The Butch Mapa Project

* My First Blogspam *

Awwwwwwww!

I'm so bad at tech stuff, so it took me awhile to figure out how to get rid of blogspam... We'll see if this works!

posted by butch @ 9/28/2005 2 comments

I Hate the French (Curves)

Louis Porter contacted me last week, asking if he could get some art out of me. Fortunately for me, I happened to be doing absolutely nothing, so I said "sure, what've you got?" Unfortunately for me, Louis replied with a word that I've been dreading for the longest time...

... "Mecha."

Agh. I hate drawing mecha! Hell, I hate drawing anything that involves French curves and rulers-- cars, planes, and of course, robots. I just think that I don't have enough experience to be able to draw 'em as well as I draw other things. I suppose that's exactly why I agreed to do it. Here's how it turned out:

And another:

Anyway, it's been a good learning experience so far. I've been training myself in the use of those damned Curves, as well as freehanding some of the easier curves. It's also been rewarding to take a look at some of the Mecha stuff I've got on hand, for reference. I've been looking at Star Wars, Transformers, Metabarons, basically everything I've got at home-- even drawing on my memories of playing Armored Core a few years back.

At this point, I think I'm comfortable enough to do designs and pin-ups, but I think it'll be awhile still before I'm skilled enough to do Transformers or whetever.

(For more mecha, hit up: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v80/virtuabutch/lmpjr3_set1.jpg)

posted by butch @ 9/28/2005 0 comments

Mock You!

I'm keeping most of the art for Valaan under wraps, but I figure I can show you some preliminary art for the cover of the first issue. Me and Kereth (Cowe-Spigai, my terrific writer) went through a few samples while talking about the cover. Initially she wanted a simple head shot of Cael (the lead character) looking forlorn. I did a few, and then did two mock covers:

This one is based on achieving a more cinematic look. It's very dramatic, I think.




This one is based on those fantasy novels-- a la Sword of Truth series.

But Kereth saw another rough I did and thought that that would be better-- a shot of Cael on a cliff. Again, I did a few more thumbnails, and we settled on a design with Cael holding her sword, looking upwards.

And this is how it turned out:

Of course, this isn't the final cover. I re-did the figure of Cael, and we're probably going to have a better colorist work on the image (I colored the ones above). But there you go! Some fun mock covers fo your enjoyment.

posted by butch @ 9/27/2005 0 comments

Stand Alone Complex

Something that I've come across many, many times during the course of learning about comic art is the belief that comic rt should be able to stand alone, without the dialogue.

Frankly, I disagree.

Why should it? Why tailor your art to be independent, when the reader is going to be seeing both the words and pictures at the same time? If an artist draws a story in such a way that it's independent of the dialogue, and then the dialogue is added, won't that result in a few redundancies? And I know being redundant is a no-no, unless you're Frank Miller.

And I've seen a lot of comics where the action can't be followed just by reading the art alone. Try reading the Finch/Bendis issues of New Avengers. Or Supreme Power, by Frank and JMS. It can get confusing real quick.

I suppose the belief that art should be independent of the story is more applicable to people trying to break in the industry, since it encourages young artists to be as clear as possible with their storytelling. And that's all good. But what if they pick up the habit of just repeating what the script is already saying anyway?

posted by butch @ 9/27/2005 0 comments