach prove too analytical and intensive for today's students? Too much like the year of drawing plaster casts that used to feature as a prominent and fundamental part of classical art education? (Considering that almost all drawing errors are some combination of misreading the evidence of senses and failure to deal with the implications of 3D-ness, I think more and more that art schools were on the right track a hundred years ago. My biggest knock on current students is that they want to be shown a recipe, a video tutorial, even for things that aren't cut and dried enough to work that way.)

Either way, please check out Rad's blog, which is a sublime combination of sharp-eyed analysis and a heightened feeling for not only figure drawing, but shape design and storytelling. As such, it is very useful to both illustrators and concept artists. And animators really need this stuff as they spend years moving beyond a superficial, shape-driven apprehension of the world.

You know a guy's got a lot on the ball when he's willing to show you his class notes.... Go now, go now!

JH

Costume Carnival! and Other Reminders.

Costume Carnival is this weekend, Saturday 30 Oct, 10-4 in Bradley Hall, 540 Powell. Great chance to brush up your clothed figure skills in a fun, fanciful, student-directed way.

The Comic Book Workshop is now weekly at 3 on Thursdays in 540, 1st floor, I think.

Ever wanted to be an intern at Marvel? This is your chance to find out if editors return the calls of people who work for them. For free.

Escape from Illustration Island has been going for a year now. It's a great source for tutorials and career tips for illustrators.

JH

Everything I Know

The key to drawing a thing well is having a strong feeling for its form. And the key to that is getting a workable simplification of it into your blue-pencil underdrawing. Over time you can develop and hold a simple 3D head shape, for example, in your mind, that you can draw from any angle.

The alternative is to have a conventionalized way of drawing a head for each of several angles. That may not sound bad. It worked for years for John Byrne. But it meant that his characters looked quite different when seen from the angles that Byrne didn’t draw as well, and that any two characters, seen from the same angle, looked like cousins, if not siblings.

The little un-glimpsed errors that cling to our work consist almost entirely of shapes and juxtapositions from one view being misapplied to another. All learning artists are accidental Cubists. They unknowingly draw a thing from multiple directions at once.

By the way, these distortions I’m making fun of are come by honestly. These are the mistakes everybody makes in the effort to do something honorable: take what you know and adapt it to a wide variety of poses and angles. The trouble comes from trying to build your general “model” of a body part from the specific surface bits of it or one view of it rather than its actual, overall, 3D shape. What makes accomplished illustration better than amateur is the understanding is that everything in a drawing has to be defined and essentially contained by its capital-f Form.

For example, take this credible-looking drawing of a foot seen directly from the side. Then, a respectable drawing of a shoe proceeds reasonably from the first drawing’s premises. We can see the correctly observed fact that the sole of the shoe rocks up, off the floor, in front.

The trouble comes when one tries to take this flat understanding of the foot into a different view. Let’s go to, say, a more frontal view, from a higher angle--more typical of the way we usually see shoes. The need to foreshorten the foot for this view seems to call us to increase the curviness of that slight S-curve on the top edge of the original shoe. A curious innate human urge to represent the front ends of shoes as puff pastry has given the shoe a distinct echo of Mickey Mouse’s bulbous brogans. Moreover the very slight curving-upward of the sole has morphed into the entire front end of the foot’s hooking mysteriously, painfully, outward. Compared with a photo or better drawing, this is clearly disastrous, yet it is typical of what that we all do before we learn to deal with capital-F Form.

The solution what I’m calling SRSs: Simplified Rotatable Solids.

Heads!

The artist’s need to draw attractive, dimensional human heads from varying angles makes it essential to start with a simplified rotatable solid. Consider for a second the fact that few appealing, believable drawings have ever begun with a charmless, sloppy, skewed or ugly underdrawing. The need for those simple solids, starting with a headshape, should be pretty clear by now.

You can base your default starting headshape on an egg, or a simplified skull, or a sphere with jaw area added and the sides lopped off. These are all workable starts, each championed in different great how-to-draw books. I use something a little different, as you see here. There is a partial flattening of the front and side planes, as is visible by the faint squarishness of the horizontal centerline. The ears are already in place, just a little behind the vertical centerline for the side planes of the face. I can draw this from almost any angle, and still keep its proportions.

When your faces get weird-looking, when you keep having to redraw the features over and over, it’s usually because you’ve lost your artistic connection to that solid, or didn’t make it very well in the first place. Without realizing, you are likely presenting an impossible hybrid view: the different facial features are drawn as if seen from a variety of directions.  When attempting to draw difficult angles on faces, do you sometimes get the Quasimodo effect?

