This is how I sleep at least…

I hear legends of a soft, comfortable “bed” where people lay down to sleep.  But they’re just crazy legends much like Big Foot and the Mail Man…

Sorry for the cop out this week. I’ve been really busy and tired.  I’ll be back with a serious tutorial soon!

And for those of you who are wondering… yes, sometimes I do fall asleep in my chair like this.  I can’t tell you how many times my girlfriend has come in and woken me up because she heard me snoring in my studio… I should get more sleep…

Anyways, tomorrow page 25 of Shadows of Oblivion #2 will be up.  And that won’t be a cop out!

Until then follow me around the web!

Like me on Facebook

Follow me on Twitter

Re-blog me on tumblr

And if you love my artwork don’t forget to pick up my comics!

And remember: Make Comics! Not Excuses!

If you’re an professional artist, an aspiring professional artist, or just a recreational artist, there will come a time when you want to print your artwork. Maybe it’ll be a business card, or an art print, or maybe you’re finally going to self publish that comic i’ve been telling you to make.  Regardless of what it is you want to print, there are some important things you need to know.  When I did my fan art contest last month, I was surprised on how many people had no idea how to format their art for printing, when I provided a template, only a hand full of submissions actually knew what they were looking at.  So I figure this will be a good tutorial for everyone.

At this point I should probably say, when I say “Printing” or “Printer.” I’m not talking about your home printer connected to your computer.  Though many printers now a days can produce beautiful photo style prints, I’m referring to a printing press or a place that mass prints materials like posters, art, books, etc.

So let’s get started.  How do we make sure our art looks the best possible when printed?

1. Know the printer you’re working with.

Every company uses different machines that have different settings, different computers, and different software all working together.  They know how to make the best prints, and they tell you what they need to make the best prints.  Every site whether it’s Ka-Blam.com or gotprint.com gives you the guidelines needed to produce the best prints possible.  Read them. Follow them.  If you don’t, your printed work will suck.

These guidelines include, but aren’t limited to: CMYK vs RGB, Resolution, Document size, Trim size, Live area (or safe area), and file format.

I’m going to assume this is all new to you (or else you wouldn’t have read this far in the tutorial.) So let me explain:

2. CMYK vs RGB

These are color formats. One is the primary colors for pigment, the other is the primary colors of light.

CMYK stands for Cyan (a type of blue) Magenta (a type of red) Yellow, and Black (K is for black, so it isn’t confused with blue.)  These four colors are the primary colors for printing in ink, and every printer uses these 4 colors.  So many Printers will ask for your art to be in a CMYK color format before you submit the art to them. If you don’t all your colors may not print the way they looked on your computer monitor.

RGB stands for Red, Green, and Blue.  They’re the primary colors of light.  Anything you see on your computer monitor or tv screen is in RGB format.  Most of the time you will want to be digitally working in RGB format and then convert it to CMYK before you print.

But this is when checking the guidelines is important.  Some printers prefer that you submit the artwork in RGB format if that is how the artwork was created.  Sometimes it’s because they’ve calibrated their machines to properly make the conversion from RGB to CMYK without loosing color quality.  So check with the printer you are using. Do they want you to submit the art in CMYK, or RGB?

3. Resolution

Ever see something that was 72 DPI, or 300 PPI?  What the crap does that mean?  Well they mean the same thing DPI stands for Dots Per Inch. PPI stands for Pixels Per Inch and mean the same thing.  The more pixels or dots per inch you have, the larger and more detailed your image will be.  Everything you see on your computer screen is 72 DPI.  Where nearly everything printed is at at least 300 DPI.  That’s why when you try to print a small image from your computer screen it either looks super tiny, or is pixelated to all hell. If your going to print your artwork, make sure it’s at least 300 DPI.  But check with the printer you are using, some of them require resolutions slightly higher.

4. File Format

Ever notice that little extension at the end of your file? Of course you have, you know how computers work. I’m sure you know .jpg .gif .tiff .psd .pdf etc etc.  You want to make sure your artwork is in the file format the printer can accept.  If you send them a AI file, but they can’t open it with their software, you’re going to have lots of problems.  The most commonly accepted is .PDF  .TIF .JPG.  Other less commonly accepted files (but common enough) is .PSD.

