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THE PROFESSIONAL “HOW-TO” MAGAZINE ON COMICS, CARTOONING AND ANIMATION

IN THIS ISSUE!

How to create a comic from script-to-print by MIKE MANLEY See the process from pencils, inks, & coloring to lettering, printing, and distribution! PLUS: Illustrator tutorials with

NUMBER 9 FALL 2004

$5.95 IN THE U.S.A.

PVP’s SCOTT KURTZ Bringing characters to life with

TOM BANCROFT and ROBERT CORLEY Product reviews with

ANDE PARKS NOEL SICKLES, Father of realistic cartooning by

BRET BLEVINS

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1994--2004

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THE PROFESSIONAL “HOW-TO” MAGAZINE ON COMICS & CARTOONING WWW.DRAWMAGAZINE.COM

FALL 2004 • VOL. 1, NO. 9

FEATURES

Editor-in Chief/Designer • Michael Manley Publisher • John Morrow Logo Design • John Costanza Proofreaders • John Morrow & Eric Nolen-Weathington Transcription • Steven Tice

COVER STORY CREATING COMICS FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT WITH MIKE MANLEY

For more great information on cartooning and animation, visit our Web site at: http://www.drawmagazine.com

Front Cover Illustration by

THE CRUSTY CRITIC PRODUCT REVIEWS BY ANDE PARKS

Mike Manley

34 SUBSCRIBE TO DRAW! Four quarterly issues: $20 US Standard Mail, $32 US First Class Mail ($40 Canada, Elsewhere: $44 Surface, $60 Airmail). We accept US check, money order, Visa and Mastercard at TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614, (919) 449-0344, E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com

NOEL SICKLES BY BRET BLEVINS

CHARACTER DESIGN BRINGING YOUR CHARACTERS TO LIFE BY TOM BANCROFT AND ROB CORLEY

ADVERTISE IN DRAW! See page 2 for ad rates and specifications. DRAW! FALL 2004, Vol. 1, No. 9 was produced by Action Planet Inc. and published by TwoMorrows Publishing. Michael Manley, Editor, John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Address is PO Box 2129, Upper Darby, PA 19082. Subscription Address: TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614. DRAW! and its logo are trademarks of Action Planet Inc. All contributions herein are copyright 2004 by their respective contributors. Action Planet Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing accept no responsibility for unsolicited submissions. All artwork herein is copyright the year of production, its creator (if workfor-hire, the entity which contracted said artwork); the characters featured in said artwork are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners; and said artwork or other trademarked material is printed in these pages with the consent of the copyright holder and/or for journalistic, educational and historical purposes with no infringement intended or implied. Batman,Superman are TM and © 2004 DC Comics • The Dazzler TM and © 2004 Marvel Characters, Inc. • PvP TM and © 2004 Scott Kurtz •The Thief of Time © 2004 Danny Fingeroth and Mike Manley. This entire issue is © 2004 Action Planet Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing and may not be reprinted or retransmitted without written permission of the copyright holders. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

18 22

ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR TIPS: BITMAP TEXTURE FUN BY ALBERTO RUIZ

