rough stuff #10
DESCRIPTION
ROUGH STUFF #10 (100 pages, $6.95) gets deep into the minds and processes of the top artists in comics, with interviews, articles, never-before-seen penciled pages, sketches, layouts, roughs, and unused inked pages from throughout comics history—plus critiques of newcomers’ work, and more! This issue features an interview with the amazing RON GARNEY, showing copius examples of his sketchwork, complete with Ron’s comments. There’s also art- and commentary-filled features on ANDY SMITH, MICHAEL JASON PAZ, and MATT HALEY, showing how their work evolves from concept and rough, into finished form. Plus: Excerpts from the new book “ALEX RAYMOND, His Life and Art” by Tom Roberts! SEQUENTIAL ART 101, with secrets of teaching comic art by Rough Stuff editor and pro inker BOB McLEOD, plus a new cover by GARNEY and McLEOD, a “Rough Critique” of a promising newcomer, and more! Edited by Bob McLeod.TRANSCRIPT
No . 10FA L L 2 0 0 8$ 6 .9 5
Celebratingthe ART
of CreatingComics!
Batm
anTM
&©
2008
DCCo
mics
.
1 82658 27766 6
83
FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF 1
Volume 1, Number 10Fall 2008
Celebrating the ART of Creating Comics!
EDITORBob McLeod
PUBLISHERJohn Morrow
DESIGNERMichael Kronenberg
PROOFREADERSJohn Morrow and Eric Nolen-Weathington
COVER ARTISTSRon Garney and Bob McLeodPencil scan courtesy Gabe Fieramosco
CIRCULATION DIRECTORBob Brodsky, Cookiesoup Productions
SPECIAL THANKSRon GarneyMatt HaleyJason PazTom RobertsAndy SmithNeal YamamotoBill RienholdJason KeithKevin NowlanGabe Fieramosco
ROUGH STUFF™ is published quarterly byTwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive,Raleigh, NC 27614. Bob McLeod, Editor. JohnMorrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: ROUGH STUFF,c/o Bob McLeod, Editor, P.O. Box 63, Emmaus, PA10849-2203. E-mail: [email protected]. Four-issue subscriptions: $26 Standard US, $36 FirstClass US, $44 Canada, $60 Surface International,$72 Airmail International. Please send subscriptionorders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the edi-torial office. Central cover art by Ron Garney andBob McLeod. Batman copyright DC Comics. Allmaterial © their creators unless otherwise noted.All editorial matter © 2008 Bob McLeod andTwoMorrows Publishing. ROUGH STUFF is aTM ofTwoMorrows Publishing. Printed in Canada. FIRSTPRINTING.
FEATURED ARTISTS26 Matt Haley
44 Jason Paz
54 Alex Raymond
67 Andy Smith
ROUGH STUFF FEATURE38 Sequential Art 101
Bob McLeod
ROUGH STUFF INTERVIEW3 Ron Garney
ROUGH STUFF DEPARTMENTS2 Scribblings From The Editor
Bob McLeod
22 Cover StoriesAndy Smith and Jason Paz reveal the process of creating a cover.
65 PreProArt by Jason Paz, Matt Haley, and Andy Smith, done before they turned pro.
75 Editor’s CornerSamples from editor Bob McLeod’s comic book career.
82 Rough CritiqueEditor Bob McLeod critiques an aspiring penciler’s sample page.
84 Rough TalkComments and opinions from our readers.
ISSN 1931-9231
Jim ClanceyRonald SonenthalGraham GossScott HawxhurstJordan MartinKenneth LiebElizabeth LeonardMelissa MuellerMatt McDonaldPennsylvania College ofArt & Design
courtesy Jim Clancey
INTERVIEW
RON GARNEYBy Bob McLeod
BOB McLEOD: You don’t look like the type of comicsnerd who would have been sitting alone in his roomdrawing all the time as a kid. How did you find timebetween chasing girls and playing sports todevelop your drawing?RON GARNEY: I think a lot of comicsnerds are going to take umbrage withthat statement!
McLEOD: Ha! No doubt. Ijust think many peoplehave a mental pictureof artists as not exactly“buff.”GARNEY: Seriously though,that’s tough to say. Iwasn’t always the “non-nerdy-looking” type, Isuppose. Where I grewup it was very rural, and backthen, there wasn’t the Internet,MTV or arcades to occupy a kid’s time.There were comics, records, monster magazinesand Star Trek.
