Figure Drawing & Breaking Down a Story
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
How-To & History Lessons From The Pros! Figure Drawing & Writing Tips Breaking Down A Story by WRITE NOW’s by DRAW’s Mike Manley & Bret Blevins Danny Fingeroth ArtArt CritiquesCritiques by ROUGH STUFF’s Bob McLeod ComicsComics HistoryHistory Crash-CourseCrash-Course by ALTER EGO’s Roy Thomas & BACK ISSUE’s Michael Eury WELCOME TO FREE COMIC BOOK DAY, FROM THE INDUSTRY AUTHORITY ON COMICS HISTORY AND CREATION! Since 1994, TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING has been celebrating the art and history of comics with its award-winning line of magazines and books about comics. By covering all aspects of the creative process, and documenting the fascinating history of comics, we’ve established ourselves as the industry authority on the inner workings of the medium. Now, for FREE COMIC BOOK DAY, we’ve tapped the combined knowledge of our TABLE OF magazine editors to assemble CONTENTS this all-new 32-page comics primer, created just for this HOW-TO LESSONS giveaway! In it, DRAW! magazine’s MIKE MANLEY and FIGURE DRAWING BRET BLEVINS (both key artists BASICS . 1 for DC and Marvel Comics) will by Bret Blevins, contributor to Draw! magazine walk you through “Figure Drawing Basics” and “How To HOW TO BAKE A Break Down A Story”! ROUGH COMIC BOOK PAGE IN STUFF magazine editor (and Collector THREE EASY STEPS . 5 veteran comics inker) BOB by Mike Manley, editor of Draw! magazine McLEOD provides “Art Critiques” of promising newcomers (see ART CRITIQUE . 8 how your work compares)! by Bob McLeod, editor of Rough Stuff magazine WRITE NOW! magazine’s DANNY FINGEROTH (also a TOP TEN TIPS major Marvel Comics writer) reveals “Writing Tips” for potential FOR WRITERS . 11 comics authors. There’s even a “Comics History Crash-Course”, by Danny Fingeroth, editor of Write Now! assembled by ALTER EGO magazine editor ROY THOMAS (former magazine Marvel Comics editor-in-chief and top writer) and MICHAEL EURY, editor of BACK ISSUE magazine (and former DC and Dark Horse COMICS HISTORY Comics editor). These top professionals cover the basics of comics art CRASH-COURSE and appreciation, making it a must-have item for fans old and new. And TwoMorrows is proud to offer it FREE from your local retailer. ALTER EGO’S BRIEF HISTORY OF COMIC BOOKS So sample the features presented here, and (The 1930s To 1970) . 16 get a taste of what TwoMorrows is all about. by Roy Thomas, editor of Alter Ego magazine If you see something that whets your appetite for more, consider ordering it from your SO, WHO’S THIS local comics shop, or online from us at “KIRBY” GUY? . 24 www.twomorrows.com. We look forward to by John Morrow, editor of The Jack Kirby having you as a customer for years to come! Collector magazine JOHN MORROW THE BRONZE Publisher AND BEYOND . 25 COMICS 101: How-To & History Lessons From The Pros, 2007 Free Comic Book Day edition. Published by Michael Eury, editor of Back Issue magazine annually by and ©2007 TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. 919-449-0344. All rights reserved. John Morrow, Publisher, Editor, and Designer. Single issues: Free at your local comic book shop on May 5, 2007. All characters and artwork are TM & ©2007 their respective owners. All editorial matter is ©2007 the respective authors. First printing. Printed in CANADA. TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: [email protected] • Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com FIGURE DRAWING BASICS by Bret Blevins, contributor to Draw! magazine he keys to good Tfigure drawing are gesture and form, in that order. Find the action and attitude of your figure through loose gesture drawing first—this is important. Most failed figure drawings are a result of jumping ahead to detail and rendering before the gestural framework is completely and clearly worked out. Use a simplified “directional line skeleton” such as the male and female shown here to begin your drawing— although extremely simple, these skeletal tools establish an enormous amount of crucial information in the first phase of bringing your figures to life. They contain all the basic proportion and structure rela- tionships of the body, as well as underlying anatomy rhythms and form details—note that the fundamental typical differences between male and female are already obvious in these “wire frame” designs, the joints that control the movements of the various parts are clearly indicated, and even structural facts such as the absence