Now Each file does something different to your art, and you can google it to see what the differences are as I’m not going to get into here.  The one thing I do recommend is that if you can avoid it, NEVER use jpg for printed art.  .JPG files do a weird compression thing to your art where it removes pixels to compress the file size.  Now this isn’t really an issue when you’re putting images on the web.  But it may cause problems in printing.  I recommend either a PDF file, or TIF file to preserve the quality of your art.

5. Document size, Trim size, Safe Area.

This is the most important thing when printing your art.  This makes sure that everything will print the way that you intend it to be.

For this example I’m going to use Ka-blam’s guidelines for printing comics.

Most printers provide you a guideline like this to ensure your art meets the requirements they need to make the print look great.

1. Document size: 

This is the total size of the document that you will send them.  Here it says 7” x 10.5”.  This is important because if they tell you it has to be that big, yet you send artwork you drew on an 8.5” x 11” paper, then this:

Becomes this:

And you don’t want your art to be cut off like that.

Trim Area:

This is the size your artwork will actually be.  Even though the document size is 7 x 10.5 when you receive the print, it’s actually going to be 6.75 x 10.25.  The reason the document size is larger than the final size is because the printer needs what is called a bleed.  When printing machines are printing off 1000’s of copies of your comic, the paper shifts slightly from one side to another.  So they ask for your artwork to be bigger so when this shifting happens, you don’t loose any of the artwork, nor do you get weird spots on the paper where nothing is printed.  If you did not provide a bleed to your art, you run the risk of your artwork looking like this:

You don’t want weird white bars on the edge of your artwork prints.

Safe Area or Live Area:

This is the spot that’s safe.  Anything that is in that area is in no danger of being cut off in the printing process.  You want to make sure all your text, and important images are inside this area.  If you don’t, and you ignore the safe area, you run the risk of this happening to your art:

You worked really hard on your artwork. Don’t let the text get cut off in the printing process.

So there you go! All the basics you need to send your art to print!

GO FORTH AND USE THE KNOWLEDGE WELL!

Tomorrow I’ll be posting page 23 of Shadows of Oblivion #2.

In the mean time follow me around the web:

Like me on Facebook

Follow me on Twitter

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And if you love my artwork don’t forget to pick up my comics!

And remember: Make Comics! Not Excuses!

TUTORIAL TUESDAY: 22 PANELS THAT ALWAYS WORK!

Last week I was writing the next issue of Shadows of Oblivion and there are alot of panels where characters are just talking.  It’s always challenging to keep panels visually interesting when all that’s happening is talking.  So I had to refer to Wally Wood’s 22 panels that always work, to create interesting panels that weren’t repetitive and borring.

Then It dawned on me.  Most of you who who are following my blog and read my tutorials are very new to making comics. Most of you probably don’t even know who Wally Wood is, let alone his 22 panels.  Which is understandable, as he passed away before I was even born, and I didn’t even know who he was until I started making comics.

So first read up on this fantastic comic creator and illustrator.

Then Study his 22 panels that always work.  Because they do always work.  They’ll make your comic’s much more visually interesting when all people are doing is talking…

Tomorrow is page 19 of Shadows of Oblivion #2. Hope you’re enjoying the adventure!

Until then follow me around the web!

Like me on Facebook

Follow me on Twitter

Re-blog me on tumblr

And if you love my artwork don’t forget to pick up my comics!

And remember: Make Comics! Not Excuses!

Hey everyone. I’m really swamped this week. So I hope you don’t mind that for this week I just show you some of my art process instead of a “how to draw” tutorial.  I guess this is more of a “How to plan out your art” tutorial.  If you like seeing my process you can see more when I talked about “How to make a Comic”, “Process”, and “Tones”.

Today I’m going to show you the process of the page I just posted yesterday. Page 16 of Shadows of Oblivion #2

So believe it or not this page was conceived about 7-8 years ago… (wow, this comic has been a long time coming).  I didn’t know where I wanted this to happen in my story, but I knew I wanted it to happen.  So behold the terrible artwork of Shono back in 2005….

Oye.. This should also be a tutorial on how if you keep on drawing for 8 years you get better…  ANYWAYS….

Fast forward to me writing Shadows of Oblivion #2 I found a place for this scene, however it needed to look a little different to work for the purpose of the story.  So i did a sketch to figure it out…

Well though it’s a hot mess of scribbly lines… I like how this looks.  It fits the story and is faithful to the original concept.  Lets pencil it!

Now since I’m my own inker on this comic, (in fact I do all the work on this comic)  I pencil a little looser and a little messier.  I don’t want to waste time drawing really tight pencils just to draw it again with ink. This is just to get all the major details and poses down so I can ink it later.

So now i convert this line art two blue line, to make the inking easier…

Now we Ink….

This issue of Shadows of Oblivion I used a couple different ways of inking.  This particular page I inked Digitally using Manga Studio. Other Pages I used a brush pen.  There is no “Right or Wrong” tools to ink with, so to speak.  You want to use whatever gets you the lines your looking for.  You don’t need to go spend $100 on digital software, if you can get the lines you want with a bottle of ink and a broken chop stick.

So since I inked this digitally I can remove the blue line layer and It looks like this:

Tone time!  Most of you are probably would add color here, but I’ve always been a fan of Black and White.  Again I’m using Manga Studio to add the tones. This is something you can do traditionally by hand… but I don’t recommend it.  It’s tedious and expensive.  This is one of the few times buying a $300 piece of software will actually save you money in the short term compared to it’s traditional counter part.

So we have something like this:

Last but not least, the word balloons!

And there you go! The process on how I bring a page from concept to finish!  Hope that got you thinking about your own process!

We’re back to our regular posting schedule, so tomorrow you’ll have page 17 or Shadows of Oblivion #2.  Until then, check me out around the web!

Like me on Facebook

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And if you love my artwork don’t forget to pick up my comics!

And remember: Make Comics! Not Excuses!

So do you guys remember that post I did a couple weeks ago about poses? Specifically about how to use stick figures?  Great! cause that will make this tutorial make more sense… plus it’ll save me time, as I don’t have alot right now.

Today’s Tutorial is also about poses.  But something very specific about the poses…

STANDING VS MOVEMENT

When you boil it down, your figure will be only in one of two poses.  They’ll either be stationary or moving (duh.)  In my student’s work i’ve seen countless figures that SHOULD be standing still, but look like their falling.  Reversly I’ve seen just as many figures that SHOULD be moving about, but they look like their just standing around lazily…

So how do you get a figure to look like their moving, or standing still?  The key is the center of gravity!

“Uh… what? What the crap is that?” you may be asking yourself.  Well it’s the center point of your body (or of anything really).  If the top part of your body no longer is over your center of gravity, you fall. So when drawing stationary figures you want the head to be over their center of gravity. When drawing moving figures, you need their head’s off of their center…. I might be losing some of you.  Lets go into some examples.

STANDING

To show someone standing still their head has to be right over their center of gravity.  Now this goes for people who are sitting, laying, leaning, etc, but Just for today we’re going to do standing up.  Hopefully you’ll be able to take this tutorial and figure out how sitting and leaning will work.

So where is the center of gravity?  Well there are scientific ways to calculate it, but that doesn’t help us when drawing.  The way to figure it out in drawing is by asking yourself: “Is the head lined up between the feet?”  If you can draw a straight line down from the head, and it hits one of the feet, or lands between the feet then the head is over the center of gravity.  For example:

These two figures are standing in very different positions, but their heads fall right between their feet.  So these characters appear to be standing still.

You should  also note that when cropping a figure so that you cannot see their feet or legs, the default interpretation of that pose is that their standing still.  You don’t know if they’re over their center of gravity if you don’t know where it is, so people automatically assume they are.

MOVEMENT

Reversely you cannot effectively show someone moving unless you show their feet.  Too often i seen people in comics, or other medias try to show someone running without showing their feet.  And unless it’s a movie where you can show arms pumping and background changing no one is going to know your character is supposed to be moving.

Now to show movement you have to do the opposite as the standing.  The head cannot be lined up between the feet. Like so:

Now whether or not they’re falling or moving under their own power is dependent on the pose of the character, but if they’re off the center off gravity they’re moving one way or another.

