rough stuff #8

FeaturingFeaturingAlex HorleyAlex Horley

Interview and Gallery

Ms.M

arve

l,Wa

span

dSca

rletW

itchT

M&

©20

08Ma

rvel

Char

acter

s,Inc

.

Rafael KayananRafael KayananNick CardyNick CardyTony DeZunigaTony DeZuniga

MIKE MAYHEWMIKE MAYHEW

N o . 8S P R I N G 2 0 0 8

$ 6 . 9 5Celebrating the ARTof Creating Comics!

18265827766

6

81

SPRING 2008 • ROUGH STUFF 1

Volume 1, Number 8Spring 2008

Celebrating the ART of Creating Comics!

EDITORBob McLeod

PUBLISHERJohn Morrow

DESIGNERMichael Kronenberg

PROOFREADERSJohn Morrow and Eric Nolen-Weathington

COVER ARTISTMike Mayhew

CIRCULATION DIRECTORBob Brodsky, Cookiesoup Productions

SPECIAL THANKSNick Cardy

Tony DeZuniga

Alex Horley

Rafael Kayanan

Mike Mayhew

Dominique Leonard

Gerald Forton

J.C. Mezieres

Albert Uderzo

Mike Murdock

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 Mike Mayhew. Allcharacters are copyright Marvel Comics. All materi-al © their creators unless otherwise noted. All edi-torial matter © 2008 Bob McLeod andTwoMorrowsPublishing. ROUGH STUFF is a TM of TwoMorrowsPublishing. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

FEATURED ARTISTS3 Nick Cardy

15 Tony DeZuniga

38 Alex Horley

51 Rafael Kayanan

ROUGH STUFF FEATURE26 Introduction to Belgian & French Comics

Dominique Leonard

ROUGH STUFF INTERVIEW66 Mike Mayhew

ROUGH STUFF DEPARTMENTS2 Scribblings From The Editor

Bob McLeod

48 PreProArt by Rafael Kayanan, Mike Mayhew and Alex Horley,done before they turned pro.

62 Cover StoriesMike Mayhew and Alex Horley reveal the process of creating a cover.

84 Rough CritiqueEditor Bob McLeod critiques an aspiring penciler’s sample page.

86 Rough TalkComments and opinions from our readers.

ISSN 1931-9231

BOB McLEOD

Nick penciled the first 39

issues of Aquaman from ’62-

’68, and all the covers through

the final issue, #56 in 1971. This

is an unpublished version of

the cover for issue #43, which I

like better than the published

version. The flowing line work

on the distant figure, as well as

Aquaman’s dynamic pose amid

the tangled seaweed are much

more interesting to me. Notice

how the black ‘L’ shape creat-

ed by the large sandal and its

shadow frame the Aquaman

figure.


NICKC

ARDY

Aquaman TM & ©2008 DC Comics

NICK CARDYFirst gaining popularity on DC’s TOMAHAWK,

he’s perhaps best known for his work on

AQUAMAN and TEEN TITANS, and my

favorite, BAT LASH. Early on, he drew the

daily TARZAN strip for a while with Burne Hogarth writing, and

worked on the CASEY RUGGLES and BATMAN strips as well. He did

scores of covers for DC in the early ’70s, before leaving comics to

work in advertising. Nick was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of

Fame in 2005. His figures and art in general are always appealing,

and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love him.

F E A T U R E D A R T I S T

NICK CARDY

I also preferred the

original version, but the

word came down from

on high, so it was not

up to me.

I penciled and inked

all of my stories. No one

could ink over my loose

pencils. [Drat! I started

ten years too late! - ed.]

When my deadline

became tight, others

penciled (Neal Adams,

Gil Kane, George Tuska,

Carmine infantino) and I

inked.

4 ROUGH STUFF • SPRING 2008

NICKC

ARDY

BOB McLEOD

In this pencil commission, he revisits Aquaman

and his wife Mera thirty years later. Notice

how he adds to the depth by overlapping

forms, using foreshortening, placing shadows,

and even adding the water currents.

