Hi, Folks:
I haven’t had the opportunity to prattle on with my lop-sided opinions lately, so it’s time I make that right.
When I saw the solicitations for the new graphic novel, “Neil Young’s Greendale,” I was momentarily confused—was I reading about music or comics? Well, as it turns out, both. I haven’t seen this comic yet, but chances are I’ll buy it. On the album “Greendale,” I consider the songs “Sun Green” and “Be The Rain” to be masterpieces, and deserving of their places among Young’s other great songs.
Lately, I’ve been in intensely studying the human head, and how to draw it better. Here are a few observations: 1) Andrew Loomis’ books (“Figure Drawing For All It’s Worth” and “Drawing the Head and Hands”) are the standard by which every other illustrator should aspire to; and 2) I have a high opinion of Jack Hamm’s books, too, as well as lifelong admiration for “How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way” by Stan Lee and John Buscema.
Most of the rest of my art books in my library fall well short of these classics. In fact, many of these art books dish out incorrect information! I was stunned by some of the wildly inaccurate proportions and measurements these books push!
You know what’s wrong with most art books created today? They are trying to sell you a genre, not drawing skills. You get all this “How to Draw Zombies” crap, or dragons, or faeries, or superheroes, or vampires, etc. ad infinitum! These books usually include basic art instruction, but why not just teach artists how to draw! Once the would-be artist gets a handle on drawing, then he can draw all the zombies and supers and dragons he wants!
Whew… Settling down now.
This is why I’ve never written an art book.
In other news, you can now purchase “Johnny Saturn” issues 1 thru 9 from Graphic.ly via iTunes. I just got to play with an iPad the other day, and I was very impressed with it—it makes a great comic reading device!
How did motion comics get popular? They seem pretty much the same format as those terrible 1960’s cartoons featuring Captain America, or the Sub-Mariner, or the like. In those cartoons, they cut up the original comic pages and then moved the two-dimensional characters around. Well, modern motion comics aren’t that crude, but are more like movie animatics. They are neither fish nor fowl, comic nor cartoon. Marvel’s motion comics have looked pretty impressive, really, for all my complaining. I’m speaking of the “Spider-Woman” webcomics, and the “Iron Man: Extremis” material I’ve seen.
Honestly, if I had the manpower, I’d produce a “Johnny Saturn” motion comic. I have the source material, and the software, after all. I just can’t make motion comics and keep up with the weekly comic work.
OK, enough blathering from me. You may now return to your scheduled broadcast.
