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I'm a comic artist, here's some of my stuff!
JordanLCook
Chicago,ILRegistered User regular
Chicago,ILRegistered User regular
I've been a fan of PA for years, but never checked out their forums. Lo and behold, an artist's corner! Since I fancy myself a comic artist, I thought maybe I'd post some of my work and hopefully get some feedback. Being manga inspired for the most part, I realize my style isn't for everyone but exposure is never a bad thing. Thanks to anyone who checks these out!
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Stylistically, you cut up "real manga" in a way that I am pleased with. I love to see the schools of comic art meet in uncommon ways.
I'd be interested to battle [thread] your character under the condition that the fight center on... *dum-duh-Dah* Table tennis.
I hope this doesn't mean you want clicks and asspats and not actual critique...?
Anyway I don't see francium's problem with establishing shots? I.e. panels 1 and 2? In fact kudos for adding them; anchoring a setting gets short shrift too often. That being said your dude looks way off balance in panel 2.
These have some nice dynamism but could really do with some greater line-width variation to pop elements out into the foreground, out of your busy backgrounds, & suggest light source since you're not toning at all.
Welcome to the AC!
Lol I'm never against clicks and/or asspats but genuine feedback is what I was looking for as well, so thanks for your reply! The reason I said that is because more often then not when I'm looking for critique of my work from strangers, especially on the internet, they rarely look past the fact that it reminds them of manga. Sometimes that's a good thing...sometimes not so much. So it was just fair warning, Because it does suck when someone who just doesn't understand gives a negative critique.
Hmm funny you should say that, because i never really thought it before but I guess they are the weaker panels... I struggle with backgrounds and there's a lot of background there so that's probably what's throwing you off.
Lol. Thanks for the reply man!
The energy and loose feeling to the comic pages are nice, though. I hope you keep posting!
I would strive for more elegant illustrations, that is, not too much and not too little. Right now, there's just an excessive amount of detail. Some simplification would make your panels much easier to read. You need places to give your readers eye a rest, use the inks to guide their eye through the art. Here's a crude paintover of your second page to show you what I mean, although I would take it even farther if I were you — getting rid of unnecessary textures and details and adding a few more solid black areas.
You can check out the inking chapter in How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. It addresses the issue of how much ink is too much ink in greater detail.
There are styles that don't use line weight. But that is mostly animation, I haven't any issue with it here.
The thing about big panels, is that they slow the eye down. Small panels don't. (in theory) so if you are married to the idea of establishing the sick location for a BA kick boxer I think that is fine. You just have to be sensitive of what your compositions are doing to the readers eyes.
I'm still excited about the work.
P.S. +1 to nibcromb for taking the time to do that .gif
Yes, I'm still working on improving my inking skills...thanks for the tutorial, I'll definitely check it out! It's funny you bring up studying outside my comfort range: A few years ago I went through a "I love Rembrandt" phase and thought I'd pursue realistic oil painting and drawing, I wasn't too bad at it (NOWHERE near the level of the master of course), and it has ever so slightly influenced my manga style, but the manga aspect is still overwhelming, which of course like you mentioned, is because it's my comfort zone. It's been my love for years and years and is a hard habit to break, but your absolutely right and I should explore my Rembrandt passion some more, and maybe discover something new as well.
And I will for sure keep posting! I'll be working on coloring the 3rd piece I posted today, and my coloring skills DEFINITELY need critique and advice. Not to mention everyone seems so cool here.
Holy mother of god you made my comic page a gif! And improved it! Thanks, dude. That's too cool, I can't get over that.
It's true, I sometimes get caught up in the process of drawing so much it borders on OCD. I keep trying to make it look as good as I think I can, and forget that less is sometimes more. I'll totally take what you've said into a account moving forward.
A running theme of mine is whenever I do a panel that's just scenery it's to establish time passing. You're right though, in this case it also pans down to set up the next panel...perhaps not so well. I didn't have a problem with it before, but now that you mention it it does kind of bug me.
And yes nibcromb is a boss.
Somehow overlooked this when I made my previous post, and It's true. I should've tilted his torso forward a bit more...dammit.
Thanks again everyone!
Jordan's approaching this from an (aforementioned) Akira Toriyama, Masashi Kishimoto, Eiichiro Oda angle. The problem with the images isn't specifically lineweight or spot blacks (neither of which this drawing style absolutely needs for the inking to be a success), it's detail not providing a focus for the action of the panel. I'm going to double agree with Nib! His paintover illustrates issue, but it doesn't really address the core failing of the inking: fear of white. When working with a style that incorporates hatching like this, you have to learn to accept that not hatching areas is more correct than hatching areas, and that fields and areas that are white are instrumental in making the reader know where to look and for them to better understand what's happening in the panel at a glance. Specifically, you need to show us what's important by showing us a hierarchy of detail that increases detail on areas we're supposed to be looking at. You should look at the works of those artists with a critical eye and think about why and where they place hatching, what it accomplishes, and why places that are blank are blank.