BOB McLEOD

Nick designed the character of Mera,

Aquaman’s wife, in Aquaman #11. Fans

have long admired Cardy’s way of

depicting the female form. “Cardy girls”

were a large part of his allure in

comics.

Notice how often Cardy uses a 3/4

angle pose for his figures. It's more

difficult than a profile or straight-on

shot, but it's a very effective way to add

more depth and form to your figures.

Aquaman TM & ©2008 DC Comics

NICK CARDY

This Mera was the first of a series of the

Cardy girls: Black Canary, Wonder Girl,

Wonder Woman, Batgirl, etc. These

pencils were to become full-color

illustrations.


BOB McLEOD

I just love the

atmosphere of Bat

Lash in this Bat Lash

sketch from 1999.

Bat Lash is fondly

remembered by

everyone who likes

western comics, for

the great scripts by

Sergio Aragonés,

the Mad magazine

cartoonist, and

Nick’s wonderful art.

As good as it was

though, it only last-

ed from July of ’68

to November of ’69.

An easy trick to

aid in drawing hats

so that they fit

squarely on the

head is to draw the

top “crown” of the

hat first on top of

the head, and then

add the brim.

Bat Lash TM & ©2008 DC Comics

NICKC

ARDY

NICK CARDY

I worked from the script written by Denny O’Neil— I never saw Sergio’s stick

figure layouts— I used my own judgment on the layouts. Denny and I were

very flexible on the stories. I wish this figure hadn’t come out looking mean.

TONY DeZUNIGATony is best known for co-creating JONAH

HEX at DC, and also BLACK ORCHID. He’s

also worked on several titles for Marvel,

and designed video games for Sega. He

also paints and teaches. I think he’s one of the best inkers in

comics, and particularly enjoyed his work on SAVAGE SWORD

OF CONAN over John Buscema. He sent me much of the art for

this feature, but was reluctant to make comments, so all of the

comments are mine.



BOB McLEOD

Tony originally began his career as a letterer at age 16, and here

he designs a wanted poster of Hex. This was done on toned

paper with ink and colored pencil. You can see it in color in the

PDF version of Rough Stuff, available at www.twomorrows.com.

For all of you young artists who have trouble staying within the

lines when you color, Tony demonstrates that’s not a problem.Jonah Hex TM & ©2008 DC Comics


TONY

DeZU

NIGA

BOB McLEOD

Finished pencils

(with even the title

lettering!) for a

Jonah Hex splash

page from Weird

Western Tales #13.

Fairly tight pencils,

considering he

would be inking it

himself. With or

without the

additional boulder,

it’s a well-planned

composition, nicely

framing Hex and

his wolf, Iron Jaws.

Jonah Hex TM & ©2008 DC Comics


BOB McLEODArak Son of Thunder

#39 (DC, 1984)

After scripting

Conan for Marvel

for many years, Roy

Thomas created a

barbarian comic for

DC called Arak, Son

of Thunder, and he

brought Tony along

with him to do the

art. They had a

good run for a few

dozen issues. I think

DeZuniga’s cross

hatch ink style was

particularly well-

suited to the barbar-

ian genre, and he

probably couldn’t

help but be influ-

enced by John

Buscema’s great

layouts while inking

so many issues of

Savage Sword of

Conan. I like his

extensive use of

diagonals in the

composition here.Courtesy Heritage

Arak TM & ©2008 DC Comics

Dominique Leonard

T he very first time I was in contact with Bob McLeod, it was for a commission. A fewweeks later, I got two marvellous drawings he made for me. Wow, great work. Basically,I’m a fan of comics who grew up with Belgian and French heroes, but I’m also reallyinterested in American artists and characters. Now, I’m trying to re-discover stories I read

when I was a teenager 30 years ago. It’s fun to re-read all these stories with lots of super-heroes.

