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Post by tarkintino on Aug 24, 2020 22:49:58 GMT -5
Romita provided layouts for endless Marvel artists--from Mooney and some Andru issues on Amazing Spider-Man, to cover breakdowns on Conan the Barbarian, The Defenders, Chamber of Chills, Captain America, and more titles than one would imagine, which is why so many Marvel covers would seem to have his kind of layout or touches, but were credited to other artists. That was when he was essentially the art director correct? And that's what an art director is supposed to do in commercial art. -M I believe he started doing it before he held the art director position.
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Post by BigPapaJoe on Aug 28, 2020 7:13:10 GMT -5
This is why Kirby could do "12 PAGES IN A DAY!!!". I also hate artists just breaking down the pencils so someone else could finish them. Feels like it really cheapens the experience. I don't care who it is, I don't want half of one artist and half of another artist doing the drawing. Just seems like it really limits the authenticity of both artists. But at the end of the day it's just another bitter reminder that this is a business first. Of course you could say the same thing about one artist pencilling and another inking as well. It's still half and half. -M I see those are two different skills though with different tools, so it's never really bothered me. And someone inking their own pencils doesn't mean it's always superior, because a lot of pencilers aren't great inkers.
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Post by MWGallaher on Aug 28, 2020 8:43:42 GMT -5
I see a lot of praise for one of my favorite artists based on his covers, which always bugs me since so many of his covers were based on sketches provided from the company, and don't represent his staging, his poses, his artistic sensibilities in anything other than a superficial way. "It's great that you like his work, but you're liking it for all the wrong reasons if you think this stuff is good!" Joe Kubert (not the artist I'm referring to above!) did so many uncredited breakdowns that he must have been a real cyclone at the drawing board. A quick look at Ragman, Rima, Unknown Soldier (in its later years) shows obvious evidence of what had to be fairly detailed layouts. Look for trademark Kubertisms like the inset panels:
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Post by kirby101 on Aug 28, 2020 9:02:58 GMT -5
Mostly the results were disappointing. A lesser version of a artist I liked. But occasionally the team up produced some nice work. Usually when the finisher/inker was also very talented. Tom Palmer's finishes on John Buscema's second Avengers stint. Mooney on Romita in Spider-Man. Or Romita on Kane in Spider-Man. The Filipino artists were particularly adapt at turning finishes into beautiful comics. Redondo over Kubert on The Bible Treasury Edition is a prime example.
There is also a difference between Thumbnails, Breakdowns and Layouts.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2020 10:10:31 GMT -5
Of course you could say the same thing about one artist pencilling and another inking as well. It's still half and half. -M I see those are two different skills though with different tools, so it's never really bothered me. And someone inking their own pencils doesn't mean it's always superior, because a lot of pencilers aren't great inkers. it's a division of labor for the final product just like the ones you don't like. Layout/design is a different skill set than pencilling the final product as well. Some can pencil anatomy and perspective just fine but have little sense of panel or page composition or design. They aren't the same skill, but they are both needed for the final product, just like inking. It's just that fans have gotten used to the penciller/inker split in the assembly line production of comics and it's become the norm so they accept it without batting an eye and often create rationalizations to try to justify it as being different than other labor divisions within the process. -M
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Post by Prince Hal on Aug 28, 2020 10:30:13 GMT -5
I see a lot of praise for one of my favorite artists based on his covers, which always bugs me since so many of his covers were based on sketches provided from the company, and don't represent his staging, his poses, his artistic sensibilities in anything other than a superficial way. "It's great that you like his work, but you're liking it for all the wrong reasons if you think this stuff is good!" MW, do you mean your acknowledged favorite, Jim Aparo, here? Just wondering because I never thought that he was under supervision to that extent. And if he was, did it ever stop? Is there a clear demarcation between covers he designed and those that were designed for him? If it wasn't Aparo (or even if it was), what do you notice as the big differences between the covers that were designed for him and his own designs? I wonder if this kind of policy was in place at Marvel when Gil Kane was drawing covers for them. While almost any Gil Kane cover is worth the cost of buying the book, I did notice a difference between most, though not all, of his Marvel covers and ones he did fro DC. Now, part of that was due to the cramped conditions of Marvel's covers back when they "framed" the cover illustration and made it impossibly small that even the work of an artist with a style as dynamic as Kane's too often looked Marvel-generic, especially under the inks of artists like Romita and Esposito. It always seemed a waste of a talented draftsman like Kane to have him draw on a canvas that seemed the size of a postage stamp. Venturing even further into the weeds, and well beyond the range of my knowledge, I think the coloring at Marvel was quite different from that at DC. All I can say is that it looked flatter at Marvel and that worked against an artist like Kane in particular.