To fix it: Erase back to that underdrawing stage, grab your blue pencil and make that headshape work, in its simplest, cleanest form, with centerlines that really hug and define that solid. (Centerlines done in a hasty, perfunctory way are worth less than nothing). When you return to drawing the features, locate them very, very softly and vaguely at first with the blue pencil before you refine them. Remember that the eyes are pushed back a little in relation to the eyebrows, forehead and the bridge of the nose. I recommend trying drawing the nose after the eyes, so you can make sure you have the eyes placed, aligned and spaced properly. If it’s still not working, get out some photo reference of a similar view.

When we forget that the bridge of a nose can block our view of the inner corner of the far eye, or when we fear to draw an eyebrow that wraps around to the unseen far side of the head, or forget that eyebrows are mostly ahead of the eyes, we can easily create little, dead, flat zones in our drawings. And we can be slow to recognize them in our own work. One solution is dutiful, analytical attention to the visible part of the far half of the face in 3/4 view, in photos and life.

When we see a face in 3/4 view, especially in closeup, the far eye is just a little more foreshortened, a little closer to a side view. Thus it looks a tiny bit shorter, less wide across. A little of this is due to the fact that our sightline to the far eye necessarily runs a little more across the eye and a little less at it than the near eye.  A little is due to its just being farther away. These differences are greater when the viewer or camera is close up, and when the bridge of the nose is strong enough to cover a little of the far eye. Intriguingly, this is something that some of the very simplest anime and manga styles exaggerate. This gives animators the ability, even in styles of Pokemon simplicity, to draw in a way that heightens the feeling of Form, conquering 2D’s limitations. Ironically, this is something that most anime imitators totally miss, at least at first.

Try this for spacing and placing the eyes in 3/4 views:
1) In your blue-pencil underdrawing, you place that far eye first. Keep it a little shorter on its horizontal axis than you think is right. Use your judgment as to whether the eyeball breaks the contour of the face or if there is a little face showing on the far side of the eye (as with broader faces, slightly more frontal views, anime-derived styles).  Forget the nose for now. Loop in a space-keeper “third eye” right next to the far eye. Because it’s a little closer to us and a facing a little tiny bit more toward us, you make the imaginary third eye a little longer, or longer still if you want wider-set eyes or small eyes. Finally add the near eye at a size that looks natural.

2) The far corner of the far eye should be very blunted by the foreshortening of the eye opening and the sphericalness of the eyeball. In fact in some views that approach profile, that little place where the outer ends of the upper and lower lids meet may be “‘round the corner,” hidden from our sight by the eye itself. But the near corner of the near eye will be extended, displayed to our eye at nearly its full length and pointiness.  Look critically at the interrelation of the eyes and the face, make any revisions, then draw in the bridge of the nose.

3) Hold on! Don’t draw it as a line--it’s an SRS too, Picasso. Sketch it as a wedge with a flat base. “Glue” that base between the eyes, centered right on the third eye. The bridge of the nose itself will tell you whether it’s deep enough to cover some of the far eye. No need to guess. Working this way saves you from this scenario: You draw the near half of the face with confidence, but lose your way trying to cram the eye onto the bit of the face that exists on the far side of the nose.

4) Now make sure that the forehead and thus the eyebrows are a little ahead of the eyes.  The centerline of the eyebrows must be shifted toward the outside, moved out into a “wider orbit” than the plane the eyes are in. Often, very little of the far eyebrow will show and the bit that does will be foreshortened--retreating around the forehead.  (This far eyebrow is the area where people most often fall “flat,” failing to reckon with the roundness of the head. For instance, often when a character is drawn with arched eyebrows, their inner ends will be shown curving down to the nose-bridge with two identical, symmetrical curves. This is never found in nature, because of the spheroid shape of the forehead. Check any 3/4 view photo of any person ever.) Refine the nose to a natural shape.

Look for this unequal eye length in photos of 3/4-view faces. You will always see it, even when the bridge of the nose is too shallow to cover any of the far eye.

When the face is shown in extreme up-shot--as when the jaw takes on a W shape --the eyes appear to “sag” slightly at their outer ends.