McLEOD: That’s true. The Internetand video games today must use upa lot of the spare time of many kidswho might otherwise be drawing. I
myself played a lot of baseballand softball when I could
have been improving mydrawing. Did you play
sports very much?GARNEY: Neither
my mother nor stepfa-ther were into sports,
so when I played inschool I did so out ofmy own desire. Early onbefore my mother mar-ried my late stepfather,we moved around a lot,
then basically settled oneleven acres in the country in
the seventies, and all I had wasmy imagination, the outdoors
and my ability and desire todraw. There was literally
R on Garney has worked on JLA, Amazing Spider-Man, Civil War, Captain America,
X-Men, Silver Surfer, Hulk and other books. He’s a guy who likes to have fun,
and it comes through in his art. You can tell he’s having fun drawing. But as I
found out in this interview, he’s also a musician, actor, athlete and painter. I don’t know if there’s
anything he’s not good at, but if there is, he’s probably working on it!
R E N A I S S A N C E M A N
FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF 3
RON GARNEYThis was a sketch for afan at a convention ofSpider-Man in his newTony Stark createdarmor from CivilWar…
JIM CLANCYI got this from Ron atthe first NY Comic Con.It was done right afterthe Amazing Spider-Man issue that firstshowed the Iron Spidercostume came out. Iremember how cool itwas to get the sketch.The show was buzzingand one of the manyconversations wasabout the new Spidey.It was an easy choicein a commission to askfor.
BOB McLEODI like a slender, sinewySpidey, and it’s coolhow Ron was going fora trompe d’oeil effectwith the wall shadow.Up-lighting is such aneasy, effective way toheighten drama.
Spider-Man TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.
nothing I could even walk to for stimulus or to hang outwith friends regularly. My younger brother and I had eachother. I played sports as well in school, but in the downtime that’s what I would do.
McLEOD: Does your younger brother draw at all?GARNEY: No he doesn’t, but he is an engineer. He’svery technical. My late grandmother was an avid oil
painter however, and my earliest memories of drawingwere of her and my aunt teaching me to do Bugs Bunnyheads, and not long after that I was doing Batman andSuperman drawings.
McLEOD: So drawing and sports—did you have anyother hobbies or interests growing up?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 ofthose pursuits served a different pur-pose for my evolving personality. I stilldo all of those things. I write music,play piano and guitar, train in jiu-jitsuand boxing, ride my Harley, play tennisor lift weights, or hike. Now, it justhappens that I draw for a living. I had arock band for a while as well, and weplayed all over New Haven county andrecorded a couple CD’s, and that wassome of the most fun I ever had, andwe started developing quite a followingfor a while there. But it was just likethe “behind the music” stuff you seeon VH1. Too much drama and ego andthe band split up. I continue to writenew music and material and plan ondoing that again as well.
McLEOD: No kidding! I played thetrumpet in school, but I’ve alwaysthought writing music is pure magic.I’m even more impressed that you cando that than draw! I also play tennis.Otherwise I’d probably weigh 300pounds. And with boxing and jiu-jitsuand weights, it’s no wonder you’re in
RON GARNEYAny 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 Spider-
Man 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.Spid
er-M
an
TM
&©2008
Marvel
Ch
aracters,In
c.
4 ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008
FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF 5
such good shape. What formal training have you had?Did you go to art school or college?GARNEY: Yes, University of Southern Connecticut.
McLEOD: Where did you work right out of school?GARNEY: Well, I was a bouncer and bartender for awhile in college, and continued that trend right into themanagement of nightclubs after college. That’s where itbecame the most difficult to maintainmyself as an artist. Not only profession-ally, but socially.
McLEOD: When did you decide to tryto make a living as an artist?GARNEY: Well, I was always trying inthe eighties, and even had jobs as ateen doing murals and things in theseventies, but I started to get seriousabout it and comics between 1985and 1988. I had gotten interested inthe comics thing as a career by around1985 and started working on samplesand honing skills in that area. That wasa very unique time of my life, however. Iwas working and living the life of avampire basically. Going to work at sixat night ’til four in the morning. It gotso bad that at the crack of dawn Iwould catch fire and have to sleepunder six yards of dirt. If I drove by acatholic church my eyeballs wouldstart to bleed… but, I digress.
