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Comic Art Style Analysis!

This is going to be a post on the art styles of a few comics (Chew, Sweet Tooth, and The Walking Dead, what I enjoy about them, as well as what I dislike and think is interesting; I will then try my best to make a piece of art which incorporates elements I enjoy from the 3 comics.

Chew

The first thing that really stood out to me are the angular nature of the art style, as well as the immaculate use of colour. The sharp lines that make up a lot of the composition give a very gritty and harsh atmosphere, which I think fits the tone of the comic very well. I like that they make it a point to not use warm tones in panels with blood / gore in them, it allows for the blood to stand out in stark contrast.

What I personally dislike about the comic is that, at least at a first glance, the clothes are very simple; now this isn't a deal breaker when it comes to comics or shows. However I personally prefer it when comics and shows express characters with their design, clothes included, as opposed to just placing the character in the narrative and not changing their clothes etc.

Sweet Tooth

My initial first impression is the use of a kind of gauchey - watercolour colouring style, as well as a unique way of drawing animal hybrids, which makes sense due to the content of the comic. The scruffy kind of feeling the illustrations have gives a sense of "childlike wonder" as well as a sense of mental states crumbling.

I personally dislike the rougher lines for intricate features. I understand that it is a practice that comes with the style, but in my opinion especially when I'm drawing I think that it looks often blocky and thick. Which is why I think the ink may have been added after the colour, and so Ill try and do that in the study.

The Walking Dead

Most noticeable thing I enjoy about this style is its use of values and colour. When shading making the shadows black, and hatching out in "scratches", and only adding colour in areas where it is needed and has been thought through.

Personally I dislike the font of the text, it looks very simple and I don't think it translates the style of the piece very well. I would have gone with something a bit more gritty maybe, but I believe this was likely tried, but was likely rejected as an idea.

The Study

In this phase of my process, I will draw a cover and a single page for a hypothetical comic, using the parts of the 3 prior comics I enjoyed. I fully expect the aspects I have picked out to look bad when mashed together; but I want to do it anyways. Before I do that however, I need to figure out the content of the cover.

Comic Contents

I think for the cover I want to do a scene from a Minecraft Fan Life Series I was in, being my favourite team and favourite moments; I will be making the comic follow "The Strugglers" .

The Cover

I want to make the cover have 5 characters in a nice general pose, with good spacing and size. So I found this reference piece on Pinterest!

I then made a Milanote board in order to formulate my thoughts as well as in order to think up fashion ideas for the characters; as I need to translate the Minecraft skins into actual fabrics etc.

In order to get the best watercolour texture, I will be using physical medium as opposed to digital, as I am used to. This should allow me to get sweet tooth's patchy kind of colour work.

I started off by getting a general idea of scale by blocking in the base body shapes of the characters, this is so that I can understand their proportions in the over sketch. I messed up by getting too comfortable and ended up using a highlighter in the over sketch process, there was also a big issue with Jardi (the bottom left character), being that I never had a good idea of body shape or expression. So it spelled its own demise.

I started the process of doing watercolour, now I did have the issue of this being my first water colour piece, so it felt very very bloated and slightly difficult at first, however once I got a hang of it, it worked pretty well.

Inking was alright, however, adding the hatching really over-did some parts (like poor poor Jardi's face) making them feel kind of burnt, and discoloured. I overall think I did pretty badly translating the 3 things I enjoyed about the styles; however, Individually, I do have notes about the process of those notes.

First of all, making aspects of the piece more sharp, and treating it more like a sketch than like a finished piece let me feel less like I was messing up and let me think more on the piece as a whole, which I really enjoyed.

Then the overall use of watercolour in the piece allowed me to understand the medium a little more, as well as I really enjoy the way it looks on the paper, it has a very nice, very pretty finish, especially in Moon's (top left) dress.

I have no good things to say about hatching, I believe it can be used well, however I cannot use it; it overwhelms me, it just looks bad likely due to my shaky hands. But I really dislike using it.

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