It also looks like this is all technical pen? It's not that I'd say lines need to be thicker so much as certain lines (the hatching, speed lines, distant details) could be a lot thinner. Tech pens aren't really capable as getting as thin as a nib (specifically a g-pen nib). If you really want to capture the look of manga hatching, that's something worth exploring.
I'd say a more pressing concern, here, is the lazy perspective. You can see it in the house and the street behind it, and a lot more in the pages you didn't post. Doing those buildings right will go a long way in convincing the reader your world is believable. Seeing a 2-dimensional cardboard-cutout house makes the reader reexamine all of the other details like the texture and shapes of the trees and such. Which is a shame, because I think the cartooning really works in most places. If you did cartoony houses in vaguely correct perspective--treating the houses like characters, instead of backgrounds you don't want to draw because they're boring--your entire comic will get ten times better.
And a second pressing concern being the choreography of the action. The jump straight up from right in front of the tree, into a spin into a straight-on kick doesn't really flow logically. As for what work to look at to get a good idea of choreography, I'd suggest Yoshihiro Togashi's Hunter X Hunter. Its battle scenes focus on clarity of action and smart layouts/shots which I really think you could learn a lot from.
You make a lot of good points, hard to argue with any of them. I agree with your first paragraph, I need to work on my inking, and to use your term "hierarchy of detail". Definitely gonna have that term in mind moving forward for sure.
I have been using technical pens for the most part, yes. I've been wanting to switch to nibs for a long time but I have yet to find the right one. The few nibs I've tried haven't felt right to me...maybe it's just a learning curve issue, but either way i found myself switching back to technical pens, somewhat reluctantly. I'll look into the nibs i have lying around hopefully they're g-pen nibs...if not I'll look into getting some. I've been wondering about what manga artists specifically use to ink. I knew they used nibs, i just didn't what kind, so thanks!
My background work/perspective could be better yes. That's always been my weak point, and with this project I've been trying very hard to overcome that. I actually have made improvements, but there's still a ways to go.
I'm actually gonna disagree on what you mentioned about the choreography. Of course, this could very well be the opinion of a biased artist talking about his own stuff, but the character is first practicing a punch, then a spinning back kick; and I thought I did a pretty good job depicting that. I see what you mean, however: the punch doesn't "become" a spinning back kick, it's more like two separate moves one after the other, so it doesn't flow like maybe it should.
As far as Hunter x Hunter: I'm a big fan! I actually own the first 7 or so volumes, and I've been following the chapters on and off for like a decade (No lie, i used to live in France and they used to be way ahead of the US in manga publishing). So i see what you mean. Togashi can slack off at times but his talent is indisputable.
Anyways, another interesting comment. Thanks for your reply! Oh yeah and I checked out Alpha Flags. Great work man!
You make a lot of good points, hard to argue with any of them. I agree with your first paragraph, I need to work on my inking, and to use your term "hierarchy of detail". Definitely gonna have that term in mind moving forward for sure.
I have been using technical pens for the most part, yes. I've been wanting to switch to nibs for a long time but I have yet to find the right one. The few nibs I've tried haven't felt right to me...maybe it's just a learning curve issue, but either way i found myself switching back to technical pens, somewhat reluctantly. I'll look into the nibs i have lying around hopefully they're g-pen nibs...if not I'll look into getting some. I've been wondering about what manga artists specifically use to ink. I knew they used nibs, i just didn't what kind, so thanks!
My background work/perspective could be better yes. That's always been my weak point, and with this project I've been trying very hard to overcome that. I actually have made improvements, but there's still a ways to go.
I'm actually gonna disagree on what you mentioned about the choreography. Of course, this could very well be the opinion of a biased artist talking about his own stuff, but the character is first practicing a punch, then a spinning back kick; and I thought I did a pretty good job depicting that. I see what you mean, however: the punch doesn't "become" a spinning back kick, it's more like two separate moves one after the other, so it doesn't flow like maybe it should.
As far as Hunter x Hunter: I'm a big fan! I actually own the first 7 or so volumes, and I've been following the chapters on and off for like a decade (No lie, i used to live in France and they used to be way ahead of the US in manga publishing). So i see what you mean. Togashi can slack off at times but his talent is indisputable.