INTRODUCTION to

So, when Bob told me about his magazine, and invitedme to write a kind of “Introduction to European comics”for his readers, I felt very flattered, but as I’m not a pro-fessional in the comics field, I also did worry. What couldI write that would be likely to arouse your interest? Just tosummarize the history of comics in Belgium and Francesince the ’40s, I would need more than three RoughStuff issues, so I thought it would be more pragmatic tohighlight the work of top artists of the Golden Age ofcomics (between the ’40s and the ’70s); mypersonal selection of 13 Golden Age artists.

First of all, it’s important to mention thatthere are a lot of differences betweencomics in Europe and in the USA. Let’shave a look at the major ones:

In Europe, almost all characters are theproperty of their creators. Usually, whenan artist stops his activities, his herodisappears at the same time.Of course, there are someexceptions. The mostimportant characterthat was the editor’sproperty is named“SPIROU.” It wasalso the title of amagazine cre-ated in 1938and stillpublishedtoday.

The editor bought the rights to the hero who gave hisname to the magazine. Spirou, the character, appearedfor the first time in the first issue of the magazine.Another important magazine, Tintin, created in 1946 (lastissue in 1988), also took the name of its main character,but “Tintin” the hero was never the property of the editor.His creator never sold the rights to his character. Tintinwas created in 1929 and is probably the most popularcharacter in comics worldwide.

Comics creators were “all-rounders.” They wrotethe stories, did the pencil drawings and also

inked their own stuff. This is the rea-son why it took an average of

one year for a story toget finished. On


DOMINIQUE:

Forton has a great

ability for sketching

very fast. His

pencils are often

clean but very clear

at the same time.

He likes horses and

can reproduce

these animals

perfectly in his

westerns. He’s also

very good at

working out the

balance between

black and white.“Teddy Ted”,unpublishedsketch copyrightForton, 2008


Belgian & French Comics

top of the books, they produced pages for somemagazines at the same time. So, workaholics…impassioned guys… Nowadays, lots of artistsillustrate stories that are written by professionalwriters, but in the Golden Age, artists regularlydid a full creation.

Between 1940 and 1960, three writers producedlots of great “success stories”. Their names: Jean-Michel Charlier, René Goscinny and Michel Greg. Allthe stories are published in hardcover. The standardmeasurements are 8" x 11". The books contained 64-pagestories till the early ’60s, and then they were reduced to 44-page stories. The price for a book today ranges from $10.50US to $20 US.

Let’s have a closer look at some artists amongst myall-time favorites. All of them have very important linkswith the two magazines listed above: Tintin and Spirou(both of them are originally Belgian creations that havebeen published in France too), but also with a third one,Pilote, created in 1959. On the one hand, the graphicsof some of these artists were influenced by Americanartists, but on the other hand some of them also influ-enced some contemporary American and British artists.I’ll try to classify the artists in relation with the magazines

in which they published their main stuff, which is alsostrongly linked to their graphic style. Spirou was moredynamic and humorous, Tintin had a staff of realisticartists – classified under the generic name la ligne claire(the clear line), and Pilote, that came two decades later,was more the work of a second generation of artists,possibly more irreverent.

Artists from TINTIN magazineHERGÉ (pronounced “airzhay”, Georges REMI,Belgium, b. 05.22.1907 – d. 03.03.1983)

His pen name comes from the phonetic pronunciationof the first letters of his surname and first name ‘RG’.

He’s the creator in 1929 of Tintin (the character), areporter always accompanied by his dog “Milou”

BOB McLEOD:Giraud’s Blueberry iseasily my favoritecomic art series,even though I can’tread most of them.Luckily, many ofthem have beentranslated intoEnglish. Here is arare look at Giraud’srough pencils for apage from MisterBlueberry. I’m hop-ing he had to tightenup the pencils some-what before inking,but possibly not.

BOB McLEOD:In the printed ver-sion, he stayed veryclose to the pencils,but I’m intrigued byhow he changed theangle of the lamp inpanel two, whichnow contradicts theperspective, whichof course he knowsvery well. I assumehe thought it wasmore important tohave the yellow lightthere rather than theblack top of thelamp, which wouldhave sunk into theblack background.The change inBlueberry’s pose isalso interesting.

