![angel-aftermath-comic-book-issue-29-pages-preview-gq-01.jpg[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/eRocxMw.jpg "angel-aftermath-comic-book-issue-29-pages-preview-gq-01.jpg[1].jpg")
Is it a common belief that most current comic book art is ugly? I don't see it talked about much, but personally I feel like it is. I can't quite put my finger on why though. Lately I've started thinking it could be the colouring? There's this way of shading/colouring that looks vague, like just using gradients or something. I feel like even good drawings can look bad when coloured this way.
I don't know. What are your opinions on comic book art styles? Do you think, for the most part, they've improved visually? If not, what is your favourite "era" of comic art?
(pic sorta related, just something I grabbed off google images. it's not all as bad as this of course but i do feel like Angel's face there is a strong example of what I'm referring to)
>>82059305
>Expecting good art from a Buffyverse comic
That's where you fucked up.
>>82059305
It is the general consensus, and it's because the industry has no standards anymore and hires hacks who can't draw.
that gradient thing is everywhere and I hate it, they're even ruining the old stuff with it
digital recoloring should be a crime
>>82059305
the dawn of affordable full-color printing with accurate reproduction has been a bane on the art of comics.
25 years ago, colorists had to make clever use of a limited palette of solid colors and occasionally simple gradients. This forced creativity and gave comics their distinctive, otherworldly look.
Nowadays they can achieve whatever they desire with the art, and it turns out then when not constrained the average colorist goes for something much more mundane, much more representationalist.
You get something truer to what such a scene would look like in a literal sense, but you lose the vitality and the clarity that a limited palette gives an art piece.
>>82059305
What you just posted is a very non-typical example of modern comics.
Most modern comics have a sort of loose, scratchy style that I like.
>>82059466
Reminder that there are a lot of people (on /co/ nonetheless) who prefer the sandman recolors.
Yeah it's a weird "muddy" sort of coloring. Kind of plastic and just looks weird. I don't understand why it's so popular.
>>82059356
Like I said, that's just something I grabbed off of google images. I've never read a Buffy book. And I know it isn't all quite as bad as this but it's that same sort of style that I see everywhere. Flat generic facial expressions coloured with gradients.
>>82059429
>and it's because the industry has no standards anymore and hires hacks who can't draw.
Why though? Surely more appealing art/colours means more sales? And I can't see why it would be much cheaper to hire mediocre artists.
>>82059511
>Most modern comics have a sort of loose, scratchy style that I like.
Could you post an example of what you mean? I'm not really happy with my example, because it does seem a little worse/different than most.
I can't help but wonder what it feels like for writers that have been around since the 70's/80's. Their scripts might be just as good as before but now they're being realised in this really underwhelming generic style. It would make me feel awful. Part of what inspired me to make this thread was seeing somebody storytiming a modern Alan Moore comic. I've recently read his Swamp Thing run and the art styles are leagues apart in terms of quality. It must be so depressing.
>>82059558
as recolors go, Sandman isn't terriblewhat's worse is that a lot of people prefer the Killing Joke recolor
>>82059673
>what's worse is that a lot of people prefer the Killing Joke recolor
That's some legit butchery, jesus.
I think the issue is most the time a lot of the gradient style shading just shoots for a simplistic "photorealistic" with composition, color theory, and general artistic merit as an after thought. A lot of the time it doesn't seem to really follow any light source, it's just generically well lit to show just enough implication of depth and form It just seems bland and cheap because it's sort of slapped in there because they feel compelled to put it in, but and doesn't add much. It basically says "we tried, but not very hard".
I say this as a complete fucking hypocrite with his own limited knowledge of course.
>>82059647
if you want good modern comic art, you generally have to go to Image or other indies
although the old-school style is almost entirely a thing of the past now, since digital coloring is just plain easier and quicker, and color printing is a lot cheaper.
Also keep in mind modern comics art is done for thicker glossy paper rather than that of older comics
you won't find the more nutty coloring anymore, but you can still find art that is hella dynamic and expressive
>>82059647
>Could you post an example of what you mean?
I was thinking of stuff like this, though usually it's not this extreme.
>>82059867
that is by far the exception, not the rule
Big 2 is publishing some stuff with looser styles, yes, but in general you're just going to find generic-but-serviceable
>>82059647
Ms. Marvel springs most immediately to mind
when it's not animoo
>>82059929
>Kamala
>hugging a dog
H-Haram!
>>82059951
her family gives her shit for bringing him home
It really just depends on the artist, same as ever. J.H. Williams III's Batwoman run is probably one of the most gorgeous comics I've ever picked up. The sheer difference between the styles used for Kate's daily life and her superheroics shows some incredible range.
>>82059673
God. Even if you prefer more realistic colours, the loss of the mood from the lighting in the originals there is egregious.
I dont want to make it a console war type of post but current DC has much better art than current Marvel. The only somehow decent art Marvel has is the Hawk Eye one. Secret Wars had kinda decent art but they copy pasted so many panels it was obscene.
The X-men books specially are really amateur tier. Some panels are Dragon Ball Super tier.
I do think a lot of modern comic art is ugly, but I don't really think it's the coloring's fault, per se.
I just think that, more and more, both writers and art teams are getting worse at paneling. And by that, I mean that they suck at making each panel/splash work by itself and be artistic in itself.
Nowadays, there's this preference towards making a whole page have "flow" -- which basically means that, if you're a lazy editor, you can glance at a page and instantly understand its purpose. The problem is that, as a whole, there's a preference against panels/images that try to point out specific and important details, be it facial expressions, textures, written text, etc.
But as you start shying away from detail (especially the kind that doesn't perfectly "flow" with everything on a page), you get sloppier and sloppier art. You get panels where you're not supposed to have any sort of takeaway except that two characters are talking to each other, nevermind what they're thinking, what expressions they're emoting; nevermind the environment they're talking in or the important elements of it.