PRE-PRESS, PRINTING & DISTRIBUTION BY JOHN MORROW

PvP’s SCOTT KURTZ INTERVIEWED BY JAMAR NICOLAS

Figurative interpretation by Bret Blevins

FROM THE EDITOR This issue of Draw! and the crossover with our sister magazine write Now! was more than a year in the planning and the making. And what could be more natural than a re-teaming of write Now! editor and old Darkhawk writer Danny Fingeroth and myself, I ask you? A DVD! Danny and I worked together back in halcyon days of the ’90s at Marvel on Darkhawk, with Danny on the writing and me on the art. When we both ended up working for the same publisher again some ten years later, both doing “how-to” magazines, it seemed like a great idea to combine the thrust of both of our mags to give the aspiring cartoonists and writers a complete overview of the creative process of a comic, from the script to the printed page, from the Pro perspective. Do a real in-depth coverage of our process. After some good give and take, Danny and I came up with our character The Thief of Time, and documented each step of the creative process which you can read about in write Now! #8 and in this issue of Draw! As Danny and I got underway and were working on The Thief of Time, preparing to have both issues of our magazines ready to premiere at this summer’s San Diego Comicon, I was contacted by Sputnik Studios from Toronto, Canada to see if I was interested in producing a “how-to” DVD. “Heck yes!” was my answer. A rapid series of e-mails and phone calls ensued between our publisher John Morrow, Danny, Sputnik and myself, and the deal was worked out. We would now produce a “how-to” DVD covering our process and filming me live as I drew. This also meant we had a very short time to do this in order to get everything done to debut the DVD in San Diego. As you know by now, Draw! #9 was delayed in order to produce the art for the DVD shoot and John and I decided it was best to concentrate on the DVD. Shane McCracken, Jeremy McCracken and cameraman Sevan Frank piled into their car and headed south to my studio here outside of Philadelphia to film the DVD. Danny came down for an afternoon to shoot our discussion on scripts and plotting for the DVD, as well. Over the next three days in the humid Philadelphia summer, the swell guys from Sputnik filmed over 40 hours of video here in my studio documenting my working process, and the result is the How to Draw Comics from Script to Print DVD. I’m really proud of how it turned out! But the race was not over yet. As the Sputnik crew headed back to Toronto and their editing suite, I still had to finish the rest of the art and do extra work on the lettering and coloring segments and some extra voiceovers, as well as finish the rest of the The Thief of Time comic which had to be held off till the filming was done. So now you hold in your hands the fruit of all of our labors: Draw! #9, the second part of the crossover with write Now!, containing the complete The Thief of Time comic inside. The DVD premiered with great success in San Diego and the Chicago Con, so much so we are already planning several more DVDs on drawing featuring some of your favorite Draw! contributors. I also want to say thanks to this issue’s contributors Tom Bancroft, Rob Corley, and Scott Kurtz, who was interviewed by new Draw! interviewer and fellow Philly cartoonist Jamar Nicholas. Be sure to check our Jamar’s weekly web strip Detective Boogaloo— Hip Hop Cop on moviepoopshoot.com. Big thanks to Alberto Ruiz, Ande Parks, my pal Bret Blevins, and to my brother Dave and his friend Antony Bell for doing the music on the DVD, and of course to Danny and John. A tip of the hat to Ryan D’Angelo for redesigning the Draw! website, and of course you the readers and supporters of Draw! magazine. See you in February!

Mike Manley, Editor

E-mail: mike@drawmagazine.com Website: www.drawmagazine.com Snail mail: PO Box 2129, Upper Darby, PA 19082

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TALKING THIEF OF TIME Danny and Mike discuss the creative process

PART 2

PART 2 What follows is the conclusion of the conversation between Write Now! editor Danny Fingeroth and myself (begun in Write Now! #8) outlining how we came up with our Thief of Time character. We discuss what issues we were dealing with as we tried to make something original yet not completely unfamiliar, mixing genres to come up with new takes on well-traveled archetypes. Combined with the notes and e-mails printed in Write Now! #8 we pick up on the conversation in this issue as we conclude the discussion of our creative process. Danny and I had a lot of open, honest, back and forth discussion, which is essential to the creative and collaborative process. —Mike Manley [SPOILER WARNING: Details of Thief of Time are discussed here. It’d be impossible to not do so when discussing the creation of a new character.]

ABOVE: This was the original penciled version of the cover to the Thief of Time comic. In the beginning I was thinking of this as being maybe a comic in a slightly more humorous vein. I later repenciled the figure of Heather Brascomb after Danny Fingeroth (my co-creator and writer) defined the characters and the feel of the series more. We decided against a humorous or more cartoony feel in favor of a more straight-forward adventure. RIGHT: My initial quick sketches or drawings of the character. The first image that popped into my mind was a female thief being chased across the rooftops of some European city, pursued by ninjas. These were done quickly directly with a brush and ink, and it ended up being the gem of the idea that became the cover image. I flopped the direction of the sketch to read better for the cover.

DRAW! • FALL 2004 3

COMICS

MIKE MANLEY that we have to put a limit on Heather’s time travel abilities. Otherwise there’s no problem the person can’t solve by simply saying, “Well, I’ll go back five minutes before that event happened.” Danny Fingeroth: That’s right. We had this discussion about how time travel stories can become incredibly complicated, and the question always comes back to, “if you can travel through time, why not just keep going back in time until you get it right?” That’s actually the premise of Groundhog Day, I suppose, which is in a way a time travel story.

ABOVE: The final penciled version of the cover for The Thief of Time. On this page and the next page are some of Mike’s rough sketches and designs for the thief’s costume and appearance. This is the second half of the Write Now!/DRAW! crossover conversation phone discussion between Danny Fingeroth and Mike Manley. The first half ran in Write Now #8.