Blueberry, unpub-lished sketchcopyright Giraud –Editions Dargaud,2008


ALEX HORLEYAlex is an Italian artist who does work

both for Italy and the United States, and

he’s probably best known here for his

fantasy art paintings. He’s worked for

several U.S. publishers, and is very sought after for private

commissions. I like his painting style, and asked him to show

us some of his prelim work for his paintings.


ALEX HORLEY

Packaging for a computer game, the World of Warcraft’s “Fires of Outland” set. I did a small layout to start with. The art had to work as a wraparound cover,

or similar to a VHS box. I did the layout in actual size, so that I had a precise feel of how to handle the composition.


ALEX

HORL

EY

ALEX HORLEY

Evil Ernie cover

rough. No thumb-

nails for this one. I

just started drawing

him on a 8.5” x 11”

sheet and the rest

pretty much came

together.

BOB McLEOD

I love it when the

roughs are works of

art in themselves.

With very little touch

up this could easily

be printed as an

interior illustration.


ALEX HORLEY

This art was done for

box art and packaging

of Upperdeck’s VS

card game. The set

was called “Marvel

Team-Up” (one of my

favorites as a kid).

The layout was done

8.5” x 11” size and

then blown up to 18” x

24” for the painting. I

try to leave as much

as possible of the ren-

dering in the painting

stage and not sort

every single detail

right away in the pre-

liminaries, otherwise I

would get bored, it

would be like working

on the same thing

twice and the painting

won’t have the same

energy.

This one took a

few weeks to paint,

but I had a great time,

since I got to work on

many of my favorite

characters in one

shot. I grew up with

Marvel comics in the

’70s and the art of

Marvel in those years

has been one (if not

the main) major influ-

ence in my drawing

formation. Kirby,

Buscema, Kane (his

covers!) and Colan,

are still the comic

book idols I look up to.

All characters TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.


PRE-PRO D id you ever wonder whatthe pros’ artwork looked likebefore they turned pro?

ALEX HORLEYThe guy with the cape is one of the hundreds of characters I “designed”.I guess this one was inspired by The Vision. These are from a drawing padI found a while ago. I was eight when I did these. I used to copy almost allthe covers of the comics I could afford to buy (not many, back then)!ALEX HORLEY

Conan is the only

non-superhero char-

acter I was interest-

ed in, back then. At

age eight, his stories

were kind of creepy,

but exciting as hell.

R.E. Howard’s epics

have been another

major influence on

my creative forma-

tion and John

Buscema’s interpre-

tation of his charac-

ters in comic book

form, to me, is still

the best one.

RAFAEL KAYANAN

Drew this during

the heyday of the

short-lived TV

show. I was nine

years old and I had

the Galen action

figure, the trading

cards and the

comics!

RAFAEL KAYANANPencil splash page for a story written by John Byrne. This is much tighter than I would

normally pencil today because I usually ink my own art and I leave all the small details for

the inking stage. I was also unfamiliar on who my inker would be so once I get a few

pages back inked I can tell how tight I have to go. This was the image that helped secure a

spot for me as illustrator for the Spider-Man Broadway show that Julie Taymor (Lion King)

is directing. I had a diverse selection of concept art from various film and stage projects,

but I knew I needed to cater my portfolio so that the reviewer can see that I’d actually worked on the character. I chose a pencil page because directors are

used to seeing the pre-visualization process. Handing them a slick color comic with your name on it does not show them the working stage, and that’s what

interests them. There’s a certain disconnect if you hand in printed work for concept design gigs, it appears too polished and the reviewer wants to see

where they can springboard from your rough ideas.


RAFAEL KAYANANI first met Rafael in the early ’80s when

he was first breaking into comics, and

he’s since gone on to become a very suc-

cessful commercial artist working in films

and now on Broadway for the new Spider-Man musical. In

comics, he’s best known for penciling FIRESTORM, TUROK,

and CONAN. He’s also a master martial artist, so we’re all on

our best behavior around him.


