Draw #29 by TwoMorrows Publishing

#29 FALL 2014 $8.95 IN THE US

The Professional “How-To” Magazine on Comics, Cartooning and Animation

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DRAW! (edited by MIKE MANLEY) is the professional “HOW-TO” magazine on comics, cartooning, and animation. Each issue features in-depth INTERVIEWS and DEMOS from top pros on all aspects of graphic storytelling, as well as such skills as layout, penciling, inking, lettering, coloring, Photoshop techniques, plus web guides, tips, tricks, and a handy reference source—this magazine has it all! NOTE: Some issues contain nudity for figure drawing instruction. INTENDED FOR MATURE READERS.

Other issues available, & an ULTIMATE BUNDLE with all issues at HALF-PRICE!

DRAW! #20

DRAW! #21

DIEDGITIIOTANSL E

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DRAW! #17

DRAW! #18

DRAW! #19

An in-depth interview and tutorial with Scott Pilgrim’s creator and artist BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY on how he creates the acclaimed series, plus learn how B.P.R.D.’s GUY DAVIS creates the fabulous work on his series. Also, more Comic Art Bootcamp: Learning from The Great Cartoonists by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, reviews, and more!

Features an in-depth interview and demo by R.M. GUERA (the artist of Vertigo’s Scalped), behind-the-scenes in the Batcave with Cartoon Network’s JAMES TUCKER on the hit show “Batman: The Brave and the Bold,” plus product reviews by JAMAR NICHOLAS, and Comic Book Boot Camp’s “Anatomy: Part 2” by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY!

DOUG BRAITHWAITE gives a demo and interview, pro inker and ROUGH STUFF editor BOB McLEOD offers a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work, JAMAR NICHOLAS’ “Crusty Critic” column reveals the best art supplies and tool tech, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP gets your penciling in shape, plus Web links, reviews, and more!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

DRAW! #22

DRAW! #23

DRAW! #24

WALTER SIMONSON interview and demo, Rough Stuff’s BOB McLEOD gives a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work, Write Now’s DANNY FINGEROTH spotlights writer/artist AL JAFFEE, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews the best art supplies and tool technology, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS offer “Comic Art Bootcamp” lessons, plus Web links, comic and book reviews, and more!

Urban Barbarian DAN PANOSIAN talks shop about his gritty, design-inspired work with editor MIKE MANLEY, DANNY FINGEROTH interviews “Billy Dogma” writer/artist DEAN HASPIEL, plus more of MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, product and art supply reviews by JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

Interview with inker SCOTT WILLIAMS from his days at Marvel and Image to his work with JIM LEE, and PATRICK OLIFFE demos how he produces Spider-Girl, Mighty Samson, and digital comics. Also, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, art supply reviews by “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

PATRICK OLIFFE interview and demo, career of AL WILLIAMSON examined by ANGELO TORRES, BRET BLEVINS, MARK SCHULTZ, TOM YEATES, ALEX ROSS, RICK VEITCH, and others, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, art supply reviews by “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

GLEN ORBIK demos how he creates his painted noir paperback and comic covers, ROBERT VALLEY discusses animating “The Beatles: Rock Band” music video and Tron: Uprising, plus Comic Art Bootcamp on “Dramatic Lighting” with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, Crusty Critic JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies, BOB McCLOUD gives a Rough Critique of a newcomer’s work, and more!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital edition) $3.95

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

TwoMorrows. A New Day For Comics Fans!

DRAW! #25

DRAW! #26

DRAW! #27

DRAW! #28

LEE WEEKS (Daredevil, Incredible Hulk) gives insight into the artform, YILDIRAY ÇINAR (Noble Causes, Fury of the Firestorms) interview and demo, inker JOE RUBINSTEIN shows how he works, “Comic Art Bootcamp” with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, “Rough Critique” of a newcomer by BOB McLEOD, “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies and software!

JOE JUSKO shows how he creates his amazing fantasy art, JAMAR NICHOLAS interviews artist JIMM RUGG (Street Angel, Afrodisiac, The P.L.A.I.N. Janes and Janes in Love, One Model Nation, and The Guild), new regular contributor JERRY ORDWAY on his behind-the-scenes working process, Comic Art Bootcamp with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, reviews of artist materials, and more!

Top comics cover artist DAVE JOHNSON demos his creative process, STEPHEN SILVER shows how he designs characters for top animated series, plus new columnist JERRY ORDWAY presents “The Right Way, the Wrong Way, and the ORDWAY!”, “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies, and hit “Comic Art Bootcamp” with Draw editor MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS!

FAREL DALRYMPLE shows how he produces Meathaus and Pop Gun War, director and storyboard/comics artist DAVE BULLOCK dissects his own work, columnist JERRY ORDWAY draws on his years of experience to show readers the Ord-way of creating comics, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews the latest art supplies, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp by BRET BLEVINS and editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only.

(84-page COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

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THE PROFESSIONAL “HOW-TO” MAGAZINE ON COMICS & CARTOONING WWW.DRAW-MAGAZINE.BLOGSPOT.COM FALL 2014, VOL. 1, #29 Editor-in-Chief • Michael Manley Managing Editor and Designer • Eric Nolen-Weathington Publisher • John Morrow Logo Design • John Costanza Front Cover • Dave Dorman DRAW! FALL 2014, Vol. 1, No. 29 was produced by Action Planet, Inc. and published by TwoMorrows Publishing. Michael Manley, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial address: DRAW! Magazine, c/o Michael Manley, 430 Spruce Ave., Upper Darby, PA 19082. Subscription Address: TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614. DRAW! and its logo are trademarks of Action Planet, Inc. All contributions herein are copyright 2014 by their respective contributors. Views expressed here by contributors and interviewees are not necessarily those of Action Planet, Inc., TwoMorrows Publishing, or its editors Action Planet, Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing accept no responsibility for unsolicited submissions. All artwork herein is copyright the year of production, its creator (if work-for-hire, the entity which contracted said artwork); the characters featured in said artwork are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners; and said artwork or other trademarked material is printed in these pages with the consent of the copyright holder and/or for journalistic, educational, or historical purposes with no infringement intended or implied. This entire issue is ©2014 Action Planet, Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing and may not be reprinted or retransmitted without written permission of the copyright holders. ISSN 1932-6882. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DAVE DORMAN

The master illustrator wields his brush like a Jedi master as he demos his unique process

comic art bootcamp This month’s installment: Concept & Design

LESEAN THOMAS

RIGHT WAY, WRONG WAY—ORDWAY!

Jamar Nicholas interviews the renaissance man of animation

Challengers of the Collaboration

PLEASE READ THIS: This is copyrighted material, NOT intended for downloading anywhere except our website or Apps. If you downloaded it from another website or torrent, go ahead and read it, and if you decide to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and buy a legal download, or a printed copy. Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR DEVICE and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. If you enjoy our publications enough to download them, please pay for them so we can keep producing ones like this. Our digital editions should ONLY be downloaded within our Apps and at

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DRAW! FALL 2014

-ING AHEAD

he Force is strong with this issue! I was so happy to finally get to interview Dave Dorman and cover his process on his fantastic illustrations. Dave has been at the top of the game doing illustration for 30 years, and it was great to talk about how things were in the beginning compared to how they are now, as technology changes the face of illustration faster and faster. A big hat off to my publisher, John Morrow, and my main man Eric NolenWeathington for making this issue look great. Kudos to my regular contributors Bret Blevins and Jerry Ordway for their articles and Jamar Nicholas for his great interview with LeSean Thomas on his career in comics and animation. By the time this issue reaches the U.S. shore from our printer in China, the first few leaves of Autumn will be falling and the fall con season will be upon us. I’ll be attending both the Locust Moon Comics Festival in Philly and the Baltimore Comic-Con in September. I attended my first comic convention in seven years this past summer, the Wizard World con in Philly, thanks to my buddy and former Darkhawk writer and Marvel editor, Danny Fingeroth. It was a fun time. It had been so long since I last trod the floor of a con. I did enjoy it a lot more than the last few shows I attended seven years ago, but did notice that fandom has changed in my time off the grid. It seems that everybody wants and is buying and selling prints as opposed to original art or books. I suppose we are seeing the continuation of the crowd broadening out into a general entertainment audience with TV and movies being dominant and comics almost being a subculture within that. The upshot for us artists, though, is that there still is a heavy demand for good art from all comers—comics, games, films, and more. So take out you pencils and paper (traditional or tra-digital), and get to drawing! Best,

NEXT ISSUE IN JANUARY! DRAW! (80 FULL-COLOR pages, $8.95), the professional “how-to” magazine on comics and animation, crosses the 30-issue mark with a great set of interviews and demos from today's top comics creators! We start with an interview with Eisner and Harvey Award-winning artist CHRIS SAMNEE (Daredevil, Batman, Thor: The Mighty Avenger, Captain America), the creator who's on everyone's radar with his current Daredevil work. Then we kick the can over to comics veteran JACKSON GUICE (Captain America, Superman, Ruse, Thor) to talk about his creative process and his new series Winter World. PLUS: "The Right Way, the Wrong Way, and the ORDWAY!" with new columnist Jerry Ordway, and "Comic Art Bootcamp" by Draw editor Mike Manley and Bret Blevins! NOTE: May contain nudity for figure-drawing instruction; suggested for Mature Readers Only. SUBSCRIPTIONS: Four issues US: $34 Standard, $41 First Class, $11.80 Digital Only Outside the US: Canada: $43, Elsewhere: $52 Surface, $141 Airmail SUBSCRIBE NOW At: www.twomorrows.com

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interview conducted by Mike Manley and transcribed by Jon Knutson

At this moment in our very own galaxy…

Draw!: So, what are you working on today? Dave Dorman: Today, I’ve got some juggling on a couple of things. I’m putting together a small art book for San Diego, featuring some of my Aliens and Predator artwork. It’s all production work—just gathering the art, putting it together, getting it ready for the printer, and sending it out tomorrow. I’m also laying out a comic book story, a 20-page comic that’s going to also be available at San Diego, featuring some characters from my Wasted Lands graphic novel project. The comic book is called Red Tide, and it’s a prequel to a three-issue series we’re going to do in the fall.

ave Dorman is an Eisner Award-winner, an Inkpot Award-winner, and a favorite among Star Wars fans—including George Lucas himself! He’s worked on practically every major science-fiction, fantasy, and horror licensed property at one point or another, and he’s learned a thing or two about slinging oil paint. So gather ’round, young Draw!: And are you publishing this yourself? padawans, as the master teaches us the ways of the DD: Yeah, I’m doing the whole thing myself. I have a writing partner, Mike Bawden, who’s doing the scripting, but I’m Illustrator. DRAW! FALL 2014

