Are the Dutch Known for Being Crazy?

So, this is my first apology for not posting at all last week. One of my goals is to have this problem on a rare-to-never basis.

What I can talk about is a camera angle trick I learned a few years ago in a class on the fundamentals of making comics. It's called the "Dutch Angle." I have no idea why it's called that; I'm sure there's some pretty basic research I could do on the subject, but I'm content to think that the true story is lost to the ravages of time. A Dutch angle is tilting the camera pretty drastically so that everything seems off-kilter. This can provide various effects, depending on the context of the scene.

1) If things are getting suspenseful and/or confusing, a tilted viewpoint can make the viewer feel off-balance or lost. Or if the character is drunk or wavering in and out of consciousness, it can help the viewer share the feeling of topsy-turvy. One example might be Orson Welles' 'The Third Man'

2) If a character is warped or maniacal, capturing them in a tilted view could contribute to their off-kilter worldview. Probably the most famous example of this is the 60s TV show "Batman" which had its villains commonly filmed at canted angles, since most of Batman's rogues are insane.

3) Diagonals will always be more 'action-y' than vertical or horizontal lines. Viewing an action scene with a Dutch angle can contribute to its dynamism. For this example, I'm using the drawing I'm working on right now, with Han Solo and Princess Leia shooting their blasters on the ramp of the Millenium Falcon.

What's important to note is that an artist should never rely solely on the Dutch angle to make an image interesting. The characters, scenery, and context of the scene itself should be interesting in and of itself, and communicate the mood that the artist wants. The Dutch angle should merely heighten that said mood.

Who Wears Plain Clothes Anyway???

This is a much more general topic than the post regarding patterns following fabric folds. Here, I'm going to talk about just putting patterns on peoples' clothes. I'm not going to attempt to claim what is in style and what isn't, mostly because I've been uncool for most of my life. But look around you at what people wear. Many people have patterns, logos, and textures on their clothes (of course, as I write this, my roommate sits across from me, wearing a plain white t-shirt).

Al Williamson is another favorite artist of mine. I've been looking at a lot of his Flash Gordon work recently, but one of my favorite panels he's ever done is this one from "Secret Agent X-9." Part of it is the framing and poses. But I always come back to this as a great example of

throwing in some texture on some clothing can help an image so much. Think of it this way: in most comic book artwork, you have stark white areas, and stark black areas. Most of the time, you don't have any grey tones. But one way an artist can sneak around that is by creating different textures. It's kind of an "indy" thing to throw in lots of textures, but a mainstream comic can retain its style by just adding in one or two textures--probably on the most important elements of the image.

I also shamelessly note that there's really no way Williamson could have made these textures follow the contours of the clothing the characters. Anyway, my panels owe their inking to Angela Falvey, who gracefully took on the task of putting up with my desire to have textures.

Her deviant art site is www.kuroko.deviantart.com

Everything I Needed to Know about Clothing Folds...

Out of the infinite things I could have learned from the European comic artist Guarnido, I pick clothing folds for this entry. Just to let you know the level of awesomeness I hold his artwork in: a fellow artist and I talk about Guarnido's comic Blacksad in pretty much every conversation we have. The guy's an artistic genius; I highly recommend everyone to read the Blacksad books. Artists should study his work not just for clothing folds, but character design, expressions, and action choreography.

Anyway, clothing folds are something I really enjoy drawing. I've been told that maybe I focus too much on them, but I'm okay with that for now. The great thing about well-placed clothing folds is that in action or in an important gesture, they can help lead the eye, or simply emphasize an arm or leg's direction. Think of it this way, it's a bunch of completely necessary lines an artist can put on a figure that can point exactly where the artist wants the audience to look. In the case of this panel, I took into account that I wanted to draw attention to the hand, and also the fact that drapery must obey the law of gravity. Had the gesture been more forceful, the folds would have been straighter and more direct (like in the Blacksad panel). But since it's a sweeping gesture, there is more of a curve to everything about the figure.

Fun with Shapes

Any image can be simplified down to basic lines and shapes. The way these shapes work together often makes or breaks an image's quality. There are tons of books written on this very subject, and many fine artists of the 20th century experimented with how much reduction one could do to an image before the shapes became unrecognizable of what they represented. Suffice to say for this entry, though, that an artist must always at some point assess the composition in regards to basic shapes.

Unfortunately, I did this a little late in the process of making this cover for my upcoming comic. I made the rough sketch of the cover, scanned it, printed it off, and started drawing. It was then that I realized that the image wasn't interesting at all. I sketched it a few more times in my sketchbook, liked what I was getting, drew it, and repeated this process again because I like to second-guess myself. The story has a happy ending, though, because the cover was eventually finished.

The initial problem I had with the cover was that the bodies seemed stiff. If you remember what I said about lines of action a while back, you'll see it too. Both characters' backs were straight, and since the whole composition centers on them, the image suffers. Giving the characters more curve to their poses forced the rest of the image to follow suit. The curved lines and shapes were far more interesting than the blocky composition. Don't get me wrong, there's definitely a time and place for forceful, straight, direct lines and shapes: they can also provide energy and force to an image. I'm pretty sure that this cover wasn't that time or place, though.

I took these sketches through photoshop to block out what I'm talking about, so you might get a better idea of what was going through my head when I was drawing these designs. It was a quick digital overlay, but you get the idea.