RAFAEL KAYANANI draw a ton of squiggly lines

when I’m trying to find my

way around a sketch. Note

the extra limbs ghosting on

the prelim indicating possible

choices on the pose. In this

instance I am happier with

the rough than the final

because the head placement

is more appealing and the

shading was better on the

torso. I would also swing the

webbing back to lead the

eye to the bottom figure. This

scene depicts a Spider-Man

hologram being viewed by

the couple below.

Spider-Man TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

RAFAEL KAYANANReally rough stuff, on the right is the thumbnail

I use to enlarge a layout, I work in the darks

with a broad marker or just use the side of a

pencil. I like using the old Duofold Parker

mechanical pencils because it fits snuggly in

my palm like a charcoal stick. You have to be

careful purchasing them online though,

because after a certain age, the barrel turns

brittle and can snap in half if you place too

much pressure on it. For something like Star

Wars, there’s a lot of reference work, so I did a

larger drawing (left), that contains more detail

but is still very loose. I ended up discarding

these studies and went for a focus point on

one of the aliens with Luke and Obi-Wan

speaking in the background. After all, the

scene was not about the Cantina, but on what

the two subjects were talking about. So as a

comic book storyteller, you have to step away

from “showing off” if the image isn’t adding to

the main story. I would probably choose this

panel layout otherwise, and if it were a double

page spread. On the printed page, this bottom

panel would be too small for the detail, and

unnecessarily eat up valuable deadline time.


STAR WARS TM & ©2008 Lucasfilm LLC


RAFAEL KAYANAN

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight

Portion of a page and the roughs. I flopped

the small Batgirl figure to direct the eventual

fall of her victim down to the larger Batman

figure in the Foreground.

RAFA

ELKA

YANA

N

BOB McLEOD

Next time you're thinking of being lazy about

adding backgrounds to a page, remember

artists like Rafael are putting in 110% and

really making you look like the slacker you

are!

Batman TM & ©2008 DC Comics


COVER STORIES

J ust how did a blank piece of paper turn into the sexy painting on this issue’scover? Mike Mayhew wanted to do a new painting just for us, but our funds arelimited and we just couldn’t afford him. Then Len Gould saw it and liked it so much

he decided to buy it for his collection, and paid the difference between our cover rateand Mike’s asking price. It was a win-win-win situation for all of us!

MIKE MAYHEW

This cover was done in the same vein as

my Women of Marvel TPB work. The

characters were chosen by interviewer Len

Gould. I really had fun portraying these

classic Avengers ladies.



BOB McLEOD

Mike often uses live models for his paintings, and I hope

he's a fast worker because it must have been difficult for

Ms. Marvel and Wasp to hang in the air like that! Here you

can see the thumbnail he made to get his basic color

scheme of red fading into yellow established, and the under-

painting he did before adding subsequent layers to achieve

the lustrous finish.

Mike Mayhew is one of comicdom’s rising stars. His extremely tight pencil renderings have an

uncanny photorealistic feel. This truly forces his art to stand out amongst a crowded field. Mike is

most widely known for the series of covers which he has done over the last few years for Marvel,

most notably on She-Hulk, Pulse, and Mystique. His earlier interior work on Vampirella with writer Mark Millar was simply

stunning, bestowing depth to the character not seen since the halcyon days of José Gonzales and Gonzalo Mayo.

Mike has a lot on his plate currently; mainstream work and creator-owned; covers

and interiors. His career has come a long way over the last decade. Recently, he sat down

with me to discuss that journey, artistic influences, and techniques.


INTERVIEW

MIKE MAYHEWBy Len Gould

LEN GOULD: As always, the best place to start, Mike, is at the beginning.Could you give the Rough Stuff readers a brief bio?MIKE MAYHEW: My pleasure. I wasborn In Mesa, Arizona. I grew up in the’70s just really into horror movies and sci-

ence fiction. Iwas seven yearsold when Star Warshit and that just kind ofsolidified things for me. Ijust kind of always drew, too. Iwas an only child, so it was some-thing that really kept me entertained andI could just sit there for hours and hoursdrawing characters. I never really drewactual comic pages when I was a little kid,but I always drew little scenarios and thatkind of stuff.