In a word, they add in a lot of stuff that seems to look pretty -- decent figures, realistic-to-cartoony coloring, detailed yet flat backgrounds -- but they just don't know how to make a piece of comic art truly pop out and work.
A big reason why re-colorings aren't the absolute worst (in most cases, anyway) is because the original artists had to work incredibly hard to make the panels a success. Different coloring might slightly worsen things, but overall, something like >>82059558 still has Kieth and Dringenberg's pencils and inks, highly expressive and detailed, which make the page a joy to look at again and again.
>>82060087
Ultimates has pretty good art
>>82060087
>I dont want to make it a console war type of post
Don't post comparisons between only two publishers then. Tell us your thoughts on Image and Dark Horse and IDW and Dynamite and Boom and Archie and more. Make it seem like you're sharing an analysis of the entire industry, and not just shilling your personal favorite while shitting on their rival.
Or don't share your thoughts at all.
>>82060165
You have a point, but you're being a little silly about it.
>>82059466
I wonder if they'll ever reprint the entire thing in black and white since A Dream of Flying and part of The Red King Syndrome were done in b&w.
>>82060165
Image
>not bound by editorial so no real standard, but generally there are some pretty good artists flexing their musclesmore Orc Stain when
Dark Horse
>pretty generic outside of Hellboy but Mignola's not really doing art anymore
IDW
>generic outside of Godzilla in Hell which was literally just done for the art
Dynamite, Boom
>also fairly generic
Archie
>used to have a unique and iconic style, decided to move to a more standard art style
>and also there's Archie Horror which generally has great art but those books never come out
Fantagraphics
>no one buys Fantagraphics because their books are only in print for an eyeblink
Humanoids
>mostly just reprinting Jodorowsky stuff so there's all kinds of great art there, but it's not new so not really fair to make a comparison
>>82060113
That's a good point too. Some of the panelling I've read in older comics is so unique and creative. The scene might be something as simple as two people talking to each other but it can be shown from all sorts of different angles.
>>82059305
nah, i tend to think current comic art is largely the best it's ever been.
Speaking of quality art, whose gosh darn dick do I have to suck to get Darwyn Cooke to take another crack at The Spirit?
What the hell is he doing these days anyway?
>>82059305
There's still plenty of good art, probably as much as there's ever been. It's just the average art has shifted to a different style of average, one you like less
>>82060402
why
>>82060425
He just kind of faded away after that whole... you know... unpleasantness...http://watchmen2creatordarwyncooke.tumblr.com/
It's more that composition is ugly.
The full-detailed uncanny valley close-up that takes up HALF A GODDAMN PAGE in the example you've posted would never happen if the artist had a better grasp of composition.
>>82060402
I think is way better than the early 2000s, but mostly because of new styles being tried out, the 'Superhero' style has never really recovered after Leidfield and Lee became the poster boys for it.
>>82060425
wouldn't be surprised if he pops up on some Morrison OGN in the near future
>>82060113
>are getting worse at paneling
I think you're talking about how post 2000's so many people are striving for cinematic looking comics. Hitch started it with Authority and Ultimates. Now you get comics that are layed out to look like storyboards
>>82060585
Steranko is too good for this world
Digital coloring is mostly terrible and I desperately wish we could return to pre-digital coloring for floppy releases, and save "remastered" digital editions for the collected trades. Modern colorists are picked from deviantart - when was the last time a colorist had the name power of Tatjana Wood?
>I dont want to make it a console war type of post but current DC has much better art than current Marvel.
DC is a far worse offender when it comes to gradients in place of actual backgrounds. It's actually frustrating to go back and read some of the early New 52 titles.
I've found myself reading modern comics for the plot instead of the art. It's unfortunate, but digital coloring just makes my eyes glide over the pages instead of taking in the details.
Look up the blog 4cp to see how the old style of coloring was an art in of itself.
>>82060630
>Modern colorists are picked from deviantart
You say this like it's inherently bad, but I for one enjoy the DA-discovered colors of Joseph Bergin III.
>>82060691
He's not Big 2 though, they're less likely to have their own unique style and will typically be valued for being safe.
>>82060630
Digital or traditional I don't think many colorists are really that skilled. You have your big names like Steve Oliff, Dave Stewart, or Marie Severin, but it's always been treated with about the same level of importance by publishers as lettering.
>>82060630
Hi-Fi's collection of guys?
>>82060585
>I think you're talking about how post 2000's so many people are striving for cinematic looking comics.
Well, at least it's not universal.
Try fucking storyboarding something off of Bachalo or Manapul, and you'd be SOL.
David Aja's Hawkeye is the one of the best looking comics I've seen in the past couple of years.
>>82060741
What runs in particular have they worked on? I'm casually looking through comicbookdb but I can't find more than scattered issues, with no definitive arc.
>>82060794
Aja is another one of those pop-art style dudes like Mike Allred
but without Laura Allred as colorist so it's not pop-arty
>>82060824
they did the second arc of Yang's Superman and a pretty big chunk of JL3K/3K1 with Howard Porter
>>82060794
Those flat colors look so good on Aja's art
>>82060780
Oh I know there's still people going wild. I heard a story about Emma Rios getting asked by a Marvel editor to change a page layout so it could be easily read in a guided panel app and she flipped
>>82060844
not as* pop-arty, rather
>>82060535
>>82060425
Last I remember he's mostly done variant covers. I think the last comics he did were that final issue of All Star Western and Parker: Slayground which was like three years ago.
Come to think of it, I'm still waiting for the next Parker adaptation. Have they even scheduled the next one?
>>82060963
No he did that Vertigo comic Twilight Children with Gilbert Hernandez. Now I think he's working on an Image series
The problem is not the color but the excess in smooth gridients.
Comics with cartoony art styles use flat colors and they look great.
>>82061096
Yeah I know Brandon Graham just taught himself Photoshop and just colors does flats that look great on his stuff
Then you have someone like James Stokoe who also taught themselves how to color and I don't understand how
>>82061004
Oh shit, I completely forgot about that.