(left) Dave: “‘The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan’” was commissioned for a book on fantastical places. From the start I wanted to do something different for this piece. The first was not to show Khan from the front. The piece is about the pleasure dome, not him. But I wanted it to exude strength and eroticism. This is the pencil art for the 20" x 30" painting.” (right) Dave: “After I transfer the drawing I begin the oil underpainting, adding textures in the paint by pulling the paint form the board and using the transparency of the oils and white of the board to add depth to the background.” The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan © Dave Dorman

plotting it and doing all of the artwork and production, and sending it off to the printer. I’m laying out the pages right now so I can start on the pencil work tomorrow. I’m also juggling a couple of logistic things for San Diego, and intending to go to Austin for the Capital City Convention—I’m working on that. So basically, partial art, partial business. Draw!: Is that a fairly typical day for you, to have the business side, and then the art side? DD: No, that usually happens maybe two or three times a month. Most of my actual work time is penciling, drawing, sketching, preparing the artwork—that type of thing. This type of book production stuff comes up occasionally, I’d say maybe three or four times a year. Mostly around this time, in the late spring/early summer, getting ready for San Diego and the convention season. I look to have new product out for when I attend the shows. So, that’s usually when this type of thing happens. But my regular work day would be get up,

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check my email, see if anybody’s ordered anything, answer fans’ questions, and then get to drawing, whether it’s drawing preliminary roughs, doing a layout, getting a painting ready, or actually sitting down and laying paint on the board. Draw!: Do you have a fixed schedule, as far as you’re usually up by a certain time, to work by a certain time, or do you sort of roll with the deadlines? DD: It’s rolling with the deadlines. I have a son in elementary school, so during the school year, it’s getting him up and off to school, and that’s the start of the day. It used to be, before we had Jack, our son, I’d get up and basically just start working, and then take a break for lunch or whatever. If there are some errands or things to be done around the house, then come back and just work again until it’s time to go to bed. But with my son it changes—good changes—the whole day, and as a matter of fact, I had to adjust the schedule to fit family life. So I work a little bit more at night, when everyone’s gone to bed, and the house is quiet.

(left) Dave: “Two more layers of underpainting give me a solid base to work from.” (right) Dave: “I begin rendering the details, this time mostly in oils as I want to be able to blend parts of them back into the background while it is still wet.” The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan © Dave Dorman

Draw!: I take it you don’t pull too many all-nighters anymore, unless it’s an extreme deadline? DD: Unless it’s a very extreme deadline, I don’t pull an allnighter. Yeah, I find that pulling all-nighters causes a lot of anxiety, obviously, because you know you’re running late, so I just basically try my best to stay on schedule, make sure that I know when the deadline’s going to hit. After 30 years in the business, I’m pretty good at approximating how long any particular piece is going to take, so I know that if it’s going to be close to a deadline, I need to work another hour or two at night to make sure I can hit those deadlines. I’m getting a little bit too old to pull those all-nighters. Draw!: [laughs] Yeah. The other thing is I know sometimes when you push the all-nighter, you also run the risk of making a mistake that takes you actually longer to go back and correct, where if you just stop and get a little rest, you would actually move much faster, and you would avoid... DD: Sure. You just don’t want to compromise the integrity of the art. You don’t want to send anything out of the studio

that you’re not happy with. If I haven’t learned my lessons through the years in the industry now, I’m never going to learn. I learned very early on it’s better to paint when you’re rested then when you’re falling asleep and ending up with a forehead covered in oil paint from dropping on the drawing board while you’re snoring away. Draw!: Do you give yourself time after you’ve finished a job to get away from it to look at it before you send it out, or does that really just depend on how hot the deadline is? DD: Exactly, it depends on how close the deadline is. Usually, I would take a day or two to let it set, so that I can turn away from it, and then come back with a fresh eye and make sure that it’s exactly what I wanted, whether additional detail needs to be made, or colors need to be adjusted, or something to make it just a little bit tighter, and a little bit more of what the client expects. Obviously, some of the things now, with the digital technology, I can sort of paint to a point, and then not have to worry about maybe shifting a color a little bit, or doing a little bit darker tonal thing on the page. I can just

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(above) Dave: “I adjust some of the background to reflect the cherry blossom coloring and detailing I will be adding in the next step. I have intentionally left a lot of the background less detailed, as I will be covering it up in the next step.” (next page) Dave: “With the painted art finished, I scan it in and have a digital copy. At this point I add the cherry blossoms digitally, layering them from back to front to help give a depth in them and also to the painting itself.” The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan © Dave Dorman

scan it in and do that digitally very quickly without having to repaint an area, or lay on an overcoat of transparent paint to go change that tone. I can do it in the computer a little bit easier, so the digital thing has made it easier on the back end of the painting. Draw!: I remember reading—it was in the last year or so— on Facebook, you were asking people about scanners. I guess the pulse was about digital painting, and how that was a big deal for some of your clients, like they wanted you to do the art because they like your work, but then thought that you were digital, but you aren’t digital. DD: It just started out as an interest in digital work because, I’d say about 15 years ago, I started encountering a lot of young guys who were coming out of school who knew my work, and wanted to talk to me about work. Most of these

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young artists were traditional painters, but they were also educated in digital mediums. So, I started talking with them, and experiencing what digital was doing. I really hadn’t thought about incorporating digital at all into my repertoire of media until three or four years ago. This was, like I say, back around the late 1990s/early 2000s, and digital “started raising its ugly head.” [laughter] I started experiencing it more and more, and I started playing with it on my artwork, because at that time, I was already scanning my artwork into digital files for the publishers, rather than me having to send my original artwork to them, since they were going to digitize them anyway. It’d gotten to the point where I just wanted a large format scanner to scan my pieces in, and send them to the publisher. Then I started learning about little tweaks that could be made to the pieces. It was a slow learning process for me, as far as after-image digital manipulation was concerned. But I never thought that I would have to create an image from a blank canvas to a fully rendered piece digitally, because in my world—and I think, in most artists’ worlds—the image is what speaks for the artist. The image is what is. It doesn’t matter how you got there, it doesn’t matter what medium you use, as long as the image is good, it’s what the client wants, and they can use it for whatever they have their purposes for. Then, about three or four years ago, I got a couple of calls in a row—and if this would’ve happened maybe two or years separate, I wouldn’t have made too much of it, but it happened within like a month or two of each other. I got two calls from two companies. Both art directors liked my work quite a bit, and wanted to hire me to do these projects. These were two separate companies. And we got into the conversation with my art, and what they wanted, what they expected from me, and the first art director said, “Okay, so you’re working digitally, so we can get these digital files.” And I said, “No, I’m working traditionally and scan my work in and give you digital files.” He said, “Oh, so you don’t work digitally?” I said, “No, I don’t.” He said, “Well, we’re really looking for a digital artist for this project.” And I really didn’t know what to say at this point, because the art speaks for itself. Draw!: And once you scan it in, it’s digital anyway, so what difference would it make, right? DD: Well, yeah! Exactly! And that was my interpretation of things. But, this happened, and then almost the exact same thing happened about a month later, and I lost the second job because I wasn’t doing my artwork in a digital fashion, from a blank piece to a finished piece. So, I started thinking about this, and it occurred to me, in talking with a lot of artists nowadays, probably about a third of the artists I know are strictly digital artists; they don’t do traditional art at all, and have never done traditional art. We have a generation—or probably two generations now—of artists who have never really put pencil to paper to any extent, or put paint on board to any extent. The whole creative process is through the computer! So, they don’t really grasp that traditional art is just as viable as digital art.

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(right) Dave: “Rail. My first stab at a long form continuous panel story—a 48-page graphic novel. A daunting challenge for someone who only had a meager few ten-page or less stories under his belt until then. But I soldiered through and had a great experience with it. That was in 2001. In 2014 I got the chance to remaster the story for a republishing. The graphic novel and many more stories are republished in The Wasted Lands Omnibus, now available. Here is my original layout for page 22, a fight scene between Edge, the hero of the story, and his frightening, relentless attacker. I felt crowded on this page so I eliminated the last panel and gave the dramatic center panel more room.” (far right) Dave: “The revised layout to my satisfaction.” Wasted Lands © Dave Dorman

Draw!: And digital art is actually a program that’s imitating traditional art, to whatever degree of success the digital program can. DD: Right. It’s a tool. It’s a tool just like pencils or brushes and pen and ink. It’s just a tool to create the final image. However—and this is just my opinion from talking to digital artists and traditional artists over the years—I believe that not only do we have maybe one or two generations of young artists who have never painted traditionally, we have one or two generations of art directors who have never done that. So they don’t understand the process. They think that traditional art takes a long time to do, it takes a long time to dry, and it’s not flexible as far as making changes. And that is just baloney. [laughter]

Dave: “The finished pencil art on vellum tracing paper.” Wasted Lands © Dave Dorman

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Draw!: It seems very odd, because at all the big art schools, like Art Center or SVA, they do the traditional stuff and the “tradigital” stuff, so I find it very odd that people would be so unaware of the fact that, like you said, it’s a different medium, but once you scan an image in, you can manipulate it, take it into Photoshop, do whatever you wanted to, it wouldn’t make any difference. DD: That is exactly right. I got almost to the point of arguing with these art directors, which is not a real positive thing to do. When you’re a commercial artist, you don’t want to be alienating your potential clients, but you know, it got to the point where I was almost going to say, “Have a digital artist do a piece, I’ll do the same piece, and see who gets done faster and puts it into your email quicker.” I have been doing this for 30 years. I can paint the painting, if need be, in a day and a half or two days, have it dry, have it scanned, have it in the art director’s hand. It’s just learning the techniques, learning what needs to be done, what you can leave out, what you can do to make a piece fully rendered without having to spend a

week on it. Ideally, with deadlines, I like to have a week per painting. But there’re some deadlines where I need to turn it over quick, and I can turn it over just as quickly. Draw!: And you can even do it like Frazetta, and put it in the oven and bake it! [laughs] DD: Bake it? Draw!: Bake your painting, if you need to to speed the drying! Kidding of course. DD: We’ll get into how I get my pieces done quickly later in the interview. I can finish a painting, actually putting oil paint on a board, and have it literally dry and ready to scan in an hour. These are just techniques I’ve learned over the years. But the digital thing? It’s lost me a couple of jobs, so what I did, a year ago or so, I started asking on Facebook and through some social media things, “Guys who are doing digital stuff, give me some tips. What do I need to know? What programs do I need to know?” I played with Wacom tablets, and the eye-hand thing where you’re drawing somewhere but you’re having to look elsewhere just didn’t do it for me. Then they invented this Cin-

tiq, which is the tablet that you’re actually painting on so you can see where you’re painting, so it’s more natural. I did eventually get a Cintiq. I have one in the studio here. It’s been sitting here for two months, and I haven’t touched it yet. [laughter] Draw!: Did you get the arm for it, so you can move it around? DD: It’s on a platform that sort of tilts. It gives me everything I would need. But it’s a process of learning a whole new tool, and I’m an old dog. I can still learn some new tricks, but it’s going to take me a little bit longer to learn those new tricks. Draw!: And you don’t want to have to learn it on a deadline. DD: Well, that’s exactly right. So, I just need two or three weeks to sit and play with it, and see what it can do, talk to some friends. Jon Foster, a very good friend of mine, I’ve known him since he was one of those young kids coming out of school, doing both traditional and digital, and he’s been a very big help for me with information and how to approach digital work, even taking partially done traditional paintings and scanning them in and finishing them in digital. Guys like Jon are very helpful, and have been, and I’m looking forward

(left) Dave: “Original inks for page 22 on 11" x 17" Bristol board. I ink with a Hunt bowl tip dip pen and Black Magic ink.” (right) Dave: “I painted the color in the old blue line style, meaning the painted color is on a separate board and the black line art is mechanically placed on top of the colored art. In this case the color was scanned and then married to the black line art in Photoshop. Wasted Lands © Dave Dorman

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Dave: “Move ahead 13 years.... I have decided to finally revisit my Rail graphic novel and this time finish the five-novel series left undone those many years back. However, I have kept working on the world of Wasted Lands and Rail and have made a few minor and some major changes—one of the most visual is that I redesigned the bad guys’ motorbikes. Below is my new design for the Hollow Men bikes. I knew it was a complicated design and I would have problems with perspectives on it, so I contacted my good friend and 3-D designer Dave Taylor and asked him to render me a bike in 3-D so I could maneuver the image for proper drawing.”

