I don’t really consider myself a comic artist, maybe some day, but now I simply think of myself as a visual artist, it’s something that I’ve based my career on, understanding and creating visual art that communicates a message, evokes a feeling and tells a story. When training myself to draw comics early-on I found competing challenges that needed to be mastered and balanced for anything from a journal sketch to a finished page to look good. One was the challenge of fact; the people, places and things that inhabit our world must be accurate for them to be believable. This is the first thing we notice when drawing when we’re young, it’s remedy is obvious; learning anatomy, perspective, lighting and drawing from reference. But if we learned everything all of those subjects sufficiently our art would be stale and clinical, lifeless without the other half of the equation; life. Life comes from the artist, it’s emotion, motion, energy, the innate life we breath into our pencil, brush and ink strokes that lift the subject off the page and make it convey not only story fact, but story emotion. It’s this dichotomy that is all important to perfect and balance for any form of visual art communication to be interesting to an audience, with no medium maybe as demanding for this balance than the world of stories in pictures and words; comic books.
Working on a comic page can be pretty daunting, the 11×17 board which comics are traditionally drawn on then shrunk down to comic size is meant to help in the process of getting a lot of savory details into the comic page, but it’s unnatural to an artist that may have spent most of their learning in a letter sized sketch book. Also there is the mental anxiety that comes with knowing the book might be published and even though it’s pencil, often times erasing numerous times destroys the paper and in-lieu the art. These factors can easily contribute to art that is either factually incorrect, rushed through or tightly controlled so that the final product becomes stale and lifeless. This is the reason why it’s been important to perfect one’s own process for creating comic pages that maximizes the factual accuracy and energy while retaining balance that makes it both interesting as well as understandable.
Electronica Zero Cover 2004
The first thing I do when approaching a comic page or cover is to read the script and understand thoroughly what my objectives are going in. With the Electronica covers I already have a preconceived idea that I want to show the characters surrounded by alien tech. Electronica is a comic I’ve been working on, on-and-off, for years. Recently I’ve been ramping up to release the mini-series Electronica: Burden of a Borrowed World in Spring of 2011 and in preface to that the release of the Electronica Prelude issue this December. Electronica is a story about a near future where our world is failing because of global climate change and a city called Electronica is erected built on alien technology. The story has an interesting balance of this larger-than-life world with a cast of lovable characters such as the psychic, fifth-dimension wielding Girl170 and Martian Bhundari, the only alien you’ll ever meet whom wears a hoody and drinks Jones Soda. The balance is something that I want to capture in the covers and did so when I released the Electronica zero issue at the 2004 San Diego Comic Con. This cover of Gir170 waking in a bed of alien tech was a eerie metaphor for her dreams about her future fate.
Beginning the sketch process the idea is to draw as many quick sketches as possible to really push past the expectable and come up with a number of solutions that might evoke different emotions and tell slightly different perspectives of the story through subject matter and composition. These are 2″x3″ small thumbnails in ink, no idea is a bad idea, so if you have one just get it down and out of your brain so you can get to the next. These should only take a a minute or two each to sketch, I like to use a black ink pen because it’s not only quicker and easier to see but there is also a commitment you must make using the ink that assures you won’t be erasing and spending a lot of time going back and forth. This quickness is important because it creates the energy and life that can make it’s way into the final composition. Because the 11″x17″ boards are so big we can get hung up easily on the details and the big bold moves that would add energy through the page become questioned and frail. Making bold moves like this small is a way to really make a strong composition that will be noticeable on the shelf.