>>82061096
it seems like the issue is that they don't know how to do shadows and highlighting without digital tools
>>82060931
>Oh I know there's still people going wild. I heard a story about Emma Rios getting asked by a Marvel editor to change a page layout so it could be easily read in a guided panel app and she flipped
Sometime after that she left Marvel for Image.
>guided panel app
Does DC mandate all its current comics' page layouts to fit in that guided view shit?
>>82061174
considering Omega Men, no
>>82061226
Then the Marvel editor who allegedly called out Rios should be a hack like most of the current editorial.
>>82061174
Yeah I think she only did three projects with Marvel anyway. Osborn, Doctor Strange Season One, and a few Captain Marvel issues
>>82059673
You have to be real pleb to prefer the original colors.
>>82061320
explain how
>>82061320
John Higgins was a fantastic colorist, he also did Watchmen, his colors are as much a part of that story as Bolland's linework
>>82061320
>not knowing who John Higgins is
>>82061333
Because the original creators were never asked about what the colors should be, some hack they never talked to came in and butchered their vision, this was common back on the day. Preferring the original hack job is just trying hard to come off as patrician for liking old things, but you're in turn defending a hack job.
>>82059673
Changing the colors is a crime. The original makes it seem like a bad dream, a situation you'll only see in your worst nightmares, or a really bad acid trip.
The new one takes that tension away. It's still a bad situation but, it's not crazy or anything.
>>82061441
>John Higgins
>some hack they never talked to
you have no idea what you're talking about do you
>>82061464
Stop embarasing yourself.
>>82061497
Sure thing, Star Wars Special Edition defender
>>82061441
>Because the original creators were never asked about what the colors should be
Higgins was a long time collaborator with Moore, going back to 2000AD. It wasn't fucking chance that he got Killing Joke and Watchmen.
You're thinking about Flex Mentallo
Because there are only a few artist within the comic book industry worth mentioning. Cliff Chiang is one and Kenneth Rocafort is the other.
>>82061497
He worked with Moore on several comics before TKJ, including fucking Watchmen, you dope
>>82060794
Yeah, the art and coloring was top notch on the book. It's a shame Aja doesn't do interiors anymore.
>>82061542
It's true for TKJ too, Moore and Bolland were never consulted.
>>82061542
He's partly right. IIRC the colors weren't what Brian Bolland wanted.
I feel like art has gotten a bit worse across the board for the past few years. Not saying everything is bad, but crap like poser art is creeping in and everything feels rushed. I was re-reading tons of the pre-52 Green Lantern stuff where the art and colors especially is absolutely phenominal. Suddenly in the new52 the art got much worse, and the second Johns left every single GL title became pretty damn crappy in the art department.
>>82061582
>never consulted.
Moore FUCKING PICKED HIM. They were in direct contact with him, Higgins just didn't follow Bolland instructions on the flashbacks. Bolland wanted them to look stark like Eraserhead and Higgins turned in the bright colors instead
>>82061582
Moore picked him, and Bolland gave him directions, but Higgins was like "nah"
>>82061620
That makes things worse.
>>82061596
Then the GL line (excluding Omega Men and the Convergence tie-ins) is currently at its worst so far in the modern era.
>>82061637
well looking at Bolland's recoloroutside the flashbacks, apparently not
>>82061856
There's really gotta be a way to mix the Bolland recolorization and the Higgins colorization, someone's gotta get better scans of the original.
>>82061923
trouble is it's an OGN and not single issues so scanning is a bit more difficult
>>82061856
Wrong.
>>82060824
Pretty sure they did all of Top 10
>>82061226
Omega Men uses a 9 panel grid, that's so easy for a panel guided view
>>82062026
the recolor is generic as fuck
like in >>82059673, in the original coloring, you've got the garish yellow from the carnival lights, Gordon is being dragged through a nightmare, and then there is the Joker, the only normally colored thing on the page, telling Gordon that what we are seeing is not a fake out, you're going crazy. He's THERE, he stands out, this is a story about HIM.
in the recolor there's no build-up, no payoff at Joker. He's just there
I find house DC art to be inoffensive but house Marvel art to be really ugly. There aren't any current Marvel books that I like the art of and it's a shame. I totally would read Power Man & Iron Fist but the book is SO ugly that I never will
Funny, this thread is really a case of how habits shape taste.
Having started reading comics in the 90s, I have a hard time reading old comics, especially 60s and 70s but even 80s don't really work for me.
And I'm pretty sure, it's because of the coloring.
I liked Watchmen and even though I think the art is well done, I can't really say that I like it. The colors work fine sometime and on others pages, they just feel gaudy, or clashing with one another rather.
The most simple issue is lack of talent, lack of time, and lack of money. But digging deeper it really is pretty much an "all of the above" issue with nearly every facet of making art. Many anons have pointed out a few above but I think the issue is truly multi-faceted, not every artist makes the same mistakes but the general feeling I get is the generic look a lot of contemporary comics have is very plastic and lifeless. Let's take a look, and for the sake of this argument I'll just consider a sweepingly generic imaginary title that checks all these boxes that are spread across the industry.
First let's talk about paneling. "Dynamic paneling" has seen a big push, and panels that work well with digital displays has become prevalent as well. Pages are constructed to have an overall flow around the panels, but no individual panel truly stands on its own. Very rigid or very loose panels can contribute. When constructing my own panel layouts I think about the composition of any given panel as a note on a bar of music, and the whole page as the bar. With all the bars taken together the book becomes a song, with a specific ebb and flow across the whole book. I'm into poetry so I want my individual panels to visually rhyme and contrast each other, to construct pages to play off each other, and I put a LOT of thought into how each set of two pages may compliment, or contrast each other, in a way that is visually beautiful but fits with either themes explored across them, the pacing, or flow of action.
But I don't have a deadline most of the time. When your whole industry is centered around a rigid monthly deadline you don't have time to meticulously plan every minute detail. Artists have to work super fast and make compromises at every turn. So paneling is less inventive to afford extra time on the panel art.