(bottom left) “Dave Taylor’s initial rendering of the bike. An amazing job that my life so much easier!” (left and right) “Making the changes in the bike panels on a separate page of Bristol. I took this into Photoshop and merged the new art onto the old page.”

Wasted Lands © Dave Dorman

to gaining more information as I move into the digital. As a commercial artist, I can’t lose work because I can’t work in a particular medium.

eye, to the layman who’s looking at the packaging of a product or a movie poster, these technicians are faking it and bringing down the overall quality of what commercial art should be.

Draw!: If you think back to the ’50s, when modern art really started affecting illustration, you had that whole generation, Bernie Fuchs, Bob Peak, and all those guys messing around and working on different ways to try to be more modern. That’s kind of what killed Leyendecker’s career. He did fantastic work, but his work looked like a certain era. But if you told someone it was digital, they might not be able to tell it wasn’t digital! They’d just say, “Oh, yeah, these are all digital,” because in the end you’re not supposed to be able to tell, for the most part, if it’s digital or “tradigital.” DD: Let me just bring up something else that’s really bitten my butt over the last ten years, and I’m sure that your butt has some bite marks on it too—so have a lot of traditional artists— which is the commonality of programs that are able to produce styles and techniques with the click of a button. They get into the hands of people who now, because it makes “art” easy, we have these people taking away jobs from trained, talented commercial artists, and that itself is a product of this digital world. I call these artists “technicians,” because they’re not artists. They know the programs, and they can fake art, and to the untrained

Draw!: I agree. Part of my thesis for my Master’s touched on some of that. You really see it if you go into a Barnes & Noble and look at the paperback covers. They’re all photos that somebody is tweaking in Painter or Photoshop. They’re putting filters on it to make it look like an illustration, but it’s actually just a photograph that they doctored up. DD: Right, and that’s what makes them technicians and not artists. They can do that quickly. They can go to an online stock photo house, get a photo, somebody else’s magic little sparkles in the background, then go to another photo stock and buy a castle, and then put them together in Photoshop, and make some colors over it, and add some fancy type, and there’s your book cover.

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Draw!: I was in the supermarket the other day, and I went past where they have their pathetic rack of books, and there was a bunch of whatever the current Tom Clancy kind of thing is, and it looked like a photo of the White House with some helicopters they’d popped in, and they put some filters on it, and they smudged it, and blurred it, and then you leave

a lot of room for the type. But there were a ton of them executed that way, and there was not one single image that was done in a traditional sense. They’re doing romance stuff, and they’re trying to make it look like Pino painted it, but it’s all done with models.... It seems to me the only reason they must be doing that is because they can hire people out of college, and people outside of the States, and get that done really, really cheaply, so they don’t have to pay Pino five grand, or whatever he used to get, to paint that paperback cover. DD: I’m sure that’s exactly what it is, and it’s really disappointing, and it lowers the expectations of the consumers. Draw!: True. DD: When I do a cover, whether it’s a comic or book or game cover, I’m always looking at the competition. I’m seeing what they’re doing, and then I’m taking a step sideways and doing something different, so I know when my cover is on the stands next to all these other covers, my cover has some element that’s going to make it stand out against everything else. But when you go down to the bookstore now, every cover looks the same. It’s some guy with a building in a background, and something flying, and it’s sort of all monotone-ish. Just hit me in the head with a hammer now. Draw!: I follow the Muddy Colors blog, and I’ve been to the IlluXCon a couple of times— it’s now in Allentown, which is actually closer to me. You see a lot of artists that are doing digital stuff... I know it works well in Hollywood for games, because you can do things with comps very quickly, and so part of it is that the commercial business says, “This is what we need, so we need you to do it this way,” but Dave: “This is the final inked page for the revised graphic novel. You can see I filled I think a lot of this actually started because as out some of the other panels’ backgrounds as well, not intending to leave as much soon as they could start cutting costs, they did, white space in the coloring as I did in the original printing.” but also because that entire generation of edi- Wasted Lands © Dave Dorman tors, and people who work for the magazines, who work for the slicks, have basically passed away or retired, Peak movie poster on it, but you’ve got this other movie poster so you have people coming in now who don’t have the aes- on it, so I don’t want to rent it now.” thetic values to judge whether this is a good digital painting, or DD: Newspapers started running photographs in the late 1800s this is a really bad digital painting. It’s just like, “I need a cover. and early 1900s instead of drawings, and then for 20 years, phoI have a budget of $500, bang!” So you’re right, it does affect tography was the big thing. Then in the ’20s, art really took off what you see every day from menus, magazines, covers, post- again, and from the ’20s to the ’40s, art was really big in books ers.... Most movie posters, if you go to RedBox, they all look and magazines. And then in the ’40s and ’50s, it was photolike they were done by the same three people. I think it dulls graphs again, and then in the ’60s, people like Bernie Fuchs people’s imagination or appreciation, because the consumer and Mark English and Bob Peak started to do these artsy ads can only consume what they’re given. If they give you good, and illustrations, and then that ran for a number of years. And you consume good; if they give you enh, you consume enh. It’s now we’re sort of getting into the digital thing, we’re going not like you can say, “Well, I would rent this if you put the Bob back to manipulating photographs as art, and I’m hoping that

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we’ll cycle through again, where people will find traditional art again that gives the image a little bit more life than just taking photographs and manipulating them, and comparing them to what has been done in the recent past couple of years. I have hope that this isn’t going to be the end of all things. [laughs]

interest in my lifetime in people actually learning to do the traditional skills, despite the fact that we’ve all slid over to the digital realm, which is very easy, and seductive, and fast, and cost-effective. There are more people now interested in learning how to draw the figure, how to sculpt the figure, how to paint the figure. And I think that will eventually turn things Draw!: I think you’re right. I’m 52, and I can say, hav- around, because when I was in school for the first time, they ing graduated from school, that there has never been a higher weren’t really interested in that. It was not cool. This was in 1980, and now, there’re all these ateliers—Three Kicks, and all these places—opening up where people really learn how to do the traditional stuff, which is great if you want to do the digital stuff, because at least you understand the foundations upon which everything is based. I mean, an elbow is an elbow; good color and good design is good color and good design. The three-value system from Howard Pyle works digitally or traditionally. But of course, if you don’t know about the three-value system, it doesn’t matter whether you’re working traditionally or digitally. DD: It’s all the basics of the creation of a good piece of art. That’s why, when I say technicians are producing these pieces, they don’t understand that, they haven’t learned the basics. They’ve learned how to work the tool, rather than starting from understanding what makes a piece of art what it is. So, that’s really a frustration. Let me give you a quick anecdote on the positive aspects of this: I did a computer sort of art convention or gathering that Massive Black put on about four years ago in Dallas called Reverie. They asked me to come down and give a talk about traditional art, and I was there along with maybe three or four other guests they had there talking about traditional art— most of the other guests were digital artists. It was a four-day weekend event. I got there, and all I was prepared to do was to do a slide show and talk about the elements of traditional still being valid, and how you can create as good a work traditionally as you can digitally... and most of these Dave: “The revised page 22. New black line work, new coloring, and new lettering. With 13 kids were teenagers to their early 20s. years more experience at comics storytelling I was able to incorporate those many years into making Rail closer to the what it should have been back then. Color-wise, making the I’m 55; I had just crossed over 50 page (and scene) more color- and tone-consistent, as I would do throughout the whole book, back then, so this was two generations making it a much more satisfying read. And artistically making it more cohesive a volume. younger than me. So, I’m at the show, and I’m talking to these kids, and they Wasted Lands © Dave Dorman

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(left) Dave: “I have wanted to do a Captain Nemo painting for years. I decided, to do the scope of the character justice, the project should be a triptych—one panel Nemo, another the giant squid engulfing the Nautilus, and the third being the divers in the underwater forest. I have finally painted Nemo, but the other two are still drawings yet to be finished. (below) Dave: “The finished pencil of Captain Nemo before transferring it to the canvas. 16" x 40" oil and acrylic on canvas.” Artwork © Dave Dorman

know my work, because they’re fans of Aliens and Star Wars and Predator and Indiana Jones and Batman, so they’ve seen my work. I started talking with them, and a lot of them did have questions about traditional art! So I got to thinking. It was a Thursday-Friday-Saturday-and-Sunday gathering, so on Friday, I talked to the guys who were running the show, and I said, “I have a lot of people asking about my technique. Would it be possible to do a demonstration?” I hadn’t even prepared anything, but it had just gotten to the point where I thought it would be good to show what I can do traditionally in the same amount of time that they do digital work. So basically, they said, “Okay, just go down to the art store, buy your stuff, bring it back. We’ll take care of all the expenses. Just do what you want.” So I bought some canvas, I bought some paint, I bought some brushes—I wasn’t prepared—and I set up an easel, and I started a painting on Friday afternoon. I had it finished by Sunday, and it was just amazing for these kids to come into this room and see me working, and see how fast this piece was progressing from blank canvas to something fully realized. And I think it impressed upon them that traditional was very valid. I had a lot of kids amazed and sort of built my value as an artist up a little bit more to myself, knowing that I could impress upon these kids that digital is not the be-all and end-all. Draw!: Well, that’s a great story, and a great illustration of the fact that you have people who’ve come up and just never been exposed to the traditional ways. So, you’re doing some continuity now. DD: Right. Well, I grew up reading comics as a kid, and that’s really what spurred on my interest in art. I’ve always been a comics fan since I was a kid. As a matter of fact, I did go to the Joe Kubert School to learn how to draw comics, and to learn how to tell stories and to get better at doing that. Either fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, I was more comfortable doing single images that tell a story rather than continuous panels. I found it very frustrating to do continuous panels at that point in my career because I was looking at each panel as sort of a single image by itself at five or six panels a page for 24 pages. That was to me a very daunting and scary thought to try to do as an artist. I felt more comfortable doing one large image to tell a story. I really learned a lot at the Kubert School. Joe and I had a very long discussion at the end of the year I was there about where I should go. You know, Joe was a great guy, and he started the school, and I think he is one of the few men in this industry that wanted to continue this form of storytelling because it is a