Energy of Movement

This is one thing I’ve really noticed alot.  Even if someone is able to capture movement in the pose, they often struggle with the energy involved.  If someone is sprinting, they often look like its a light jog.  Or  if someone was punched by a superhero it looks more like they were nudged by a medium size dog.  To solve this problem you need to think about how much energy is going into the movement, and based on that determine how far off from the base your character’s head should be.  The farther away from the center the more energy is being used or exerted. For example:

This figure is certainly off the center of gravity and looks like he’s falling, but it doesn’t look like he’s falling very fast or hard.  In fact it looks like he could recover and straight back out.  He’s not very far off the center so the energy isn’t very high.  However….

This figure is very far off the center line.  The energy is much higher so it looks like it’s moving alot faster, or falling with alot more force than in the previous drawing. So energy/force/speed of the movement is dependent on how far from that center line you put your character’s head.

So that’s some basics on getting movement in your poses (or lack there of, if you want your character to be standing still.)  As usual I’ve barely scratched the surface so go look at real life and see how the real world works and moves, it’ll only help your art!

Tomorrow there won’t be a new Shadows of Oblivion page. (Don’t complain you got two on Monday.)  I might have something else instead. I haven’t decided yet.

But in the mean time check me out around the web:

Like me on Facebook

Follow me on Twitter

Re-blog me on tumblr

And if you love my artwork don’t forget to pick up my comics!

And remember: Make Comics! Not Excuses!

bluucat:

The answer is: Well, sort of!

I noticed that a lot of things I’ve been recommended or found useful aren’t really in the masterlists of artist references on tumblr - and the same goes for helpful drawing exercises. So I decided to make my own post.

HOW TO KILL ARTIST’S BLOCK

• There is no such thing as artist’s block, if you frequently draw from life.
• No, really.
• If you are really, truly committed to improving your craft, then it does no good to sit and complain that you “don’t know what to draw”. There is so much around you to draw! :)
• In public, try doing gestures of people that walk by. Cafes and shopping malls are great for this, because you have a plausible excuse to be sitting somewhere. Ideally, you don’t want people to notice you’re drawing them— they might try to pose, which makes them look stiff and unnatural. 
• The best targets are people studying, anyone deep in conversation, and people at cash registers.
• If there are no people around, draw objects and rooms and practice your perspective.

AWESOME AND FUN EXERCISES FOR ARTISTS AND ILLUSTRATORS

• Draw a portrait where a body part other than the face/head is the focus.
• Do a full spread for a children’s story. It can be a fairy tale or an original story. Make sure to utilize good design principles and pick readable, high quality fonts that match your art style.
• Draw something using only high contrast light and shadow- no lines, no color, no midtones. 
• Pick a crime report from the news, preferably an unconventional one. Illustrate it as best as possible, making sure to use a dramatic perspective and lots of realistic detail.
• Choose an object — one you haven’t drawn very much before. Gather lots of reference images. Draw it in two and three point perspective — bonus points if you can take the references and draw them from different angles than they were photographed. The goal here is to be able to visualize it easily without effort. This is a good exercise for product design and ideation, as well as concept art.
• Draw thirty people from life.
• Draw thirty people from your imagination. Make sure they’re just as well proportioned and realistic as your sketches from life.
• Do twenty studies of your hand, in various positions. Bizarre angles and positions are fine, but it’s more helpful to examine the construction of it and get used to drawing hands realistically.
• See above, but with your feet.
• Draw a study of a skull. Do not stylize it. Be careful to pay attention to the proportions and texture.
• Remember your object? Imagine it in a setting where it could be good or evil— perhaps interacting with humans or other objects. Avoid obvious angel/devil associations. Draw 3 pages of thumbnails and sketches imagining it in this way.
• Choose a thumbnail and do two larger sketches of it, and then pick one to bring to completion. Make sure it’s in proportion with accurate lighting for the situation. 
• Redesign a fairy tale’s characters in either a modern or non-European setting. Provide costuming references, and make sure to do character sheets and full turns of each.
• Design your own deck of cards — make sure the borders and pattern on the back are paid as much attention as the figures on the fronts.
• Bonus points if you also design and illustrate packaging for the above.
• Do you have a favorite piece of fanart? Draw it as original characters- chances are, you’ve likely put a lot of thought into the relationships and personalities of your favorite characters or OTP, which will show through in an original piece. This is a decently good way to use fanworks in your portfolio, if you feel that they’re better than your original work.
• Draw a car. A really realistic car. Now draw it from a perspective you find really difficult. You are not allowed to take more than half an hour on this total— cars are actually just boxes with some strategic curves, so they should become very easy to gesture once you retrain your brain.
• Draw a table in perspective 5-6 times or so, concentrating on the way it casts a shadow. Make sure to define your light source.
• Design a toy! Draw it from multiple angles — imagine you’re presenting this to someone who has to actually model and produce it. Include as much information as humanly possible. Make sure to include an illustration of its use — you can also create an advertisement, if you’re so inclined.
• If you watch TED lectures, draw portraits of your favorite speakers while you’re viewing them. Try and finish the sketch during the duration of the talk.
• Do an original illustration inspired by two of your favorite illustrators or artists— combining two should help prevent you from directly copying anyone, and force you to think a little harder about solving problems within a work.
• Do 30 studies of animals in motion - housepets or birds are probably going to be the easiest, unless you live by a zoo.
• Fill three full pages of your sketchbook with hard surface studies. (Cars, ships, tractors— you get the idea.) Try to define them with quick, confident lines.
• Make a comic with one panel for each hour of your day. Avoid shortcuts like over the top, animeish emotes and chibi versions of yourself. Make sure to include environments.
• Draw ten illustrations as a series that purposely do not tell a story. They must be as ambiguous as possible. This is really difficult — was originally an assignment from Phoebe Gloeckner, and almost nobody managed to be completely ambiguous. The trick to it is to make sure to create thumbnails of the series first, and look at your work very critically — if anything looks too obviously negative or positive, alter it accordingly.
• Draw yourself combined with your favorite animal, or an animal you feel represents you well. Avoid traditional anthro depictions— try replacing your body parts with the parts you’d find most useful, or thinking of yourself like a sphinx, etc.
• Create a poster for your favorite play.
• Draw yourself at age 7, and age 70. Realistically. Avoid thinking of how cool or uncool you’d be or were. Using pictures of your younger self, or relatives, might help.
• Paint a still life with unconventional lighting or objects. If you must use fruit, use weird fruit, or light it from below.
• Pile books into a tower and draw them in perspective. It’s also fun to make cities out of them, etc.
• Draw yourself every day for a month in the same media to track improvement. Use a mirror, not a photograph.
• Remember your still life? Now illustrate it in the style you’re accustomed to using.
• Draw six busts (head and shoulders) in profile, concentrating on creating an interesting silhouette.
• Do color studies of your favorite movie scenes. If you can’t find screenshots, pause the movie and paint from your television or laptop. Detail’s not as important as strong shapes.
• Draw your favorite place by your home.
• Illustrate a fortune cookie.
• Draw a treehouse or birdhouse and include as many details as possible.
• Design a historical character, and try to make them recognizable by quirks of wardrobe or unique facial features. “Being extraordinarily attractive” does not count.
• Do the 30 day monster challenge! 
• Illustrate your favorite recipe. It doesn’t have to be fancy. “How to make pizza rolls” will even suffice. Seriously.
• Make a business card for yourself. Illustrate it. Hey, everyone needs one- and it’s a great exercise for working under strict constraints, since you’ll need to make sure your name and contact info are clearly legible.
• Draw the weirdest object you can possibly find. IKEA is a really awesome place to find weird objects, if you can’t find any in your home.
• Design a knight of the round table, and make sure to research armor, etc— it’s hard to draw! Great practice.
• Draw ten or twenty plants that are currently seasonal.

BOOKS THAT ARE REALLY USEFUL!

• The Art of Ralph McQuarrie. Yeah, this is expensive. But it’s one of the few artbooks that shows an entire process of illustration— if you’re not sure how to proceed from thumbnails to mockups to final pieces, this is probably what you want to be lookin at.
• How to Analyze People on Sight by Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict. This is available for free online— awesome resource for character design, as it teaches you to think about external characteristics as indicators for personality. Even if it’s not always the most accurate thing ever.
• Leonardo DaVinci’s Notebooks. Yes, I know. Your relatives have even probably tried to get you to look at these. If you can find a good printing of them, though, it’s a really good look at a well used sketchbook.
• The Selected Works of TS Spivet. Not actually a real art reference book, but so many beautiful illustrations and well laid out. Worth a look.
• Drawing with Imagination. Lots of exercises to do if you “can’t think of anything to draw”.
• Any batman artbook. Any of them. I have the OnStar promo one from about ten years back, and it’s still great. There’s a huge mesh of styles going on, and seeing how much thought is put into the character designs and environments is well worth your money. Plus, Batman is cool.
• Any Pixar or Disney artbook that shows the visual development process. The Princess and the Frog is a particularly good example of this, and possibly my favorite, even though I dislike the actual film. They really make sure to show all of their art department’s sketches and preproduction work.
• The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed. Also available on project gutenberg, and will revolutionize the way you think about drawing. It’s a bit wordy and dated, but worth it alone for the lesson that we do not draw what we see, in reality. Go read it.

WEBSITES THAT ARE VERY USEFUL

• conceptart.org
• behance.net - mostly for inspirational purposes, and worth getting one, if you’re in the industry or trying to be
• http://greyscalegorilla.com/blog/2011/04/fck-you-pay-me/ The most important lesson you will ever learn.
• Noah Bradley’s twitter. Tends to retweet useful advice. Blog is good too.
• http://lackadaisy.foxprints.com/exhibit.php?exhibitid=333 Lackadaisy’s expressions tutorial. Take note, intrepid comickers.
• http://conceptcraniopagus.deviantart.com/gallery/24184227 Here’s some decent concept art tutorials.
• http://galadarling.com/article/i-want-to-be-part-of-an-evil-illustrator-duo Kurt Huggins and Zelda Devon talk about working as illustrators and how to do what they do. Sort of overlooked but vastly awesome.
• http://comictool.blogspot.com/search/label/brushes Do you ink? You should probably try using brushes, if you do. This blog is terrifyingly in depth on your brush needs.
•  http://www.retronaut.com/2012/02/soviet-space-propaganda-posters-1958-1963/ Here are some awesome retro posters. Retronaut is a great reference resource in general.
• http://freakshow6.deviantart.com/art/Photoshop-Gouache-Tutorial-177890902 Do you want to be cool like Loish or many other people using this brush? Of course you do! Here’s how to do it. Warning: may be addicting.
• What Skin Colors? How to effectively deal with lighting human skin. Doesn’t include any skintones for POC, unfortunately, as is a common problem with many art tutorials.
• Gradient Tutorial Literally one of the most important things to learn when painting digitally, IMO.
• Texture Brushes Some good brushes.
• DanLuVisiArt Some more good brushes.
• Quick Facial Anatomy Tips …with links to other facial anatomy tips. Of course this isn’t a substitute for drawing from life, but it sure helps :)
• http://lostandtaken.com/ Free textures for your work! I would encourage making your own, in the long run, but these work well.
• http://www.watercolorpainting.com/pigments.htm The masterlist of watercolor pigments. Really helpful if you’re ordering from Blick or Utrecht and can’t recall the difference between one pigment or another, god forbid.
• http://minyos.its.rmit.edu.au/aim/a_notes/p_images/walk_2_legs(side).gif How to do various walk cycles. Very exaggerated, of course.
• http://ilovetypography.com/2008/04/04/on-choosing-type/ Nice article on choosing type. You should always be mindful of how your type choice works with your artwork.

USEFUL THINGS TO OWN

• Brown paper sketchbook. Makes defining volume a lot easier, for beginners and advanced artists alike— just get a white pencil and go crazy with highlights.
• Small sketchbook. For all the times you can’t bring an a4 one someplace. Also good for sketching in public. Moleskines are good, as they get mistaken for ordinary notebooks often. See notes on sketching humans in public.
• White pencils.
• Several weights of mechanical pencil— awesome for when you can’t drop pencil shavings places.
• A small package of prismacolor pencils. You don’t need to go crazy, but high quality pencils are really a necessity, IMO. A 12 pack will do. If you find they’re too soft, or keep snapping, try using the Verithin variety instead— they’ve got harder leads.
• A good ruler. At least 6”. Tape pennies to it to avoid bleeding ink.
• Tracing paper, so that you don’t have to completely redraw your semi-final sketch if you like it.
• Masking tape. Keeps paper still on a worktop, and keeps tracing paper in place. Touch it to your clothes a couple times before sticking it to your paper to reduce the stickiness and possibility of your paper ripping.
• Pen and ink. Also some good sable brushes. 
• Carbon dust. Not a necessity, but it allows you to “paint” while still getting the effect of a pencil drawing.
• Good kneaded eraser.
• Good white plastic eraser.
• A COMFORTABLE bag. That holds your electronics and wallet as well as all of this. 
• Fingerless gloves. If your hands cramp often, these will help.
• A website. Coroflot.com or tumblr will work fine. If using a tumblr, make a separate one for your art.