>>82062705
Then you have compositions. It appears to me there is a general lack of mastery of composition in the industry, individual panels compete with each other and each panel is broadly a visual mess. Level of detail and coloring also tie into the point I'm trying to make here but generally composition of a panel and the page is probably the most important fundamental element when structuring a page of a comic. Artists need to balance a carefully planned composition against their time constraints. I make endless thumbnail sketches of each of my pages with so many different layouts and compositions to get the right one. Most artists on a deadline can't afford more than a few ideas per page in this regard, so they pick a generally okay composition per panel and piece it all together so the foundation is there and they can get on with the rest. I have done upwards of 100+ thumbnails just for a single panel before to get it completely right. Most don't have that time. Deadlines.
All of these elements are generally decided by the penciler who then does the underlying art. Some of these are changed along the way, editors make changes and so on. But generally this is decided at the very first level since it has to be. So the penciler is responsible for deciding how the art is presented structurally, and then does the pencils obviously. Often pencilers are very good at drawing the art but not compositionally, or any number of things. So the cracks start to pile up with more artists in the mix of a creative team. Now a weak penciler will make dull, non-expressive art. Most often the pencils are broadly competent though you have weird outliers too. But again, they are constrained by time and the faster they work the more work they can do and make more money. So art can get a little sloppy. With a sloppy foundation, the cracks appear.
>>82062718
Next you've got line work. An inker has to make the final choices about specific lines. A good inker can make a good pencil drawing into great line-art with very careful, small decisions about lines. A line defines something, not just an outline. If the pencil draft is really good an inker's job is pretty easy and straightforward. This is one of the least bad areas of comic art since it's more or less following rules already set, however good inkers can make minute adjustments and really make something special of a piece if it's lacking something. But again, deadlines and money.
So colorists. This is where most of my personal issues stem from in regards to generic art. A bad colorist can ruin a great piece, while a great colorist can transform weaker art into something really pleasant to look at. Just take The Killing Joke original vs. recolored. It's an entirely different tone. The colorist sets the tone of the book entirely, adds all the flavor and texture and all that good stuff.
So let's look at ways coloring most often goes wrong:
First up is contrast. Poor contrast KILLS otherwise solid work. You need contrast to convey something. Look at >>82059305 for example, the most visible thing in the entire page are the stars along the panel division. This is obscenely stupid for this page. They're the brightest object, the panel bright gutter catches your eye immediately, then his face.
>>82062732
Next let's compare >>82059647 and >>82061596 to see how they stack up. Both have very busy character designs against a relatively busy background. But by the colors alone, the first is a much MUCH more clear image, because of contrast. Contrast can be created through detail or lack thereof, so those decisions can be made well before the colorist touches a page. I't attribute a lot of the second one's faults to the penciler and inker, though the colorist could have easily fixed this issue with contrast.
So what's different? Well the first uses a classic red/green color contrast. The green and red are of different values, and the foreground has a lot more detail in it than the red object in the background. The sun frames him and the detail brings him forward, because of its contrast. The trees at the bottom are compositionally balancing the sun, creating a triangle. Actually there are two interacting triangles in that one page, the first in the background with the sun and trees, the second in the foreground with his arms forming a countering, flipped triangle. This is contrast, and balance. The colors reinforce this. The background doesn't overpower the figure, and though red is a more immediate color to humans than green, it is used in a way to provide a contrast and focus on the figure.
>>82062741
Whereas the second image has almost the exact same color range across all its colors despite the blue/orange contrast. The foreground is busy, the background is busy. The colorist could have pushed a much higher degree of contrast to really focus the viewer's eye on specific things but the whole page reads as almost incoherent due to weird decisions. There is a bizarre lack of contrast in the coloring here. The orange-tan color is the same value as the blue, and everything in the background is either black ink or rather light values. The colorist should have pulled the colors in the back down a lot more, and subdued them while pushing the colors in the foreground more. Doing this would have removed a lot of visual clutter in the colors, but careful coloring would have also saved the foreground visuals as well with careful emphasis. This was likely going for a more realistic look but real life has a shitload of colors. In fact it has all the colors. Things don't need to be super dull or be allowed to congeal into a mess.
Other ways colorists can fuck up is flats versus blended, full-range colors. Or color temperature. Or basically anything else, really. Color temperature means a whole lot. In the first image, everything is warm while the second is very cool. The second image has a two points of warm coloring - the ring and the dialogue up top. Unfortunately the eye is drawn to detail first, then color. The overt level of detail kills the contrast that should have been pushed a lot via the color temperature differences. Meanwhile the first one has a uniform temperature range, everything is warm so when it's all uniform nothing is truly distracting. There is a sense of gestalt, everything fits together. The artfag word for this is harmony.
>>82062751
The first uses flats, the second is blended. A super quick and easy way to achieve a broader range of colors in a piece is a gradient. Gradients are heavily applied all over the second image. This contributes to the confusing mess it is, because there are so many it lacks any real cohesion. If you take a look at old propaganda posters, they used a lot of gradients as well but for the most part these were textural and elongated, they're not haphazardly placed. They're meant to direct the eye across the page, unlike the second page I linked.
So when blending colors you can get something great. Look at the original coloring in TKJ for example. It uses both flats and blending. But if you compare it to the recolor, with its liberal use of miniscule gradients EVERYWHERE across the page it looks noticeably plastic. What happened was that, on top of taking the very slight hatching on the inking around shadows, the recolor actually gradated to black around those hatch marks creating a bizarre fuzzy look that is just offputting and fake. Everything is extremely soft. Compare the fat woman's legs in panel 4 in >>82059673 or the elephant's ear in panel 2 where the shadow starts. It's well defined in the original, and fuzzy in the recolor.