Mike Manley: In creating a drama, be it comics or a movie, etc., it’s probable all the paths that you’re going to walk dramatically have been walked by someone before. So, all you can do is try to put a little spin on the ball. There’s been a zillion stories about pirates, or about private eyes, or guys flying through outer space, starship captains, and super-heroes. Nothing is really going to end up being completely unique. I mean, you hope your idea is fresh, but in genre fiction most ideas have probably been tried now. So with Thief, my concern, visually, was try to do something that’s interesting for the reader and that’s fun for me to draw. A story, that even if it’s time travel, not a unique idea certainly, has something that’s a little different in some way. Some kind of hook. In one of the conversations we had we discussed 4 DRAW! • FALL 2004

MM: We initially said, okay, it’s going to be a thief, and we decided we’ll make the thief a female character. Then we talked a little bit about the movie Entrapment, which was about a burglar, and looked at the elements that worked in that, and then we started talking about time travel. I actually went on the Internet and spent some time reading up on time travel. Some scientists believe there is a possibility, depending upon faster-thanlight drives or going the speed of light, that it is possible to do some form of time travel. There are others who believe there’s time travel possibilities via wormholes, or black holes. There’re a lot of different theories on it. So even though this is a fantasy, you still want to be able to have a layer in it that has some basis in science, so that at least you have some foundation on which to build a fantasy construct. DF: There was one logistical problem we came up with what I think is an elegant solution for. I was having our heroine have to literally travel to different parts of the globe by jet or something, to then go back in time so she would end up in that part of

COMICS the world when she time-traveled. And you came up with the pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo (and I mean that in a good way) about some kind of global positioning thing, where she could end up coming out in the correct geographical spot, which simplified things nicely. MM: Well, I figured since the Earth moves through time and space, and since she’s going to jump through time, the time-vest she wears would have to have some ability, maybe in conjunction with some machine, computer program, a guy working the machine back at the home base, tracking her in relationship to the Earth, so that you can say, “When I’m going through time to April 14, 1876, at 3:00 AM,” you would know exactly where the Earth would be in order to do that, or else you’d pop into space, because the Earth might be on the other side of the sun. DF: This new version of the plot felt more organic to me. Does it work better for you? MM: It does. And we were also trying to decide if the key time travel scene in her first story would take her to ancient Greece or medieval Japan. DF: In this case, I think it’s more what you’re in the mood to draw. The story point would be similar in either case, so it’s what’s more fun for Mike to do artwise? MM: So I settled on ancient Japan, because, for me, ancient Japan and samurai or are going to be more fun to draw. I went through step-by-step, reading the plot and wrote down what Heather’s key motivation is. The fact that she’s try-

MIKE MANLEY

ing to find her father, who invented this timevest that she wears, and he’s lost in the time stream. She wants somehow, to locate her father in the time stream and basically save him. And then we had a big, long talk about how there had to be some reason why she couldn’t just pop in two seconds before he turned the vest on and got himself lost in time, why didn’t she just do that? All of this is in my mind when I’m reading your plot that you just sent, which was really good. I was thinking, what if the dad’s time vest was damaged and maybe there was something wrong with it initially, a design flaw maybe, so that he keeps skipping through time like a stone thrown across a lake, and every time that he pops into a different time, he sends out a slight “ripple.” And that slight ripple maybe subtly affects time after that. So he’s sending out slight ripples in time, that are generated by the suit “punching holes” through time. And, since it’s a random thing and her brother Henry’s helping her track her father down, I was just thinking, maybe Henry’s job could be to track where his father goes when he’s using the vest. To see if there’s a pattern to the jumps in time that their father’s making as he skips through time, trying to triangulate where Dad will be next, so that he can say, “Well, we think that, based on this algorithm that I’m running”—some chaos theory computer program—“we predict our father will appear in 1776 in Malta,” or something like that. DF: Yeah. From The Time Machine to The Terminator to Back to the Future, to just about any time travel story, I think you just have to establish the rules of time travel and figure the audience will be willing to go along for the ride as long as the story points are compelling enough to make them want to. Otherwise, you go into territory where you’re trying so hard to explain how and why DRAW! • FALL 2004 5

COMICS

MIKE MANLEY wrong, she could really screw something up.

Some character studies of Heather that explore her personality and stylistic approach.

DF: You know, this goes back to our original discussion, the way that you even said, “Why doesn’t she go back a week and invest in whatever stock went up the following week? Why would she have to be a thief?” Which is why I put the message for the father in there. Because we’re back to that same thing, why go to such elaborate means just to generate money if you can know how future financial markets are going to turn out? MM: Well, here’s the other plot idea I had in relating to the father. Maybe via his skipping through time, he’s sort of set himself up financially or science-wise. Maybe he’s trapped, maybe there’s some reason why he can’t take the vest off, maybe it’s bonded to his skin, whatever. So he’s always going to have to jump through time. DF: Because if he takes off the vest, he loses any hope of ever getting back to his home time.