Upshot or down, it is imperative to visualize eyeballs as spherical. Even though only a fraction of the eyeball is visible, the lids are shaped by it. When you do a downshot, think of the lower lids as semicircular balconies hugging that sphere of eyeball, for example.  The lines of the eye opening will only appear straight-ish where they come between your viewpoint and the core of the eye’s sphere. As they bend away from you toward the “horizon” of the eyeball, they will curve more and more, due to the progressive foreshortening imposed by the eye’s sphericity. So if you always draw the eye opening as a leaf shape, slot or oval regardless of one’s angle of view, you need to bring some direction to your approach. Check photos of faces taken from high and low angles, especially ones where the eyes are not wide open, and you will gain that necessary sense of the eyeball as a sphere.

These little site-specific heightenings of Form-awareness, by the way, are not airy-fairy extra enhancements of the existing charm of your work. Rather, they are surface telltales of a deeper insight that separates learning artists from good ones and increases charm and convincingness: an ability to draw from 3D Form. My belief is that  paying attention to the specifics, especially with checking against reality and photos, can lead gradually to a heightened awareness of the primacy of Form in general. Some jag-off fine-arts styles may trade on primitive drawing to falsely imply an authenticity of expression. But beyond that insular world, there are very few styles, including those of Power Puff Girls geometric simplicity, that are in anyway diminished by this ability.

JH

Perspective

The resource I mentioned in class as being especially valuable for perspective has many other valuable insights into drawing in general. Allow several minutes for download.

JH

Ellipses: The "Implied Cylinder"

You guys, here's a set of very short videos I made just recently to explain how to orient ellipses properly, over on the blog for my graduate Drawing from the Imagination sections.
If you haven't already, please read the announcement following this post.
JH

Comics Workshop is in flux

Stay tuned for news re time and location of Dan Cooney's Comics Workshop. Up in the air at the moment.

JH

P.S.: I am tracking down the Comics Club. Please leave a comment if you know anything.

After the First Meeting

Hi, Y'all,
Here's the first, verbal part of the handout, as well as the instructions for the head exercise, now no longer worded as notes to myself!

JH

Comics 2 - ILL 292
John Heebink
Credits: Take the Book off the Shelf, Doll and Creature (Image), Vampirella Quarterly (Harris), Killer Stunts (Alias), Elvira (Claypool), Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (Hamilton), Nick Fury, Quasar (Marvel), Action Planet Comics

PHONE 415 887-
BLOG ill193.blogspot.com
EMAIL penciler@



Category Weights:

Participation (Helpful crits, adding to discussions, readiness to draw)    20%
Homework                                                                                                 35
In-class Assignments, Quizzes                                                                  20
Final Project (pitch pack)                                                                          25

ATTENDANCE
Attendance is required.
Two unexcused lates will count as an unexcused absence.
Arriving five minutes or more after class begins or leaving fifteen minutes or more before class ends will be considered a late.
Three unexcused absences will lower final grade one full letter (B to C, etc.)
Three consecutive unexcused absences will result in a final grade of F.
Four unexcused absences will result in an F.
Excuses for absences and tardinesses must be written and verifiable by phone.

LATE WORK IS NOT PERMITTED
Late work is given an “0” without a written excuse with contact info so I can verify (see Student Handbook for what constitutes a valid excuse--it’s limited). However you may re-do up to four on-time assignments. So your incentive is to turn in work, good or bad, on time, and later re-do the ones you’re unhappy with. Work must be turned in (or emailed to me if you can’t make class) 20 min before the end of the class session in which it is due. Re-dos are due in the 14th week of class.

FOOD IS NOT PERMITTED. Seriously. We have a student lunchroom. Drinks are okay.

DIFFICULTIES. Please see syllabus for available services for when you are in difficulty or have special needs. ARC in particular is helpful: They have motivated, helpful counselors, content tutors and language tutors, and they put on subject-specific workshops. They have a special office for accommodating the needs of students with disabilities (Classroom Services).

Everybody goes through rough patches, periods of adjustment. Please see ARC early if a problem arises that interferes with your work. If your grades drop to D or F, I am required to talk to you about it and  urge you to see ARC. Working with friendly, eager ARC counselors earlier may prevent things getting to that point.



Philosophy:
INDUSTRY PRACTICE. This class is modeled on industry practice. Though comic-book deadlines are often somewhat elastic, the career risks of lateness make my no-late-work policy a good practice. Real cartoonists often have coffee and soda in their work area, so it's allowed in this class, etc.

ALL ABOUT THE WORK Most of our aims in this class will be in service of producing a high-quality final product.  Please ask questions.

GENERAL-TO-SPECIFIC. The best way to produce professional work is to move, in our work,  from  big issues to small, from soft to hard, general to specific, taking no more time at any stage than is necessary. Working with blue pencils is key to this, as is breaking out of comfortable bad habits.