Gradients aren't bad in and of themselves but they are relied upon so much with digital artists like a crutch when more creative uses of coloring, or harder decision-making would otherwise need to be involved. Digital gradients are so uniform they're unrealistic, unless it's a plastic surface. This is why so many contemporary comics look plastic and fake, like OP. very linear gradients without variation. Using ink to blend and gradate allows a natural variation that comes through as a slight texture. Again, one only needs to compare the two elephants of panel 2 I just mentioned. The original has a slight gradation as a result of ink application, though it's very textural. This is why propaganda poster gradations look interesting.
>>82062760
This is also why a lot of older comics look interesting despite their limited colors (besides colorists having to make smarter or harder choices). They have a natural texture from the paper. Today everything is printed glossy, there is no texture. This isn't a problem if the piece was inked or colored with actual ink instead of digital, but completely digital pieces can look sterile on glossy, cover weight stock paper. So you get weird shit like the OP or TKJ's recolor. It really is the easiest think to emulate the look of traditional painting in digital with textured brushes or actually getting textures for pieces. But this requires extra work that colorists probably aren't prepare to do because of time and money. Also probably talent as well.
I think the most fault should be placed upon the industry itself due to the limitations imposed, however better artists have made better decisions in tighter constraints. That's why old strips from the 30s look so good today: specific decisions the artists made under their restrictions. Today artists don't have to make a lot of hard choices, but because they're financially incentivized to make art faster and more conveniently (due to horrible wages and pay) the art does suffer in ways unique to today.
Also at fault are editors, poor letterers, and consumers would buy and enable this shit. So fuck every one of you, etc. Not really you anons are cool. But really support good artists, they deserve the money and reward for their hard work. Art is HARD. And great art is hard and time consuming. It's a wonder you get 20-30 pages of good looking art per month in any book.
>>82062705
>>82062718
>>82062732
>>82062741
>>82062751
>>82062760
>>82062793
good read, anon, I learned something today
>>82062813
Thanks anon, I aim to please.
>>82062278
You'll just have to learn to get used to it. I mainly started reading comics on a regular basis during the early 90's but I eventually learned to appreciate comics going as far back as the 30's (and even before that, if we're counting comic strips). Believe me, you get stuck to comics that you find aesthetically pleasing now, it's gonna eventually feel stagnant as fuck.
>>82062834
What (>>82062813) said. It's very informative. Thanks a lot for taking the time to write this out.
Ya have any tips and tricks and good habits to start picking up for a prospecting artist who wants to get into sequential art?
The new ghost Rider had a goat art style for the first few issues.
>>82062732
>First up is contrast. Poor contrast KILLS otherwise solid work.
Yeah, you can even see this in Tom Scioli's article about Barry Windsor-Smith where he shows examples of BWS' art with the old colors and the new recolorizations.
http://comicsalliance.com/whatever-happened-to-barry-windsor-smith-in-the-comics-conversation/
>>82062918
>>82062891
Hone your fundamentals. Take what you can from every other form of art as well, comics are sort of like vidya where they have a really unique way for the viewer to experience them. Comics portray sequential images but unlike film which is constrained to a relative linear time frame-to-frame (unless it's some weird, experimental film but I'd argue that would be incoherent. I don't mean non-linear narrative but actual space, actual time between individual frames or shots). Comics have a lot of leeway to experience them at a unique pace. Take advantage of that, think outside the box when constructing your panels.
But as I said, draw on anything and everything for inspiration. Study the great cinematographers, the great draftsmen and painters. Learn how they compose their shots or paintings, often a painting might use completely unrealistic space to compose a more stylistically nuanced composition. You can be naturalistic with your rendering, but more more expressive and non-representational with your panels. Study art in all its forms. As I mentioned, what works for me is poetry and music for the structure of my own panels and pages. I think of my layouts as bars of music, stanzas of poetry. Mostly this comes from examining Hebrew poetry while studying Biblical texts. Ancient Hebrew poetry is really interesting, instead of literal phonetic rhyming schemes they rhyme and contrast ideological elements and themes across lines of a poem. Repetition reinforces a point, and ironic contrast can be used to completely change the meaning of a line without changing a word or even tone.
So draw inspiration from everything you can. Don't be afraid to think non-linearly or non-literally. Learn how to render things well, composition is key. Do something experimental, if it doesn't work examine why it doesn't and apply that next time. And remember that while it is a lot of fun, it's very hard work. You'll never improve if you don't keep doing it though so keep at it!
>>82059305
Maybe you should quit reading things with bad art.
>>82063045
that picture dosn't say anything.
it's like posting she-hulk #1 cover.
the cover is always good while the content is shit.
Artists should color their own work, but considering deadlines and the general sheer amount of effort that goes into it, not surprising that they don't.
>>82060425
>>82060535
He has a book for Image coming out, and he just did Twilight Children.
>>82062987
Beyond the contrast, take a look at how the page is composed. It really is almost musical. You have the long top panel, then the second row of panels has each one flow into the next. The first has the yellow structure take up the top right half, all the converging lines point to the figure but also lead into the second panel with the same color and lines going in the opposite direction. This draws the eye across to the next page where the extreme vertical figure of the building is replicated by the man, whose forward motion draws the eye across to the next panel. The fourth panel sort of sandwiches the third, and visually ties into the second with the blue sky being the exact same level. The yellow then carries across on the bottom half to the fifth panel where the focal point is created with the motion of the swing.
Then the last row is a rhythm in shot distance. Closeup-down, medium-straight, medium-up, long-down. Note the figures form an arch from left to right, rising then falling, as well as linearly move away from the panel. The first panel and last panel are contrasted well as the first is a horizontal closeup, and the last is a vertical long shot of the same character.
This is a remarkably well done page compositionally. Each panel works, compliments the one next to it, and the layout enhances the page with a very sure rhythm across it. This is what I love, and it's what's definitely missing from so many examples of contemporary comic art.
>>82063123
Luppachino's pretty good
>>82063123
There are people on /co/ who don't like Luppachino?
>>82063014
What's your stance on the heavy usage of panel grid patterns? Like the 3X3, or 2X3, etcetc.
Pros, cons?
>>82063174
Anything can work well if you know how to use it.
