Campbell Con Means No Saturday Comics Class This Week

Hey, a reminder that there's no Saturday Comics Class this weekend. I'll be down at Campbell Con, a fun one-day con run by the very nice Dave Haworth and Marina Lukyantseva-Haworth!

John

Join Us, as We Voyage to...

...THE ZONE BEYOND COMFORT!

The Crypt Keeper, Tales from the Crypt, EC Comics
The late great, great Jack Davis

It is that insidious realm where most fear to venture, yet all must, in time! They who dwell--even for a time--in this Palace of Paradox emerge blinking and disoriented, but with greater skills!

Saturday's brief, nearly painless foray into this dread dimension will confound you with one specially prepared EXERCISE...

...Perhaps even a second...

Tremble not! Nor permit the so-called "Instructor's" sadistic, leering countenance to distract you from the task ahead.  Repeat, if terror compels you, these feeble few words:

"IT WILL ALL BE OVER in a few minutes!! Also, Chinese food!"

And refunds for most, even. See you guys Saturday!

John

How Much Freedom Do Pro Inkers Get?

We talked about this question-with-many-answers a few sessions ago.

Here's one unique answer: From several years ago, a high-visibility title with big-name penciler John Byrne doing so-so work and a mediocre inker named Nelson taking considerable liberties with the inking. In making several sensible changes, Nelson takes the work all the way from "Enh..." to "Meh."

Yes, Byrne drew Supes with legs of two different lengths, his own peculiar and fanciful bullshit leg anatomy.

But despite Nelson's anatomical improvements, and rationalizing of shadows, it still isn't really very good, is it? Maybe only good in the eyes of the editor, who likely urged Nelson to fix things up, and was probably good and tired of Byrne turning in half-baked work.

(Though comics are in some sense done to a higher standard now, remember it's still a job, one that does not demand perfection.)

This non-uplifting, unredemptive little fable reminds of us of that time-honored maxim, "You can't polish a turd." When something is fundamentally off, you can't fix it with little adjustments.  You really can't.  You can massively redraw...  But many inkers are not good enough draughtsmen to pull it off, even if they felt it was the right thing to do, had the OK, and didn't mind putting in extra effort for the same money.

So what could have prevented this admittedly inconsequential flub in the first place?

Thumbnailing a better pose early in the process.

John

No Class 23 September

Hi, You Guys--
I'm going to be away at a convention in Santa Rosa Saturday, so I will see you again on the 30th.

I haven't decided on a topic. Please let me know if you have any requests!

John

For People Interested in Shadow Plotting.

Hey Everybody,

Here's a video I made a few years back to show how even a little awareness of the Law of Parallels can help you make simple shadows correctly, and bring a little extra reality to your created world.

Just as the vertical stick cast a shadow that went vertical when it hit a vertical wall, so does this simple box, which kinda looks like an office supply cabinet... :)

John

What's Going On Next Time

Hey Everybody!
When we meet again on the 16th, I plan to cover a bit more on light and shadow:
The effects of bounced light, How to plot basic cast shadows, and Shadows that fall on other objects.

PLUS

We'll have our usual visual storytelling exercise, with an emphasis on the manifold blessings of  thumbnailing, which is the most time-saving species of drawing you can do!

Then I'm proposing we do an exercise on expression, which is always fun. I'll bring in some reference photos to work from.

 Here's a peerless model sheet, while we're on the topic of expression...

"HoneyLemon" Model Sheet. Big Hero 6, Disney, 2014. Shamefully, I don't know the name of this artist.

That's the plan!

See you Saturday, 

John

Saturday's Handouts!

Here are the handouts we worked through on Saturday.

The purpose of the pictures of Jeremy Irons and the Firefly guy is to compare the differing effects of two closely related lighting schemes. These are both split lighting schemes where one light source is stronger than the other, like the last of the Klaus examples. 

We all agreed Firefly Guy's picture, lower right, was by far the more "comic-booky":  It is lit more dramatically, because there is much more of a contrast between the intensities of the two sources. That created a big chunk of near-blackness. Plus the terminator (the border between lit and unlit) is nearly on the center of the face, which is striking-looking.

There are many subtleties in picture of Irons that would be of interest to a naturalistic painter, but I think replicating that in a comic would be three times the effort for half the impact.

And this ties back to my big point of the day: You can copy cool shadow patterns from photos and artists like Klaus (totally legit), or you can work the shadows out simply, using simple geometric solids as your mental model, and also get something very strong. 

See you on Saturday! Remember that we're off Sept. 23 and Oct. 21.

John