THE GOAL of this class is to produce a professional quality comics pitch: Cover, character sketches and 6 pages of inked story art. (Some students may want to design logos and write the verbal component of the pitch, but these are not required and will not affect grade). Lettering directly on the boards is strongly discouraged.

I stand ready to assist you with any problem areas in your work. You can call me at the number above. I highly encourage you to scan and email me your work in progress, so I may give helpful feedback that can save you time and heartache. There may be comics and perspective workshops that can be helpful and fun. I believe they start after the third week of the semester.

Teaching Methods:
Lectures (limited), demos, handouts, homework, class critiques, quizzes, in-class assignments, one-on-one advice from teacher.

Updated Supply list
Pencils, of your preferred hardnesses
Sanford Col-erase Blue or Light blue Pencils . ALWAYS bring to class.
Strathmore 400 or 500 Series bristol board, smooth finish. (Trim down to 11" x 17")
Kneaded and Pink Pearl or synthetic erasers (e.g., Staedtler-Mars White)
30/60/90 triangle--the bigger the better. Look for one with a raised straightedge for inking
Raphael 8404 Series Kolinsky sable brush, size #2 or #3 or #4 , (or the less expensive Escoda 1212 series, size #2 or #3 or #4) available at Pearl Paint and Jerry's Artarama. OR,  alternatively, an excellent brush pen: Brush pens can be found at the Kinokuniya Stationery Store , 1581 Webster, Japantown, on the 38 Geary bus line.
Pen nibs and holders (I'd suggest Hunt 102 and an assortment of others. I really like the Deleter nibs and holders from Japan. They are sometimes available at the Kinokuniya  BOOKSTORE in Japantown, but  it's difficult to find out because a lot of their clerks don't know they carry them. Deleter makes it own holder that fits both styles of Deleter nibs.)
Pelikan Waterproof  or Speedball Super Black India Ink (Higgins Black Magic is a passable second choice.)
Pentel Presto or Pro White or Dr. Martin's Bleedproof White or Pilot Correction pen or other correction pen
Micron Pigma black pigment liners, sizes 03, 05 and 08, two of each
Drafting  tape or dots
Optional but recommended: drawing board with parallel rule or T-square; stick-style or pencil-style eraser; architecture-style lead holder, leads and special sharpener; sanding paddle for making chisel points on pencils; electric eraser (for erasing ink); French curve, flexible curves, ellipse templates; compass; 2H or 3H pencil (or lead and lead holder) for doing side-of-the-pencil shading and fills of black areas; a 6" metal ruler for ruling backgrounds; light box, tone screens.

Carrying a sketchbook is a good idea.

Always bring blue pencil, black pencil, erasers, paper and a ruler to class!

Welcome to Comics 2, Fall '10!

Hi, everybody.
We've got a nicely sized section this semester.
This class is about helping you make the best-possible package of pages by the end of the semester. So the amount of work required is not excessive--it's a time-tested number of pages. It won't force you to compromise on quality--if you use your time well.
Another aspect of this class is maximizing what it is that you already do. That makes our smallish class size a true plus, so that you can get enough individual attention to help you deal with whichever aspect of your work is occupying your attention these days.
I'll give you a couple others to worry about as well, naturally!
Good luck, you all. Speak up, both in class and out. From the first day of class you will have my email and cell phone number. Don't be shy--let me know if you are not getting from the class what you want.

JH

Another Challenge: Expression

THE "25 Essential Expressions Challenge"
You may have seen examples of this one on deviantart. Someone named Nancy Lorenz designed the sheet for it. Not sure why she put a copyright on something she wanted people to copy, but OK, so not everybody gets the concept of copyright.

It's a great exercise, even if some of the expressions are kinda redundant. There are three different flavors of fury, for example.

It's not only an exercise in expression, but a workout for people like me who have trouble drawing a character consistently. I've been sketching out specimens for a vampire pitch I'm working on. I will post them here at some point.

  JH

The Page 100 Project

Artist Jason Turner has started a new challenge for comics artists with a simple premise: You pick a favorite book (prose or, I suppose, poetry) and adapt page 100 into comics form. Turner's effort is shown here. It's from Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union. My fave of those I've seen is the one in color, based on one of the few books on this list that I've heard of and one of only two I've read, The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. This one is adapted by Mark Oftedal.