of something that’s impossible in the first place, that you end up sabotaging your story. Let’s face it, what do people remember about Back to the Future? The time-traveling DeLorean and the fact that Michael J. Fox had to make sure his parents got together so that he would be born, which, when you think about it, he must already have succeeded, or else how could we be watching a movie about his character in the first place? But you don’t think about that as you watch the movie. You just take the filmmakers’ and characters’ words for it that what they’re trying to achieve—the McGuffin, as Hitchcock called it—is important. MM: Sure, the more logically you set it up, the more chance the reader or viewer will buy into it. DF: Agreed. MM: I did think, at the end, in our story, having the father show up was kind of a cool thing. Now, we could have some reason that that happened, we’ll to work that out, because we have a limited amount of space with the initial comic. DF: That was definitely going to be the cliffhanger. Because, as you were just saying, he pops in and out of time. There could be a pattern to it, but one that maybe they haven’t quite figured out. Now, does he want to be rescued? That’s another issue. MM: Basically, the main thing for me as an artist working on the story with you was to figure out logical parameters within this fantasy construct so if this person can travel through time, they can’t just simply solve every problem they encounter by just going, “Oh, well, I’ll just dial back before that happened, ding, problem solved!” So there should be some reason that every time they actually go into the time stream, there’s a real possibility that if they do something wrong, they could really screw up the present. I think it would be a good thing to have it set up at the beginning that there was a real consequence every time Heather jumped through time, and if she did something 6 DRAW! • FALL 2004

MM: Right. And maybe he hasn’t been able to fix it because he doesn’t have the 2004 technology to repair the vest. Or maybe he’s working on it, it’s going to take him a while in the past to gather the materials he needs to fix the vest or something. Like a stone skipping through time, so you never know where the next skip will send you. DF: He has to triangulate where he’s going to be. So now the question still comes up, why is she stealing stuff in the past, if it’s not to find clues for him? If she’s on an assignment from the Emperor of Japan, that’s one thing, that specific favor, or maybe he has something she needs. MM: That’s a cool idea. Maybe she’s trying to track him, so maybe by stealing this mask from the past and delivering it to the emperor of Japan in the future, he gives her some photograph or some information about where her father was in Japan at some point.

BELOW: My thumbnail breakdowns. This is where it all starts as I sketch out thumbnails based on Danny’s plot. These will go through a refining process but I want to get the visual images in my head down as quickly as they occur.

COMICS

MIKE MANLEY

CONTINUED ON PAGE 67

DRAW! • FALL 2004 17

By Ande Parks

Interesting, isn’t it, that while an artist of my caliber rarely makes mistakes, many of my columns concern themselves with ways to correct, cover, and otherwise eliminate errant marks on the comic page. We have previously covered various types of whiteout pens, but we haven’t discussed the most traditional method of correction, the simple application of an opaque white to the page with a brush. Whiteout can be used not only to make corrections, but also for a number of effects… everything from smoke to white-onblack line art. Some artists (Michael Golden, for example) rarely use it, and in fact, seem to think of it as a stain upon their work. Others (Klaus Janson and José Luis Gárcia-Lopéz come to mind) cover much of the page with it, layering with ink and whiteout to achieve painterly results. For me, examining the page after it has been erased, whiteout brush in hand, is the final stage of the inking process. I use it to make corrections, but also to go back in to tweak the art. I admit that I often resort to a whiteout pen just because it’s fast and easy, but I still prefer to do things the old fashioned way. The problem with adhering to the time-honored tradition of painting with whiteout is that it has become much harder to find an excellent product. The goal is to find a substance that is thin enough to paint with easily, but is opaque enough to cover black ink completely in one coat. Ideally, it should also leave a nice, inkable surface to work with. For years, I faithfully used such a product, the wonderful Pen-Opake. Unfortunately, like many art supplies, it has gone the way of hand lettering and a decent corn dog. In other words, it has been discontinued. I miss it so, particularly after sampling the products that are available.