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very vital form of storytelling, and he was one of the best at doing it. So I was so fortunate in being able to meet him and know him for the year I was at the school, and then continue to know him for the rest of his life. He is probably the biggest influence on the direction of my career that I’ve had. It was sad to see him pass a little while ago. Draw!: Yeah, you would think that he would live forever. He was such a dynamic personality in his physical sense and everything. DD: I’m very grateful for the time I had as his student and beyond as his friend and peer. But he put me on that direction, to go into the single image. So, I started to concentrate on painting right after the school, and that’s where my career has led. But that’s not to say that I did not have an interest in comics. Obviously, more than half of my career has been doing covers for comics, because I love the medium. But I really wasn’t able to contribute in any type of real significant form, because I wasn’t really doing comics. And then, at one point, about the late 1990s, I decided, “I’ll give it a try.” So I created this world that I call The Wasted Lands. It was an offshoot of a computer game that I was hired to create part of—sort of a creator’s universe game. There were five artists that created several parts of this game, and they incorporated all the parts into one video game. I created this world, and from that, I expanded into what I call my Wasted Lands Universe, and I decided to do a 48-page graphic novel in more of the European style of their graphic albums, because it’s sort of a science fiction/western story. It’s not a superhero thing. It inspired me to produce something that I felt I could do at that time. And so I just jumped right into it. It was called Rail. It was published by Image in 2001, I believe. I did the whole thing except the actual scriptwriting (written by my long time writing partner Del Stone Jr.). I plotted it, I did the artwork, I colored it, I did the cover. I did most of the production on it. So, I sort of got it out of my system. Actually, I was very happy with it. I felt that I contributed to the medium that I loved and worked in for 25 years, and I felt very comfortable with it. But unfortunately, we had some problems with the company—contract problems and financial problems and such—so I just sort of let it lie. But since 2001, I’ve done various small continuous panel projects—ten pages here, eight pages there, various things. Some things tied in with my Wasted Lands storyline, some didn’t. I was able to tell the stories I wanted. But it hasn’t really been that significant an amount of continuous panel work, because I’m just not as comfortable with it as most comic book artists are. I’m not a comic artist, but it’s in my blood; it’s a medium that I love.

Dave: “After transferring the pencil and fixing it with a light coating of spray fix, I begin the background layer in oils.” Artwork © Dave Dorman

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Draw!: Is that because you feel like you want to treat each panel as more like a very complete illustration, as opposed to saying, “Well, I can leave the backgrounds out here.” Part of the thing in comics is—Joe is actually a great example, because his work was never as detail specific as Russ Heath’s drawings. Joe would draw stories about tanks, but he’d never draw every nut and bolt like Russ Heath, you know what I

mean? Russ Heath was much more of an illustrator, in a way, than Joe was. DD: Joe was a storyteller. He indicated a lot of things in his art rather than detailed them, because he wanted to tell the story rather than get involved in the nuts and bolts of the art. And that’s just every artist’s way of telling their stories. That’s all well and good. And yes, one of the things I found was I was tending to draw each panel as a little painting. One panel that tells a whole story, and the next panel tells a whole story, and then the next panel.... I wouldn’t have one panel lead into the other to tell just a portion of the story, and then move the story along. So, that was really my problem in envisioning how to tell a story in continuous panel form. Draw!: Have you changed in your approach? Do you feel like you can now go more towards the storytelling and less towards complete illustration? DD: Now I’m a much more experienced artist, and I understand what I’m drawing much more than when I was back in the Kubert School days. Having read another 20 years’ worth of comics, and having talked significantly with other creators who draw comics for a living, I have a greater understanding of what is needed in the continuous panel art to tell a story. So, I have to balance that with what I am capable of, as far as being an artist goes, to be able to tell the story that I want to tell. One of the things that I have learned—I learned this through talking to Chris Moeller and Scott Hampton—was that I can create a comic page by not having to create a comic page. I can break it down into what panels I want, but I can draw the panels separately, and then bring them together in Photoshop and build a page. Draw!: So one of your issues was actually creating an actual, physical comic page where all the panels are laid out on the same page. DD: Mentally, if I did that, and I drew each panel, and then looked at it and thought about inking it or painting it—depending on how they want the finish to be—I knew that I would have to start on one panel, finish it, and move to the next panel and finish it, then to the next panel and finish it. So, basically, I would look at the page and see one panel finished, one-sixth of the page is finished. But over my career, when I get to a point of finishing a painting, I take a break, I take a day or two off and refresh my mind and come back and start whatever project I’m going to do next with a fresh eye. So when I’m looking at a page of continuous panels, and I finish one panel, and see five panels aren’t finished, I look and say, “Really? I’ve got to do five more of these things?” [laughter] Draw!: And there’s also Hal Foster’s way of doing a page, which is sort of a hybrid between illustration and comics, because sometimes there is movement between panels, but then sometimes it’s five or six different illustrations with the narration. There are a lot of different ways to approach it, depending on your personality. Joe really had, like Kirby had, that storytelling personality.

Dave: “Once the initial background layer is dry, I come back into it and begin a second layer, filling in any unpainted areas and beginning to define details in oils.” Artwork © Dave Dorman

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(left) Dave: “After the oils have dried, I begin to define the details with acrylics, using the oil underpainting as my starting point. Then building up the opaque acrylics. (above) Close up of the acrylic paint defining the details of Nemo's weather-worn face. Artwork © Dave Dorman

DD: There are guys like Joe and Kirby that look at a page, and know exactly where they want to go from panel one to the end panel, and make that last panel make you want to turn the page to see what’s going on next. And then they just put the pencil to paper and, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom—and that’s a natural talent. For me, that’s not a natural talent. Draw!: How do you approach it now? Do you do a thumbnail of your whole story, then arrange it later? DD: What I do is, I do a thumbnail on sticky notes, and I just lay out the whole page in very sketchy form—the proportions of the panels, what story I want to say on each page—making sure each page works, from coming in to it to going to the end, and then having you have that little finger, so you want to turn the page. I do a thumbnail like that, and then I’ll enlarge it a little bit, and I’ll start refining the storytelling just a little bit more. If I need to add another panel or two, I’ll figure out where I can do that. If I can take away a panel and tell the same story, I would prefer to have fewer, larger panels than to have a lot of smaller panels. That’s just the illustrator in me; that’s the person who wants to just do one piece of art. These roughs would be on an 8½" x 11" sheet of paper. Then I take that and blow it up to 11" x 17", and then I start drawing each panel separately. I get a piece of Bristol board, and lightbox my layout sketch onto the Bristol board for one panel. I do that for each of the panels

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on the page. So if I have four panels on the page, I’ll have four separate pieces of Bristol board, each with one drawing on it. I’m able to look at one drawing at a time, because I have it worked out and know what the story is doing, without having to look at the other panels on the page. Draw!: It’s a mental thing. That’s your rhythm. Every artist sort of has a rhythm, a way that’s comfortable for them to work. I suppose if you’d been doing multi-panel continuity all the time, it would just be part of your natural rhythm, but you’re used to focusing on each image. DD: Exactly, I’m used to focusing on one image at a time. I’ve found that—and Chris Moeller told me this directly. I saw a bunch of originals on his table at one of the shows, and I said, “What are these from?” He said, “These are panels for one of the graphic novels.” I said, “Why did you cut up your pages?” He said, “I didn’t cut up my pages. I did the panels separately, then brought them into Photoshop and built my pages.” That really stuck in my head. I don’t know what his thought behind that was, because I’ve seen him work on full pages with six or seven panels, so I know he does that in more of a traditional fashion too. But for me, that really hit me as a way I could do continuous panels, and not have to think of it as a continuous panel page, but as individual pieces I could build into a page once I’m done.

Draw!: Well, it’s very interesting that you’re talking about this, because in my experience as a teacher, there are sort of two brains: There’s the storytelling brain, and there’s the illustrator brain. And having taught a lot of different students, I usually find people squarely fit into one camp or the other. There’s a lot of people who can do a beautiful illustration, and you give them continuity and the train kind of goes off the track, because they have a hard time prioritizing things, I think, because they like to finish each illustration. And then you have other people that are not as strong as draftsmen, but they really have the ability to tell a story. DD: I can understand that now from where I am artistically, as far as storytelling and continuity. I can very much understand that. Draw!: When you’re working on Star Wars, or you’re working on Predator, or working on anything like that, I did some Tron stuff a couple of years back and the amount of reference that they sent me was insane! I had four gigs’ worth of reference. Do you think that also affects your approach? Because you come from the illustration mindset, where it’s, “Okay, I’ve done my comp, I’ve got my layout, that’s approved, now I’m going to get whatever reference I need.” Certain artists, depending upon their style, they have the reference, but they can kind of fudge it. DD: Well, for me, it depends on what the project is. Certainly, I’ve built my career on licensed work, so the Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Alien, Predator, Batman, whatever I was working on at that point in my career, was very reference-based material, because one of the aspects of doing that is the client wants the material to look like the original. So, for me, that was a challenge, to be able to give them likenesses, give them characters that were easily recognizable within milliseconds of looking at the artwork, where you could tell who it was, you could see it was the actor portraying this character, you could see it was this creature he saw in the film. Those are very reference-heavy pieces. That doesn’t negate the fact that there’s a lot of creativity involved with that. Many people tend to think that if you use reference, you’re just basically painting a photograph. Draw!: If only it were that easy! [laughter] DD: Yeah! Draw!: If only it was that easy, then everybody would be Norman Rockwell. You’d just take a picture and.... DD: The challenge is to make that piece of artwork unique, make it viable, make it dynamic, make it something that people want to look at for more than a second. Commercial art is still a piece of advertising. It’s something that the viewer needs to get caught by as they’re looking over a magazine rack, or a stack of books in Barnes & Noble. It needs to have something that will make that eye scan over that rack and stop at that particular piece. So there is a challenge, a very hard challenge most of the time, to take these licensed characters, these reference-heavy things, and create an original piece of artwork that

Dave: “I continue to define the piece in acrylics with an occasional wash of oils to even out any tonal problems.” Artwork © Dave Dorman

