David Marquez
comics illustration

What makes a comic visually appealing? Who is the most important part of the art team?  Penciller? Inker? Colorist?

I’ve been drawing for so long that I have no doubt my knowledge of style, technique, etc biases my opinion.  I mentally critique every piece of comic art I see – trying to learn from those that I really connect with, and try to figure out what “went wrong” in those I don’t.  (There’s a really fine line between art that, on the one one hand, I don’t like because it looks “flawed”, and on the other hand,  stylistic choices that are “technically” correct, but that I nonetheless find unappealing.  I don’t know if that’s an artist-specific experience or not – I’ll have to think about that and post later).

One conclusion I’ve reached is that the whole art team has to be working together to make the final piece work. It may sound like a fairly obvious statement, but it’s an important point.  The comic world is replete with great pencillers’ work being ruined by bad inking (sometimes their own) or bad colors.  And there are an equal number of situations where a great inker or colorist has saved a bad penciller.  Choose your permutation. Just look through your own books and I’m sure you’ll come across it somewhere, and I won’t waste the effort mud-slinging here.

Instead, here’s one great case of where it all works:

(image from Mike Choi’s blog: http://mikechoirants.blogspot.com/)

The Mike Choi/Sonia Oback team you see here is a great example of where it all clicks (what’s more, they’re a couple).  Choi is an accomplished penciller in his own right (clean, technical, not lazy at all with backgrounds or props, lots of good stuff), but when you see Oback’s colors, there can be no denial that her contribution is HUGE!  (Often, I think she doesn’t get nearly the credit she deserves for their shared work.)  The pencilled image is great:  clean lines, solid anatomy, detailed, but it is a bit static, dry, vanilla.  Compare that to the colored version.  The whole mood has changed, there’s emotion and mystery and danger all over it.  Textures pop – metal weighs heavy like metal, you  feel the slickness of Domino’s suit, and the brick and blood in the background are amazing. Choi’s solid anatomy is given firmness and volume. Beautiful.  On their own, the pencils may feel a bit empty – but they are IDEALLY suited as a canvas for the style of coloring Oback brings to the table.  A great team making for a great visual appeal.

I’m obsessed with process.  I’ll spend HOURS on twitter or google reading through various artists’ thoughts on art.  Sketches, videos, words, it’s all good.  I’ve  gradually shifted more and more into the digital realm for my own art making, to the point that now I really only do really quick thumbnails with paper and pencil, doing all the real layouts and final inked drawings in Photoshop with my Wacom tablet ( a nice big 9×12″ Intuos3 from my days working on A Scanner Darkly).

There’s a pretty lively debate/discussion about traditional vs digital tools and comics (especially for inking).  There are those that swear by the tried-and-true methods of crowquills, sable brushes, tech pens, etc.  The argument sometimes goes something along the lines of …”if it worked so well for all the artists you loved as a kid, it should be good enough for you.” It’s a pretty flawed argument. Don’t get me wrong – I have a GREAT amount of respect for people who use traditional media, but not because it is inherently superior to digital.  (There is *one* HUGE benefit, but I’ll get to that).  If our forebears had access to modern technology and tools, I can promise you that at least a few would have adopted them over their traditional counterparts.  Tools are tools.

For several years I made a concerted effort to learn the tools of the trade – first with rapidographs (technical drafting pens), but eventually favoring brush and ink.  For my style, perhaps crowquill would have been more appropriate, but I could never really wrap my head around them, and the brush (as long as I had JUST the right brush) really seemed to do everything I wanted.  One day I decided to ink a sketch in photoshop using a Wacom I hadn’t touched in quite a while, and found that not only could I (with a little tinkering with the brush presets) get really nice lines, similar to a brush or crowquill, but I had  ALOT more control.  If I didn’t like a line, I could redraw it with no fuss – something that many traditionalists correctly argue is a mixed blessing.

Arguably the greatest benefit of digital tools is the greater versatility of the toolset. There are a few things I haven’t yet found a good digital equivalent for (e.g. a true ink-splatter tool, or  a french curve set or straightedge ) – but these are greatly outweighed, in my view, by what you gain access to.

For perspective, you are no longer limited by the size of your drawing desk  for laying out vanishing points, or having to measure out increments on the sides of your page to layout out a correct grid.  Using something like Freddie Williams’ perspective paths (http://freddieart.com/QuickTools/), perspective becomes FUN! (Seriously! Try it!).  Also, with other programs like DAZ3d or Sketchup, you can set up amazing reference models and essentially lightbox them by inserting a screengrab of your model as a layer in the drawing.

The list goes on and on, and I’d recommend anyone who’s interested to check out Freddie Williams’ DC Guide to Drawing Comics Digitally.  It’s a great starting place for those interested in trying digital tools, but I’d also comment that there are lots of *free* resources online, if you have the time and patience to seek them out, and Williams’ book lays out *his* processes, not *the only* processes, a point he himself makes.  Again, digitial tools (hell, ALL tools) are to be used however best suits the artist.

Drawbacks?  Yeah.

While a digital workflow *can* be faster, the freedom to draw and redraw definitely can (and does) slow things down.  Traditional inking tools force you to make the right line the first time, or at least punish you if you don’t.  It’s good training, but I think that with discipline, you can become equally efficient using a digital toolset.

Perhaps more importantly – computers are expensive.  Assuming, however, that you have a computer that’s relatively new (say, the last 4 years or so), with a couple hundred bucks to spare, you can fairly easily get a beginner’s rig going.  Perhaps sometime I’ll post on that topic specifically.

The most tangible drawback, other than the monetary barrier to entry, is the lack of physical original art.  This is, to me, the most convincing argument for using traditional tools.  That said, while there is definitely a collector’s market for the big-name artists, I tend to see ALOT of unsold original art, even for them.  If you absolutely HAVE to have your original art – for your own purposes, or for sale, then yes, traditional methods are probably for you.

For myself, I prefer the freedom granted by the digital toolset – more versatile tools allow me to create better art.  I do NOT believe that digital tools make me a better artist.  But quite frankly, neither to traditional tools. Tools are just tools. It’s up to the artist to make something of them.

Didn’t really mean to ramble on like that, but those’re a few ideas that’ve been stewing in my head for a long time.  Here’s a little taste of my digital layouts, then the inked version.

Digital Layout

Digital Inks

For anyone else jonesing for some Process, check out Kevin Nowlan’s AMAZING blog:  http://kevinnowlan.blogspot.com/