Rough Stuff #10 Preview by TwoMorrows Publishing

Celebrating the ART of Creating Comics!

No. 10 FA L L 2 0 0 8

Batman TM & ÂŠ2008 DC Comics.

$6.95

82658 27766

Volume 1, Number 10 Fall 2008

Celebrating the ART of Creating Comics! EDITOR

Bob McLeod PUBLISHER

John Morrow DESIGNER

Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADERS John Morrow and Eric Nolen-Weathington COVER ARTISTS

Ron Garney and Bob McLeod

Pencil scan courtesy Gabe Fieramosco

FEATURED ARTISTS 26

Matt Haley

Jason Paz

Alex Raymond

Andy Smith

CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Bob Brodsky, Cookiesoup Productions SPECIAL THANKS Ron Garney Jim Clancey Matt Haley Ronald Sonenthal Jason Paz Graham Goss Tom Roberts Scott Hawxhurst Andy Smith Jordan Martin Neal Yamamoto Kenneth Lieb Bill Rienhold Elizabeth Leonard Jason Keith Melissa Mueller Kevin Nowlan Matt McDonald Gabe Fieramosco Pennsylvania College of Art & Design

ROUGH STUFF™ is published quarterly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Bob McLeod, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: ROUGH STUFF, c/o Bob McLeod, Editor, P.O. Box 63, Emmaus, PA 10849-2203. E-mail: mcleod.bob@gmail.com. Fourissue subscriptions: $26 Standard US, $36 First Class US, $44 Canada, $60 Surface International, $72 Airmail International. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Central cover art by Ron Garney and Bob McLeod. Batman copyright DC Comics. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2008 Bob McLeod and TwoMorrows Publishing. ROUGH STUFF is a TM of TwoMorrows Publishing. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

ISSN 1931-9231

ROUGH STUFF FEATURE 38

Sequential Art 101 Bob McLeod

ROUGH STUFF INTERVIEW 3

Ron Garney

ROUGH STUFF DEPARTMENTS 2

Scribblings From The Editor Bob McLeod

Cover Stories Andy Smith and Jason Paz reveal the process of creating a cover.

PrePro Art by Jason Paz, Matt Haley, and Andy Smith, done before they turned pro.

Editor’s Corner Samples from editor Bob McLeod’s comic book career.

Rough Critique Editor Bob McLeod critiques an aspiring penciler’s sample page.

Rough Talk Comments and opinions from our readers.

FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF

INTERVIEW

RON GARNEY

R E N A I S S A N C E

M A N

By Bob McLeod

on Garney has worked on JLA, Amazing Spider-Man, Civil War, Captain America,

RON GARNEY

X-Men, Silver Surfer, Hulk and other books. He’s a guy who likes to have fun,

fan at a convention of

and it comes through in his art. You can tell he’s having fun drawing. But as I

This was a sketch for a Spider-Man in his new Tony Stark created armor from Civil

found out in this interview, he’s also a musician, actor, athlete and painter. I don’t know if there’s

War…

anything he’s not good at, but if there is, he’s probably working on it!

JIM CLANCY

BOB McLEOD: You don’t look like the type of comics

McLEOD: That’s true. The Internet

nerd who would have been sitting alone in his room

and video games today must use up

drawing all the time as a kid. How did you find time

a lot of the spare time of many kids

between chasing girls and playing sports to develop your drawing? RON GARNEY: I think a lot of comics nerds are going to take umbrage with that statement!

who might otherwise be drawing. I myself played a lot of baseball and softball when I could have been improving my drawing. Did you play sports very much?

McLEOD: Ha! No doubt. I just think many people have a mental picture

GARNEY: Neither my mother nor stepfather were into sports,

of artists as not exactly

so when I played in

“buff.”

school I did so out of

GARNEY: Seriously though,

my own desire. Early on

that’s tough to say. I

before my mother mar-

wasn’t always the “non-

ried my late stepfather,

nerdy-looking” type, I

we moved around a lot,

suppose. Where I grew up it was very rural, and back then, there wasn’t the Internet, MTV or arcades to occupy a kid’s time. There were comics, records, monster magazines and Star Trek. Spider-Man TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

then basically settled on eleven acres in the country in the seventies, and all I had was my imagination, the outdoors and my ability and desire to draw. There was literally courtesy Jim Clancey

I got this from Ron at the first NY Comic Con. It was done right after the Amazing SpiderMan issue that first showed the Iron Spider costume came out. I remember how cool it was to get the sketch. The show was buzzing and one of the many conversations was about the new Spidey. It was an easy choice in a commission to ask for.