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still looks like what it’s supposed to. I’ve built my career on that, and I have no problem telling anyone I use reference, even for my comic book line stuff, the continuous panel stuff. I will shoot reference, because I tend to want to draw more realistically. I can draw out of my head, I can do exaggeration, I can do stylized work, but that’s not my particular style; my particular style is more of a realistic style. If I need to shoot reference for the tilt of the head, if I don’t think I can render the exact angle I want it to be, or in the case of wrinkles in clothes, I’ll grab a friend of mine, have him come over, and pose for me. Draw!: In illustration that’s built into your natural way you work, but most guys in comics don’t really do a lot of that. I mean, it was very common in the strips. I used to share a studio with Al Williamson, and he used to shoot himself constantly. In his Art-O-Graph room, he had mountains and mountains of photos he’d shot of himself. He used to use old “photo romansos,” the old photo magazines where they’d do photo comics, and the great thing about that is, you’d have some old guy, and then you’d have every single angle, because it was staged like a comic! Comic strip guys did that, but most comic book guys—outside of maybe [Neal] Adams and [Russ] Heath, Gene Colan a little bit—didn’t do that. They sort of made it up as they went. DD: That was just their working method. Taking reference, taking photographs, collecting reference, working from roughs is just a little more time-consuming. I don’t do comics as a living,

(above) Detail of the tight work on Nemo's face. (left) Dave: “The last touch on the art was taking a sepia marker and drawing the map tattoo on Nemo’s hand. A subtle detail that makes a huge statement of who he is.” Artwork © Dave Dorman

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(left) Dave: “An absolutely fun project fell into my hands when I was asked to do a tribute to the amazing Winsor McCay and his creation Little Nemo. I have been a fan of Mccay’s since I don’t know how long. His controlled pen line work was a great inspiration to me in my own pen work. So I jumped at the chance to say “thank you” to one of the great illustrators of the 20th century. This piece is the small rough idea for my Nemo vignette.” (right) Dave: “I took my rough into the computer to do a quick color comp to guide me in my thoughts—even though later I wound up throwing it out!” Artwork © Dave Dorman

I do commercial artwork as a living, so the time that I spend when I do continuous panel stuff, I don’t have need to worry about a deadline. I don’t have to crank out 30 pages in a month. I don’t have to worry about whether a panel looks right or not to be able to finish the page. I can take the time to make sure that panel looks right, because I don’t have a deadline. I’m drawing for me. If I end up doing one of my strips for, say, Dave Elliott wanted for Monster Massacre, something like that, I have a deadline, but I make sure it’s a long enough deadline for me. If I’m doing twelve pages, I have three or four months to do twelve pages. So, I can take the time to make each panel right, taking photo reference, or looking for photo reference on the Internet, or whatever, to make sure that what I’m rendering is what I want. But your average comic guy can do that, your average comic artist can render a comic book every two months, that’s a lot of work. It’s not a habit any more, like the old strip guys used to do, doing seven strips in a couple of days. Draw!: Well, almost every single one of those guys had a background assistant. Leonard Starr had Tex Blaisdell. I know Blaisdell used to do backgrounds for other guys. I collect that

stuff, because I love the classic strips. Al had Carlos Garzon help him on Star Wars, because just drawing C-3PO, there’s no way you can do him fast! [laughter] Or R2-D2, those things are so tech-heavy. Even trying to simplify something like the Millennium Falcon is work to simplify something complex. DD: Right, I agree with you 100%. It just depends on the artist, but you find very few of that type of artist working in the medium today. Draw!: Well, there’re only a few continuity strips left. One of them I do, Judge Parker, and I was looking at some of my Leonard Starr originals the other day, thinking about how they were printed about five times larger than my strip, and also it doesn’t pay me enough money to afford a guy who’s lettering, or hire a guy to say, “Here’s a reference, go draw those cars and trucks. I’ll lay it out, but then I’ll give it to somebody else.” Even in the old days of illustration, part of your pay that was built in was the model fee! The guys, they would go to the same photographer. That’s why everybody says Steve Holland was on every single paperback cover! DD: He was the go-to guy!

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Draw!: And it’s funny, because sometimes he’d be multiple characters in a single illustration. Do you have your version of Steve Holland you go to? DD: When I was living in Florida, I had a friend of mine, Phil Burnett, who was in the military. I was doing G.I. Joe, I worked with Hasbro Toys from ’86 to the early ’90s, doing G.I. Joe designs and artwork for them, and Phil was almost all of the characters I did for G.I. Joe. I did about a 120 characters for them, and he posed for nearly every single one of those. Then he posed for The Rocketeer when I did the Rocketeer cover for Dave Stevens, and he was Batman... yeah, he was my go-to guy for about ten years. He was a really good guy, a big fan of comics, and a fan of mine. He was willing to do anything. He got into character, and it was a lot of fun to work with him. I don’t

have a go-to guy now. Basically I’m shooting reference mostly for light and shadow, clothing wrinkles, small things that the mind... you can’t remember every detail, every little piece.

Draw!: But if you needed a model, how would you go about doing that now? Say you were doing a project, and you needed a big black guy and a little Asian guy, and a standard G.I. Joe guy. Do you go to an agency? Do you put an ad in Craigslist? How do you get a model? DD: I just do it the old-fashioned way: I call a friend, I say, “Do you have a friend who looks like this?” I live about 40 miles outside of Chicago, so to call an agency in Chicago, there’s a drive in, paying them an hourly fee. I’m looking at losing a full day of work, probably a couple hundred dollars in modeling fees, just having to deal with all the minutia of something like that. In my career, I’ve hired models for maybe three or four projects, but mostly it’s friends. I get them to come over, and I sort of approximate the costuming I need. I did a couple of Doc Savage paintings for the comics, and some for the Doc Savage Club, and so I got a white longsleeved dress shirt, and I ripped it up, and wrinkled it up, and put it under the bed for a week, and got these nice pressed wrinkles that Steve Holland had for the book covers, and I put that on my model so I had all the wrinkles and the form. When I get to the drawing part of it, that’s the creative part. Certainly, doing the reference and getting the layouts and all the preliminary stuff is fun, but you get to the actual drawing of the piece, and that’s where the creativity flows. That’s where you start building the world that you’re going to paint. So the reference material I take isn’t necessarily the big black guy, or the small Asian guy, it’s someone who I approximate the size of what I need, and I can change the color and the features of the white guy to look like a black guy, or Asian, or Indian, or whatever I need in the drawing. [James] Bama used to do that with his models, and most artists could do that as well. So, yeah, I just get friends to come over, spend an hour taking a bunch of shots, and then I print them out, Dave: “I laid out my story in exactly the way McCay did, to keep his influence consistent: 16" x or, now, with the computer, I can 21" pencil on double-thick illustration board.” just run through them, and I do my Artwork © Dave Dorman drawing. The drawing I do, there’s a

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fully-rendered pencil drawing of what the painting will be, so I know what all of my elements are going to be, I know what my characters are going to look like exactly, it has lighting, it has very minute details of what I’m going to put in, and then once I pencil all that, I transfer it to the board and paint.

Draw!: Exactly, it’s like saying “mimeograph” or something. They’ll go, “What the heck is that?” DD: I mean, even artists today don’t know what graphite paper is. They’re still scribbling on a piece of white paper, and turning it over and doing a drawing, rather than just going down and buying a roll of graphite paper. So, I take my printed out copy and trace the whole drawing onto the board I’m going to paint on. I have my original pencil drawing to the side, so I’m not tracing over that. I’m keeping that pristine, tracing the copy onto the board, so I can throw away the copy when it’s done, and then have the drawing on my board, ready to paint. Then I can make some changes, I can tighten up some lines, or add anything I want to it before I actually start throwing the paint on.

Draw!: Do you make a transfer sheet and trace it off? Do you project it on an Art-O-Graph? DD: For the transfer, what I used to do was make a photocopy in the old days. Before the real computer technology, I had a full-size photocopier, so I could enlarge up to 200% and make the piece smaller down to 50%, so I could adjust what I needed for the size of whatever I was working on. With the computer, it’s just easy to scan it in, make it the size I want in Photoshop, and just print it out. So, in today’s technology I do my drawing the full size of what I’m going to paint. If it’s a 14" x 20" painting for a comic book or paperback cover, I’ll do the drawing that size on vellum tracing paper. I’ll start with one layer of tracing paper, and I’ll just build the composition. I build it in what I call donut shapes, just round shapes for figures, squares for buildings, whatever shapes are going to fit into the composition. Then I’ll put another piece of tracing paper over that, and with the photo reference, I’ll start adding details, do the photo rough, I’ll put another piece of tracing paper over that, I’ll start finishing it, and usually by the fourth piece of tracing paper, I have a fully-rendered pencil drawing ready to go. In talking with some digital artists, it’s pretty much the same thing they do with layers in Photoshop and Painter. They start with roughs and start putting layers on top of layers. So, my traditional way of doing this for 30 years is something they’ve learned to do digitally as well. I get my finished drawing on the vellum tracing paper, and I’ll scan that into the computer, and then I’ll print it out from my printer at the same size I’m going to paint it. Instead of doing a photocopy, I can just print it out on my printer in the same office. I take that, I go into the studio, and I use graphite paper, which is just pencil on one side so you can do a tracing. They say it’s like carbon paper, but Dave: “Because I am know primarily as a painter, I was asked by the publisher to include a this generation doesn’t know what painted element in the page. So I left that panel penciled as I inked the rest.” Artwork © Dave Dorman carbon paper is! [laughter]

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Dave: “I decided to make the drama panel the painted one. It is an oils wash and acrylic opaques with marker and colored pencil detailing. After setting my color palette with the painted panel, I see my original color rough does not work and I end up making it a warmer tone than I had planned. No problem, just adjust my eye to the new tones and run with it. The rest of the page colors were done digitally to finish the page for printing.” Artwork © Dave Dorman

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Dave: “‘Lord Vader's Persuasion of the Outer Worlds to Join the Empire’—the first of what has become my favorite type of Star Wars art to paint: images that have not been filmed but are asked for whenever I attend shows. So many had asked for a painting of Darth Vader in battle leading his troops, I could not resist! This is my rough work, showing my pencil comp above on my drawing table and a full-sized enlargement of it for me to begin my layouts. The size of the piece will eventually be 20" x 36".” Star Wars © Lucasfilm Ltd.