of a single straight line are evident. (No bone in the human body is perfectly straight—each large bone and the spinal column have a distinct characteristic curve.) MALE FEMALE 1 of the page remains unfinished: A big no-no! And why is this a common factor in so many aspiring or young storytellers’ work, you ask? Well that’s because in their enthusiasm they’ve skipped a huge step in the process of storytelling, and just like a baker who leaves out crucial ingredients in a cake recipe, the result after all their labor is an inedible lump—and in the case of comics, unfinished, unread- able stories, pages with holes that sideline the work, and eventually cause most artists to lose enthusiasm and probably abandon the story. Like the baker leaving out a crucial ingredient, by skipping a step, the artist didn’t work the story out first; they didn’t break down the story first into a series of panels, or what we call a layout—and only once that was done with the details of exactly what is happening, proceed to the next step, drawing the final pages. The formula for a successful comic story, no matter the subject or style, is basic and simple; but as they say, “Simple is hard”. Young artists always want to skip steps, jump ahead to the fun part, the exciting part, but a story isn’t exciting unless you build up to the excite- ment. Another thing that often vexes the young artist is leaving enough space for word balloons and cap- HOW TO BAKE tions, so often the art gets cramped, and figures and background details have to fight for space. A COMIC THE RECIPE So here is my simple recipe that should help you BOOK PAGE make better comic pages, and better stories. I’ve used it to help people who’ve never drawn a comic be able IN THREE to tell a story. This is also something all comic writers should do so they also have a good idea of how their EASY STEPS story is paced and how much room their script takes up visually; the real estate they have to play with on a by Mike Manley, editor of Draw! magazine comic page. Before you leap in and run along like crazy, start see them all the time: fresh-eyed artists. They may simple. Try and boil your story down into no more I approach me at a con, or as a student in one of my than a few sentences; if you can do that—focus on a classes, and they always have a story they want to clear beginning, draw, often a huge Lord of the Rings multi-verse epic. middle and Sometimes they even have a few half-drawn pages end—you will where they’ve usually gone and drawn all the fun, have a good, cool or easy stuff, leaving the rest of the page or solid story. Very pages half-drawn. Their pages are covered with par- often writers will tially penciled panels, with figures floating or even figure out the entire panels left blank. They’ve skipped ahead, end first and avoiding that part they haven’t figured out yet, so then work their they can’t show me the story—nope, they have to tell way back to the me the story. “You see, this is where Vortox enters beginning. into the space station to have his showdown with Next, buy Wolverine’s twin brother.” Of course some cheap copy paper from the local Staples, Office there is no space station to be seen. Max, etc. Sharpen a few pencils; get an eraser, trian- Comics are a visual medium; we gle and a black Sharpie or similar marker. have to see, to read visually what’s Then draw a six-panel grid layout like the example going on. We can’t have the artist shown; you can do this for each page or do it once standing there narrating to us to fill and make copies of it. The purpose here is to break in the gaps. The worst case is that down what happens in your story from the beginning on some pages the young artists to the end. Later you can change the size of the have even sometimes gone in and panels, but for now just draw everything in a grid. inked up something while the rest 5 STEP 1: Work out your story using the simplest drawings you can do. They can even be stick figures for this part; the point here is not to do great drawings or fall in love with rendering tricks; we just want to draw out our story, and see what happens. As you draw out your story, draw the balloons with all the dialogue, sound effects and narration as well. If you have writing, you need to see how much space the dialogue and narration take up along with the drawings—what I call the visual real estate. The idea here is to work out the story in as clear and simple a way as possible and to give you a clear idea of what is happening and how the story flows.