Electronica prelude issue cover thumbs
Electronica prelude issue cover comp
Once I feel that I’ve explored the sprectrum of possibilites, and then pushed it a little further I landed on the Girl170 close-up cover as a solution that I felt really good about. I thought it would be very strong but also somewhat intriguing, it was also very different than what I plan to do with the rest of the covers for the mini-series so I thought that it really represented what the focus of this comic is; Girl170 in this future world. The expression on her face is meant to be a blank cold stare almost as if she’s woken up in absolute clarity. The next stage is the comp stage, every artist has their own preferred methods, some start drawing directly on the 11×17 page, others draw the thumbnail and jump to the larger board, others start with a middle-sized sketch comp, but for me I like to establish the energy and the idea at the thumbnail page and use the comp stage to really define the concept and block out the shapes, the factual data that I mentioned earlier. For the comp I blow up the thumbnail about 200% on my home copying machine and trace 2-up to a letter sized piece of paper, this allows me to see spreads (2-sheets at a time) .It’s sort of a chance, before going larger, to really decide who and what goes where, what are the poses and camera angles, the lighting situation, the flow of the story if it’s sequential panels, you have a chance to start dividing the space and telling the story, while still keeping it fairly quick and loose before going to the rigid final. For the Electronica cover you can see now that I’ve really elaborated on what will be in the panels. I wanted to show the reast of the characters including Girl170 in full action so audiences get an idea of what might be happening on the inside pages.
Here are some additional comps of the first four pages of the Electronica book to give you an idea of how important the comp stage is to sequential storytelling. To see the first four pages finished check out the Electronica/Stitchwork Prelude issue preview here http://www.preview.wegjart.com
Electronica prelude issue comps pages 1-4
Penciling. The next stage is blow up the comp and trace it to the 11×17 art board. When in a hurry I will blow it up on the copying machine loosely but if I have time I scan it into the computer and set it up on the 11×17 board to match where the bleeds and crops are more closely, then I will print it out and using a light table trace it to the 11×17 board. It’s important not to try to draw when tracing, but lightly and quickly trace the page with no emotion or thought, allowing the energy to come back in after you are looking at the page on your art desk. The Electronica prelude cover posed a number of unique challenges; the first one was the importance of the symmetry to the face at such a large scale, because Girl170 is sort of a perfect being and with a very blank expression, her face required symmentry. A way of checking yourself is photocopy down the page and look at it from a more gloabal perspective, “stepping back” from it and seeing if there is anything you would further refine. While penciling this page I rephotocopied it and folded the copy in half and looked at it on a lightbox to see how my symmetry was lining up and made adjustments matching top and bottom of the eyes, ears, mouth and jaw-line to make sure she looked okay when scaled down, it’s easy to get things out-of-whack when drawing this large. The other unique challenge is the holo-screen windows, in hindsight, and as mentioned by the judges in the Small Press Idol Contest 2010, which Electronica was entered in this past Summer, it may have been better to draw these seperately and then digitally composite. However on this one I was interested in the challenge it posed to see if I could pull it off in pencil, also I really like to have a piece of finished art that looks like the finished product – I’m sure one day there will be no time for that sort of selfishness. Below you will find the pencil, ink and color versions of the Electronica prelude issue cover.
Electronica prelude issue cover pencils
As a self inker I had the opportunity to further refine my art during the inking process. After photocopying the final pencils down in size and stepping back, I realized that smoothing out some of the hard lines in the face and making some of the features more delicate would help give the open, ethereal quality I was looking for on this cover as well look good on such a large close-up of Girl170′s face. Also in the inking process keeping the window lines fairly thin was important that I wanted the audience to first see Girl170 and then second come closer to discover the rest of the characters in the windows.
Electronica prelude issue cover inks
On the final cover I knew I wanted to go white on the background to give this a very open, ethereal, high-tech feel, the background dots whipping through the pictures, which I originally thought of as sand or a metaphor for the stars, became more related to the black color of Girl170′s fifth dimensional powers and more of a metaphor for stars or sand, the warm climate and space aspects of the comic. I did a lot of back and forth with the opacities of the panel but I had to stick to my guns, make them translucent enough so that Girl170 will be seen first and then the characters seen closer in. I actually painted the panels and Girl170 in full opacity on separate layers so that I could be able to make this decision easily at the final stages. Will it work on the shelves? Will it get people interested in the story? We will see..
keep creating! –WEGJ
Electronia prelude cover final
Buy the Electronica Prelude issue now at http://www.buyelectronica.wegjart.com
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WEGJ on DeviantArt