McLEOD: Well, as long as you didn’tdrink blood.... A lot of artists workthrough the night and sleep during theday, but to work at another job like thatand then also try to draw must havebeen tough.GARNEY: I did have some art jobs:I worked for a women’s newspaper,doing illustrations and the like. I alsoacted in some theatre productions,was a waiter, and...
McLEOD: Acting? How was that foryou? Do you ever consider doing moreof that?GARNEY: Yeah, actually I loved it real-ly, but didn’t have the balls to pursue itthe way I would have liked. I acted in a
few plays and actually went back for a course a fewyears ago and really enjoyed it. It’s just having the time Isuppose with everything else going on in my life like fam-ily and work. Someday, though, I’d like to do local theatreagain.
McLEOD: So I was right. You were acting, playing musicand sports; you weren’t just sitting alone in your room
Spid
er-M
an
an
dIr
on
Man
TM
&©2008
Marvel
Ch
aracters,In
c.
FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF 19
Wolverin
eTM
&©2008
Marvel
Ch
aracters,In
c.
Cour
tesy
Jaso
nKe
ith 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 per-
spective. Being brave
with your choices and
challenging yourself
can lead to good
results, as I think this
page reflects.
Pencils: Ron Garney Color: Jason Keith
22 ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008
COVER STORIES
W hether a cover is inked or painted, it still needs to be approved in sketch form, then a finished drawingis done. But even after the sketch is approved, the artist may come up with a better idea and makesome 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 compo-
sition 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.
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.
FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF 23
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.
BOB McLEOD
Here we go again
with “…printed
from pencils…!”
And it looks fine!
But of course it
helps that Andy’s
also an inker, and is
just using a pencil
here instead of a
brush.Claw TM & ©2008 DC Comics.
26 ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008
MATT HALEYThe super-industrious Matt Haley
started out on STAR TREK at DC, then
did GHOST for Dark Horse, then went
back to DC for BIRDS OF PREY. He later became a
writer/artist, co-creating a number of comic series. He
was recently the artist and creative consultant for Stan
Lee’s WHO WANTS TO BE A SUPERHERO TV series.
F E A T U R E D A R T I S T
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 draw-
ing. I’m a long-time manga fan, but preferred
the naturalistic style to draw in until recently.
... 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 head-
space.
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!
FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF 27
MATT HALEY
Elseworld’s Finest:
Supergirl & Batgirl
Still my favorite DC
comic I’ve done.
My college room-
mate 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
someday.
MATT
HALEY
All
ch
arac
ters
©2008
DC
Com
ics
28 ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008
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—!
MATT
HALEY
BOB McLEOD
Well, my wife gives
me a hard time when I
do that…!
Spider-Woman TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.Supergirl and Power Girl ©2008 DC Comics
38 ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008
Well, 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,
trying to be constructive and show how to raise the page up to a more professional
level. Every page has its own problems, and every artist has different things to learn,
but there are many recurring problems I see in all of the sample pages.
SequentialBy Bob McLeod
The most important thing that is invariably lacking isthe figure drawing. You just have to draw a lot of figuresand memorize a lot of anatomy before you can draw goodfigures from your imagination, and then you still need tolearn how to make them move dynamically. There are alsoalways several problems with composition, many uniqueto comics and therefore new to illustration students, andcomic book storytelling techniques. And most youngartists don’t have much of a grasp of perspective. I do mybest to offer knowledgeable advice in my Rough Stuffcritiques, but I always wonder if the artists actuallyimprove after hearing my critique. Does it all sink in, or isit too hard to absorb all at once and change the wayyou’ve been doing things? I have this vision of them read-ing my critique and a light bulb flashes over their headand suddenly they’re able to draw great pages and go onto become superstars.
In reality, it usually takes a lot more than one critiqueto get someone up to that next level. They may not wantto make the effort to actually read those figure drawingbooks they have and practice drawing the manikin poses.They might not want to study and work at it becausethat’s too much like real work. So many artists just wantto draw Spider-Man, and they think drawing comicsshould be fun, not work. My own attitude at age 20 wasfrighteningly similar to that.
There were no schools I knew of teaching cartooningor comic art in 1969, and I was never able to find some-
BOB McLEODJordan Martin was
really the only one in
the class who nailed
the couch scene. It
has a lot of depth and
good characteriza-
tion, and I really like
the low camera
angle, putting us in
the room at their
height, not ours.