Draw!: And you’re painting in oil, right, or mostly in oil? Or do you paint in acrylic as well? DD: For about 20 years, I painted exclusively in oils, and I got very comfortable with that. Actually I got overly comfortable, so I started challenging myself. I was always uncomfortable with acrylics, because I taught myself how to paint in oils, so I was very used to the drying time that oils take, whether I put it on thin and it could dry quickly, or put it on thick and it dries more slowly. But acrylics were always a problem for me, because they dry very quickly. I was never comfortable with them because I couldn’t blend them like I did with oils, and I couldn’t lay in big areas of acrylic, because by the time I’d start in one corner and lay in the big area, by the time I got to the other corner, the first area would be dry, and then I’d have to paint over it, and it would start looking lumpy, and blah, blah. That’s why I had all sorts of problems with that. But about 10 years ago, I started playing with acrylics, and I found that there’s a certain point in my painting technique after I’ve laid down the oils and done my underpainting and started with the detail, when I got a lot of the fine detail, I was laying in

strokes of color, and not really manipulating them very much. I was just refining details and things. I thought, maybe I could do this with acrylics. So I just shifted that fine detail painting with oils to using acrylics, and painting acrylics on top of the oils. I found out that it was working very well, because I could get the same look to what I was doing and it would dry very, very quickly, so I could move through the details, the end part of the painting, faster, because it would dry quickly, and I could move on to finish it and send it off to the publisher. Draw!: You’re doing acrylic over oil? DD: Yeah, [laughs] and that has gotten that same exact questionable tone from everybody I’ve talked to, because it’s something that I taught myself, and I’ve never met an artist that does this. Draw!: Because it’s usually the opposite way. DD: Exactly, because the acrylic is porous, and the oil tends not to be, so when you paint acrylic first, the oil can stick to it very well, but when you paint the oil first, if you don’t know

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Dave: “After shooting my reference, including members of the 501st Midwest Garrison in all their Imperial uniforms and armor, I begin my layout on vellum tracing paper the same size as I will be painting.” Star Wars © Lucasfilm Ltd.

how to do it, it’ll create a waterproof barrier, and acrylic is a water-based paint, so it will not adhere to the painting. But over the time I was experimenting, I found a way that I could paint the oil—and I usually paint it very thin. That’s been my technique almost throughout my career: I tend to paint very thin. In the ’80s, when people would look at my originals, they would ask me what type of airbrush I used. I’d say, “It’s not airbrush. It’s traditional brush techniques. I just paint very thin and work to brush the brushstrokes out of it,” because to me, brushstrokes just intimidate what the detail’s going to be. Draw!: Oil can look like wash on paper, so I could see how, if there was some tooth to the paper, like you didn’t have a huge, thick impasto of oil, maybe you could go back over it with acrylic. Have you found, over time, that any of your paintings are peeling up? Are you having any problems? DD: I’ve had no problems with peeling at all. The trick to that is not to do that impasto technique! You paint thin. Like I said, I tend to paint fairly thin, even when I have opaque oils. But the tooth of the gesso—because I’m painting on gesso illustration board—does come through enough of the oil paint that it gives something for the acrylic to stick on. Now, if I paint the oil too thick, I do run into that problem, where the acrylic will bead up. So I’ve learned through my own technique and experimentation how thick to be able to lay the paint on, and still have that tooth flow through the acrylic. Parts of the painting where I’ll want to have a nice, thick texture to the paint, that I know I won’t have to deal with the acrylic, I can go in and I can lay in the paint very heavy. But the detail

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parts, I just go ahead and leave it thinner. The paint can still be opaque. It doesn’t have to be a watercolor style paint, but it’s still thin enough that when I’m ready to apply the acrylic, it has that tooth to stick to. Draw!: Do you ever go back over the painting and put a final seal on it? Do you varnish your stuff, or is it unvarnished? DD: It’s usually unvarnished. However, I’ve noticed that over the years, because the acrylics tend to dry in a matte finish, and the oils tend to dry in a more semi-gloss or glossy look to that, I will put on a thin coat of varnish just to even out the whole piece, so you don’t see that border between the matte and the gloss of the paint. I very rarely do an archival finish of varnish or whatever. When I’m finished with the painting, I tend to be finished. I just never really thought of it as the finishing touch, like the Masters do. It’s a commercial piece of art, it speaks for itself, and maybe I’m just tired after I put on that final coat. [laughter] I just leave it as it is. I very rarely put anything on it. Some of the very large canvas pieces I’ve done, I’ve put on maybe a couple of coats of varnish, just to give it that sort of gleam, because when you’re hanging in a gallery, people expect it to look a little bit sharper, I guess. But for the illustrations, no, I really don’t do much of anything after I lay on the last couple of brushstrokes of paint. Draw!: You’ve gone and bought your Cintiq and everything. Do you think you’re going to try imitating this way of working by starting with importing your drawing and painting over your drawing?

Dave: “The finished pencil drawing with all the elements and all the characters exactly where I want them.” Star Wars © Lucasfilm Ltd.

DD: Certainly, that’s the most comfortable technique for me, because that’s the way I have taught myself over the years. Draw!: That might be an even better way, if you could paint over your drawing. You do your drawing, and then you transfer, then you basically do your final painting looking at your drawing, or looking at your drawing and your reference, and there’s always some juice in that original drawing that you never ever quite get back. If you have a drawing you’re working on the top of, do you think that might speed things up, or you don’t know yet? DD: I don’t know yet, because I haven’t had that experience. In talking with some of the digital guys, they’ll do their quick drawing, save it in case if they want to come back to it, but then they’ll start painting right on top of it with the digital, and it just sort of free-flows from there, which is not something I can really do that much with traditional paints, which is why I do a very tight drawing before I get to the painting, so I know exactly what I’m going to be putting down, and I’m not having to clean up or wipe away areas and restart things. There’s usually very little mistake in that. But with digital, I certainly know if you make a mistake, it’s fairly easy to eliminate it, go back and fix it right there, without any mess. Draw!: Do you foresee a point in which you might give up doing the traditional, or do you just like doing that too much? DD: No, I don’t think I’ll ever exchange digital for traditional. Doing this for so long, it’s become part of my nature, and my being. I like to go into the studio. I like to smell the paints. I like to get my hands dirty. I don’t paint with the brushes all the time. I’m using the fingers, I’m using dirty cloth, I’m building the texture and the feel and the atmosphere of the

studio, which is something that I’ve lived with for most of my life, and it’s something that gives me pleasure. To try to achieve that, that sort of nirvana, in something as sterile as a computer, I don’t think I’ll ever get that much pleasure out of it. The creation of the image, maybe, but not the environment of creating that image. Draw!: I started teaching a visual development class this past year, and one of the things that I would tell to the students is that, to me, the glass nature of painting digitally tends to make everything the feel same. I can be making something that’s supposed to be oil paint or pastel, but I don’t have the specific tactile sense from using a pastel from my hand. When I’m working with a tablet, everything feels the same. It says it’s this, but it feels the same as anything else! There is a certain aesthetic that you get from training, from working with the traditional mediums that now, if you go to the digital, you take with you which I think can inform your aesthetic, even your sense memory of what it feels like to do a wash like this, or whatever. Going back to what we were talking about before, I assume LucasFilm doesn’t care how you give them the art, they just want your work, right? They’re not saying, “Oh, you need to have this digital now.” DD: No, pretty much everybody that I have dealt with during the course of my career has just looked for the image as the final product of what they’re hiring me for. There have been companies that I’ve been doing art for various purposes, Hasbro being one of them, they’ve wanted the originals as part of the commission, so I’ve adjusted the price in working with them to cover the purchase of the original, but in general, as a commercial artist, the clients just want the image. They don’t

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Dave: “I then transfer a copy of the pencil drawing onto my gessoed illustration board. Next I spray-fix it lightly so the pencil does not smear into the paint. Above the art on my drawing table you can see a small color digital comp I made to make sure I do not lose focus on the tones in such a large, detailed piece.” Star Wars © Lucasfilm Ltd.

care how the image is done, they just want to make sure that image represents their project in the best and most imaginative way. That’s what I give them. Draw!: So, going forward, you don’t really foresee there being a difference, as long as they’re just getting what they want, right? DD: That’s pretty much it, yeah. I don’t see a period where I’ll stop doing traditional painting as a finish for my clients in exchange for digital painting, because I’ll start arguing with them right from the start. I’m to the point where I’m not afraid to argue with art directors anymore. But I can see some use for digital in my repertoire of mediums to use, and when I get comfortable in learning what I need to with digital, I’ll start incorporating that more into the commercial aspects of my work, but for me, you can’t just stop using 30 years of experience in a particular medium just because a new medium’s popped up. It’s incorporating what you need to incorporate at a particular time to get the job done, and making enough money to put food and clothes on the table. Draw!: I know for some guys, when they went from Photoshop 7 to other versions of Photoshop, they didn’t like the ways the interface was rearranged, and you’re always reliant upon the people who are making that particular program to

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continue to not move the palettes around, or change the way the brush performs, or whatever. DD: That would be like me going to Dick Blick and buying a certain brush for a couple of years, and then suddenly that same brush is not the same brush because it has different hairs in it! And so, you’re laying down different strokes, or the paint isn’t as fluid. That would be very frustrating, and for me having that change happen every couple of years, I would find it very frustrating as well. I don’t know how to approach that, because right now I don’t know what version of Photoshop I’m using, but once I start doing it, and they start putting out new versions, it would be like having to learn that new tool over again. I don’t know if I’d be comfortable with that. That is certainly one of the negative marks towards moving to digital, because you’re at the whim of the designers, whereas with traditional, you don’t have to worry about that at all. You want to hear a really funny story about that? Draw!: Sure. DD: [laughs] Years and years and years ago, during the mid- to late ’80s or early ’90s, I would buy regular tubes of paint, and at this point, Liquitex was just putting out oil paints. Each particular brand of paint had a way of making their paints. Some had heavy pigment, and not so much linseed oil; some had a good mixture; some paints were a little bit more transparent than

Dave: “Laying in my background in oils, defining my space and distance in the piece, and silhouetting elements for dramatic purposes.” Star Wars © Lucasfilm Ltd.

others; some were thicker. So I would just buy whatever paint I felt comfortable with from whatever brand. However, Liquitex oils had a certain palette of colors that was very rich and vibrant in intensity, so I would buy a few of these colors, because I couldn’t mix them myself; they were very pure. Even if I sort of lessened them with some linseed oil or turpentine to make them more transparent, the color would still be very vibrant. I became sort of addicted to these colors, and I would use them quite frequently because of the intensity. One day, I went down to the art store, and I was looking for a particular purple that Liquitex put out, and they didn’t have any. So I went, “Oh, okay, I’ll just go to another store.” And that other store didn’t have any. As I went through stores in my local area, there were less and less Liquitex oil paints available. So, I started asking, “Why aren’t you carrying it?” Their response was, “Our distributor just isn’t carrying them anymore.” I got really frustrated, because I loved those colors. [laughs] So I called Liquitex, and I said, “My local stores aren’t carrying your oil paint tubes anymore. Is there a way I can order them from you directly?” And the lady said, “Oh, you know, I’m really sorry about that, but our oil paint factory burnt down, and we’re not going to rebuild it, so we just stopped making oil paint.” [laughter] And my jaw dropped, I just really completely stopped, and fell on the floor, and said,

