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[kame-sennin]

I'm leaning towards buying this book:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0399508031/?tag=neogaf0e-20

anyone read it?

 

[GrotesqueBeauty]

I'm leaning towards buying this book:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0399508031/?tag=neogaf0e-20

anyone read it?

That is actually an amazing reference book, although I don't know how good it will be for teaching you the basics. Early on I actually gleaned a lot about cartooning from the Draw 50 books by Lee J. Ames. It's all straight copying, but it does a fantastic job of breaking drawings down into basic shapes and proportions.

Also, I overlooked your post earlier in the thread, but thank you for your thought out response. It's a very interesting subject and worthy of further discussion at some point (I'm feeling a bit under the weather to go into it deeply atm). I obviously have some pretty strong opinions about the subject, and ones that I considered hard earned as an artist. I look forward to continuing that conversation with you.

 

[KAP151]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI7NzPnp0i4

Maybe Bob Ross could help?

 

[Raging Spaniard]

Thanks. Although, I'm not interested in learning how to make animated films. I'm more interested in the art of cartooning whether its done in newspapers, magazines, comics, or animation (I'm a comics writer actually). I want to learn how to translate the human form into the kind of simplified designs used by Disney, Herge, Eisner, Tezuka, ect.

That book will still teach you how to do all that. Dont rush to conclusions due to the title

I myself went into the 2d animation field in order to learn how to really draw the figure, didnt have the biggest interest in motion studies.

Good to see this thread pop-up again! I want to see PROGRESS, people!

Edit: If I could recommend a book to anyone willing to learn about proper layout and storytelling studies. Framed Ink by Marcos Mateu-Mestre is an AMAZING book. Easily the best art related book I have bought in a LOOOONG time, cheap too!

 

[ethic]

I'm leaning towards buying this book:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0399508031/?tag=neogaf0e-20

anyone read it?

What you want to do is buy the Andrew Loomis books.

Figure Drawing for all its Worth

And Drawing the Head and Hands

They're old and out of print, but awesome. I got my copies on
eBay.

 

[kame-sennin]

Edit: ^ Thanks Spaniard and ethic. It looks like I'll be buying a bit more than I thought I would.

That is actually an amazing reference book, although I don't know how good it will be for teaching you the basics. Early on I actually gleaned a lot about cartooning from the Draw 50 books by Lee J. Ames. It's all straight copying, but it does a fantastic job of breaking drawings down into basic shapes and proportions.

Also, I overlooked your post earlier in the thread, but thank you for your thought out response. It's a very interesting subject and worthy of further discussion at some point (I'm feeling a bit under the weather to go into it deeply atm). I obviously have some pretty strong opinions about the subject, and ones that I considered hard earned as an artist. I look forward to continuing that conversation with you.

Thanks for the recommendation. I also forgot all about our debate until I started trawling the thread for amazon links :lol

 

[DarthWoo]

I didn't think it would be appropriate to ask this in the 45 Day thread as it is unrelated to the challenges and content there. I have a reasonable amount of skill in traditional and digital drawing, as well as digital painting. It's nothing too fancy, but I can make something that looks pretty...if I have enough time. What I wonder is, how the heck do I get to a point where I can churn out an issue's worth of a comic book/graphic novel type work every week? Most pieces I've done have been fairly intricate with a fair amount of color, but they take upwards of 15-18 hours to finish. I just purchased The Walking Dead Compendium and I've been considering trying to emulate a similar style, but even that looks like it wouldn't be that simple and conducive to efficiency. Does anyone here have knowledge of streamlined art creation? I do have a couple books regarding drawing comics, but none of them really address being efficient. I'm wondering if I should search for my old scanner's AC adapter, as sometimes it seems I really can draw on paper much more quickly than with the tablet.

 

[Yeef]

Not familiar with the behind-the-scenes stuff of The Walking Dead Weeklies, but from what I recall most western comics will have separate people doing the writing, penciling, inking and coloring. Japanese comics tend to be in black and white and also have multiple people working on a single comic (even if they're not necessarily credited). Having one person doing everything is clearly going to take longer.

As far as creation goes, where's your bottleneck? I'm far from an expert, but it seems logical to work on designing a process to streamline the things that take the longest. Everything gets better with practice, so I'd say don't worry about doing an actual comic series right off and instead just do some one-off comics and focus on your weakest/slowest areas for awhile while jotting down notes, sketches and outlines so that you'll have a good idea of which way you want to go when you do get started.

 

[Pirabear]

As an art student one thing I can say is to not be too harsh on yourself while you're still learning. One thing I regret in my first two years of college was being demotivated to draw in my free time because everyone else around me was just so much better or could pick up things much faster than I could. Realized that being self damaging is very unproductive, so now I'm drawing almost everyday and can't wait for school to start!

Just remember to not get discouraged by great artist, they all had to start somewhere.

 

[Loxley]

As an art student one thing I can say is to not be too harsh on yourself while you're still learning. One thing I regret in my first two years of college was being demotivated to draw in my free time because everyone else around me was just so much better or could pick up things much faster than I could. Realized that being self damaging is very unproductive, so now I'm drawing almost everyday and can't wait for school to start!

Just remember to not get discouraged by great artist, they all had to start somewhere.

Ha, oddly I was in a similar position, albeit for slightly different reasons. I'll be going into my senior year this fall, but for the first three or so years art school pretty much ruined my desire to draw in my free-time, since I was drawing 24/7 for school, art officially became work. The last thing I wanted to do after drawing/painting in Photoshop after six hours at my studio was go home and draw more. Which is sad when I remember I would draw all the goddamn time when I was a kid.

Lately I've been getting out of that funk a bit, it's been fun have that creative fire lit again.

 

[DarthWoo]

Not familiar with the behind-the-scenes stuff of The Walking Dead Weeklies, but from what I recall most western comics will have separate people doing the writing, penciling, inking and coloring. Japanese comics tend to be in black and white and also have multiple people working on a single comic (even if they're not necessarily credited). Having one person doing everything is clearly going to take longer.

As far as creation goes, where's your bottleneck? I'm far from an expert, but it seems logical to work on designing a process to streamline the things that take the longest. Everything gets better with practice, so I'd say don't worry about doing an actual comic series right off and instead just do some one-off comics and focus on your weakest/slowest areas for awhile while jotting down notes, sketches and outlines so that you'll have a good idea of which way you want to go when you do get started.

I think my main bottleneck would end up being somewhere between the penciling and inking stages. I can come up with whatever when it comes to writing, and then I can make some rough sketches of what I want. Unfortunately, as I've looked closely at the style in Walking Dead, I notice that one of my weaknesses is that I can't do what would sort of be the equivalent of level of detail in games. Even if someone is way in the background, I try to squeeze way too many details onto them and they just end up a mess.

As I mentioned, I think that for the moment, the tablet is more trouble than it's worth as far as just plain sketching. If I'm doing a digital painting or something, it's fine since I only need to do one page, but if I need to do a whole series of pages with multiple panels, it's easier to just do everything in pencil. On the tablet I feel the urge to immediately have perfection since I'm on a tablet, and that slows everything down.

 

[Monocle]

Fuck, wrong thread. Really sorry for the necro bump.