18 DRAW! • FALL 2004

I’m afraid you will not find a perfect product in this review. I didn’t find any magical substance that was ready to use out of the bottle, and possessed all of the properties I was seeking. Disgusted as I was by the choices that I found after perusing my usual suppliers, I bravely persevered. I owed it to you, my loyal readers, to wade through these milky bottles of glop. In the end, I did find some satisfactory products, and one that I like quite a bit, so let’s get on with it! The Criteria As I already mentioned, there were three things I was looking for as I tested the various whiteouts: ease of Application (flow): I wanted the whiteout to go down easy. Basically, it just had to be thin enough to flow from my brush without too much trouble. Many of these products are so think that they are nearly impossible to apply. In that case, I simply thinned out the substance with distilled water until I could work with it. The thinning may have left the product too thin for it to pass the other criteria, but I had to make it workable. Coverage: Ideally, the whiteout should cover thoroughly with one coat. inking Surface: Sometimes you will be able to apply the whiteout exactly where you want it, and you won’t have to go back in with any ink. Often, though, you’ll need to go back in and ink on the freshly-created white area. In that case, you want a nice surface to ink on. Many whiteouts flaked or ran when I applied ink, which rendered them unacceptable in my tests. The Candidates I tried to think outside the box, ordering everything from traditional whiteout to acrylic paints to gouaches, and even a fluid made specifically for watercolor corrections. It was pretty easy to rule some of these products out immediately, mainly because they were nowhere near opaque enough. I ended up with six final contenders, which you can read about below. The Testing I knew I wanted to test these products in real world conditions, so I went to the pantry and found a bunch of pages from my “no way in hell I’m ever going to be able to sell this crap” pile. Yes, dear readers, it’s true… actual original pages were sacrificed for your benefit. These gems of comic art may be lost forever, but they gave themselves freely so that you could buy a quality whiteout in confidence. I went over the pages, in some cases eliminating huge chunks of the art, and in other instances simply adding minor white highlights. Some of the products were ready to use right out of the bottle, but many others had to be thinned. It’s hard for me to say how thick each product may be when it finds it’s way into your hands. Shelf life may have an impact, and your personal preference for what consistency you desire may differ from mine. If you should have to thin your whiteout, I would recommend using water that has been distilled or filtered. Simply add some water and stir like crazy (I used the handle end of a brush). It’s not a very fun process, but you should be able to get a consistency you can work with.

he vision and talent of Noel Sickles transformed and expanded the possibilities of narrative comic strip art in fundamental ways that are still apparent in current comic books and graphic novels. After this accomplishment he left the cartooning field to spend several decades as one of the grand illustrators of his generation, and ended his career painting historical western images for galleries across the Southwest. Sickles invented a technique combining naturalistic drawing, cinematic storytelling and realistic lighting that invigorated the art of newspaper story strips and gave birth to the melodramatic visual intensity of adventure-themed comic books. In his Scorchy Smith strip work we see the first aggressive melding of cinema camera techniques with static narrative drawing. Before Sickles, Hal Foster had created spectacular realistically drawn narrative sequences in his Tarzan strip work, but his vision was a more formal theatrical sensibility. Foster used no speech balloons, enclosing dialogue within captions, and his compositions were rooted in classical salon art and early magazine illustration traditions. The quality that was new in Sickles’ work was a convincing impression of spontaneity, as if the viewer were witnessing the events in motion. This sense of immediacy in Sickles’ work was his special gift, and it invigorates LEFT: An illustration from Life Magazine. all his images. As a ABOVE: A young Sickles. RIGHT: The young teenager Sickles power and moody atmosphere of Von haunted the public Schmidt’s high-contrast line drawings inspired libraries and studied all Sickles to introduce a similar approach to the the artwork that newspaper strip. Sickles pushed the simplifiappealed to him, from cation of detail further and eventually broadthe old masters to conened the tonal range by introducing a temporary newspaper mechanical gray tone that allowed him to cartooning, but he also play white edges against the gray, creating a

sketched from life constantly and gradually coalesced his vision into a personal approach to solving drawing problems. He began his professional career before the age of twenty, cartooning for local businesses and newspapers—in the early work reproduced here his skill and adroit mastery of then-common pen-and-ink styles is remarkable. In those days reproducing photography on newsprint was difficult, and newspaper artists were often visual reporters, drawing people or scenes to accompany a news story. When the opportunity to take over the comic strip Scorchy Smith came along, Sickles used it as a vehicle to develop his natural way of visualizing dramatic narrative images. At first he was required to imitate the style of the strip’s creator John Terry, who produced, in Sickles’ words: “...the worst drawing I had ever seen by anybody.” In the early Sickles example reproduced here, the evidence of Terry’s crude rendering technique is evident, though Sickles cannot hide his own mastery of form, arial depth, perspective, and storytelling. Already we see here an important element of Sickles’ revolutionary contribution—a flawless, spontaneous sense of objects and living forms existing and moving through real space, and a intuitive mastery of viewpoint and rhythm of scene choice—called “shot flow” in visual storytelling parlance. Sickles wanted to “...bring the art out of the page.” He combined the pacing, cutting and camera mobility of the black-and-white movies of his day with a graphic treatment inspired by a set of illustrations Harold Von Schmidt created for Willa Cather’s “Death Comes for the ArchBishop.” (See examples below.)

remarkable impression of depth and air in his pictures. In the early strip below Sickles is still imitating the crude parallel line rendering of his predecessor John Terry, but his marvelous sense of spatial accuracy is already evident—look how surely the weight of the speedboat rides the heavy water—indicated so simply you can count the lines!