Cour
tesy
Jord
anM
arti
n
FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF 39
Art 101one to teach me how to draw comics, and never had areal critique. Even after I started renting space in NealAdams’ Continuity Studios, I never got one of Neal’s infa-mous, ego-shattering critiques (Neal was the top artist incomics at that time, and known for making wannabescry). The closest I came was when I first approached DCComics and then-art director Joe Orlando (of EC Comicsfame) told me I needed to go back to school and learnhow to draw! I wasn’t about to do that. Instead, I stub-bornly went back to my room and started cranking outmore sample pages. I learned most of what I know fromstudying other artists and through trial and error. Drawinghas always come easily to me, but it took me years to getcompetent at penciling superhero comics, which is why Idid mostly inking in the early years of my career. Unlikemost comic book pencilers today, I was not a superherocomic fan before I started in comics, and had intendedto draw for Disney or do a comic strip in the newspaper.I just wanted to draw humorous cartoons. But once Idecided to give comic books a try, I was willing to studyas hard as necessary and would have welcomed a roughcritique to show me the way.
So I now try to teach others what I’ve learned, andhopefully spare them those many frustrating years of trialand error. To that end, I recently began teaching as anadjunct instructor at the Pennsylvania College of Art &Design in Lancaster, PA, which I was very pleased tolearn is a very good art school, with an excellent staffand excellent students. In the fall semester of ’07 Itaught a class in “sequential imagery” (the fancy colle-giate term for drawin’ comics), and most of my studentswere juniors. Not all of them were even illustrationmajors, and when I had them draw figures with no refer-ence the first day of class, I realized I had my work cutout for me.
Most of them had talent, but it was very undevelopedwith regard to drawing comics. Their prior instruction hadmainly all been drawing from a model or from reference. Idon’t think they had ever been asked to draw figurestotally from their imagination, because most illustrationcareers don’t require that. It’s one thing to draw a figurewhile looking at a model. It’s quite another to remember
what a human looks like and draw it in dif-ferent poses and viewed from above orbelow with no reference! That was a new
BOB McLEODGraham Goss is an excellent artist with much more experience in painting than in inking. We
discussed whether splitting the explosion into two panels worked, and decided that it did. I was
impressed by the way all of the students were trying to break new ground in various ways,
rather than taking the easier, more obvious route.
Cour
tesy
Grah
amGo
ss
40 ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008
challenge for them. I frankly thought drawing a comicbook story page was going to just be too difficult forthem. Drawing comics requires being proficient in somany different areas. The job’s sort of a combination ofartist and movie director. There’s anatomy, dynamic figuredrawing, composition, perspective and storytelling, butthen there’s also lighting, camera angles, costuming,backgrounds (set design), lettering text and soundeffects, balloon design and placement, character design,panel layout, inking and coloring! How could I teach themall of that in just one semester? I decided I couldn’t. Iwould have to narrow the focus.
This was not a figure drawing class. There was simplynot enough time to work much on their figures. So Idecided I would concentrate mostly on layout and com-position, because that’s the real meat of the problem insequential art—not just drawing a single illustration, but
five or six or more illustrations working together on onepage as a unified, balanced composition to tell a story. Ibegan simply. I just asked them to draw two charactersinteracting in some way on a couch in a room showingtwo walls (hopefully to create some depth and perspec-tive). In spite of my initial concerns, I was actually quiteimpressed by many of their drawings. Their charactershad a lot of personality and they were trying to be inven-tive in presenting this simple scene, even though severalforgot (or ignored) my instructions and drew just onewall, creating very flat drawings. The best way to drawsomething like that is to show it from a 45-degree angle,not head-on, which looks flat.
Nevertheless, I was sufficiently impressed with theirabilities that I decided it was time for them to sink orswim, so I threw them into the deep end. I gave them thefirst page of a script by Randy Stradley from a Ghostcomic. I chose it simply because Martin Balcer had sentit to me along with his sample pages for my Rough
BOB McLEODScott Hawxhurst’s
bedroom page has
some problems with
anatomy and per-
spective, but his cam-
era movement, story-
telling and wash
tones are very effec-
tive. I really like what
he’s trying to do with
dramatic lighting. BOB McLEODJordan’s bedroom page still cracks me up. Just the way he uses flies
as the characters in such a deadpan manner is so funny. In contrast to
his humorous art, Jordan is very serious and all business when it
comes to promoting his art and is sure to go far.