“What am I going to do?” I had a couple of tubes of this color, and I just looked at them sadly, and said, “Once these tubes are gone, they’re going to be gone.” Draw!: You’d have to start driving around the country, hoarding all the paints, going to all the art stores.... DD: Well, we’re getting to that! [laughs] I started looking at more expensive tubes, and some of the European paints tend to be a little bit richer because they’re made in more of a traditional fashion, but I just didn’t find the intensity of the colors. They were nice paints, but they weren’t what I was really looking for. So, what I did was, yes, I got on the Internet and I started looking for big art stores, and I just started calling around, and I said, “Look, do you have any Liquitex oil paints sitting in the back in a box somewhere?” And literally, I ended up buying probably 40 tubes of the stuff. Eventually, I did find some places that had them available, and I just said, “Send me all you have, and charge it to my credit card.” I think there were five colors I’d used, so I ended up with just a whole bunch of tubes of color that I would never be able to get again. I know one store sent me a box of them, and they were all hard; I have no idea where they stored them. But they took my money, sent me the tubes, and they were all just rock solid. But you know, I have those tubes sitting in my studio

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(left) Dave: “More oil underpainting. Note the continual use of the reference shots above the art.” (below) Dave: “I start with the main subject of the art and begin detailing from there. At this point I shift to acrylics for the detailing. It helps move the art along quickly as they do dry much faster than oils, yet give me the same look as I would have gotten with oils in the same areas.” Star Wars © Lucasfilm Ltd.

now, and every now and then, I look at them and think, “Yeah, that was a pretty smart thing to do, looking back on it.” You get used to something, and one day it’s gone, and you just have to work around it. Fortunately, I was able to work around it in a very positive fashion. But, one of the things that came out of it was, I was able to look at some of those tubes of expensive paint, and I tend to be very frugal in my purchases of paint. It’s from when I was younger and didn’t have a lot of money, and just was buying what I could afford. So, I’ve found some of those paints are actually very good quality paints, very brilliant paints, so I don’t mind paying $14 or $20 for a tube occasionally. You know, a tube of paint can last me 15 years. Draw!: And certain colors are much more intense, so they tend to last even longer. DD: Yeah, I still have paints from 20 years ago sitting in my drawer—ones I don’t use a lot. One of my slide show demonstrations, I show a picture of my palette, with one quarter sitting on the palette, and my daubs of paint to show what I use. For painting I have ten daubs of paint no bigger than a quarter that I can do the whole painting with and not have to reset my palette. People are just amazed at that. When you look at my paintings, they’re very flat, there’s not a lot of texture in the paint, and that’s just my technique that I taught myself over the years.

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Draw!: Everybody sort of uses the same stuff, but everybody uses it in a different and personal way. I’ve never heard of another artist, for instance, doing acrylic over oil. Everybody usually uses oil over acrylic, but I went to one of the IlluXCons, and somebody had done big print-outs where I think they were doing something that was digital, and then they did oil painting on top of the digital printout, so people do all kinds of combinations! You’d never think to work that way.

(above) Dave: “The whole piece, as I march on like Vader’s troops, moving ever forward until the battle is finished. Details now in acrylics, some marker, and colored pencil for definition. (right) Dave: “Detail on a few stormtroopers showing the build up of the acrylic paint on top of the oil underpaint.” Star Wars © Lucasfilm Ltd.

DD: Yeah. Want to hear another funny paint story? Do you know an artist named Doug Klauba? He’s an artist here in Chicago. He’s done a lot of commercial work, but he’s done some comic covers for Moonstone, like The Phantom and Flash Gordon. He’s a good friend of mine, and he uses acrylics quite a bit in his art. He was over to the house and we were talking about my approach of doing acrylics over oils, and he wanted to learn a little bit more about that, so I showed him my paintings, and how I lay down the paint and make sure it’s thin enough that the acrylics can hold onto it. He was suitably impressed, which most people are when they see how I do it. So we started talking about paint, and I said, “What kind of paints are you using?” He said, “I’m buying these Liquitex bottles and tubes, and....” I know what those things cost, because I’ve been down to the store looking at them as well, and you’re looking at about $4, $5, $6, $7 for a tube of standard paint, and you can go up to $12 or $15 for deluxe, depending on what you want. Every artist tends to be a little conscious economically with their materials, and I said, “Doug, do you know what I use?” And he said, “No.” I said, “Do you know where Michaels is?” That’s a certain discount art store. Do you have those there? Draw!: Oh, sure, we have Michaels and A.C. Moore. DD: Yeah, and Hobby Lobby’s basically the same thing. So, I said, “What I do is, I go into Michaels into the craft section— not the art section, the craft section—and they have these little bottles of craft acrylics for, like, 99 cents, and they have hundreds of color variations, and it’s just liquid acrylic. It’s really not that different from the Liquitex or Winsor & Newton or whatever, so I go and I pay $20 for 20 bottles of acrylic paint, and that’s what I use! It’s the same thing, just a little more liquified. But for what I’m doing, this is exactly what I need.”

Draw!: The binder they use is already a little thinner. DD: Correct. Still, it’s giving you that opaqueness, and the quick drying time that a tube of acrylic will give. Draw!: But it’s not as thin as the stuff that will go through an airbrush. DD: Correct. He was very impressed with my frugality on buying acrylics that I work with. You know, I’ve never had a problem with them. They don’t peel.... Draw!: They don’t fade? DD: Not that I have noticed, it looks great, it stands up against the oils. As a matter of fact, people can’t tell if I’m detailing in oil or detailing in acrylic. Draw!: This is actually very good. DD: Real quick, to finish this oil and acrylic thing, do you know where the Gnomon Workshop is? They’re out in California, they teach digital art? Draw!: Yes, I do, yes.

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DD: Yeah, a couple of years ago, they had me come out and do a demonstration that they put on DVD about how I do oil underneath acrylic, so if people go to Amazon or the Gnomon website, they can look for the Illustration Techniques with Dave Dorman set. They decided to release a set showing my prep and completion of the pencil drawing as the first DVD, and the second DVD was taking that pencil drawing and rendering all the way through to completion with all my techniques with oils, acrylics, markers, color pencil—everything that I throw into the mixer, and it comes out as a semblance of painting. [laughs] Draw!: Do you do much personal work, or are you just mostly doing illustration? DD: I’m pretty much still doing illustration. You know, I’ll take that back. The past couple of years, I’ve really been doing

a lot of my own work. I’m still doing some work for LucasFilm and some of my other clients, for Dungeons & Dragons and things like that. I’ve actually been working on my own project, The Wasted Lands, reworking the graphic novel and doing some new material, and to follow up with that, the new book will be out for San Diego, called The Wasted Lands Omnibus. It’s 152 pages, which features the original graphic novel Rail that I recolored in the computer, I relettered, I added some new artwork to it, and it’s a totally different look to it. It amazes me how much I’ve learned since publishing the original graphic novel back in 2001 with the computer technology, which was really fun to work with. I learned a lot recoloring those pages. I’ve been doing some gallery paintings and some large pieces for myself. After 30 years of working for other people, I made a conscious decision over the past year and a half or two years to start working on my own stuff, and things that will hopefully be able to generate interest in the graphic novel series. I have a couple of games based on my material coming out as well, a card game, a board game, and some other things. So I’ve been able to work for myself, creating for myself without having somebody looking over my shoulder, as an editor or a publisher, saying, “We want something different.” That’s been something I’ve been approaching for many, many years, and I’m finally getting that opportunity. Draw!: I think that’s really important. The way the commercial work is spinning now, I think if you just work for other people, it’s really to your detriment, because there are so few places now where there’s any kind of real loyalty. George Lucas was a personal fan of Al Williamson, so if you’re lucky that the big dog likes your stuff, you can suffer a few less bite marks on your ass. But ten years ago, you could not image that Disney would own Marvel and Star Wars. DD: That’s very true.

(above) Dave: “Another detail shot as I lay in more detail, keeping in mind the visual depth and stacking of elements to give the proper effect of this image elements fading back to the distance from the viewer.” Star Wars © Lucasfilm Ltd.

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Draw!: You could not imagine a time where fewer and fewer places own more and more of everything that you like, and that’s never in the long run a good thing for artists, because these big corporations don’t really care about you. They don’t hate you, but they also

don’t care about you. If you work for them, it works out great, such—not to go into anything with great expectations. I go fine. If it doesn’t and they decide, “We’re going to move to in with just the work in mind, and take it for what it is. So, China to paint this thing,” they’re not doing it out of a con- even though I’ve lived with Star Wars for most of my life, scious maliciousness, but they’re also not being conscious and I’ve worked with LucasFilm for almost 25 years, and Star about how it might affect you in the long run. I also think that Wars has been a very big part of my life, both personally and you have to work on your own stuff, especially after a certain professionally—my son loves Star Wars; it’s a real big deal in point in your career, just to wean yourself, too! I think that’s my house—my hope is that they make a fun film, that it’s exreally important, to wean from the commercial work. citing, it’s state-of-the-art, it’s a good story, good characters. DD: Yeah, I would kind of agree with that. I look back on the time during the mid-’80s to about the late ’90s when I was working with a number of clients, LucasFilm and Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, and these were all relationships that were built on mutual admiration and trust and respect. Eventually, it ended up as a very friendly relationship. You could call up the art director and editors and chat for a little bit, and share life, not just talking about a piece of work. You don’t get that nowadays. It’s very... I hate to say it tends to be very cold, but that’s certainly the way it feels in that editorial aspect. The peers that I’d get to meet at shows, conventions, and spend time with Dave: “Another step closer to finish. Detail keeps tightening.” is very valued, because it’s very Star Wars © Lucasfilm Ltd. heartwarming, and that might not be the technical word, but you feel very comfortable, a lot That’s what makes entertainment what it should be, if it’s Star warmer when your peers are able to discuss the art, and show Wars or any other movie. I’m hoping that it will be as exciting what you have and what you’re doing, and where you’re go- for this generation of kids as the original Star Wars was for ing. You could do that years ago with art directors and editors, me when I was 17 and went into a theater and saw it. It has a and now you can’t. Everything’s very business-oriented; ev- lot of baggage to go along with it, and I’m not sure where Diserything’s email oriented. There’s no longer a more personal ney is going to take that baggage, but I’m looking forward to relationship with people that you deal with to a greater ex- a good movie. I have no expectations that it’s going to be any tent. I feel a bit lost without that, and I think that’s one of the better or any worse than the other six, I just want it to be a fun other reasons that I’ve taken to do my own pieces, because it two, two and a half hours of moviemaking. That’s my hope. used to be you’d get some excitement from your editor, art director. “We’re really happy with the way you did this. Let’s Draw!: That’s my hope too. If they can make it have the look forward to the next one.” Now, you do the work and get spirit, especially of the first two films, then they will be very the check, that’s all the communication you get. The pleasure successful for the long run. But if it ends up having the spirit I’m deriving from doing my own work is that I don’t have to of the last couple, visually there’s a lot of cool stuff, but you please anyone but myself, and I’m challenging myself, and I don’t really care about the characters. I think that’s what prothink I’m doing the best work of my career right now in gen- pels you through the last three, is you still have that fondness eral. I’m very happy with where I am right now. for the characters from the first three. DD: Yeah, I can understand that too. In looking at the preDraw!: Just to cap it off here, are you excited for the new quels as three parts of a single story now, I can see what Lucas Star Wars stuff? How do you feel about it? was trying to do, and I actually enjoy the movies now more DD: You know, I was a fan of Star Wars before I became a than when I saw them in the theaters when they were released. professional artist, and I’ll always be a fan at heart of com- I also think it’s a generational thing. My son could care less ics in both the comics medium and the film medium, and about the live-action movies. He’s been watching Clone Wars I’ve learned over the years—especially in working with the since he was four years old! He likes Clone Wars, and that’s licensed product, working with the movie companies, and Star Wars to him.

