Drawing & Digital Art

My favorite comic art reference books.

Hey Hey all! I wanted to share the following art books from some of my favorite comic book artist. If your a comic book artist looking for some bad-ass reference books or a comic book art fan, the below three books are for you…

Icons(art by Jim Lee)

When I opened the box from Amazon I was so impressed. It’s a large-sized hardcover, full of amazing art by Jim Lee. It only covers his career outside of marvel though. It has amazing art of Batman, Superman, Wonder woman, WILD C.A.T.S and more. It shows lots of pencils inks and full-color pages. As an artist and art fan I was instantly humbled after flipping through the pages.

What I found great about this book (past its quality and price) is all the great art examples I could reference. If I open the book I get lost in time basking in its greatness.

The Marvel art of Joe Quesada

This poor book had the privilege of sitting in the box while I drooled over Icons by Jim Lee. Once I pulled it out I flipped though it quickly and went back to Icons. Over time I started feeling guilty that I had disrespected Joe Quesada and I returned to it. This is an hardcover book as well with great references in perspective and some great art, but in the end Joe and Jim are two totally different artist. The problem I had with Joe’s book was I was never a huge Daredevil or Avengers fan. I was quickly realizing I was a fan of his Ghost Rider and Azrael/Batman work. The good news is there is a expanded edition with more heroes, linked below!

Art of Marc Silvestri

This is a soft cover or hard cover with more amazing art. Marc seems to be some sort of artist and super ambassador as he has the only art book with Image, DC and Marvel art all in one. From Spawn, Batman and Superman to Wolverine and the Fantastic Four. Oh.. and of course his Image titles Cyber Force and Darkness. Very good book and a great price!

In the end, they are great books to look at for art style, perspective, color and so much more.

Perspective Basics

I had never invested a ton of time into learning perspective and learning it to an acceptable level over the years has been a challenge. So I started on my journey of understanding, 1 point, 2 point, 3 point perspectives and what tools are out there that can help and guide me. Here are the results of my research. I hope it saves you some effort.

My top recommendation for beginners: “Perspective for Comic Book Artists” after seeing some solid reviews on it I snapped it up. What caught my attention was a review from a art major who said he learned more from the book then in his art classes.  It is a excellent book and teaches you to think a certain way when taking on the challenge of a scene.

Click to view it on amazon.

If you are digital and creating comics: Clip Studio Pro is a great starting point and has perspective grids at such a great price! I have upgraded to the full version, it is worth every penny.

Check it out on Amazon!

Already have a base knowledge of perspective? “Vanishing Point: Perspective for Comics from the Ground Up”. I have not totally dived into it, but looks insane and take about a sphere based perspective… brain melted at that point.

Check it out on amazon!

Drawing Dynamic Comics by Andy Smith really knocked it out of the park with this book. It is the Swiss army knife of comic drawing and has a few pages on perspective.

Click to view it on Amazon!
Here are some of my favorite utubes….

This youtube from Drawing Tutorials Online is a great starting point video. You can also find a ton of good pod casts by this art teacher on his site or on youtube.

Paper Mate, SharpWriter mechanical pencils RoCk!

I draw with mechanical pencils and over the past few years ended up using Bic’s .7 2H disposables, as it was what I saw at Staples. Even though with every minute of detailed work SNAP, a lead has broken it was tortured I accepted from my love of drawing. Accepting the problem I would pound on its end advancing the lead and move on. It had become a way of life. UNTIL NOW! I ended up discovering Paper Mate mechanical pencils about a month ago and they still snap now and then but something about this pencil makes the lead way stronger. The lead strokes are as fine as needed. The one down fall is the eraser, like a person running its first marathon it wears out fast(though it works great). But HEY who really cares I got tons of erasers.

The can be bought on Amazon in small to big packages, links below…

Best bang for the buck on Amazon a box of 36
10 pack on 4 dollars! Click to see on Amazon!

Use official comic boards when creating comic book storyboards and cover art!

If you want to be a comic book artist be like a pro and use comic boards, especially if you want to sell your work.

I have had the pleasure of working and creating comics for a lot of years and I will never forget walking into the comic store and seeing a set of Blue Line Pro comic boards and thinking, what the heck are these? I researched it an was very poor at the time, but the next day bought all they had, why?

Have you ever looked at a comic page and went, damn look at the detail! This is because they don’t draw on 8×11 or A4 paper they draw on a type of bristol paper called comic boards at 11×17, which has the defined lines to guide the artist to proper North American art size of 10×15 . The art is drawn at this large size then shrunk down to fit a comic page, giving it great detail. I would never use any other type of paper for storyboards.