BOB McLEOD I like a slender, sinewy Spidey, and it’s cool how Ron was going for a trompe d’oeil effect with the wall shadow. Up-lighting is such an easy, effective way to heighten drama.

FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF

nothing I could even walk to for stimulus or to hang out

painter however, and my earliest memories of drawing

with friends regularly. My younger brother and I had each

were of her and my aunt teaching me to do Bugs Bunny

other. I played sports as well in school, but in the down

heads, and not long after that I was doing Batman and

time that’s what I would do.

Superman drawings.

McLEOD: Does your younger brother draw at all?

McLEOD: So drawing and sports—did you have any

GARNEY: No he doesn’t, but he is an engineer. He’s

other hobbies or interests growing up?

very technical. My late grandmother was an avid oil

GARNEY: I was also into music, so I was experimenting with a lot of things I found interesting, and I guess as I reflect on that, each of those pursuits served a different purpose for my evolving personality. I still do all of those things. I write music, play piano and guitar, train in jiu-jitsu and boxing, ride my Harley, play tennis or lift weights, or hike. Now, it just happens that I draw for a living. I had a rock band for a while as well, and we played all over New Haven county and recorded a couple CD’s, and that was some of the most fun I ever had, and we started developing quite a following for a while there. But it was just like the “behind the music” stuff you see on VH1. Too much drama and ego and the band split up. I continue to write new music and material and plan on doing that again as well. McLEOD: No kidding! I played the trumpet in school, but I’ve always thought writing music is pure magic. I’m even more impressed that you can do that than draw! I also play tennis. Otherwise I’d probably weigh 300 pounds. And with boxing and jiu-jitsu

and weights, it’s no wonder you’re in

RON GARNEY Any chance I get to draw a fight scene on a New York City street is fun for me. I enjoyed the confrontation between Iron Man and SpiderMan during the Civil War run, and when I was drawing it I got rather nostalgic, for instance, about how excited I’d be when I’d pick up a Marvel comic from the sixties or seventies like Daredevil vs. the Sub-Mariner or the Thing vs. the Hulk on the GW bridge (Kirby). I felt this confrontation had that same flavor to it and is what helped make the story so successful.

ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008

such good shape. What formal training have you had?

few plays and actually went back for a course a few

Did you go to art school or college?

years ago and really enjoyed it. It’s just having the time I

GARNEY: Yes, University of Southern Connecticut.

suppose with everything else going on in my life like fam-

McLEOD: Where did you work right out of school?

again.

ily and work. Someday, though, I’d like to do local theatre GARNEY: Well, I was a bouncer and bartender for a while in college, and continued that trend right into the

McLEOD: So I was right. You were acting, playing music

management of nightclubs after college. That’s where it

and sports; you weren’t just sitting alone in your room

became the most difficult to maintain myself as an artist. Not only professionally, but socially. McLEOD: When did you decide to try to make a living as an artist? GARNEY: Well, I was always trying in the eighties, and even had jobs as a teen doing murals and things in the seventies, but I started to get serious about it and comics between 1985 and 1988. I had gotten interested in the comics thing as a career by around 1985 and started working on samples and honing skills in that area. That was a very unique time of my life, however. I was working and living the life of a vampire basically. Going to work at six at night ’til four in the morning. It got so bad that at the crack of dawn I would catch fire and have to sleep under six yards of dirt. If I drove by a catholic church my eyeballs would start to bleed… but, I digress. McLEOD: Well, as long as you didn’t Spider-Man and Iron Man TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

drink blood.... A lot of artists work through the night and sleep during the day, but to work at another job like that and then also try to draw must have been tough. GARNEY: I did have some art jobs: I worked for a women’s newspaper, doing illustrations and the like. I also acted in some theatre productions, was a waiter, and... McLEOD: Acting? How was that for you? Do you ever consider doing more of that? GARNEY: Yeah, actually I loved it really, but didn’t have the balls to pursue it the way I would have liked. I acted in a FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF

Courtesy Jason Keith

RON GARNEY I originally chose a down shot for this piece, then scrapped it in lieu of the more challenging angle with the figure in perspective. Being brave with your choices and challenging yourself can lead to good results, as I think this

Wolverine TM & ÂŠ2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

page reflects.