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Dave: “Finished art including the last elements—Vader’s lightsaber and blaster bolts flying through the fight.” Star Wars © Lucasfilm Ltd.

Draw!: I suppose it’s the age you’re exposed to things. DD: To Lucas’ benefit, I think he sees that in Disney. Disney has built a reputation of understanding generation after generation, and keeping things fresh with updating storylines, advancing the technology of filmmaking and their amusement parks, and LucasFilms has done that with its films. With our generation it’s the first three, and two generations later with the prequels, and in-between that, letting Dark Horse put out books, the paperback novels, the toys, all of that was in that sort of in-between generation. And then six or seven years later, after the prequels, Clone Wars comes out, which gets little kids excited. So, I think it’s a good fit, LucasFilm and Disney, and they’ve been working together before, obviously, with the Indiana Jones Experience and Star Tours in the parks, so it’s not like they’re coming in not knowing how it works. I have a big feeling it’s going to be a fun movie, and I think we have to look at it like how we experienced the films in our generation. I’m looking forward to doing more Star Wars artwork as the years go by, and adding a whole new group of characters. Draw!: I’d imagine they’re keeping it all tight-tight, but do they work ahead a year with licensing and all that stuff? DD: Yeah, it’s still early in the licensing end of things. We’re still 18 months out from the films, so we’re not going to start getting licensing stuff going until probably late this year. I have my fingers in the pie on that, and I’m looking forward to doing that. I think the big thing is Marvel taking over the comic book license from Dark Horse, and right now very few people know what Marvel is doing with the storylines, and how they’re going to package the books. Obviously, they’re doing it with Disney, so Disney might have a large say in how Marvel packages

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them. We don’t know if they’re going to go on a different look than Dark Horse did. I don’t know if I’ll still be involved in the comic end of things. I hope that I still will be, because I’d love to get the work, but they could take a different tack completely with the material. A lot of us in the comics industry that have done Star Wars art for 25 years, we’re very interested in seeing what Marvel’s going to do with that material. Draw!: From what I was reading, they’re still deciding what is and what is not canon now—all that other stuff you were talking about that came out between the films. DD: There’s a lot of stuff going on with the Expanded Universe and other material that resulted from that time. You know, I can see both sides of it, and I really don’t have an answer that I can give to how I feel about it, because I just understand both sides. I’m a fan as well as a realist, and it would be sad to see them throw away 25 years of hard, creative work because Disney and Marvel want to go in a completely different direction, but from a business standpoint, that’s their choice to do, and maybe they won’t. I kind of think what they’ll end up doing is keeping some elements from the Expanded Universe, and incorporating those into what’s going on. I think most of what we’ve worked on in the past 25 years is just going to be “Earth-2.” Draw!: I’m sure they’re going to say, “Some of the stuff works,” and, “I shouldn’t have approved that story.” Some of the stuff is going to drop out. I was just wondering in general how you felt about the new Star Wars. DD: I’m very much looking forward to it. It is very exciting, and I’m definitely going to be first in line! [laughter]

Design C

by Mike Manley and Bret Blevins

oncept Art is an ever growing field that today plays an important role in every film, television program, video game, and yes—comic book. Look at the recent Marvel movies as an example. The core visuals are built on the visual language and designs of the great Marvel artists, but especially Jack Kirby and the hundreds of comics he drew in his teaming with Stan Lee during the prime Marvel period. The initial character and concept designs for the Marvel Universe are chiefly the result of this visual dynamo, one of the most important artists of the 20th century, whose work fuels the fantasy designs of the 21st century.

Every cartoon I have worked on has contained as part of the design pack a style guide for backgrounds and character designs, etc. It is essential in the early parts of the development of a show to get everybody on the same visual wavelength. You can’t have the dozens of artists working on the cartoon running in every different direction, and in the movies and video games you now sometimes have hundreds if not thousands of artists spread across the globe working on the same project. In the very earliest stages of the design and concept process of a movie or video game, the artists, art directors, and people in charge of visual development pull together style boards to help create the visual talking points that lead to the building blocks that form these new universes. Ralph McQuarrie’s concept illustrations for Star Wars (1977) are probably the best example of the way modern filmmaking employs the use of this concept of creating a grand visual narrative in the preproduction story stage. Some companies may even go further, as Disney did with Mulan, by sending the development team to a location— in Mulan’s case, China—to One of Kirby’s concepts that’s become a major visual backbone of Marvel’s do research, to draw, sketch, 21st century movies is the S.H.I.E.L.D. and take pictures for authenhelicarrier seen in its original design ticity. In the case of Mulan, a (left) and the Avengers and Captain very important story and herAmerica movie version (above). oine in Chinese culture, DisS.H.I.E.L.D. © Marvel Characters, Inc. ney wanted to get the visual The Avengers © Marvel Studios. details correct.

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(above) Star Wars is a massively influential film that has spun out culturally, and its world was built on the “style boards” of Flash Gordon and the comics and sci-fi movies that influenced and thrilled George Lucas as a child. C-3PO is just one example of a major character in Star Wars that came from a visual inspiration or style board from another source. In C-3PO’s case, it was Maria, the robotic woman from Fritz Lang’s silent movie classic Metropolis (1927), which sparked the initial idea. (top right) One of Ralph McQuarrie’s first Star Wars concept illustrations featuring one of his original designs for C-3PO. (right) C-3PO in the final form we have all grown to love. Star Wars © Lucasfilm Ltd.

Building Your Style Board

A great way to start developing your ideas, no matter the medium, is to start by spending time building what are called style boards or inspiration boards. Graphic designers and fashion artists employ these collections—almost a visual collage of images, textures, fabrics, texts, etc.—to create an overall “style” in which to visually illustrate the work they want to create. Interior designers will employ this as a way to show a client how the new interiors will look. Pinterest is basically a web-based style board. It’s often hard to just pull ideas out of the either. Even the great Jack Kirby, who was ten times as imaginative as the normal artist, would find inspiration for some of his fantastic machinery from household objects like his wife’s hairdryer. Even the most fantastic designs are better if they are based on something real. To start making your style board, I suggest you spend some time being sort of a detective for your project. Think about the who, where, why, what, and when of your ideas. Write these notes down and review them, make lists. You can break things down into figures, backgrounds, interiors, exteriors, etc. Once you have these lists, you can then start hunting down your visual reference. Google is of course a fantastic resource and search engine, but knowing how to ask for something in more than one way is also essential. I still recommend going to your local library and asking for help to research your list of ideas. There is more and more on the Internet every day, but not everything is online, and there are many, many research books and references that line the shelves of your local library.

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Organization

The next step, once you have your pile of visual information, is to start organizing it into folders that then you can use to build your style boards. Once you have the folder filled, it’s a snap to make a series of collage boards for the different subjects for your project:

Here’s another collage board example (right) I put together from some of the thousand of photos in my photo library. I can organize these pictures to give me reference to pull from for designs like the animation background here (below). I can also use them along with books I have on art deco architecture to do concept designs like these I did for Batman Beyond (bottom). Batman Beyond © DC Comics

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he artwork presented here tracks the development stages of promotional material for a project created and written by my son Timothy, and executive produced by Renie Sweeney. It will a fantasy graphic novel called Epoch. I don’t want to spell out too much before the project is finished, but there are Fairie elements and characters alongside humans and futuristic technology. I began by trying to find the proper look and attitude for the main characters. In the following pages, Tim’s original descriptions are accompanied by some of the sketches I made to find a workable design that I liked.

Belas the Hobgoblin Goblins are shorter than humans and very skinny/lanky—they have skinny arms and legs with slightly enlarged, webbed hands and feet, and large heads with large eyes. Goblins have rubbery, amphibian-type skin—they like damp, dark places. Goblins’ skin coloring varies from muted, desert-toad tones to wild, poisonarrow frog coloring. Belas being a hobgoblin/half-human, he’s a mix of human and goblin qualities. Belas is pretty for a goblinoid—a less attractive Hob probably wouldn't be hired by a posh Elven corporation. He's proportioned like a human, and has human-looking hands. Belas has no hair— few Hobs do. Being chief of security for a billion-dollar company, Belas has an admirable military background, and comports himself in a military fashion. Being a distinguished veteran and chief of security, Belas dresses more like his high-ranking Elven employers than the other security grunts. For Belas’ acting, he has something to prove, as do most goblinoids. Goblins have been outsiders throughout history—elves and humans and dwarves historically shunned them, orcs periodically enslaved them. As such, goblin culture revolves around ideas like self-sufficiency and guile. ART NOTES: The descriptions were so clear I had a handle on Belas quickly—only a few sketches nailed him down—then my mind obviously wandered to the setting, as you can see on this sheet.

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Tia Hollow Tia’s human, about 5' 7", thin and athletic. She has violet/purple irises, as she’s an eighth elf. Tia has short hair; it’s a dark shade, maybe an organic color or maybe dyed—maybe her hair changes color often. You choose. Tia’s stealth-suit is concrete-grey and “aesthetically padded.” She carries a few small, flexible tools. The stealth-suit has a hood because I like the shape—she needs a balaclava or mask or something to prevent her face being caught on camera—the more I think about it, the more I think her face-cover should have some kind of cheeky modification, like a stitched on scarecrow smiley-face or something. Tia moves like a leaf in the wind—the harder you swipe at her, the more she flits out of the way. Tia is an upbeat person, but as her criminal career implies, she has some baggage hidden beneath her cheeky exterior. When not in stealth gear, Tia dresses in comfortable, notparticularly stylish clothes. When she dresses sexily, it’s usually for work-related purposes. ART NOTES: I was unusually lucky here. Tia is based on my lovely friend Claire Louge (right). I wish every character design was this easy! Tia’s attitude was pretty clear at the beginning. I did a rough sketch and costume suggestion (left), Tim drew his costume ideas over the sketch (figure at far right) and Tia was done.