For example, I have a graphic novel I'm publishing later this year. It's split across five acts, and each uses a specific paneling system to show a progression in the character. It's about mental illness so the art, panels, and compositions shift across the book as he loses his tightly controlled grip on himself and his surroundings and plunges into depression and schizophrenia. The first is very tight, a strict 3x3 grid with strict gutters, no variation. By the end of the first act it starts using a few panels that are two wide or tall, and that style is most of act two with some that are three panels across and some full pages. The third act uses more organic panel shapes, while using a loose grid system. The gutter is removed and panels butt up against each other as he's starting to really lose it. The fourth act does away with panels altogether and the art just bleeds into itself with natural divisions. Think if a cubist did a comic book. The fifth act does something else but talking about how I construct its panels sorta gives away the ending.
Use panels to tell your story. They're the must fundamental framework of sequential art, the lens through which the viewer sees the imagery. If 3x3 or 2x2 works for your story mine that for all it's worth. If it doesn't work either compositionally for what's best for the book as a whole then it's your job as artist to figure out what does work best. Art is entirely just a series of decisions, some art loose and quick decisions (Egon Schiele's style being a good example) and some are exacting and methodical.
Pros and cons are pretty much entire related to the content and subject, there aren't any real right or wrong ways to do a comic book unless you fail to understand why things work or don't. Remember your panel decisions say something objective, they literally frame the events. Think how you want to frame them and do what's appropriate.
>>82063247
Dude.
Who are you?
>>82063269
Just an aspiring artist. If anything I ever make gets popular here I may pop in for discussion but I'd rather not say.
But I am excited for my book, unfortunately I won't make enough money to support myself so I imagine I'll probably wind up as a horrible patreon whore and be widely loathed as a sellout by the tiny handful of people who do read it. Such is the life of an artist in the digital age.
Actually patreon is a really great system, especially in an era where artists and designers are so grossly underpaid (I've an extensive background as a freelance print and web designer, pay is bullshit and illustration work is infuriatingly underpaid). I wish more good artists could get the financial support they deserve and it isn't coming from the industry. The money issue is actually why so many artists have to work so fast, not just for their deadlines but to make sure they meet a quota and get enough pages done to make enough money to make it through the month. Artists, especially in the comics industry, are criminally underpaid, especially if you go the extra mile and do all art from pencils to inks to colors and lettering by yourself. As much as I really dislike QC, I think it's quite remarkable he can make so much per month just from the fans and I'm quite jealous actually. Good on him for being able to pull that off. Ideally Patreon lives up to its namesake of patronage and allows talented artists to actually make good money, as well as open a more direct line to their fans. Unfortunately that's not how things always go, and artists in the more professional side of the industry suffer quite a bit from wages. Plus anyone still working traditionally has to pay for their own supplies which eats income, driving them to digital work. Digital is also more convenient and speedy, so that's why there;s such a major push for it the last decade.
>>82063247
Goodness, you've made my night. Just hearing someone putting so much thought into paneling is wonderful.
What do you think of comics, main stream or otherwise, could do with experimenting with their page sizes? Instead of the classic long rectangle, maybe try a square? Or flip the rectangle on its side, have a landscape setup? Or maybe even staple the comic in such a way that it'd be held like a calendar.
I'm a little tired, it's 6am over here.
Good luck with your graphic novel (And if you're at liberty to give out such info, you have a blog or something of the sort we could follow you at? You're a fountain of knowledge and good advice
>>82063247
Thanks man, you've been a godsend.
Mind dropping the name of the thing? I might pick it up eventually when I have the cash.
What do you think of artists like Mignola, Kelley Jones or Miller's Sin City? I like to draw with a lot of black and I've kinda grown to emulate the aforementioned artists quite a bit in how they spot the blacks and layout the page. So the weaknesses they might have, I might have picked up as well so I wanna weed them out. I've also taken to studying the work of people like Toth, Quitely and Miller when it comes to building a page.
>>82059558
I prefer the one on the right. Which is that?
>>82060794
>>82063356
That's the original - you can still find that coloring in the old Vertigo trades; if you're autistic like me, you just buy that AND the Absolutes, because they both have their pros and cons.
>>82063341
Too bad; would love for you to be a tripfag just so I could be on the lookout for your posts.
>>82059992
Batwoman was beautiful.
>>82060087
Hawkeye does look really excellent, and I agree with you about the rest of Marvel.
>>82063374
>all those kikebook normies wanted Deadpool but shit on Aja
>>82060332
>IDW
IDW is hardly generic. They've got stuff like the Ghostbusters' TRG animated style, and Transformers has at least three different artists with drastically different styles.
Including horrors like pic related
>>82063342
Well I've just recently read Mouse Guard and I love the format. Though it's not really a comic, John Kenn Mortensen's Sticky Monsters was really fun with its format too though that naturally comes from him drawing everything on sticky notes. I really like it when artists break format. Staple binding is used for floppies, I dislike it myself, but I think you mean ring binding. Actually this ties into the format thing, but what I really like doing is actually buying a 32 page spiral-bound book of Stonehenge paper 6"x15" and doing completely unique, one-off short graphic novels and handing them out to friends. I've given a few out at local conventions just walking the floor, people really liked them. I love the extreme wide format of those, though I've never used one vertical. I've got an idea for something that might take advantage of that well.
So I love odd formats. Stacked on a shelf, different binding can be annoying but not unmanageable. I have a tumblr with literally nothing on it besides design shit and some intaglio prints, I've thought about starting a full on blog though. And thanks!
>>82059558
I got a Sandman recolour and a Sandman original colour for Christmas the first time I ever read them. The difference was jarring, holy crap why isnt it illegal to recolour. I'd rather watch a thousand George Lucas remasterings than read a recolour.
>>82063376
>begging people to trip
this is literally /co/mbler
>>82063344
Not posting the name I feel like a whore shilling for my own work right now. But when it comes out I might do a storytime of it or something.