Pencils: Ron Garney Color: Jason Keith

FALL 2008 â&#x20AC;˘ ROUGH STUFF

COVER STORIES

hether a cover is inked or painted, it still needs to be approved in sketch form, then a finished drawing is done. But even after the sketch is approved, the artist may come up with a better idea and make some unexpected changes.

ANDY SMITH Claw #3 For issue #3, I did four different rough sketches to show my editor. As you can see, I don’t do much detail in the sketches. They are just for composition and to give a general idea of what is going on. The idea was Claw being attacked by someone off panel that we obviously can’t see, with a shadow of the attacker looming over him. In the first sketch I did a down shot of Claw but I didn’t want to give away that the attacker might be that much larger then Claw and I felt too unattached to the scene. There was just not enough drama for me. Sketch 2 is cool with the camera angle lower, but I wasn’t feeling it. Claw is standing, which doesn’t give me the feel of impending doom looming over him—just too casual. Sketches 3 and 4 were the ones I really liked. He’s backed up against a rock in sketch 3 and is seated on the ground, which would make it more difficult for him to get away. Sketch 4 looks like he was just knocked down and is really in trouble, which I also thought was really cool. However I went with sketch 3 because the composition works better for the logo placement and I also liked how I framed Claw’s face within the bow and bowstring. 22

ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008

ANDY SMITH Claw #3 My next stage is to take the rough sketch and enlarge it to about half-size of the original art and trace it off to tighten up the sketch.

ANDY SMITH Claw #3 From there I enlarge that to full size and trace it off on my light box to the tight full pencils. This job was being printed from pencils so I was careful not to smudge it up too much while tracing it off.

brush. FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF

I S T A R T

D U R E F E A T

MATT HALEY

aley strious Matt H The super-indu DC, then STAR TREK at started out on en went Dark Horse, th r fo T S O H G d di r became a PREY. He late F O S D IR B r He back to DC fo comic series. of r be m u n a co-creating t for Stan writer/artist, tive consultan ea cr d an st ti the ar ries. was recently RHERO TV se E P U S A E B O NTS T Lee’s WHO WA

MATT HALEY A rough sketch of Sif, from Sons of Asgard, a new cartoon project created by me and Eureka TV series creator Andy Cosby. Tons of fun reimagining the Asgardian characters for kids!

... and the inks. Style changes can be fun. I’ve learned not to limit myself to one comic-art style; have to keep things fresh, you know! For this, I read a lot of Asterix to get in the right headspace.

ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008

MATT HALEY The rough sketch and finished art for my new character Fem-I-Nine, for a manga teaching book for Random House I’m writing and drawing. I’m a long-time manga fan, but preferred the naturalistic style to draw in until recently.

MATT HALEY Elseworld’s Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl Still my favorite DC comic I’ve done. My college roommate Tom Simmons and I pitched and sold Elseworld’s Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl to DC after having done Tangent: Joker, and we got to redesign practically the entire DC Universe! Supergirl was the toughest to redesign, as putting her in anything other than the blue union suit just looked wrong, she had to be a female version of Superman, without being a Barbie doll, or too butch. I would dearly love to do a sequel

MATT HALEY

someday.

FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF

MATT HALEY A smattering of rough superheroine art for trading cards. I could draw superheroines all day for the rest of my life and never get tired of it. Maybe I should—!

BOB McLEOD Well, my wife gives me a hard time when I

MATT HALEY

do that…!

ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008

Sequential

By Bob McLeod BOB McLEOD Jordan Martin was really the only one in the class who nailed the couch scene. It has a lot of depth and good characterization, and I really like

ell, we call this magazine Rough Stuff because we usually bring you the rough preliminary art of the top pros, but this issue I also want to share with you a different kind of rough stuff; some work done by art school students I’ve taught. Regular Rough Stuff readers are familiar with my Rough Critique feature in the back of every issue,

where I take a sample page sent in by an aspiring comic book artist and critique it,

the low camera

trying to be constructive and show how to raise the page up to a more professional

angle, putting us in

level. Every page has its own problems, and every artist has different things to learn,

the room at their height, not ours.

