The Best Offense is a Good...Weight Distribution

I had just drawn a pin-up of Green Lantern, and wanted to do another. So I went back to a sketchbook page with lots of different pose ideas roughed out and saw this one. I sketched it out at 6"x9", and scanned it in. Once I started pencilling it out on its full size, I started to feel like the image didn't have enough energy or power to it.

My first thought was that it was a matter of line work, and that it might be solved as I draw it out. But just in case, I set up my camera and struck the pose with some energy behind it (quick movements and flexing muscles--how the character would theoretically be moving).

At first, the result frustrated me. When taking the picture, I put my weight on the wrong foot and the pose was completely inaccurate. Then I realized that my photo was better than my drawing.

The original pose is actually not a bad or incorrect pose. The problem was with the fact that I was trying to communicate energy and power, and that pose wasn't doing it. It's because the weight was distributed on the back leg, rather than the front one. The layman might not think that an important issue, but ask any dancer, athlete, or fighter, and they will tell you that distributing weight on one foot versus the other changes a lot. One of the main things that weight distribution effects is direction. You can't move in any direction without putting your weight towards that direction. In this case, Green Lantern is blasting an energy bolt out of his power ring. I want him to look like he's making a powerful attack. With his weight pushed back, he looks like he's defending or retreating, whereas with it pushed forward, he's really moving forward. This pose is essentially a punch. An energy blast from the hand will have more power behind it if the body is a part of that blast.

You Have to Admit: It Sells.

Trends come and go. In my very few years of life, even I have seen people's 15 minutes of fame rise and fall. For anyone getting into any form of entertainment, this idea must be evident in their minds. What is popular today will change in a week, a month, a year.

That being said, anyone getting into any form of entertainment should pay serious attention to the trends of their time. Regardless of whether they themselves like those trends or not, they have to admit that popular things sell better than unpopular things.

Take for example, comic book creator Jim Lee. He is easily the most popular superhero comic artist of the day. He isn't producing anything now that I know of, but many popular artists that are producing mimic his style in various ways. When he does a comic--or even just a cover--that comic WILL sell.

Lately, I've taken this fact into account. I would never say that Lee is my favorite artist or that he's a comics master, but I have to admit that his art looks really cool. After paying close attention to what he does, I've decided that it's in his rendering (adding of details through shadow, line, or texture) that he interests fans. I have a--loosely--similar drawing style to him, so I've begun to make attempts at mimicking some of his methods. This example is part of a Green Lantern pin-up that I pencilled.

Disclaimers:

1) Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's good.

2) Just because it's popular doesn't mean it will fit with your particular style.

3) Copying someone else's art isn't okay. If that artist is popular, people will totally see that your copying.

I'm on a BOAT!

Backgrounds are often treated as just that: backgrounds. Simply the background against which the story is taking place. Oftentimes, comic creators are tempted to go with very average locales: an office building, a house, a park, etc. Sometimes, the story calls for it, and it works for the way the plot progresses.

But I think that a lot of potential is missed here. One unique quality in many comics outside the US is the attention to environments. Many times, the camera is pulled out a bit more to reveal where the characters are, and the locales are far more unique and interesting. This is often the result of treating environments as characters themselves. I used to think that paying too much attention to backgrounds would distract the reader from the characters, but then I read Osamu Tezuka's "Buddha," and then I changed my mind.

My drawing here is an unfinished panel (what's left is mostly just shading in various areas). It's the first panel of the scene, and I used the down-shot not to create isolation but to display where exactly the characters were. Since I lived most of my life land-locked, I didn't know anything about boats. So the research was enormous, because I knew I needed some very specific details about this scene. Not only did I look at pictures of docks and boats, but also the way other artists did similar scenes (Leonard Starr and Al Williamson, particularly).

Gridlock!

First off, there is a difference between copying another artist's work, and doing a 'study' of it. When someone copies an artist's original work, they are doing just that: copying. Sometimes this is done illegally and without the original artist's knowledge/approval. The copier might even advertise it as their own original work. This does happen a lot, and it's a shame, because I wish people could be responsible. Doing a study of another artist's work is a very good practice for an artist to do. When drawing, painting, sculpting, etc., the artist is looking very closely at every square centimeter of the piece. A good artist knows their own work incredibly intimately. Because of this inherent close attention to the smallest details, it is good for an artist to try and recreate another artist's piece. It'd be one thing to simply look at the piece, but recreating it brings that intimate knowledge too. This is very helpful, because if the original artist is one that inspires the new one, there is no measure to what an artist can learn by doing a study.

One method of doing a study is by setting up a simple grid over the original piece. For my example, I was drawing a bookmark for someone, which was a recreating of "Saint John the Baptist" by Caravaggio. I put up the grid in photoshop, and drew one of the same size on my paper. Instead of looking at the picture as one whole image, I looked at each square as an image in and of itself. This helps the artist because it taps into the abstract/creative centers of the brain (which we generally want to use), instead of using the more rationally-based centers of the brain, which would perceive this image simply as a young man. Looking at each square individually also helps make the study more exact. It's simply easier to figure out the exact placement of the shoulder when the image is 1"x1" instead of 2"x7".