I love Mignola, Hellboy is my favorite comic series. I'm not as familiar with Jones, and I haven't read much of Sin City specifically but from what I have seen I enjoyed. The key to drawing strict black and white is knowing what you want to be seen, and what not to. Also contrast, contrast, contrast. Always keep contrast in mind. If you do a lot of more hard lighting I might look into chiaroscuro paintings, with super dramatic lighting and apply that to b/w drawings. Also look into film noir for sure, especially older b/w films. Look how they use lighting to highlight figures or separate foreground from background. If you want to do more grayscale works, I'd highly recommend looking into some photography. Take a photo, throw it into lightroompirate cs6 version if you don't have it already, great tool for digital photography. or photoshop if you do digital art.and play with levels, channel balance, curves, and hues while in b/w. Just turning it grayscale won't look very good. Just sit there and play with it for a while, learn how shadows and highlights can become so dramatic and engaging just by changing what is dark and light. One of the biggest keys to getting b/w or grayscale right is mastering lighting. Without solid lighting, things become flat. So again photography and chiaroscuro will really help you a lot there.
>>82063374
being an artist on /co/ can get really cringe when the discussion turns to art.
>>82063376
>tripcode
I might consider a trip for bigger, more blog-like posts such as the ones ITT in the future but I don't want to be an attention whore and just post with it all the time. If I ever do it'll be under this tripI hope I put that under the right field there.
>>82063483
Can't really use any of those programs. Well I can, but it'll give me a headache with how slowly it'd work and it likes to hang on my crappy laptop. I wanna be more of a traditional artist anyway, keep away from digital as much as I can. Thanks for the suggestions anyway.
>>82063557
Well you can still easily draw influence from film noir and other stuff. I think studying light is still a very big thing for working in dramatic b/w, as well as a firm grasp on contrast and detail. Look into Berserk for an example of an artist who sometimes goes a bit overboard with details. The pages are incredibly detailed and, because everything is strictly black and white, the level of detail alone can get confusing at times but he still has a firm grasp on contrast which reigns that in a lot when it does happen.
>>82063467
Don't worry anon I'll probably forget my trip immediately anyway so you probably won't see me again. In fact I'll take it off after this post, attention whoring is silly and I like being anonymous.
>>82063587
One last thing before I fuck off to sleep. How old are you? And if you don't wanna say, age range? It's pretty trivial in the long run, but it'd be reassuring on my part, I guess.
>>82063247
What's your thought about Howard Chaykin's take on comic page layout?
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/10/06/howard-chaykin-entertains-at-wizard-world-nashville-part-2/
>“Most civilians just think comics are disparate images on a page, and most comics today are scripted by writers who are illiterate to narrative form. They don’t understand that there is an intentional form of communication in everything from the layout of the panels, to the space between the panels, to the way the images are drawn within that space.”
>He showed this by roughing out a five-panel layout on a large drawing pad in the front of the room. After completing his visual aide, he elaborated that he believes in the five-panel layout because trying to put more on the page “sucks the air out of the page,” and further explained the purpose of each panel, from the initial horizontal “establishing shot,” to the three-panels in the middle of the page, to the final image which should be a “return” or “callback” to the first panel. Chaykin went into great detail about the purpose and most effective use of the three-panel sequence, emphasizing that in our “culture of threes”, the linear series of images represents a beginning, middle, and end. He also provided information such as,
>“Panels in a sequence are typically the same size. If one is larger or smaller, that signals that something special or different is being communicated. The same can be said of the size or amount of detail of the characters drawn within the panels. It’s an unconscious perception that readers have, and it should be leveraged by the artists.”
>>82060585
I'd let her holster my weapon, if you know what I mean...
>>82063651
>In addition, Chaykin further detailed that even the space between the panels is important.
>“The borders between the panels represent time. They give the story time to breathe and communicate how much time has passed from one image to the next.”
>Although he laid out his sample sketch to represent “the rules of the comic-book page”, he clarified that there are many variations on the basics that still communicate the same information. For example, as he flipped over the paper of his sketchpad, he drew an entirely different five-panel layout that included several insets and a large three-quarter page image. He used this example to represent how his own personal style’s evolution still preserves the critical narrative elements from his previous lesson.
>Since this panel was a whirlwind of information in a short-span of time, it is unlikely that anyone was able to retain everything that was said. However, Chaykin summarized that,
>“The three main takeaways from this presentation for any of you aspiring comic-book artists are first, the space on the page is a lot smaller than you think. Second, you have to make a narrative choice about what you are trying to say. Third, size matters.”
>>82059978
why is she not ex-muslim yet
>>82063613
22, I've been doing design work since I was 16 though I didn't really get into illustration or the studio art side of things until fairly recently. I've had a few jobs and internships, done a lot of brand design for non-profits, and did a brief turn in a printing shop.
Don't let age be a factor or trajectory for your art. Everyone has a different pace of growth, if it takes you a year to go from Jeph Jacques to Raphael, or twenty, then the key thing is at least you're improving. Nothing is a straight line or linear in life. So if I'm younger than you're hoping or older, don't let that affect your own confidence. I just do absolutely nothing but think about my own art to absurd degrees and it's rather hard for me to actually complete work.
>>82059673
That page really does look a lot better with the original color, but there are other pages where this isn't the case. The problem with most modern recoloring work, in my opinion, is that they're kinda lazy and usually don't care about atmosphere, like in that Killing Joke page.
Let's be honest though, 90% of old comics had shit color.
>>82059305
It really depends on the comic and artist.
Generally I don't like the look of some new techniques. It's the same with movies: I generally don't like the look of a lot of CGI, and it's better when a scene is mostly props with some CGI or CGI composition of multiple real shots.
It also really depends on art-style. I think JRJR's art is disgusting, and don't like the 'housestyle' from the new52 relaunch.
I think it's mostly that a lot of comics try to be movies. Huge spreads, large panels with """"dynamic"""" camera angles, digital techniques. I sometimes prefer old Byrne comics with rigid paneling and rather static (but always on-model) poses.