GOULD: Were you a comic book fan?

MIKE MAYHEWI’ve been playing a lot

with gray prismacolor

markers in my pre-

lims, to lay down

quick values and get

a sophisticated sense

of lighting. They’re a

lot of fun too!

MIKE MAYHEWThis was one of a

pair of tight

unpublished Elektra

images that I did in

anticipation for some

Elektra covers.Elektra TM &©2008 MarvelCharacters, Inc.

Catwoman TM &©2008 DC Comics


MAYHEW: Yes, but as a little kid mostly ofhorror comics. I remember having Creepyand Eerie. I even remember bringing acopy of Tomb of Dracula to church, so I

wouldn’t get bored, and I remember my mom tearing it out ofmy hands. I also had a lot of the Power Recordsthat Neal Adams did the art for. I was a fan ofthe popular comic book (especially Hulk andBatman) and cartoon characters and drew thema lot when I was a younger kid, maybe beforeten, and then I kind of just got out of it for what-ever reason. Then, as an adolescent, I grew upand discovered Frank Frazetta and Heavy Metal.

GOULD: OK, now that’s a pretty big step! [Bothlaugh]MAYHEW: Yeah, then I got back into comicbooks when I was 14, 15, because of the art-work. It just really kind of spoke to me. That was a cool time for art-work, too, because there was a lot of experimentation going on. Bill

MIKE MAYHEWStorm cover

With these covers, I

wanted to celebrate

the African ethnicity of

Ororo and T’Challa. So

many times in cartoon-

derived comic art,

ethnic races end up in

caricature. I know

from working with

models and photo-

graphs that an individ-

ual’s unique, idiosyn-

cratic features can be

captured, and in the

course of a series a

range of emotions can

be displayed.

Storm TM & ©2008 MarvelCharacters, Inc.

MIKE MAYHEWMystique coverMystique is probably my best known work.I thought when I got the gig, “This is going tobe as easy as falling out of bed”. Hot chick,espionage, action, no problem...On Mystique #9, here’s an initial variation onthe pose that didn’t quite work as well as thefinal art turned out.

On Mystique #12 I really wanted to capture aphoto-realistic figure that seemed to be fly-ing through the air and not posed. I startedwith a super-cartoony sketch to get the feelof what I wanted, that I had at my photoshoot to refer to.

On Mystique #16, I actually inverted mymodel into this pose (balancing her on astep ladder) to get the reality of how itwould look. She wore the latex outfit, andlooked exactly like this except for theblue skin!


Mystique TM & ©2008 MarvelCharacters, Inc.


ROUGH CRITIQUEBy Bob McLeod

T his Marvel-ous sample page was sent in by Mike Murdock (presumably no relation to Daredevil, aka MattMurdock). Mike has evident talent and has obviously put in a lot of hours trying to teach himself how to drawcomics. He sent me several pages to choose from. He has balanced compositions, his storytelling is clear, hisfigures are well-proportioned, he’s varying his views, putting in some backgrounds, and no doubt wowing his

friends, so he must be wondering why he can’t get a break at Marvel. What’s he doing wrong?

As I know all too well from personal experience, the problemwith teaching yourself is that a lot of your effort gets misdirect-ed, and you tend to overlook the weaknesses in your art that

are obvious to others. Many comic artists are self-taught, but it’sa long process of trial and error. Mike, when you draw a panelyou’re choosing what to show us, and a lot of your problem isin your choices. I mean what information you’re putting into thepanels, and exactly how you’re showing it. Let’s begin withpanel one. You’re showing us a cool building. So far so good.But make it more dramatic with a more extreme upshot andexaggerate the perspective of the building. Maybe move ourview up so you get the top of the building in the panel. Thetop’s much more interesting to see than all that empty space atthe bottom. And c’mon, putting a little cloud in the center ofevery opening is repetitious and boring. Better to place theclouds off-center so they look more random.