DRAW! • FALL 2004 23

NOEL SICKLES

Scorchy Smith © AP

SPOTLIGHT

The development of this strong high-contrast “graphic sparkle” rendering technique revolutionized his treatment of Scorchy, and is also evident in his political cartoons from this period. In the mature Scorchy strips printed here, the draftsmanship and storytelling are brilliant in their unforced feeling of “happening” as you look at them—Sickles’ work always appears to be unfolding as you witness it— you never see the mighty labor behind these spontaneous images that seem to be no more than accurate reporting of the events pictured. Although he took no credit for this gift—he explained it as “osmosis”—he recognized it as his defining motivation. After forty years of creating images he summed up his approach: “Spontaneity is all that interests me in picturemaking.” During his time as a comic strip artist Sickles shared a studio with the young Milton Caniff and Sickles’ influence on the style of Terry and the Pirates is shown in the examples printed here. The early Terry strips show the contrived, artificial mannerisms that characterized comic strips before Sickles’ influence expanded the possibilities. Note the weightless, stiff unnatural poses and fake drapery, the lack of any real sense of place—no clear ground plane or atmospheric perspective—and no shadows or light source. The later post-Sickles Terry strips take place in a world we recognize as our own—all the visual cues convince us the characters have substance, are bound by gravity and can be crushed by the weight of those falling bricks. The huge success of Caniff’s strip saturated the comic art and illustration world with Sickles’ vision, and directly shaped the development of comic book art styles. After only three years Sickles was bored by the endless pulp fiction pattern of danger, escape and rescue cycles he had enhanced so magnificently in the daily newspaper strip medium, and left for the larger world of 24 DRAW! • FALL 2004

magazine illustration, taking his marvelous vision with him and expanding it into new rendering techniques. The astonishing series of WWII tank warfare illustrations seen here began a long relationship with Life Magazine as an artist-reporter. Sickles illustrated news or documentary war events when no photographs were available, and also worked at the Pentagon using his picturemaking clarity and accuracy for military purposes, such as the soldier’s handbook for camouflaging movements and equipment seen here in an excerpt. During these years he also contributed his skill to large advertising campaigns. A highlight of his postwar association with Life is reproduced here, including several images that have never seen print before. In 1949 Life published a speculative article predicting a manned flight to

SPOTLIGHT

NOEL SICKLES

These political cartoons were done while Sickles was reinventing the newspaper strip through his melodramatic work on Scorchy Smith, and by contrast allowed his whimsy and sense of humor full rein—once again he proves himself a master at yet another form of visual storytelling. The quality of animation and unmistakably accurate knowledge of horse anatomy and behavior found in the trough cartoon is both funny and delightful. The lighthearted caricature of Hitler was done before the full extent of his atrocities were known— but his megalomania is understood and playfully deflated here in those few perfect brush lines charged with such marvelous brevity and eloquence—beautiful! The gritty Civil War piece was done thirty years later and is devoid of humor—at first glance it seems one artist could not contain such versatility, but again Sickles turns in a flawless performance.

DRAW! • FALL 2004 33

BRINGING CHARACTERS TO LIFE PART 2: Expressions and posing BY TOM BANCROFT AND ROB CORLEY

This is the second in a series of articles by animators Tom Bancroft and Rob Corley on the subject of “Bringing Characters to Life.” This article will discuss the second step: expressions and posing. While we are traditional animators and the examples given will focus mainly on that style, we believe these articles will contain information that will apply to the video game, special effects, comic book and comic strip industries, to name a few. ––Tom and Rob

Frank and Ollie’s Illusion of Life and Richard Williams’ book The Animator’s Survival Kit. These are excellent books and should be a permanent fixture in any character/story-driven artist’s reference collection. EXPRESS YOURSELF! Hey, all! It’s your friendly neighborhood animators Rob Corley and Tom Bancroft from Funnypages Productions here. Thanks for the great response to our first article last issue on “Character Design.” This next article in our series of articles touching on the finer points of animation is entitled “Expression and Posing.” Back in the early days, when an animated character had to show a particular expression it rarely went beyond a few basic designs, such as lines above the head to show surprise or tears pouring from the eyes to show sadness. These tricks worked for many years on the old shorts, but as audiences became more sophisticated the animators soon learned that they needed to bring something more to the screen and to their characters. One of the most important things we learned at Disney was to avoid the “cliché.” Try to avoid using the first idea, expression, pose, etc. you come up with for your scene. Some artists/ animators lose an important opportunity to really push themselves as artists and—ultimately—their scene to the “next level” by settling for the easy way out. It’s time to lock up that old toolbox of tried and true tricks or formulas and start really growing artistically. Now we’re not saying that your first idea ain’t pretty, but it’s always nice to flex your artistic muscles from time to time. You never know, you just might surprise yourself. Ok now, you may be asking, “Where do I start if I can’t think of anything else to do for my scene or drawing?” Only through observing life around you will you be able to bring something new and fresh to your arsenal of creative talent. Watch people and observe how they act, how they move and react to their environment. Peoples is such crazy animals, and nine times out of ten you will walk away with a library of information and material that could make your art/animation SING! Some of the suggestions that follow are based on our personal experiences and can also be found in a number of books on the subject of animation. One of the most obvious would be 34 DRAW! • FALL 2004

