Rick Shambles is Forever Adrift

A long time ago there was a thing called “Myspace” and for some reason, Dark Horse Comics was producing comic book anthologies in partnership with the now-antiquated social media platform.

I was commissioned to illustrate the cover of “Myspace Dark Horse Presents #6: The Year We Make Contact,” which you can see below, but the thing that really got me excited about the job was the chance to write and illustrate my own 2-page comic for the anthology.

I came up with a story called “Rick Shambles is Forever Adrift,” based on a painting I did at Art Center, about an unconfident space hero who uses visualization and other self-help techniques to achieve his self-serving goals (one of my illustration students accurately described him as a “loser”).

I took the liberty of chopping up the comic into chunks so that you can read it right here, but the way it appeared in the published layout is up above.

Here’s the cover where the story appear.

The cover illustration for Myspace Dark Horse Presents Volume 6: The Year We Make Contact

Process

Below, you’ll see the pencils, inks, and finished colors for the comic.

The student painting that inspired the Forever Adrift. story.

Read Comics Online

I recently began reformatting some of my comics to be easier-to-read online.

I was inspired by the Marvel Comics app to reformat the comic for web viewing. Although experience on the app is better than what I was able to achieve here, but I think this a decent alternative.

John Buscema’s cover of Silver Surfer #1

If you have the app, I recommend purchasing Fantastic Four #1 and my favorite, Silver Surfer #1. Those books look incredible in that format. It appears that the original art was rescanned and adapted for a tablet. They stayed true to the original flat colors that are so mesmerizing.

I didn’t plan on this post becoming a commercial for the Marvel app, but there you go.

Have a read of Rick Shambles is Forever Adrift and let me know what you think.

Cheers,

Frank

Moebius (AKA Jean Giraud) on using photo reference

I was surfing the web recently and came upon an interesting snippet from an interview with none other than French comics legend Jean Giraud AKA Moebius, talking about drawing photo reference

reblogged from raggedclaws.com

[KIM] THOMPSON: You attended art school, right?

[JEAN] GIRAUD: Yes. I began as a self-taught artist, copying other artists; then, luckily, I entered an art school, which freed up my hand and opened my eyes to a degree. It’s very dangerous to work only second-hand — referring only to other artists, that is. My teachers were of the old school: they insisted that in order to transcribe reality with any degree of freshness or personality, the eye had to be confronted with the three-dimensional image. Of course, I didn’t do it enough, and when I met [Belgian artist Joseph] Gillain, that’s what he told me. He said that one could work from photographs in a pinch, but the work wouldn’t have the same intrinsic quality. It’s true: you can be very adept at drawing from photographs, and yet completely lose the scope, the dimension of the original…

THOMPSON: It has a tendency to flatten out…

GIRAUD: Yes, you lose the perspective; there are so many details to transcribe that you get lost within the billions of pieces of information. Working from nature teaches you to synthesize.

THOMPSON: Have you ever worked from photos?

GIRAUD: Oh, yes, when I began working with Joseph Gillain, he taught me how to draw from photos. It’s a very special kind of skill; if you’re too loyal to the photo, it swallows you up. If, for instance, in the middle of a whole page of “personal” drawings, there is suddenly a drawing that is too…

[JEAN-MARC] LOFFICIER: Overworked?

GIRAUD: Not overworked, but too dependent on a photographic vision, it’s as if there’s a sudden hole in the page. You have to take the elements from the photo that you need, and retranscribe them through your personal computer, in order to get a personal vision. The same rule applies to drawing from nature. It’s very difficult, but it’s what enables the artist to bring his vision to a work. Otherwise he’s nothing but a parrot, or an ape. [pp. 86-87]

SOURCE: Jean Giraud, “The Other Side of Moebius,” interview by Kim Thompson, The Comics Journal #118 (December 1987), pp. 85-105.

In my humble opinion, Moebius is one of the greatest comics artists to ever hold a pen. Here are some examples of his art: