September -- Back to School

Well, not back to school for me. I miss teaching, but not dealing with the passive-aggressive ownership at Max the Mutt Animation. It was pretty hard trying to direct a program when I wasn't allowed program oversight to ensure the students were getting what they needed and the school president hates the vast majority of the comics market output. To be honest, she's essentially a cultural bigot, holding most of contemporary culture in contempt.

As you can see, I feel that enough distance has passed between my quitting the school that I feel comfortable talking more openly about the problems, stupidity and unethical behaviour I saw there. Reports from this year show things really aren't getting better.

Anyway -- you have any questions about my experiences there or what the school's really like, feel free to ask. No worries -- I'll respect requests for anonymity.

Onward!

DR SKETCHY was this past Monday.

I had a great, relaxed time drawing. The model was great fun and her costumes outrageous. I was happiest with the small one-minute gestures that night:

I've completed all my Marvel Masterpiece 3 sketch cards and Artist Proof cards, just awaiting Marvel's approval to share them. I should be able to talk about my DC projects shortly, too.

I think it's well past time I updated my comics art program curriculum project -- I'll upload year one, semester one tomorrow.

~Richard

Third Year part 2

After the set-up of knowing what will happen for the last part of third year (see previous entry) the first semester of the third year almost determines itself:

Monday
Advanced Penciling
Life Drawing III

Tuesday
Intermediate Storyboarding
Anatomy: Arms and Torso

Wednesday
Advanced Inking
Advanced Painting

Thursday
Intermediate Concept Art
Life drawing III

Friday
Illustrative Painting
Non-human Anatomy

Advanced Penciling
After the previous iterations of penciling, we get a course where the advanced practicalities of drawing for comics on an ongoing basis are dealt with. All the fundamentals must be understood to proceed here. The course load should clip along at a page a week so the homework load would be intense. Pages would essentially cover a variety of regular situations for comics artists; special effects sequences, urban, suburban, rural, and natural environments. The practical application of lighting and staging and other aspects of drawing applied to the moving camera of the artist would be explored, all with an eye to the work being handed off to an inker. Evan if the penciller never plans to allow another inker to touch his work post-program, the experience of drawing to that level of precision and finish is a valuable one.

Life Drawing III
The focus will be on understanding how the body moves, carries weight, rests as well as taking observations from the real body to enrich the student’s work as a whole.

Intermediate Storyboarding
This obviously follows up from a Beginning Storyboarding class. Assuming the fundamentals and language of contemporary storyboarding was absorbed, this class would deal with the practicalities of producing boards for TV, animation and film as a possible alternate or cooperative career choice for a comic artist.

Anatomy: Arms and Torso
I would think what this would cover would be self-evident, but my recent experience shows otherwise. This course would provide a variety of constructive methods to draw the arms and torso without ready reference as well as educate the artist on the skeletal and muscular anatomy as well as the kinesiology (how the body works).

Advanced Inking
Much like Advanced Penciling, this class would move at a page a week and assume the student mastered the fundamentals of the previous two iterations of the inking class. A variety of inking challenges would be presented, from content of the page action to a variety of artists’ styles to deal with. Even if the student never plans to ink another artist (or even their own work), the knowledge gained by going through the process would greatly strengthen their core drawing skills for their own work.

Advanced Painting
This would follow the previous painting courses by dealing with painting the figure as well as painting on location.

Intermediate Concept Art
Much like Intermediate Storyboarding this course would follow a primer on what the artist is expected to do in this field. Since many of the aspects of the current concept art field are skill specific, this course would stick to the skills most developed in the comics curriculum. Focus would be on character design, turn-arounds, prop and environment design. This course would also show how and where comics artist most often enter the concept art field.

Illustrative Painting
The practicalities of colour illustration would be covered; from how traditional to digital media are used and how to best communicate with the client and satisfy their needs. Specific assignments would cover comic covers, book covers, interior illustrations for textbooks and other books. Again, like storyboarding and concept art, this course would show how a comics artist could use their skills as an illustrator as a sister field.

Non-human Anatomy
This would be an intense overview of how animals and other creatures are assembled. Common comics related animals would get more focus (pets and work animals), but a broad understanding of how invertebrates, insects, birds and other creatures anatomy works enables the artist to inform the structural anatomy of aliens or monsters they may eventually design with a touch more realism.

So that would be what’s facing the student as they enter the September of their last year; essentially a polish on the comic skills they developed and a broadening of how they could apply them after they graduate.
Next time I come to this I’ll probably explore the entirety of how I’d like to see the second year work.

~R