Becoming a Comic Artist Part 2

So, in the last blog entry I spoke from the beginning of my infatuation with drawing comics, at age 13 up til around 18. I was pretty big into the manga style around that time and I’m not alone. This was when manga were finally getting their big break in the UK market and shops like waterstones were jam packed with dragon ball, naruto, shaman king and all the other titles that already had a huge cult following. Also webcomics were beginning to take off between these years, the most influential one for me being the Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi by Bleedman. This was oozing a manga style that was just mesmerizing, it’s easy to see why this style had such a huge impact on me.

When I went to Teesside University in 2008 I finally had a comic shop nearby and I would initially just get Shonen Jump every month before becoming a little bit bored of it. I started going back to the monthly comic titles instead and ate up every issue of Grant Morrison’s work on Batman and bought the odd issue of UK titan 2000ad. Graphic Design was my course, but comics became my life. I got one of the highest grades in my class for my dissertation which was titles ‘How has the American Comic Book changed since the 1930s and why?’ and even my final was a submission to 2000ad.

Calling my tutors ‘unsupportive’ would be an understatement. They were all Graphic Designers with little to no interest in comics, all except Nigel Kitching who did Sequential Art lectures for the Computing Arts course (which i wish I had taken). Nigel was already a huge influence on me thanks to his work on Sonic the Comic and 2000ad and I managed to persuade him to let me go to his lectures despite being on a different course. I would occasionally go see Nigel when he had a free period and he’d tell me what 2000ad were looking for in a page. My graphics tutors shot these down wanting me to go down a mixed media route. So I did. In the end I thought passing Uni was the best option.

In all honesty I was disappointed in myself for producing this weird and un-wonderful work. I was happy however that it gave me the chance to teach myself how to colour in photoshop so it was an invaluable lesson

I posted it on deviantart hoping to get some constructive criticism, and some arrived from none other than 2000ad artist; Simon Fraser.

“You need to work on your drawing. Figures and environments. You’re throwing everything but the kitchen sink at this page, but that isn’t going to distract anybody from that problem. Keep it simple and prioritise the storytelling and the drawing. I’m not singling you out here, 99.9% of all art submissions to 2000AD that I’ve seen have had serious problems with drawing. It may seem like a simple thing, but it’s hard work to fix and you can’t fake it. Good luck.“

I realised that this is what i needed. The truth. Being the only one drawing comics in school gave me no reason to get better at telling the story. I look at those pages without the script and I have no idea what is going on. I promised myself that I would get better.

Flash forward after uni and I had started working on a story called ‘Bad People’ which was about supervillains trying to be heroes I felt my storytelling was improving but my art had stagnated. To top it off the story was hardly awe inspiring I was basically just poking fun at superhero books

I quickly lost interest in the project and shelved it.

In 2013 I was contacted by a gentleman from the states named Robert Finch who had a script he wanted me to adapt. I took it on not expecting the workload but up to that point his story ‘First Earth’ ended up being my best work.

What was so great about this project was how I used EVERYTHING I learned in uni to make it. It’s what I would have rather had as my final. I managed to incorporate comic storytelling, digital colouring and still managed to make use of mixed media and various textures.

The last page you see ended up being my last on the comic. I was suffering from crazy levels of burnout. The pencils, inks and colours along with a full time job would prove to be far too much so I would leave the other pages to other artists. I determined that I needed to make my process quicker which would eventually lead to me putting down a pencil and picking up a stylus.

I still hate posting old work, but this blog has been quite cathartic and I’ve been able to see my progression from drawing Dragon Ball Z fan comics to my last big job as a quasi traditional/digital artist and hopefully it shows just how much anyone can improve as long as they try to be better.