but there are many recurring problems I see in all of the sample pages. The most important thing that is invariably lacking is the figure drawing. You just have to draw a lot of figures and memorize a lot of anatomy before you can draw good figures from your imagination, and then you still need to learn how to make them move dynamically. There are also always several problems with composition, many unique to comics and therefore new to illustration students, and comic book storytelling techniques. And most young artists don’t have much of a grasp of perspective. I do my best to offer knowledgeable advice in my Rough Stuff critiques, but I always wonder if the artists actually improve after hearing my critique. Does it all sink in, or is it too hard to absorb all at once and change the way you’ve been doing things? I have this vision of them reading my critique and a light bulb flashes over their head and suddenly they’re able to draw great pages and go on to become superstars. In reality, it usually takes a lot more than one critique to get someone up to that next level. They may not want to make the effort to actually read those figure drawing books they have and practice drawing the manikin poses. They might not want to study and work at it because that’s too much like real work. So many artists just want

Courtesy Jordan Martin

to draw Spider-Man, and they think drawing comics should be fun, not work. My own attitude at age 20 was frighteningly similar to that. There were no schools I knew of teaching cartooning or comic art in 1969, and I was never able to find some38

ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008

Art 101 one to teach me how to draw comics, and never had a

what a human looks like and draw it in dif-

real critique. Even after I started renting space in Neal

ferent poses and viewed from above or

Adams’ Continuity Studios, I never got one of Neal’s infa-

below with no reference! That was a new

mous, ego-shattering critiques (Neal was the top artist in comics at that time, and known for making wannabes cry). The closest I came was when I first approached DC Comics and then-art director Joe Orlando (of EC Comics fame) told me I needed to go back to school and learn how to draw! I wasn’t about to do that. Instead, I stubbornly went back to my room and started cranking out more sample pages. I learned most of what I know from studying other artists and through trial and error. Drawing has always come easily to me, but it took me years to get competent at penciling superhero comics, which is why I did mostly inking in the early years of my career. Unlike most comic book pencilers today, I was not a superhero comic fan before I started in comics, and had intended to draw for Disney or do a comic strip in the newspaper. I just wanted to draw humorous cartoons. But once I decided to give comic books a try, I was willing to study as hard as necessary and would have welcomed a rough critique to show me the way. So I now try to teach others what I’ve learned, and hopefully spare them those many frustrating years of trial and error. To that end, I recently began teaching as an adjunct instructor at the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design in Lancaster, PA, which I was very pleased to learn is a very good art school, with an excellent staff and excellent students. In the fall semester of ’07 I taught a class in “sequential imagery” (the fancy collegiate term for drawin’ comics), and most of my students majors, and when I had them draw figures with no reference the first day of class, I realized I had my work cut out for me. Most of them had talent, but it was very undeveloped with regard to drawing comics. Their prior instruction had

Courtesy Graham Goss

were juniors. Not all of them were even illustration

mainly all been drawing from a model or from reference. I

BOB McLEOD

don’t think they had ever been asked to draw figures

Graham Goss is an excellent artist with much more experience in painting than in inking. We

totally from their imagination, because most illustration

discussed whether splitting the explosion into two panels worked, and decided that it did. I was

careers don’t require that. It’s one thing to draw a figure

impressed by the way all of the students were trying to break new ground in various ways,

while looking at a model. It’s quite another to remember

rather than taking the easier, more obvious route.

FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF

five or six or more illustrations working together on one page as a unified, balanced composition to tell a story. I began simply. I just asked them to draw two characters interacting in some way on a couch in a room showing two walls (hopefully to create some depth and perspective). In spite of my initial concerns, I was actually quite impressed by many of their drawings. Their characters had a lot of personality and they were trying to be inventive in presenting this simple scene, even though several forgot (or ignored) my instructions and drew just one wall, creating very flat drawings. The best way to draw something like that is to show it from a 45-degree angle, not head-on, which looks flat. Nevertheless, I was sufficiently impressed with their abilities that I decided it was time for them to sink or swim, so I threw them into the deep end. I gave them the first page of a script by Randy Stradley from a Ghost comic. I chose it simply because Martin Balcer had sent

