Saturday 4 December 2010

Shazam or Captain Marvel, if you prefer

I Just felt like drawing Shazam...when I was a kid my dad got transferred to Germany (he was in the Army) on the way to the airport while sitting bored in a motorway cafe, a truck driver took pity on me and handed me two Comics, shazam and the hulk, they were the first Comics I ever read. I've always been fascinated with the character Shazam especially ever since, mainly because there's so few comics with the character. I've tried to draw him a few times but It never really worked, I never felt I could pull if off with my style of drawing, but I think it works quite well here

Thursday 28 October 2010

Oh why didnt UK publishers credit artists?

i found a bunch of old Battle/War Picture Library and Commando comics that id bought second hand (i really wasnt around in 1961!), but it always annoyed me that skinflint British publishers refused to credit their creators...so theres a whole generation of artists, British European and South American who worked on British comics in the 60's and 70's that are unknown (to me at least), heres an artist, British i think? it might be Mike White who worked for 2000 ad, but whoever the artist is i love the spontaneity of the line work the rough and ready composition and what looks like a lovely instinctive feel for spotting blacks, heres a selection of pages. They are in UK digest format, roughly equivalent to cutting American comics in half  and turning them on their sides, which permitted only about 3 panels a page, tho' they were 60-70 pages long....





I dont know why these images were re-arranged when submitting this in one go...

Wednesday 20 October 2010

Preparation...preparation...I...must ...prepare!!!

Im currently working on a short strip (cant post anything of it yet) and the writer gave me plenty of reference, more than i usually get and more than i couldve hoped for really, but im struggling and the reason? Its the same reason i always have, but never realised until now. I dont do enough preparation, i do a few character sheets, but i always thought they were for others to see what i was thinking, now i realise i should be drawing everything so i can draw it in my sleep! i never consciously skipped this stage, but id always get bogged down, i always thought it was artists block or something; now i know that most of it, is that im trying to introduce new characters, objects or locations while im drawing the page, i have to get in to the habit of preparation sketches and get stuff in my head both before starting  the strip and before starting a page with anything...Its my new resolution.
Ok here is a page of a sample strip i did recently...