Comic art boards are important because….

  • They are way more durable, meant to absorb ink and deal with erasing better.
  • It takes a bit to get use too, but you will create better more detailed art.
  • The boards have no printable blue lines to guide you. I have dealt with a ton of artist and when I pay for work and get art not fitting correctly it cost me time to fix, and gives you a bad reputation.
  • When you present your art it will give it more of a wow factor and fans like to buy artist boards.
  • You can use the same boards to create 11×17 art for your posters or cover art. For cover art always think of where the comics logo and details will go, a good rule of thumb is to have a space of 3.5 inches at the top with no primary art details.

I use to have to run all over to comic shops and order boards. We are all so lucky you can buy stuff online. Here are some links on amazon. When you click and buy via the links below you help WhiteFire comics it is win for us both…

Premiere (Strathmore 300) Smooth Comic Book Art Boards. Not available in Canada.

Premiere (Strathmore 300) Smooth Comic Book Art Boards.
Click to view on Amazon

Canson Comic Book Art Boards Pad with Preprinted, Non-Reproducible, Blue Lines, 150 Pound, 11 x 17 Inch, 24 Sheets.

Click to view on Amazon

My favorite portfolio holder for my boards, I have one for each comics art. Keeps my art organized, safe and displays well at cons.

My favorite portfolio holder for boards.
Click to view on Amazon

Canson Foundation Series Create Your Own Comic Book Kit: 10 Art Boards, 2 Cover, 2 Sketch, 4 Layout, 20 Trading cards, and 3 Sakura Pens, 11 17 Inch.

Click to view on Amazon

My Experience with publishing digital comics… so far… Part 1: Comixology

NOTE: Comixology has now been absorbed into amazon.

It is a popular topic out there, all us interdependent comics creators trying to understand where to focus and what can we do with the digital version of our comic boos and what can you expect in the experience. This article is all about Comixology.

The most popular, well known choice I think is .to publish your comics to Comixology, we think.. our comic book will be show cased to the world, with Marvel and DC ones, WOOT! The reality is that the Submit part of Comixology is amazing, yet is all about them ONLY accepting quality comic books. Because of this you may end up wasting your time or can take a long time to get approved (it took 6 months in my case). Here are a few surprises I ran into trying to meet their standards…

  • There are PDF quality guidelines, requiring you to provide a high quality PDF. I always like to say “I am a Graphics Technician by trade.” (got the Collage certificates on my wall.) But even with this knowledge I still submitted a few comic frames not meeting the Comixology standards. This caused the delay of the product getting published. But they provided great detail on the issues.
  • Writing and text quality, they actually check your use of grammar and text quality and care about the font used. Of course I got caught here too.
  • Marketing, the are not gonna push your comic book, you have to do it! Your happiness about being in the same place as Marvel and DC could make you cry as Comixology is a sea of comics, people need to know what they are looking for, odds are they know Spiderman, The Avengers, Batman… not “Jimmy the Mighty”.

Now take a deep breath… here is a link to their submission requirements… https://support.comixology.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1302915-please-read-prior-to-submitting-your-pdf-file-

Some other things to take away that could be subjective….

  • I am not a fan of their tech support. I asked some simple questions about how I get paid and it was a waste of time as I am in Canada and they seemed to say what I found on the support forum over and over, not actually answering my question. For your leaning pleasure, here is their details… https://support.comixology.com/customer/portal/articles/1021464-how-will-i-get-paid-and-how-often-
  • You need to create a “Series” and “Company” profile containing Graphics and text. An example of my Forsaken Future one …
    https://www.comixology.com/The-Forsaken-Future/comics-series/81718?ref=cHVibGlzaGVyL3ZpZXcvZGVza3RvcC9saXN0L3Nlcmllc0xpc3Q
  • You do get sales information under “Submit’ in the form an Excel file. Took me forever to figure this out. The link is top right when signed into “Submit”.
  • In a year of doing NO Marketing on my side, Comixology did not sell one issue on its own.
  • It was a lot of work to meet their standards but now I can create a PDF I can submit to any other place like Indy Planet.
  • They offer a DMZ option, still researching this stuff, but I selected it as on as it would protect my comics from theft. Not sure if that makes readers mad ;-).

As well here is the authority on Comixology talking about “Submit” …

Comment below so I know to continue on with these types of posts!

WhiteFire Comics at Hal-Con 2016 photos and review.

1

I had a big goal this last year to shrink my booth and make it portable and scale, I think the mission is accomplished, It was tight behind but I pulled it off!