Courtesy Scott Hawxhurst

it to me along with his sample pages for my Rough

challenge for them. I frankly thought drawing a comic

Scott Hawxhurst’s

book story page was going to just be too difficult for

bedroom page has

them. Drawing comics requires being proficient in so

some problems with

many different areas. The job’s sort of a combination of

anatomy and per-

artist and movie director. There’s anatomy, dynamic figure

spective, but his camera movement, storytelling and wash tones are very effective. I really like what he’s trying to do with dramatic lighting.

drawing, composition, perspective and storytelling, but then there’s also lighting, camera angles, costuming,

Courtesy Jordan Martin

BOB McLEOD

backgrounds (set design), lettering text and sound effects, balloon design and placement, character design, panel layout, inking and coloring! How could I teach them all of that in just one semester? I decided I couldn’t. I would have to narrow the focus. This was not a figure drawing class. There was simply

BOB McLEOD

not enough time to work much on their figures. So I

Jordan’s bedroom page still cracks me up. Just the way he uses flies

decided I would concentrate mostly on layout and com-

as the characters in such a deadpan manner is so funny. In contrast to

position, because that’s the real meat of the problem in

his humorous art, Jordan is very serious and all business when it

sequential art—not just drawing a single illustration, but

comes to promoting his art and is sure to go far.

ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008

D U R E F E A T

JASON PAZ

I S T A R T

lented yet another ta Jason Paz is Manila. artist, born in ic m co o in ip il F ology itecture Techn h rc A r disan as w He for a top pape r to ra st lu il orked as an g to student and w st now startin ju is d an s, ic trying com me across a tributor before him when I ca ed ic ot n t rs fi n. I gain recognitio rtle! he did of a tu on ti ra st lu il magnificent

JASON PAZ This is a Superman pin-up I did early 2005. An exercise to show if I could draw particular faces with distinct racial features, people, a city setting, etc. There is a silhouette of a sniper in the upper right corner of the page if you notice, pointing his rifle at the beauty queen/VIP of the parade on the float below. I'm always questioning myself every time I see this early work, if Superman is holding these two kids, from what or from whom is

BOB McLEOD Late breaking news dept.: As we go to press, Jason just informed me that he’s going to be drawing a story called “Outlaw Territory” for an anthology comic for Image. His story will debut in volume 2, due out in June 2009. 44

ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008

he saving them?

JASON PAZ These are the six sequential page layouts I did for an independent comic for Paperstreet Comics.

JASON PAZ

The finished inked pages. I just blew up

The finished toned pages. I applied gray water-

the layouts to 11" x 17" size and used a

color washes to a separate copy of each page.

lightbox and worked directly in inks. I was inspired to

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m quite happy of the results but unfortunately I was not able to

utilize the style of heavy blacks and shadows to con-

be onboard for the entire run of the book because of conflicting

vey a dark and moody result.

work schedules. Victor, the writer, was kind enough to understand and proceeded with the project with a new artist. FALL 2008 â&#x20AC;˘ ROUGH STUFF

ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008

D U R E F E A T

I S T A R T

ALEX R AYMOND

s been an x Raymond ha The great Ale s of comic e on generation nc ue fl in ng ri endu standard that g a very high in tt se s, st ti ar meet ever 34. That have tried to h Gordon in 19 comic artists as Fl ng ti ea cr st known for on to also since. He’s be l, but he went ta or m im m hi JIM, ve made IRBY, JUNGLE K alone would ha IP R , -9 X T GEN aw SECRET A create and dr THE TOILER. , and TILLIE K C LU e from a ’S R LE TIM TY a small sampl st ju e ar s ge these pa m Roberts The images on d by artist To on m ay R t ou book ab also supplied wonderful new AND ART. Tom FE LI IS H — D AYMON called ALEX R . for the images the comments

TOM ROBERTS

All scans courtesy Tom Roberts

Preliminary study for Grasshopper Dance This image bears no major changes from the study to the finished piece. Obviously, Raymond felt the need to fully resolve all the contrast between the elements before starting the finished version in ink wash. The composition is very much in the style popularized by Albert Dorne, with the figure in the foreground turning to look at the reader, and therefore pulling the reader into the scene as an additional participant.

ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008

Preliminary study for Hard Work With the horizon line dividing the picture plane in half, it is interesting to note and study Raymond’s use of perspective, and the grid system he uses to establish the different planes on which the man and woman are standing.