Panel two needs some background to show us we’reinside the building, not up on the roof. Nothing fancy, justmaybe a doorway, a chair and picture frame will do. I shrunkCap’s hands a bit to make more room for that and a dia-logue balloon. Don’t forget writers like to write dialogue andyou have to leave room for it. Some simple metallic shineadds interest and texture to that coffee pot. It would be evenbetter to google some reference and see what an actual cof-fee pot looks like. He’s also holding it a bit awkwardly. Trypouring with the handle facing away from your body like thatand you’ll see. Logan appears to be staring at the coffeecup because his newspaper is hidden behind the coffee pot.His face is also touching the edges of the woman (is itWanda?), flattening the depth. He appears to be a largehead next to her that she’s reaching down into. By movingWanda over behind Logan, she doesn’t look so squeezed inbetween them, and he’s clearly in front of her. They nowbecome a unified shape instead of two separate elements.

In panel three, you now give us too much background. Allthat detail in such a small space becomes a gray patternand competes too much with the figures for our attention.It’ll also no doubt be almost totally covered up with a dia-logue balloon. This is exactly what I mean by misdirectedeffort. There’s a time and place for detailed buildings, butthis isn’t it. In a panel like this, it’s better to simply put in agraphic black shadow, presumably caused by light from awindow projected onto the wall. This pops Cap forwardmuch better and doesn’t distract from the figures. You also



need to move Cap’s head down away from the panel bor-der. Never have the edge of anything touch a panel border.And never draw a line into the corner as you did with thetowel on Wanda’s head. It looks like you moved your cameraand barely got Wanda in the picture. Move everything over abit to get her into the frame more. Placing your figures cor-rectly is critical when you’re composing your panels, so putmuch more thought into it. Also, notice the changes I madeto Cap’s and Wanda’s faces. On men, it’s better to have astrong, square chin than a pointed, rounded chin. And itadds depth to throw a shadow on the neck and under thenose. On Cap’s face and the two faces below it in panelfour I raised the right eye and moved it away from the nose.The tear duct should be right above the edge of the nostril.Wanda’s neck is poorly drawn. I also moved Cap’s pectoraldown. His star should be up on his chest. And once again Imust advise: Learn to draw hands! Yes, they’re difficult, butyou can do it. Make it a priority.

The figures in panel four look squeezed into the space nextto Logan’s head. You should always try to vary the size ofheads from panel to panel. It’s not as interesting when they’rethe same size, as Cap and Wanda are here in panels threeand four. See how much more interesting your views of Loganare? And where do you want the balloons to go? I’d rathersee them over their heads instead of covering up the figures,wouldn’t you? The left side of Wanda’s neck should be underher left ear. If you study the skull and visualize the head trans-parently, you’ll know where that is. And did Logan stand up?Why do we seem to be looking down on Cap and Wanda, asif Logan’s up above them? The composition is improved withhim lower anyway. This is the focus we want. We don’t needto see Cap’s leg or Logan’s neck. We don’t need to see thecoffee. Only show us what tells the story, which in this panel isthe talking heads. And if you do show the coffee cup, move itaway from the border and make it shorter like it was in panelthree. The background can be white, but I’d rather throw in ablack to help balance against panel one. And finally, the mouthsimply can’t do what you’re attempting with Logan. Put a mir-ror next to your drawing table. I also moved his right nostril ina bit and changed his right eye. As the head turns, the far eyelooks smaller and shorter.

Study the composition of the best artists. It’s really vital insequential art. Try to group figures rather than just place themside by side, and study when and how to add backgrounds.You’re very close, Mike, but those last few yards to the goal lineare often the toughest. Don’t give up! Readers who would liketo submit a sample page for a Rough Critique can send it toP.O. Box 63, Emmaus, PA 18049 or e-mail me [email protected]

rough stuff #8

Documents

rough talkcomments

bob mcleodnick

cover storiesmike mayhew

central cover art

tu r e da r t

s p r i n g

copyright marvel comics

issue subscriptions