Cour
tesy
Scot
tHa
wxh
urst
Cour
tesy
Jord
anM
arti
n
44 ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008
JASON PAZJason Paz is yet another talented
Filipino comic artist, born in Manila.
He was an Architecture Technology
student and worked as an illustrator for a top paper dis-
tributor before trying comics, and is just now starting to
gain recognition. I first noticed him when I came across a
magnificent illustration he did of a turtle!
F E A T U R E D A R T I S T
Su
perm
an©2008
DC
Com
ics
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
he saving them?
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.
FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF 45
JASON PAZ
The finished toned pages. I applied gray water-
color washes to a separate copy of each page.
I’m quite happy of the results but unfortunately I was not able to
be onboard for the entire run of the book because of conflicting
work schedules. Victor, the writer, was kind enough to under-
stand and proceeded with the project with a new artist.
JASON PAZ
The finished inked pages. I just blew up
the layouts to 11" x 17" size and used a
lightbox and worked directly in inks. I was inspired to
utilize the style of heavy blacks and shadows to con-
vey a dark and moody result.
JASON PAZ
These are the six
sequential page
layouts I did for an
independent comic
for Paperstreet
Comics.
46 ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008
54 ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008
ALEX RAYMONDThe great Alex Raymond has been an
enduring influence on generations of comic
artists, setting a very high standard that
comic artists have tried to meet ever
since. He’s best known for creating Flash Gordon in 1934. That
alone would have made him immortal, but he went on to also
create and draw SECRET AGENT X-9, RIP KIRBY, JUNGLE JIM,
TIM TYLER’S LUCK, and TILLIE THE TOILER.
The images on these pages are just a small sample from a
wonderful new book about Raymond by artist Tom Roberts
called ALEX RAYMOND—HIS LIFE AND ART. Tom also supplied
the comments for the images.
F E A T U R E D A R T I S T
TOM ROBERTSPreliminary study for Hard WorkWith the horizon line dividing thepicture plane in half, it is interest-ing to note and study Raymond’suse of perspective, and the gridsystem he uses to establish the dif-ferent planes on which the manand woman are standing.
BOB McLEODAn excerpt from Andrew Loomis’Figure Drawing For All It's Worthshows you how to do this on myweb site here: http://www.bobmcleod.com/loomisp40.gif
TOM ROBERTSPreliminary study for Grasshopper DanceThis image bears no major changes fromthe study to the finished piece. Obviously,Raymond felt the need to fully resolve allthe contrast between the elements beforestarting the finished version in ink wash.
The composition is very much in thestyle popularized by Albert Dorne, withthe figure in the foreground turning tolook at the reader, and therefore pullingthe reader into the scene as an addition-al participant.
All
scan
sco
urte
syTo
mRo
bert
s
FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF 55
TOM ROBERTSPreliminary 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 ROBERTSPreliminary 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.
56 ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008
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.
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.
FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF 65
PRE-PRO
Just how well could the pros draw before they starteddoing comics? Were they any better than you at age12? Maybe, maybe not. There’s also an important differ-
ence between drawing well from reference and pencillingcomics well from your imagination. This issue Jason Paz andMatt Haley offer a glimpse into their pasts.
JASON PAZ
I worked as an illustrator for a paper manufac-
turer here before, and these animal illustrations
were made for a cover design for their note-
books. 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.
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 val-
ues, achieved completely by crosshatching.
His tiger is equally impressive. You can see
more of Jason’s animal drawings in the
Rough Stuff section of my web site.
FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF 67
ANDY SMITHAndy Smith is a real dynamo. He’s
worked for Marvel, DC, Image, Acclaim
and CrossGen (where he was also an
editor and art director), as well as doing various commer-
cial jobs. He also wrote and illustrated the best-selling
DRAWING DYNAMIC COMICS and DRAWING AMERICAN
MANGA SUPER-HEROES published by Watson-Guptill.
F E A T U R E D A R T I S T
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 lay-
out. 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.
68 ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008
ANDY SMITHStormwatch #8 page 4 initial layoutsThis was my first layout for the splashpage in the danger room type setting.