JH

Revised Photoshop Primer

Vampirella Quarterly 2008 Halloween, pencils and colors JH, inks M. Manley

 Hi, you guys. I'll see if I can schedule that Photoshop lab day. I've just newly condensed and updated a Photoshop primer for you. Here also is a link to a Photoshop file that shows my preferred file setup and represents a file that is ready to have the modeling done. The advantages of this file setup are detailed in the Primer.

JH

Those Wee Facial Offsets

These jpegs are presented to help you to a finer handling of the ins and outs of facial structure. I did these a couple years back to help a grad student. He was a good page designer and storyteller, but admitted he'd been forgetting to use all he knew about facial structure. (The school couldn't let him go out with samples that showed such amateurishness, and so he was graduated conditioned upon his making some few revisions to his thesis project based upon these notes.) Click on them to enlarge.

Hope these are helpful for you guys. In the second illo, I'm showing how starting with simple, attractively proportioned structure can allow his own line work to be repositioned into something dimensional and nice-looking. Handling that far half of the face is really tricky, largely because all its surfaces are rounding away from the viewer's eye, and because we unknowingly treat it as flat in places.

JH

These are Copyright 2010 Academy of Art.

Feedback from the Jazzy One

I recently found my notes from when, years ago, I had then-Marvel Art Director and personal hero John Romita , Sr. critique my stuff. His comments are a valuable list of things to remember in drawing comics, and expecially relevant for those who, like me, have struggled with stiffness in the figures and achieving a Marvel-ready level of dynamism.

This stuff is golden:

• Twist hips, shoulders
• Avoid parallel lines (it hurts the design of your page)
• Figures in groups: Vary angles (of bodily attitudes and body parts)
• Vary poses, gestures within the group to avoid repetition
• Order large groups into subgroups and vary the spacing between those subgroups
• Look at how old pros handle groups
• Open mouths of speaking characters more (This one is more specific to me)
• Can't over-do the deep perspectives in BGs (so more 1-point persp?)
• Avoid the sleepwalking, antiseptic, talking-heads look--more acting!
• Push the expressions--boost emotion with dramatic lighting like split lighting
• Take poses to greater extremes! Easier for Raiders (art correction team) to tone down excesses than to add excitement where none exists (Romita stood then to show how, when one really leaned into a simple pointing pose, the arm came out of the sleeve a few inches farther!)
  
• Keep a little "air" around figures in action--Don't pin them near borders (esp. don't put figure outlines parallel to nearby panel borders)
• Remember to spot room for balloons
• Keep individual characters' faces more consistent as to features (e.g., nose long/short), young-looking/old-looking
• Keeping individual characters' reactions internally consistent will make the characters live in peoples' minds--making story overwhelm art in readers' mind--which you want!

In this last one, Romita was deeply influenced by Milton Caniff's classic adventure strip Terry and the Pirates, wherein the characters were superbly individuated and true to their own natures--that is, consistent, yet without being predictable. This helped Romita make the Spider-Man cast very human for his readers.

Thanks, Mr. Romita, for sharing your knowledge and undimmed enthusiasm for comics!

JH

The Portfolio Game, Part 1

It's easy to be nervous about presenting your portfolio to an editor or another artist at a comic book convention. It's easy to delay it, in the mistaken belief that a lot is hanging on this one early incarnation of your portfolio. It's not so. The first convention at which you show your portfolio is the beginning of a process, it's not the whole game. You will very likely not walk up to an editor, wink, say, "Have I got a style for you" and blow him away. Not at the first con and probably not the fifth.

For now, just pick the very best pages you have. The ones that you don't feel you have to make excuses for or explain anything about. Maybe that's just three pages now. That's fine. Your job is not to convince an editor that you are already the artist you secretly hope to be. You need to make the most favorable representation of where you are in your growth now.

Right now, you can only be as good as you are right now. You are accountable for nothing more. Don't wait for inspiration to strike so you can finish that really great page you know you have within you. It'll come out some day. For now, the most important thing is that you get the process started.

Be clear on this: You will only show editors pages with storytelling. No pin-ups, no covers. I should retype this ten times because people always seem to dream up reasons why they should show some single drawing. Don't! Story pages only!

If you are demonstrating inking, make sure that you have xeroxes of the original pencils. It's much better if these are not your pencils, but those of a professional. If you know a comic book artist, ask him or her if you could make copies of some xeroxes of their pencils and others'. All artists have some. You can ink these on one-ply bristol on a light box, with a duplicate on hand to refer to. Or you can scan them and print them out in blue ink onto two-ply bristol on a large format ink-jet printer. Again, have a copy on hand to refer to.