LET’S EMOTE! (No, Rob, that’s not what you put on toast.) First things first. Let’s concentrate on the face. Normally, when you approach drawing a character, you should never separate the thought process between the face and body. This is because they are so integral to one another and the emotion you are trying to convey. That said, we do it here for ease of reference and to concentrate on finer points. Later, we will add the all-important body to “push” the expressions. Your character must be real to you. You have to be able to relate to what your character is going through in order to capture the right pose or expression for your scene. What is your character thinking or feeling? Are they happy, angry, or confused? Use a mirror and “act” out the character’s mood or acting. Study your own attitude and ask yourself: “Does this pose feel right? Does the drawing I’ve created feel the way my face feels?” Choosing the right expression will make or break your scene or drawing. SOME BASICS: Let’s go over some fundamental principals first. Here is a basic cartoony face with no real emotion. (fig. 1) Not all characters have cheeks and even pupils (like more “limited-style” characters) but for these examples we are using a more realistic design to show more subtleties that can be achieved. The thing you need to notice on all of these examples is the “change” in the drawings. Making sure there is a clear “change” from one emotion drawing to the next emotion drawing is vital.

EXPRESSIONS AND POSING

BANCROFT/CORLEY

We can see this by using this “happy” expression example. In (fig. 2) there is little difference or “change,” it may be overlooked.

In (fig. 3) there is no escaping the change in attitude: notice how that when the mouth goes up it pushes the cheeks into the lower “lids” so that there is a compression on the eyes? The eyebrows go up. There is even a slight stretch upward on everything on the face.

TWO, the Eyelids. The lids are more the “Supporting Cast” in the overall emotion of the eyes but really help “push” an emotion. It should be noted that, though not shown, the compression of the cheeks below the eyes help create some of these eye expressions. (fig. 6)

In subtle acting, all these things are very important. (fig.4) is an optional “push” if the character is “very happy.” As soon as a character shows teeth, the level of emotion increases.

THE “EYES” HAVE IT They say that a person’s eyes are a window to their soul. In Rob’s case, his eyes are a window to how much sleep he got writing this article. For the purposes of a person creating characters that they want to bring to “life,” the eyes are the MOST important part of the expression. People look in your eyes for what you really mean or the context of what you are saying. In comic books or any print media, they are especially important as you don’t have a voice to hear to give more clues to the character’s acting. There are three main components to creating acting with the “eyes”:

ONe, and probably the most important, is the eyebrows. They are the key to how the eyes convey emotion. How the eyebrows compress and decompress the eye shape give the broad strokes of the emotion you are trying to covey. (fig. 5)

THree, is the Pupils. Eye direction can convey many subtle emotions. Psychologists say that when we are thinking of the past we look up and to the right, when we think of the future, it’s up and to the left. Either way looking up and to the corner of the eye “reads” as thinking. Looking down usually says you are remorseful. Pupils in the middle of the eyes reads as attentive. Looking up can say “Here we go again.” While looking left or right in succession makes the character feel paranoid or sneaky. Wall-eyed or cross-eyed pupils makes the character look like Rob. (fig. 7) TAKE YOUR “ORDER” PLEASE! Remember that you are creating a visual interpretation of a particular mood or attitude. For each attitude there is one key expression that will illustrate what your character is thinking or feeling. The thought process is revealed through the change of expression. What order and how many expressions you use will convey different things that your character is thinking—or not thinking. One example would be if your character is happy and suddenly becomes frightened but then becomes angry, you’ll need to plan out how you will get the best results as you move through each attitude. Timing in animation will help “push” what you are trying to convey but even in illustration the order and how many expressions you choose is vital. You’ll need to show that change from happy to frightened pretty quickly, but you may want to spend a few more seconds (or drawings) on DRAW! • FALL 2004 35

BANCROFT/CORLEY

EXPRESSIONS AND POSING

your way from frightened to angry to really make it read. If he’s a little slow, then you’ll need more time for the impulses to travel from the brain to the face in order to affect the body. No Tom jokes here, nope, not gonna do it! Yes sir! I’m takin’ the old high road on this one. (fig. 8) In animation, another thing to watch for is to be sure to change the expression before or after the character moves. This will make it more “readable” so it will register with the audience. (fig. 9)

Also, an expression or animation can be made stronger by having the facial elements working together. (fig. 11) Notice how there is compression on one side of the face and a slight “stretch” on the other? This creates a stronger eye direction of the viewer. You could take the pupils out and even the face would be pointing to the left!

