Now I’m back into drawing and stuff, I feel like I need to build up a reference library. I used to have “How To Draw Comics: The Marvel Way”, but I have no idea where it is now, I think my brother may have it. Whenever Jane and I used to go to Hobbycraft, I always used to go off and look at the art books while she took ages browsing the rubber stamps and card stock. I’d have a flick through, but it was never really enough to re-ignite the artistic fire inside me. I have no idea what eventually did re-ignite it to be honest. Anyway, we went to Hobbycraft yesterday and I purchased this book.
Why this one? Well, I was once a huge comics fan – X-Men being my poison. I used to have quite a large collection, but in the end it was becoming too expensive and space-consuming. Also, the boys borrowed one of Christopher Hart’s other books, the Humungous Book of Cartooning or something, and I was quite taken by his Marvel-esque lines. So taken in fact, that I recognised his style inside the book before I recognised his name on the front of the book! The few pages I was intently studying in the shop and initially sold the book to me were the ones describing facial features – a problem area of mine. I feel it’s my largest stumbling block, I’ve never been good at faces. The tips in the book were kind of obvious, but to my shame I do feel like I learned something from them.
I was tempted to skip the section covering body-shapes as I am pretty confident with them – but this line jumped out at me.
The Superhero never just stands there facing the reader head-on.
I cast my mind back to all those old pictures I drew, and flicked through some of my recent creations – 90% of the people I drew were pretty much just standing there. This section taught me so much about weight-bearing legs, balance, the centre of gravity, flowing action and how to make characters look dynamic. Along with Fantasy Artist and ImagineFX, I can see this book serving as both inspiration and a solid foundation for a long time.
Superheroes and Beyond covered a lot of ground. It had tips on how to design heroic good guys and create original bad guys, not just visually, but with regard to their character, too. From costume design to lighting, it even went so far as to cover composition and speech bubble placement, so it really did live up to its title of being Superheroes and Beyond. I fully recommend this book to anyone looking to refine their comic book stylings.