JH

Views from the Top

Again thanks to Jon Colton and comicscareer.com: more thoughts on getting work, this time from Marvel chief Joe Quesada. (edited by me for spelling and punctuation).
JH

Joe Quesada’s Portfolio Tips
March 19th, 2009

This evening, Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada was Twittering tips for new comics artists who are building a portfolio to show editors. We’ve captured these tweets for your reading convenience. You can follow Quesada’s messages yourself at: http://twitter.com/JoeQuesada.

• Okay, how about some portfolio building advice? Grab your notepads and pencils, kiddies.
• Okay, first, you’ve heard it before: don’t letter your samples. No SFX either.
• Don’t ink your work, unless they are ink samples over someone else’s pencils. Don’t color your own work unless you’re a painter.
• Keep it simple, an editor does not need to see a 30-page portfolio. We can tell by the second page whether someone has the stuff.
• I see people spinning their wheels doing these gigantic portfolios and I end up feeling bad, because whether they’re good or not, they wasted a lot of time.
• A perfect penciling portfolio can be built in 12 pages.
• Three stories, consisting of no more than 3 pages each. Three cover samples that relate to your story.
• Each story a silent vignette, with a beginning, middle and end. No words, but the viewer should be able to tell exactly what’s going on.
• Pick a single character vignette, a team vignette and then one with two people doing ordinary things. A quiet moment.
• Artists have it easier than writers folks, there’s no way to sugarcoat it.
• However, writers have the ability to make more money than artist if they’re prolific.
• Okay, so, out of your single hero and team vignettes, make sure one is DCcentric and the other Marvel. The quiet vignette can be Vertigo.
• Your vignette doesn’t have to be a brilliant story, keep it simple, just make sure it’s clear.
• Here’s an example of 3 pages and a cover that got me my first gig at DC.
• Page 1 Small panel of Supes flying, pull back it’s a TV screen, pull back its Luthor watching Supes on Multiple screens, he pushes a lever.
• Page 2 Supes flies, rescues a cat from a tree hands it to a little girl. Something off panel gets his attention. He flies off.
• Page 3 Supes encounters a giant robot, knocks it out with one punch, stands heroically on robot's chest. Pull back, he’s on the TV screen.
• Pull back and Luthor smashes his fist on his desk as he watches what just happened.
• Cover- Superman struggles in the hand of the giant robot.
• Simple, brainless story, but the point got across.
• I was going to give some writers submission advice, but we’re not accepting writer submissions at the moment.
• Marvel was accepting cold writer submissions until it recently became too overwhelming to keep up with. Hopefully we will again.

Great Twittered Tips

Courtesy of AAU grad Jon Colton, a bunch of Twitters from Marvel's head reviewer of art, C.B. Cebulski. Interesting reading, especially when he mentions how he prospects for people online!

JH

* When and if sending an editor samples pages, always save as JPEGs and keep all files under 300K.

* PDFs are cool too, but try and keep them around 2MB tops. Last thing you wanna do is crash an editor’s inbox.

* And limit attachments to your 5 or 6 best pieces. If the editor wants to see more, he/she will ask you to send more.

* Yes, a link to a blog with your art would always be recommended over attachments to begin with.

* Sorry, writers, but I’m offering advice for artists. Maybe some of the editors here can chime in and help you guys?

* Blogs are always structured chronologically with newest posts first which is another reason I recommend them.

* Yes, it’s definitely harder for writers than artists to break into comics these days, in my opinion.

* And when I say “breaking into comics”, I’m generally referring to working for the more major mainstream publishers.

* Truth be told, it’s easier than ever for anyone to “break into comics” via webcomics and self-publishing these days.

* The internet &/or print-on-demand services mean anyone with an idea, motivation & a little $ can bring a comic to life.

* Barely anyone has “broken in” at Marvel or DC directly. We always say it’s better to be published elsewhere first.

* I always recommend people make comics, whether it’s for themselves or to try and break in professionally.

* It’s easier than ever for writers to find artists, and vice versa, here on the net. (cont.) Like Digital Webbing, Deviant Art, conceptart.org, and lots of creator boards, like Bendis and Millar, to name a few.

* The question of digital art vs. on the board is a question each artist needs to answer for themselves.

* Makes no difference to the editor or publisher really. How you create your art is your business.

* Yes, “good, fast or nice.” If you’re two of the three, you can get a job in comics, as the saying goes.

* I can almost guarantee you that my idea of being “Marvel ready” and an up-an-coming artist’s idea of “Marvel ready” are totally different.