STRIKE A POSE, or ”LET’S VOGUE”! (cheesy ’90s reference for Tom’s sake) Okay, let’s start adding the body!

WHACHOOSAY? Try to avoid saying too much. I think the phrase we used in our last article was: “K.I.S.S.—Keep it Simple Stupid.” There is usually one main expression that will dominate a scene or bit of action and that should only change in intensity and not feeling. Randomly changing the pose or expression in your scene will only confuse your audience and ruin any scene no matter how well drawn. Less is more they always say. How a character’s facial pieces work together need to make sense. A grin on one side of the face should compress the eye of the SAME SIDE. (fig.10) If you’re not thinking about this being an actual character with real muscles and tissue, you may forget some of these very “real” principles.

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COMPOUNDED (EMOTIONAL) INTEREST When we’re talking about “expression” we’re talking about the whole package, face, body and all. Through body language we are able to reinforce any attitude we are trying to convey. Some emotions are inseparable from the use of body language. Take the emotion “sorrow” for example, when a character begins to feel sad, the first place it will start is the “Mind” from there it will immediately begin to show in the eyes and the now down turned mouth. As the emotion progresses, it will begin to manifest itself in the rest of the body with the shoulders slumping and the torso taking on more of a “C” curve as the chest and pelvis slowly collapse inward on each other. (fig. 12) The face alone can communicate a wide range of emotions but it is greatly reinforced by the action of the rest of the body.

DIGITAL ILLUSTRATION

ALBERTO RUIZ

Importing photographic textures and effects to add dimension and excitement to otherwise flat vector art is a lot of fun and it couldn’t be easier. Adobe Illustrator lets you bring Photoshop generated bitmap images through its “Place” command, which can be transformed with a click of the mouse. In addition to textures, you also have the capability of placing inked drawings, blackand-white photographs and sketches for easy coloring and tinting. A bitmap file looks deceptively like a good old high-contrast, black-and-white image. Its magic, however, lies in its transparency properties, the “black” part of the bitmap is opaque and can be recolored at will, while the apparent “white” area is actually 100% transparent, allowing for a myriad of design possibilities.

HIGH SPEED COLORING JOB I scanned the above inked drawing as “line art/text” at 600 DPI, and saved the image in TIF format. After creating a new document in Adobe Illustrator, I placed the file by choosing “Place” from the File menu. By the way, most high-resolution TIF bitmap files are under a megabyte in size. NOTE: It’s important that you keep all TIF files associated with the work you are doing in the same folder along with the main Illustrator document as AI keeps track of the linked files’ location. I then locked the current layer (Layer 1) and created a second layer which I re-named “coloring” and dragged directly underneath. You should also keep in mind that you can change the default grayscale (black) bitmap to any custom, CMYK, RGB, or PMS color you wish, but you can’t fill the image with patterns or gradients.

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DIGITAL ILLUSTRATION

ALBERTO RUIZ

APPLYING FLAT COLOR AND/OR GRADIENTS With the inked drawing placed securely in the layer directly above, I drew the different shapes that make up the car with the pen tool in a carefree manner and the girl was drawn freehand using the pencil. Ellipses were used where appropriate and also to speed things up.

For this particular piece I offset the colored shapes a bit, but you can color yours as tight or loose as you want, knowing the black line or layered colors will overlap and hide any inconsistencies.

THE FINAL ILLUSTRATION

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DIGITAL ILLUSTRATION

ALBERTO RUIZ

COLORING A QUICK SKETCH After scanning in Grayscale mode, the contrast was improved using the level slider in Adobe Photoshop—Command+L (Mac OS), Ctrl+L (Windows)—and the image was inversed—Command+I (Mac OS), Ctrl+I (Windows). The mode was converted from Grayscale to Bitmap using the Diffusion Dither Method at an output of 600 pixels per inch.

These settings worked fine for this image, feel free to experiment.

In a layer directly underneath the bitmap image, I drew the “inner color” shapes using the pencil tool and added the logo.

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DIGITAL ILLUSTRATION

ALBERTO RUIZ

The basketball as a design element was an afterthought, I felt the figure needed more than just a black background. The chain link fence was cut from the main picture and saved as a bitmap as well, several copies were colored red and scattered all over the ball for texture.

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Draw #9