BOB McLEOD An excerpt from Andrew Loomis’ Figure Drawing For All It's Worth shows you how to do this on my web site here: http://www. bobmcleod.com/loomisp40.gif

TOM ROBERTS

Preliminary study for Sirenade Raymond, in his attempt to fill the spot vacated by George Petty for Esquire magazine, labored to imitate Petty’s style of pin-up. Raymond was apparently uncomfortable with the awkward look of the partially hidden right foot peeking out from behind the opposite leg, and hid it under drapery in the finished image.

TOM ROBERTS Preliminary study for Sonnet for a Bride This lovely drawing was framed and hung in Raymond’s home studio. The original drawing is now part of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, and was obtained in 2003 as a part of the J. Arthur Wood collection of original comic strips, drawings and cartoons. FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF

TOM ROBERTS Dreams This pin-up sample for Esquire appeared in print only once during Raymond’s lifetime in washed out black-and-white reproduced in the Washington and Lee college yearbook for 1941. Raymond was asked to judge a beauty contest at the school that year.

TOM ROBERTS Marine Pay Line of Carrier While undoubtedly working from a snapshot, the quick and loose feel of the penmanship in the image adds a vitality to what could easily be a stagnant scene. 56

ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008

PRE-PRO

ust how well could the pros draw before they started doing comics? Were they any better than you at age 12? Maybe, maybe not. There’s also an important difference between drawing well from reference and pencilling comics well from your imagination. This issue Jason Paz and Matt Haley offer a glimpse into their pasts.

JASON PAZ BOB McLEOD I was astounded to chance upon Jason’s pencil drawing of a sea turtle when I was searching for animal drawings on the web one day. The level of detail is amazing, but what really impressed me were his tonal values, achieved completely by crosshatching. His tiger is equally impressive. You can see

I worked as an illustrator for a paper manufacturer here before, and these animal illustrations were made for a cover design for their notebooks. They were done with just pencils on a good stock of paper. I recall they provided several pictures for every animal, and I just Googled some more for the details, and did the drawing/rendering in pencil.

more of Jason’s animal drawings in the Rough Stuff section of my web site. FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF

D U R E F E A T

ANDY SMITH

I S T A R T

He’s a real dynamo. Andy Smith is e, Acclaim arvel, DC, Imag M r fo d ke or w so an here he was al (w en mmerG ss ro C and ing various co do as l el w as director), best-selling editor and art illustrated the d an te ro w so MERICAN cial jobs. He al d DR AWING A an S IC M O C NAMIC ptill. DR AWING DY by Watson-Gu ed h is bl pu S E R-HERO MANGA SUPE

ANDY SMITH Stormwatch #8 page 6 layouts When I work I go straight to the board after doing a small thumbnail. This is an example of my initial layout. From here I would go in and tighten up the page to finished pencils.

ANDY SMITH Stormwatch #8 page 6 pencils Here are the finished pencils. When I started Stormwatch I wasn’t the inker as well. I full penciled the first seven pages and then the decision was made that I would ink the book as well. FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF

ANDY SMITH Stormwatch #8 page 4 initial layouts This was my first layout for the splash page in the danger room type setting.

ANDY SMITH Stormwatch #8 page 4 finished pencils You’ll notice that there isn’t a robot on the layouts, that’s because I designed him on a

ANDY SMITH

different piece of paper and then lightboxed him off to the original board. Once the

Stormwatch #8 page 4 revised layouts

layout was done I used my kneaded eraser to wipe away the pencils to where all that

I wasn’t happy with the female figure in the lower left cor-

was left was a really faint image. I then go back over those with a HB lead to do my

ner, she was just too flat on the page. I wanted more depth

finishes and rendering. The layout is the easier part for me and the finishing has

so I redrew her in a flying pose leading her into the scene. I

always been the hard part. I think it’s because I have more fun doing layouts and fig-

also think it’s more dramatic.

uring out the drawing and storytelling then putting the icing on the cake.

ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008

ANDY SMITH The Atom #18 page 14 layout and pencils Here is another example of my layouts and full pencils.

BOB McLEOD The finished pencils look more impressive, but even though he enjoys it more, I think the real work is in the layout. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s where all the important decisions are made. The rendering can be done any number of ways, but getting the layout right is the key to a suc-

ANDY SMITH

cessful page.

