Your Legend

How not to make a superhero walk.
Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD,
penciled by J. Heebink, inked by Don Hudson

Hi You All,

Let's get to the essence of our ongoing project, for benefit of the present group and those who may join us.

Your Ongoing Project

You have by now given yourself, in your heart, your "dream job," I hope:

A story or stories from the created world you would like to show to readers and spend time in. Let's call this your Legend. You probably haven't fleshed it all out now and that's fine. Maybe you've started writing a "bible" for it or made some foundational notes about tone, look and direction. Maybe just some bits of script or panel doodles.

It doesn't have to be fully worked out! It will take shape as you work on it. The thing is to work.

Because we have busy lives and obligations, we can only deal with things as grand as a Legend and a goal of artistic improvement by breaking the main goal into smaller goals. This tactic is so widely known that it's a cliche, but a supremely helpful one.

So this is why our class assignments are generally about getting your pencil or stylus moving on some storytelling art.

The Rationale

In my own career, I've done better work on things that were mine to a significant degree. Not that I decided to do less than my best on pro work. It's just that drawing things for your own satisfaction is more conducive to good work. It's natural. You're not accountable to anyone but yourself for how things look. That's comfortable and sometimes even energizing.

It's important, though, to get a few extra pairs of eyes on your work so you can strengthen it. That what this class provides for you.

Teaching at art school showed me that learning and improvement come from...

• doing the work
• being open to feedback

...preferably on something you care about.  So my projects like Doll and Creature (co-created with Rick Remender)...

Comfortable!

.... and Space Chicks and Businessmen (co-created with writer Link Yaco)....

Also comfortable!

....and my solo thing "Wrathbone & Bitchula"...

Really comfortable!

... were all more fun and better drawn than, e.g., my wonky work on Marvel's Nick Fury or Quasar, where I was working on characters and situations I didn't have a hand in, and weren't really my thing anyway.

A struggle

So, please, do your thing. Trust your instincts. You know what you like! Have fun.

And Anyway...

Any homework you do that is...

1. drawn, and
2. in panels 

...is a successful assignment. Really.


John

Message to the Teacher

Dear Teacher,

(Found on Instagram)

Signed,
Teacher

Paneling: How many ways can you use a 3x3 grid?

Three by Three They Came

Nine-panel pages are rare now. But they have a long and distinguished history. Steve Ditko's founding run on Spider-Man and Moore and Gibbons's Watchmen are merely the most notable.

Those examples are vital as ever, but are--I concede--old. Yet the nine-panel matrix can be the basis for a great number of page designs, as you see below.

One caution though: Don't use ones like the second (above the orange splash) that saddle the reader with a dilemma as to which panel to read next. I see a number of such here. See if you can spot a few.

Sure, you can do the lamer thing and use border-busting balloon and caption placements to guide the readers through the hiccup, but why create the problem in the first place? It's easy to avoid in the planning (thumbnail) stage.

Thanks to Erik Larsen.

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2287784/in-how-many-different-ways-can-a-9-panel-comic-grid-be-used

John

The Zenith and the Nadir

Hi Everybody,

The artist of this cover did a decent job with this worm's eye view of the two lead characters. Their belts curve upward, for instance. The legs have their full length, while the upper bodies are foreshortened a little. Etc. That's all good.

But he made a pretty natural, common mistake: He didn't fully commit to the perspective he chose. The other figures and the background don't follow it. When you have a strong upshot like this, all the verticals should point at the same vanishing point (VP). Not just the ones in front.

The Zenith

This VP is usually established well outside the drawing to keep the scene from looking severely pinched at the top. Though it works just like any other, this VP is called the zenith, and represents a point directly above the viewer's head (And over the heads of all the people in the scene, for that matter). Like all VPs, it is infinitely far. Out where distances appear to shrink to zero, and direction is all.

The yellow lines below show how the people and the White House's columns would have been skewed, if the artist had fully followed the perspective established by the two leads.

You can imagine that the resulting "leaning-in" would be intense, distorted, hard to draw, severely pinched. The zenith works best farther outside the drawing, as I said. In this case, it is on the top edge of the cover. Tsk, tsk.

The Fundamental Goof

So the artist's most basic error was creating a perspective that would be very challenging to commit to. And might not look good if he had. Which leads us to...

Why It Doesn't Matter!

We can presume he arranged the characters in relation to each other and to the background in a way that suited his intent as a storyteller. This is always more important than the niceties of perspective.

How It Could Matter!

Perspective can help make your created world look more believable and realistic. If that matters to you. Not saying it should--you do what suits your storytelling aims and style.

Artists Whose Styles Involve Sophisticated Perspectives

Consider for a second the dazzling animation and comic book work of Academy Award nominee Robert Valley. Part of his style is "pushing" perspectives, on objects AND figures. He knows that if you draw a panel knowing where the horizon and VPs are, you can distort that art to a great degree, adding angularity and energy, via the transform tool in Clip Studio, Photoshop, etc.--without violating the perspective! The horizon and vanishing points maintain their sway regardless; their interrelation is unchanged by stretching and shrinking.

Frame from the animated short Pear Cider & Cigarettes by Robert Valley

Consider also the work of Sana Takeda, who draws the eye-popping Image title Monstress. Her work exploits a deep, and apparently natural, understanding of perspective. Notice the down-shot in the second panel. This perspective shows the verticals converging toward the bottom. The vp in this situation is called the nadir. It's the opposite of the zenith: it's as low as you can go, straight down below the viewer and all else.

Monstress Art by Sana Takeda

Clip Studio

Clip Studio makes creating perspectives like these easier with its specialized Rulers. You can set up perspectives that have VPs way outside the art. The program places them, and keeps track of them. You never have to "touch" a VP, much less one that's way outside your art. Here's how they work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNtH5nmwrh8

Have Fun and Keep Drawing,

John