* The two main things we look for are style and storytelling. Speed is something we learn and judge later.

* I don’t really know as I don’t recruit writers or review their work, but I would assume so.

* Bad storytelling is bad even w/ the flashiest finish. Good ST is good w/ a crayon.

* Got my first “where does a nobody like you get off giving advice on breaking into comics” note. Must’ve been from someone I didn’t hire.

* If your work gets picked for review at a con, it means yours was one of the better drop-offs the Marvel editors saw.

* Sample pages = TEST pages. They’re a means for artists to “try out” for an editor. They’re not a guarantee of work.

* If you have published work, it’s better to send the editor the actual books than links to the stories online.

* The most important thing to remember about working in comics is that THIS IS A JOB!

* Your portfolio is your resume. Talks with editors are your job interviews. Be professional.

* Yes, working in comics is a lot of fun, but it’s still work and has to be approached as such.

* No need to dress up to meet editors at cons. It’s more about acting professionally. Showering helps tho.

* Proper etiquette for following up with an editor after a meeting at a con? I recommend the rule of 4 Ps. (cont.)
Be persistent. Be patient. Don’t be pushy. Don’t be a pain-in-the-ass.

* Wait a week to send out your initial e-mail. No attachments. Follow-up two weeks later if you don’t hear back.

* Then just send updates letting the editor know what you’re up to every 4 - 6 weeks. Never more than once a month.

* Yup, everything I say here may be common sense, but you have no idea how many people don’t get it right.

* I’d say the Rule of 4 Ps applies to both artists and writers.

* It’s interesting, in discussing it over beers last night, we all seemed to agree that writers tend to be much pushier than artists.

* We also noticed an increase in the disturbing trend of “editor fishing” going on of late. Editor fishing = Telling Editor #1 you’re coming to the office for a meeting with Editor #2 when you don’t actually have an appointment.

* This done in hopes of Editor #1 not checking with Editor #2, thereby tricking him into letting you into offices for a meeting you never had.
Oh, yeah… people just show up at the Marvel offices all the time. The receptionists are experts at dealing with it!

* Although there was one time Dave Finch dropped by unannounced to drop off pages and they didn’t believe him or let him in.

* You’d be surprised. There’re 2 writers famous for it & always manage to pull it off. They usually pull it on new editors.

* Oh, editors check, but you’ll find comics people are very forgiving of talent and always like to believe the best in creators.

* No, wearing a Marvel t-shirt to a con will not improve your chance of getting a meeting with a Marvel editor.

* You know, this is actually working. Gotten lots of e-mails and replies with intros and links to sweet art blogs. Cool!

* Who knows… maybe Marvel will soon have our first Twitter hire?

* Again, I am not trying to pick on or deny new writers opportunities. It’s just not part of my job. NOT what I do. I’m Marvel’s artist guy.
I come across many new artists via links on creator blogs. So new artists, get your pro friends to start linking to you.

* There have more new opportunities for new writers at Marvel these past two years than ever before. I see a new name at least every month.

* Astonishing Tales, X-Men Manifest Destiny, MCP… almost every issue debuts as new voice that the editors have discovered.

* Looking at the new issue of Astonishing Tales, there are two new writers in there. One who had a short story in MCP, one making his debut.
Marvel also has new writer specific one-shots that they do to test run new writers who they think have the chops to write for Marvel.

* I know for a fact Axel Alonso hired an up-and-coming writer he likes just this past Thursday for a Punisher one-shot of this nature.
He’d been following this writer’s work at few other publishers, read his newest issue, thought he’d found his voice, and called him.

* Yes, these gigs are on short stories, one-shots and maybe not the best sellers, so you might not hear read them or hear about these guys.
But the point is the chances are now out there. Systems are in places at Marvel to get new writers in on a regular basis. More so than ever.

* “New” meaning “new to Marvel”, yes. Which brings up another myth I’ll be happy to dispel re: screenwriters and novelists at Marvel. (cont.)
Just because they work in another entertainment medium, that doesn’t mean they have an automatic in at Marvel. Far from the case.
TV/movie/novel writing is very different from comic writing. Writing for an artist, understand the pacing, etc., are completely different.
And the editors at Marvel know and understand this. Any writer from Hollywood or literature has to try out just like any other new writer.

* Yes, you may see more names crossing over into comics these days, but the door wasn’t magically just opened for them.
Maybe they get more “buzz” due to their other writing, but that’s to be expected. But they now write in comic cuz they KNOW and LOVE comics.