FALL 2008 â&#x20AC;˘ ROUGH STUFF

EDITOR’S CORNER

’m hoping we have some younger comics fans among our readership, and if so, they likely have no clue who I am, since I haven’t been very active in comics for the last few years. So when I found myself a few pages short this issue, I decided to show some of my own rough stuff. After 35 years, I could easily fill up an entire issue or

three, so it’s difficult to decide what to show in these few pages, but here are a few of my favorites.

BOB McLEOD Crazy #63, pg. 9 Some of the earliest work I did, and the most fun of my whole career, was for Marvel’s Crazy magazine. Then-editor Marv Wolfman was kind enough to give me my first freelance job. This is a page from a satire we did of Apocalypse Now a couple years later called “Apocryphal Nowland,” where the Vietnam War became a Disney-type theme park. This is the type of work I had expected my whole career to be, but super heroes were fast beginning to dominate the comics business, and there just wasn’t enough of this work to keep me busy. I also felt my style was too derivative of my idol Mort Drucker, which is why I never tried to work for Mad. FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF

BOB McLEOD Red Sonja Unpublished Some time around 1980, I think, I wrote and pencilled a tenpage Red Sonja story for the Savage Sword of Conan magazine, but it was never published. It’s about her falling in love with a woodsman while recovering from being batted off the cliff by this gargoyle. Maybe I’ll eventually try to sell it to Marvel, or change it to a more generic character and use it elsewhere. It would be fun to ink it. Early on, my pencils had been criticized for being too stiff, so I was trying to make it as exciting as I could. You can see a couple more pages on the Rough Stuff section of my web site.

BOB McLEOD In addition to balancing each panel, I tried to balance the page as a whole with the combined gargoyles at the top against the large gargoyle

BOB McLEOD

in the lower left.

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BOB McLEOD I always think upsidedown figures are interesting. Especially in bikinis.

ROUGH CRITIQUE By Bob McLeod

his issue we have a very cool Justice League sample page sent in by Neal Yamamoto. Neal, the first thing I notice is that you’ve put in a lot of hard work on the backgrounds, which is very important, particularly on a sample page. You’re varying our viewing angle a lot, which is also very good, and you’re trying hard to compose with diag-

onals, which I always stress. Your compositional sense looks pretty good, and your storytelling is clear as glass. You’re working hard, giving your best effort, which is really mandatory in the highly competitive business of comic books. But I see several things you need to work on to get up to that next level.

First off, when using inset panels you need to be careful that the backgrounds don’t blend between panels, making it hard for the reader to see what’s what. Inset panels should be like TV screens in a restaurant, where they stand out clearly, not like small screens in front of large screens at Circuit City, where they blend in. I added gutters around your inset panels to make them stand out from the background panel. If only all problems were that easy to fix. Second, as with most beginners, you really need to study figure drawing a lot more. Your faces need to be more attractive. A face can be relatively correct and still look goofy or strange. Study how the artists you admire most draw chins, noses etc. Learn to draw ears. They have a particular structure and they’re slightly lower on the head than you’re drawing them. Compare our Wonder Woman heads above. When drawing something such as crossed arms, it helps to get in the pose yourself. If you cross your arms, you’ll find that your fingers don’t reach so far around your arm, and your arms project forward rather than hang down, so foreshortening is needed. And you (along with most everyone else working in comics) also need to study perspective. Establishing a horizon and finding vanishing points is very important, as I’ll demonstrate. Lets look panel by panel at some of these things. In panel one, it’s good to have the roof line of the mansion be on a diagonal, but by tilting the horizon it appears that the house is not on level ground, especially since the trees are vertical. The house should also be the focus of the panel, and by pushing it up and cropping it off, the hill becomes the focus. You’d want to crop it like this if someone were walking down the hill. You need to make the horizon level, and all horizontal lines should recede to a vanishing point (VP) on the horizon (H). That’s how to know what angle to draw things like the steps, which you’ve drawn sloping down severely on the left. Several lines on the house are also off, some of which I corrected. If you want us to be gazing up at the mansion from the bottom of the hill, as it appears was your intention, just move the horizon down more. Remember this: the horizon is always where the viewer’s eyes are. You should avoid having the center of interest (the house) in the middle of the panel, so I enlarged the art to bring the house over more to the right. That also gave me some white space at the right end of the

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