After a few years of setting up shop at Ottawa Comic Con I had decided it was time to mix things up and try a new convention. My new challenge? Take on the biggest geek-fest in the Atlantic provinces Hal-Con, which just happens to be located in my home province of Nova Scotia, Canada. The “Hal” part of Hal-Con is a take on the the city I was born in “Halifax”. I planned for a year with the task shrinking my booth to not be as grand(but still cool) being critical, then invested a ton of time to get 3 of my comics published. After teaching a local print company about color calibration, I was armed with the “The Forsaken Future” number one and two and a flip comic of “Gabriel – Hand of God” and “Quint”, To get me to my promised land I rented a Grand Caravan as my trusted warhorse and loaded my gear, and hit the road. The sixteen hour drive from Ottawa, Ontario to Halifax, Nova Scotia went well as we broke the trip up with with what seems to be the most popular stop-over spot of Edmustron, New Brunswick.

I ended up with a great deal on a Hilton Suites & something in Halifax that was blocks away from the Scotiabank Centre, and after transporting my gear. Finally I got to setting up my booth with the help of my sister and nephew…then I noticed something was missing at my booth… The power outlets to plug in the 47 inch TV. I had just lugged cross country with a huge stand. It was the main reason I had drove(16 hours each way) over flying(1.5 hours each way). I had confirmed I as suppose to have power via email multiple times, so I continued to set-up with my side-kicks help(suspecting villainy). Then stalked Hal-con staff and tracked down someone in “charge” (power joke) not it was no it was not Electro!. The all powerful one told me I would have power by the morning and refuted if I will not have power “please let me know so I could remove the TV from being in the way”, as it was tight behind the booth(and I am a heavy weight not a lightweight), I then again was promised I would have it. The morning of the convention came and guess what, I had no power. This was very disappointing as I had put great effort to get the TV to the convention and significant effort in to creating a slide show(that nobody would see). I counted on the TV to create interest. Of course the Hal-con staff member explained they had unexpected issues and then added a Canadian “Sorry” multiple times. All good!   Continue reading →

A cheap way to create your own card set using Vistaprint and a paper trimmer.

I am always looking for different ways to do things, this week I was exploring how I can reprint or create a new WhiteFire Comics card set. I ended up finding a cheap way to do this by using Vistaprint and a bit of elbow grease on a paper trimmer. In a nutshell, what a discovered was that Vistaprint has an oversized postcard that can be print on thicker stock and on these oversized postcards you can fit 4-up standard collector cards(2.5x 3.5 inches).

cards

What the front page looked like in CorelDRAW X7 4-up. The lines through the middle are the cuts I had to do(they have arrowheads). The other cut-lines are done by Vistaprint.

Here is a breakdown of the process…

  1. Create your cards and art in a layout software, I use CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X7. Keeping print bleed in mind. Link to what bleed is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleed_(printing)
  2. Layout your cards to the Vistaprint oversized postcard size of Width 2135×1535 that includes the bleed. 4-up see the graphic. You will need a back and front graphic/page.
  3. Go through the Vistaprint process and make sure to upgrade to the paper stock.
  4. Once you receive the order you cut the postcards into four typical trade cards. In my case, I used a paper trimmer I bought at Staples years ago.
  5. BLAM! Now you can make your own card sets and print low numbers or high numbers of sets as long as you don’t mind doing some cuttings.

Continue reading →

Some of my favorite drawing videos from YouTube.

The below uTube is a playlist of the sketching/art videos I have favorited. To select which one plays in the video section pick the playlist button and then you can choose. The video are….

– Dynamic Figure Drawing.
– How to Draw Interesting poses.
– Placing characters into Perspective.
– How to draw relaxed hands.
– How to Create a successful comic using Manga Studio.
– Explosions.
– How to shade drawing 3 different ways.
– How to apply textures.
– How to render concept art – adding color.

Hope they save you some time and helps you out ;-)!
Doran

A good “POINT” on placing a subject in a frame/panel of a comic book page.

I thought I would share, I was having trouble placing the comic bubbles on my pages and I quickly learned…

One third of a panel/frame should be dead space for story text. What is suggested in the below referenced book by Andy Smith is that each panel be divided in to 3 by 3 squares. Then place your subject matter, the subject should never be centered to the frame/panel(if text is required). This can avoid a ton of pain down the road as adding text is the last stage. A green artist can mess up a project if this is not understood.

Taming space for the comic bubbles can be a chore, now go look at a comic to see the hidden science. Knowing is half the battle G.I JOE!

Drawing Dynamic Comics by Andy Smith
ISBN-10: 0823003124
ISBN-13: 978-0823003129

Example 1 of how to frame a comic book panel with room for text.