Anyways, another interesting comment. Thanks for your reply! Oh yeah and I checked out Alpha Flags. Great work man!
I only recently started using nibs of any variety lately for the same reason as you. The nibs section in most art stores is just a wealth of all the wrong tools for comic inking. So many calligraphy nibs. Just head for the saji or the g (or order them online or something) and you'll probably like one of them as a main nib. I found there was a bit of a learning curve, but much less than learning to ink by brush. More fear of scratching the wrong direction and ruining the nib or the paper, I think. After a while you learn to trust that they're pretty sturdy and forgiving.
re: the choreography. The only thing that really throws me off is how he goes from a spin to a kick that's totally without spin. The drawings themselves are great, and if the spin speedlines weren't there, I wouldn't question the motion.
Also, I hope I don't come off as being too down on your backgrounds. It's a good start.
Hmm I see what you mean about the speed lines. I suppose if i were to remove them though, I might as well remove the panel completely. The lines are an implication that he does a 360º turn, but his stance in the panel could throw you off.
No sweat, about the background critique. It's true I need to improve and that's all there is to it.
The composition itself is a bit of a mess to boot. If you applied a black/white silhouette over the characters it would be virtually unrecognizable. Strangely this is an issue that a lot of professional and successful manga artists have had as well, so take that into consideration.
But putting everything together into a composition means making some tough decisions about what's most important and why, so the viewer's eye is drawn to where it needs to go in order to read what's going on as soon as possible (like Toji was saying, establishing a hierarchy of detail.)
So looking at the latest picture there, most of the characters are given equal amounts of detail, and roughly the same level of tone- if I walk to the other end of my room and look at it, most of it kinda blurs into a single grey tone. I assume the character in the bottom center is supposed to be the main character, but I only know that because I've seen the previous pages- standing on it's own, he's not the guy my eye goes to first- I'm more drawn to large black areas of various character's hair, because they contrast with the large areas of finicky detail present everywhere else. This probably isn't what you're going for, so at this point (or really, on your next picture), you've got to take a couple steps back and question why that's happening, and how you can change it.
Here's a quick couple of things to think about playing with when you're sketching out a composition, and kind of showing where your head should be at in the initial lay-in stage. If I took these characters as a simple series of individual objects just copy pasted next to each other, it'd look like the first picture- pretty flat. But engaging them at a more abstract level- treating them as a whole- with a handful of pretty simple concepts I can really get a lot more out of them.
(Ignore the style- I know it's not close to what yours is, but the principles here apply regardless of style.)
Before launching straight into your next drawing, try thumbnailing out a couple ideas first so you can work out what your priorities are going to be as you go on to the finished drawing. A good example of thumbnailing would be something like this:
http://deadoftheday.blogspot.com/2010/07/perspiration-composition.html
You can see that even though Bama is dealing with a TON of detail, it all stays readable and coherent- even reduced to a teeny tiny size- because he picked out where his areas of highest contrast and detail were going to be before going in and painting it.
So if you were to do another group shot like this again, you might start off with trying to figure out how to make that main character stand out- you could throw a shadow off him of the other characters to make some contrast, you could set him against people with darker clothing, you could give him a stronger light source with more large, distinct areas of black and white than the rest of the characters, you could make him more detailed and make everyone else less detailed, etc, etc. There's no one solution there, it's putting some significant thought into these issues that's the important bit.
If nothing else , every 10 minutes or so just take a walk across your room and look back at it and gauge how readable it is from that distance. If you can follow what's going on with it from 20 feet away, it's probably a solid composition. If it's unclear, it's time to start doing some thinking on why that is.
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Hey bud, I quite like this first page. The style is quite unique and I like the east meets west art style you've got going on there. To me, it looks to be a mix and inspiration of Japanese manga as well as western cartoons, the style reminds me of Astro Boy. Now... to be honest I think there's a little too much going on with the backgrounds, they should be a bit simpler and less detailed. If this comic was done by digital means, you could use blur to create cool focusing effects.
For example on the first page, the character in his stance would be nice and sharp, while the background has a soft blur to it. This can't really be achieved by traditional pen and ink means, but I think just drawing the backgrounds simpler might look a lot nicer and cleaner. It would sure be quicker too, I can't imagine how long it must have taken you to draw the trees alone!
On the second page, I can tell what's going on but I'll be honest, it was difficult. It's because of the lines, it feels very distracting and in a way, a little disorientating. I think you don't need 'em, may be better off with less, or perhaps no lines. As I said before, it may save you some time.
Awesome work regardless, great style.