I think there's also an issue with people trying to draw too realistic. I don't necessarily mean that drawing realistically is bad (I kinda dislike Ramos and the art in the latest Spider-gwen thing from spiderwomen was absolutely disgusting), but some artists try to go for lifelike faces while they don't have the skill to balance realism versus the ability to recognize characters. And you just end up with a bunch of sameface that you can hardly see the difference in.
And then there's Greg Land, the master.
>>82063690
>Let's be honest though, 90% of old comics had shit color.
Depends really. There were a lot of 80's Marvel comics that had some really bad coloring. You can even see this with the baxter reprints that recolored some stuff.
>>82063374
Jesus fucking christ why
>>82063671
Yeahhh, I know, I don't let it get to me, but y'know. A curiosity. Age has always been that niggling thing in the back of my head. Just gotta suppress it.
Since I haven't seen your art, it's your knowledge and assertiveness that impresses me so, especially for someone at your age. How have you accumulated so much knowledge? That bit about the Hebrew texts, it was some cool shit. Are there any websites, or books you'd recommend, good places to start branching out and learning more? Expanding my vocabulary when it comes to analyzing and interpreting comics and more? Understanding Comics has been in my library since I was a kid, can always go for a reread, I wanna know if there's anywhere else to look.
If you get around to answering, I'm off for real this time, thanks for being a chill dude. You have a good night. Or morning.
>>82063663
>>82063651
I'd agree broadly though I don't inherently agree about more than five panels "sucking the air out of the page." Of course this can be true, and that can be an intentional effect on the artist's part. In some of my work I've experimented with extreme size differences in panels. In the world of painting, a larger painting more often than not means it is depicting something important. A portrait of King Louis XIV might be 20' tall because he's KING LOUIS XIV and by God is he more important than anything else in the room. Size and physical distance between panels is definitely key.
In my book I mentioned above I even took that to a mild extreme by showing the main character at a massive lowpoint of isolation and loneliness by having him huddled in the corner of the left page, the right page fold out to a triple-page spread that is entirely white except seeing the lower legs of a crowd of people around the top right corner of the large spread. No panel, but a huge amount of distance. It conveys space and time. The crowd is blurred, few details, and is so incredibly far away from him as he sort of floats in a white void without any noticeable ground to anchor him in a literal space. And across each act of the book I mentioned I play with the gutter, eliminating it entirely before long and then even panel lines, where everything bleeds into each other and ghosts through itself.
So yeah I'd say for sure I agree with all that, with the caveat of form serving story, so his five-panel structure isn't an inherently better system. A page can work with fewer or more panels. In another GN I'm working on, as a critique on media consumption, 24-hour news cycle, and placation culture, I have several pages which have so many panels they become almost inconsequentially small over time as more shit is thrown in and around the protagonists to the point of sensory (visual) overload. That's the point.
>>82063651
>Howard Chaykin
why does anyone give a fuck what this guy has to say?
>>82063727
Here's a charcoal piece I did a few months ago, I'm not really that great I'm afraid but I put a lot of thought into structure. I wanted to be a game designer for a long time so thinking critically about mechanics just kinda transferred from that. I've long thought about doing a blog with really large posts similar to Wait But Why about some of my favorite games and dig into them and their mechanics like an actual art historian, of which I also have a minor amount of history in. It's my minor at university.
The Hebrew poetry I learned about through osmosis from my father who was a Christian youth minister for 30 years, as well as my own pastor who's got a PhD in a religious degree. I can't remember off the top of my head which, but he's a really smart guy. I've thought about trying to read the Bible in Hebrew and Greek, and the Korran in Arabic because I briefly studied just a little bit but I'm sure I'd need to really brush up on those languages to actually read anything. Actually my fascination with Arabic calligraphy inspired me to get into pre-Islamic mythology which I've read a lot of with a Lebanese friend of mine, and all that turned into a big project in the future I'm really looking forward to. It's a neo-noir science-fantasy murder mystery based around Arabic mythology with a heavy dose of epistomological existentialist cosmic horror. Lots of it is about language and the nature of knowing. All that stemmed from fascination with calligraphy. I guess to answer that question, I just find something I like and take it to a wild extreme with eclectic and disparate endpoints feeding into my personal work.
Sadly because of that I have nothing to really recommend. My vocabulary comes from a really great visual arts program. I'd look into art history vocabulary, maybe take a class or two if you can. You'll learn so much in art history you can apply to any field or career. UC is a great book though for sure. So very helpful. Have a good one, anon!
>>82063374
Those comments gave me cancer.
>>82063374
>years ago, in Marvel's Secret Volcano Headquarters
>"We should do something for the fans," one editor says.
>"Yeah, we should give the fans something they want!"
>The eyes of the lowly assistants begin to glimmer with hope.
>"Open up the facebook page, just go to one randomly. What does it say?"
>"The fans want.... Hawkeye to team up with Deadpool."
>"Make it happen! For the fans! This was really fun, we should do this again in a few years."
>>82064713
that was a really good book tho, it also mocked Fraction's hawkeye quite a bit
>>82059673
Woah, right is... painful balnd. I fucking love left.
>>82059808
Well, you're not wrong.
But true being told, coloring is one hell of a work and people usually don't pay enough attention or even merit to it. Requires as much, if not more, creative work than drawing a generic scene. You want to create and atmosphere, enviromental feeling and tension or drama or whatever. It's kinda the same for movies and cinematography and/or score.
I always thought jae lee did some of the best paneling nowadays
>>82059992
>Colors: Dave Stewart
WELL THERE YOU GO
>>82060165
>>82060087
>DC looks better than Marvel, I'm not just console warring
>THEN DON'T COMPARE THEM
I've heard from a few people that Marvel is moving towards an entirely digital process. They don't want artists to have originals to sell at conventions, they don't want another Kirby situation where they're haggling over someone's originals, etc. It's not an issue of "company wars." Marvel has distinct in-house art policies that undoubtedly contribute to the finished product.