Wheew. That’s all I have for now, I think!

Goes into way more depth than I have time to for my own tutorials.  But super helpful, and super true… Have at it friends!

Drawing poses sometimes is a very difficult thing to do. Sure, drawing someone standing straight up and down perfectly lined up with the “camera” isn’t that tough.  But what if we wanted to turn them, or put them in a dynamic pose? How the crap do we do that?

Well first things first, you need to know how the human body works.  So if your reading this and you don’t have any concept of human proportions, or how the body moves, then that’s the first thing you need to do.  Go look at people.  Draw real life people, not manga, or comic book people as they’re exaggerated.  Draw real life people so you know what comic and manga artists are exaggerating.  Figure out how their body works and moves. That’s going to make the next part make alot easier.

Okay. So now we have basic understanding of human proportions, and how the human body moves.  How the hell do we draw them in a specific pose?  Well it’s simple my friends.  The key to drawing human poses is the stick figure!

That’s right! The stick figure!  That’s how you’re going to make sure your poses look interesting and natural.

And when I say stick figure, I do not mean this:

This is essentially useless.  When i say stick figure what i really mean is more of a skeleton. Something that has all the major body parts needed to draw a person correctly: Head, neck, shoulders, arms, hands, back, hips (everyone always forgets the hips), Legs and feet.  Something that looks like this:

The reason you want to use this type of stick figure is two fold. 1. It gives you a basic frame to work with to get your pose down. and 2. It’s alot easier to fix if you make a mistake.  If you spend an hour drawing the most highly detailed arm in the world, then you find out it’s too long and you have to erase it and you just wasted alot of time.  It’s alot easier and faster to correct one stick line, instead of a whole detailed arm.

The stick figure also helps you with any foreshortening that the pose may require.  Like this little guy’s arm who’s going to be taking a swing with that stick… or bat… or sword… or whatever this is going to be.

So once you have the stick figure you have to block it out.  Block it out?  Well we can’t just jump from a stick figure to a finished drawing now can we? Here lets go step by step…

Step 1: Stick figure

So this is a rather simple yet dynamic pose.  Notice  here how the shoulders and hips are tilted.  This is why it is important to include these in the stick figure as the tilt of the hips and the shoulders make even a standing figure look interesting.  Also notice the foreshortening in the arm.   The circles show where the joints are so I know how much I need to foreshorten each part of the arm to make it look correct.

Step 2: Block it out

Now we build blocks around the stick figure we drew.  Why blocks?  Well they don’t HAVE to be blocks, however I find that the human body is much more like a block than a cylinder. I base this on the fact that we have a front, back, sides, top, and botom just like a block. I also find using blocks help alot more with figuring out how shadows fall on the body.  Not to mention it helps me from accidently drawing the body bending in a weird way.

It’s also in this stage where you’ll correct any drawing errors you may have made.  You might realize that you made an arm to long, or a leg to short here.  Which is perfectly okay.  Thats why we use the stick figure first, so it’s easier to fix!

So now that our pose has some volume to it. Lets add in those details like muscles and clothes…

 Step 3: Details

Now that we have the pose and the volume established we can add in all the details like muscles, hair, clothes, and shadows. You’ll find that if you did the stick figure and blocking right adding the details will be incredibly easy.  WAY easier than if you tried to start off with the details.

There you go! Thats how you do poses.  Naturally this tutorial just scratched the surface so here are some tips and things to research to help you along the way.

1. When drawing poses where the hands or feet are in places that may make the legs or arms difficult to figure out, try drawing the hands or feet first.  Then play connect the dots between the foot and the hip, or the hand and the shoulder.

2. Check out Brune Hogarth’s books on Dynamic Anatomy and Dynamic Figure Drawing.  He goes into more depth and details.  They’re great books.