ANDY SMITHStormwatch #8 page 4 revised layoutsI wasn’t happy with the female figure in the lower left cor-ner, she was just too flat on the page. I wanted more depthso I redrew her in a flying pose leading her into the scene. Ialso think it’s more dramatic.
ANDY SMITHStormwatch #8 page 4 finished pencilsYou’ll notice that there isn’t a robot on the layouts, that’s because I designed him on adifferent piece of paper and then lightboxed him off to the original board. Once thelayout was done I used my kneaded eraser to wipe away the pencils to where all thatwas left was a really faint image. I then go back over those with a HB lead to do myfinishes and rendering. The layout is the easier part for me and the finishing hasalways been the hard part. I think it’s because I have more fun doing layouts and fig-uring out the drawing and storytelling then putting the icing on the cake.
FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF 69
ANDY SMITH
The Atom #18 page 14 layout and pencils
Here is another example of my layouts and
full pencils.
ANDY
SMITH
BOB McLEOD
The finished pencils look more
impressive, but even though he
enjoys it more, I think the real
work is in the layout. That’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-
cessful page.
FALL 2008 • ROUGH STUFF 75
EDITOR’S CORNER
I ’m hoping we have some younger comics fans among our readership, and if so, they likely have no clue who Iam, since I haven’t been very active in comics for the last few years. So when I found myself a few pages shortthis 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. 9Some of the earliestwork I did, and the mostfun of my whole career,was for Marvel’s Crazymagazine. Then-editorMarv Wolfman was kindenough to give me myfirst freelance job. Thisis a page from a satirewe did of ApocalypseNow a couple yearslater called “ApocryphalNowland,” where theVietnam War became aDisney-type theme park.This is the type of work Ihad expected my wholecareer to be, but superheroes were fast begin-ning to dominate thecomics business, andthere just wasn’t enoughof this work to keep mebusy. I also felt my stylewas too derivative of myidol Mort Drucker, whichis why I never tried towork for Mad.
76 ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008
BOB McLEOD
Red Sonja Unpublished
Some time around 1980, I think, I wrote and pencilled a ten-
page Red Sonja story for the Savage Sword of Conan maga-
zine, 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.
BOBM
cLEOD
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
in the lower left.
BOB McLEOD
I always think upside-
down figures are interest-
ing. Especially in bikinis.
82 ROUGH STUFF • FALL 2008
ROUGH CRITIQUE
By Bob McLeod
T his issue we have a very cool Justice League sample page sent in by Neal Yamamoto. Neal, the first thing I noticeis that you’ve put in a lot of hard work on the backgrounds, which is very important, particularly on a samplepage. 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 seeseveral 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 thebackgrounds don’t blend between panels, making it hard for the readerto see what’s what. Inset panels should be like TV screens in a restau-rant, where they stand out clearly, not like small screens in front of largescreens at Circuit City, where they blend in. I added gutters aroundyour inset panels to make them stand out from the background panel. Ifonly 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 tobe more attractive. A face can be relatively correct and still look goofyor strange. Study how the artists you admire most draw chins, nosesetc. Learn to draw ears. They have a particular structure and they’reslightly lower on the head than you’re drawing them. Compare ourWonder Woman heads above. When drawing something such ascrossed arms, it helps to get in the pose yourself. If you cross yourarms, you’ll find that your fingers don’t reach so far around your arm,and your arms project forward rather than hang down, so foreshorten-ing is needed. And you (along with most everyone else working incomics) also need to study perspective. Establishing a horizon and find-ing vanishing points is very important, as I’ll demonstrate. Lets lookpanel by panel at some of these things.
In panel one, it’s good to have the roof line of the mansion be on adiagonal, but by tilting the horizon it appears that the house is not onlevel ground, especially since the trees are vertical. The house shouldalso be the focus of the panel, and by pushing it up and cropping itoff, the hill becomes the focus. You’d want to crop it like this if some-one were walking down the hill. You need to make the horizon level,and all horizontal lines should recede to a vanishing point (VP) on thehorizon (H). That’s how to know what angle to draw things like thesteps, which you’ve drawn sloping down severely on the left. Severallines on the house are also off, some of which I corrected. If you wantus to be gazing up at the mansion from the bottom of the hill, as itappears 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 mid-dle of the panel, so I enlarged the art to bring the house over more tothe right. That also gave me some white space at the right end of the
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©2008
DC
Com
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