* You know, I’d bet there were more “new” writers than “Hollywood” writers hired by Marvel in 2008. You just never heard of the newer guys.

* Yes, you can sit here and argue and debate every point I bring up about breaking into comics, but really… what’s the point?

* You don’t like what I have to say? Feel free to ignore me. Follow your own path. Break in your own way. Please.

* My opinions and advice are my own, formed from personal experience. I pass it on with only the best of intention. I’m only trying to help.
Oh, I don’t mind. I know I’m just a Marvel corporate stooge to some people, doing spin control to covering up the big Marvel conspiracy.

* “I’ve got the best ideas for (insert Marvel character here) since Stan Lee and Marvel won’t publish them cuz they’re scared I’m so good!”
Oh, you found us out. You’re so good that we’re keeping you down just so we don’t have to fire hacks like @BRIANMBENDIS & @mattfraction!

* None of this sours me on Twitter or the internet in any way. I’ve been getting it for years and expect it. Makes me smile actually.

* And I’m saving it all for my book. The chapter on how NOT to break into comics continues to grow on an almost daily basis.

* Yes, breaking into comics really can be murder.

* Most of the comments I’ve been getting have been via e-mail and DMs actually. I guess people want me to see them but not make them public.

* And as some seem to have missed the point, the tweets about a Marvel conspiracy and me calling my friends Brian and Matt hacks WERE A JOKE!
Woke up to inboxes full of material ripe for Twittering about!

* First and foremost, don’t use the current “global economic crisis” as an attempt to get work. It’s not just you who’s suffering financially.

* Comic jobs are given based on talent, not economic need. Can’t believe I had 2 e-mails trying to guilt me into work! What’re you thinking?!

* There are plenty of already established pencilers who have fallen on hard times and who are out there looking for work as well.

* And we’re more than likely to call up and offer a gig to a pro we’ve worked with before and know we can trust.

* I don’t care if “I’m new and hungry and will work cheaper than the other pencilers out there because I desperately need money to get by.”

* And another thing, if you happen to find out personal details about an editor, don’t try and use them as an in to get work.
(And I’m not saying this about me as I put all my shit out here online and am always happy to talk about anything I post.)

* But I’ve heard from other editors how artists at portfolio reviews, complete strangers mind you, asked about their wife and/or kids by name.
Or knew where they went to college. Or challenged them to a game of one-on-one as they heard the editor liked basketball.

* There’s a line between the personal and the professional. Between being friendly and being creepy. Just know where it is and don’t cross it.

* The number one piece of advice I give newer, up-and-coming artists: stick to the grid! There’s nothing more important in my opinion.

* And for those that haven’t seen it, here’s “Wally Wood’s 22 Panels That Always Work”:

* Second piece of advice I always find myself giving newbies: Don’t break the panel borders. It’s distracting and usually not necessary.

* New pencilers often make the mistake of breaking borders to add dynamicism to a page but it usually just confuses their storytelling.

* Third piece of advice, don’t neglect your panel borders and gutters. They are an important part of your page that are often forgotten.

* Fourth piece of advice, don’t forget that word balloons and SFX need to go on the page. Make sure you include them in your initial layouts.
Sounds obvious, I know, but there are even pros I know who don’t always take them into account and complain when their art gets covered up.

* And my last piece of advice for new pencilers today, don’t attempt to draw in any sound effects. They’ll only serve to clutter your art.
Certain artists, like Adam Kubert, are masters at it, but it’s an art to be learned. Tell the story first without cluttering your pages.

* And as I’m just a lowly writer & talent scout, I would greatly appreciate any artists here jumping in with advice/experiences of their own.

* As Hollywood’s invaded and San Diego’s grown, it’s not the best con to try and meet editors and show your portfolio at anymore.

* Unfortunately, there’s no real set answer to that. “Marvel ready” is a subjective term. When I see, I know… that’s about it.

* I discovered @skottieyoung ’s artwork simply walking thru Artists Alley in Chicago, so I always recommend new artists get tables at cons.

Women in art

Follow this link to a very trippy, beautiful video made by morphing between portraits of women going back to the Middle Ages.

Thanks to Al Gordon for the link.

I did something much less ambitious but similar a while ago when I was trying out a demo version of a morphing program. Recognize the beauty with the ghostly teeth in the illo at left? "She" is a morph between Adriana Lima and Salma Hayek, than whom Nature has provided no greater known exemplar of feminine beauty, IMHO. Click below to see this as a very short movie. I'm not sure how much educational value this has, so please don't watch it more than 7 or 8 times.


JH