3. Look at real life.  I know I said this before but real life is always best.  Look at yourself in the mirror, or a friend/family member to get the pose down.

4.  Sometimes friends aren’t around, and you can’t take a picture of yourself at the angle you need. In that case I recommend going to posemaniacs.com.  They have great CG models that you can rotate to get the proper angle you need.  They’re not perfect, but they’ll do when no real life people are around to help.

That’ll do it for today!  If you have any suggestions or requests for a Tutorial Tuesday leave a comment here, or send me an email and I’ll be sure to incorporate it into a future Tutorial Tuesday! Tomorrow you’ll get the next page of Shadows of Oblivion! In the mean time, check me out around the web! 

Like me on Facebook

Follow me on Twitter

Re-blog me on tumblr

And if you love my artwork don’t forget to pick up my comics!

And remember: Make Comics! Not Excuses!

Happy new year everyone! This is going to be the best year ever! (until 2014)

Since it’s a new year lets do a quick recap of my blog and what it’s all about.  I’m a comic book artist. I’m not anyone big and famous but my job is to make comic books. As such I get alot of comments like “I wish I could do what you do, but i can’t because of INSERT EXCUSE HERE.  So I built this blog to feature my own comics as well as teach you how to make comics, and show you there are no excuses, ONLY COMICS!

It’s a daily blog, so I break down the week like this:

MONDAY: New page of Shadows of Oblivion (my creator owned comic.)

TUESDAY: Tutorial Tuesday. (I’ll do a drawing tutorial for you.)

WEDNESDAY: New page of Shadows of Oblivion (updates twice a week.)

THURSDAY: No Excuses. (I show you why your excuses are silly, and why you should follow your dreams)

FRIDAY: Artwork! (I just show you other artwork I’ve been working on. Commissions, sketches, etc.)

So today is Tuesday!  So that means a tutorial!  Well since today is sort of a re-introduction day, instead of showing a new tutorial I’m going to sumerize my past tutorials.  Some of you have been following me for a while but i know how easy it is to have a post get lost in the feed.  So visit, read, learn, and draw! And if it’s something you find helpful feel free to like and reblog it!

And after you look through them, if there is anything you’d like me to cover in a future tutorial tuesday either leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll work it into a future Tutorial Tuesday!

Layouts -> Finished Art • Practice • Comic Layouts part 1 • Comic Layouts part 2 • Faces • Comfort Zones • Portfolios • Composition • Hatching • Armor • Nature • How a Comic is Made • Manga Studio Basics • How to make your art incredible

I have a bunch more tutorials planned for the new year.  But If you have requests let me know and I’ll work it into the schedule! 

In the meant time follow me around the web:

Like me on Facebook

Follow me on Twitter

Re-blog me on tumblr

And if you love my artwork don’t forget to pick up my comics!

And remember: Make Comics! Not Excuses!

I get a lot of questions on what’s the secret to being a great artist.  It’s not like I’m a great artist myself, so I don’t know why people bother asking me.  But since I get asked so often I’ll give you the secret.  This is my tutorial to making your art incredible. You ready?

It’s really easy.  Just follow these 10 simple steps. Ready? GO!

STEP 1: GET A PENCIL

STEP 2: GET SOME PAPER

STEP 3: DRAW ON PAPER USING PENCIL

STEP 4: CONTINUE DRAWING

STEP 5: KEEP ON DRAWING

STEP 6: DON’T STOP DRAWING

STEP 7: I SAID DON’T STOP DRAWING!

STEP 8: DO. NOT. STOP. DRAWING!

STEP 9: NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER STOP DRAWING

STEP 10: REPEAT STEPS 1-9 FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

There! Now you’re the best artist the world has ever seen.  That wasn’t so hard was it?

Who am I kidding, this is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do in life.  But it’s worth it.  So so so worth it.

Tomorrow will be the last page of Shadows of Oblivion for 2o12. Until then check me out around the web!

Like me on Facebook

Follow me on Twitter

Re-blog me on tumblr

And if you love my artwork don’t forget to pick up my comics!

And remember: Make Comics! Not Excuses!

I’ll be demonstrating some things on Manga Studio and then taking some questions.

Go here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/art-tutorials

You’ll have to sign in or create an account to participate in the chat.

Lets do it!!