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Post by MDG on Aug 28, 2020 10:40:31 GMT -5
I see those are two different skills though with different tools, so it's never really bothered me. And someone inking their own pencils doesn't mean it's always superior, because a lot of pencilers aren't great inkers. it's a division of labor for the final product just like the ones you don't like. Layout/design is a different skill set than pencilling the final product as well. Some can pencil anatomy and perspective just fine but have little sense of panel or page composition or design. They aren't the same skill, but they are both needed for the final product, just like inking. It's just that fans have gotten used to the penciller/inker split in the assembly line production of comics and it's become the norm so they accept it without batting an eye and often create rationalizations to tr to justify it as being different than other labor divisions within the process. -M It's also that the penciller/inker choice is often made independently of (or despite) the penciller's intentions, at the editor level.
I often wonder if it would've been better to keep the "studio" model, where a single artist (or at least entity) is contracted to provide complete work despite how ever many hands actually contribute.
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Post by kirby101 on Aug 28, 2020 10:59:02 GMT -5
I believe these days it is more common for the artist to team up with his choice of inker for the art work.
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Post by Rob Allen on Aug 28, 2020 11:33:09 GMT -5
Does anyone have a copy of FF #167 handy? On the letters page, Roy Thomas responds to a reader's question with an explanation of terms like "embellisher".
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2020 13:06:37 GMT -5
I believe these days it is more common for the artist to team up with his choice of inker for the art work. These days most inking is done digitally anyways, and a lot of the pencilling too. And with the way comics are reproduced now and the coloring processes, inking is not necessary for reproduction so many re skipping the inking step altogether and going from pencils to colors. Access to digital is also making it easier to use "painted art" or programs that recreate painting effects without ever having to pick up a brush. The division of labor will continue to evolve as the tech used to produce print (or digital) comics evolves. Also, the evolution of penciller and inker skill sets being different were the result of that division of labor being in place in comics, the division wasn't in comics because that is a natural division of skills in the art process. Aspiring artists would have continued to get both skill sets if that was needed to get a job in the industry, but the industry demands based on typical division of labor set the standard for how to divide the skill sets for artists in training. If single artist doing it all had been the norm, aspiring artists would have continued to acquire all the skill sets. -M
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Post by chaykinstevens on Aug 28, 2020 15:42:09 GMT -5
Romita provided layouts for endless Marvel artists--from Mooney and some Andru issues on Amazing Spider-Man, to cover breakdowns on Conan the Barbarian, The Defenders, Chamber of Chills, Captain America, and more titles than one would imagine, which is why so many Marvel covers would seem to have his kind of layout or touches, but were credited to other artists. Which Andru ASMs did Romita provide layouts for?
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Post by kirby101 on Aug 28, 2020 15:47:22 GMT -5
True about the division of labor. That still doesn't mean some artist did not like to ink their own work and preferred to pencil, and others preferred to ink. Kirby could do both, and he and Joe Simon often traded off, but Kirby would much rather have just penciled and move on to the next page. Al Williamson wanted to be an inker in his late career because it was less taxing on him than penciling. And he was one of the best pencilers ever. Learning a skill set and being good at it are very different. There are just artists who look better when inked by others, and inkers who can draw, but are much better at inking. I don't think the world of comics would necessarily be better if every artist only inked themselves. The collaboration often leads to wonderful results. You can just extrapolate to the whole comic. Since it is a storytelling medium, by this standard artist should write draw and ink. But that is just a level of purity for no real reason.
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Post by kirby101 on Aug 28, 2020 15:49:11 GMT -5
Though there is much digital work being done, I wonder what percent that actually is. I still see a lot of original penciled and inked art for sale.
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Post by MWGallaher on Aug 28, 2020 20:20:49 GMT -5
I see a lot of praise for one of my favorite artists based on his covers, which always bugs me since so many of his covers were based on sketches provided from the company, and don't represent his staging, his poses, his artistic sensibilities in anything other than a superficial way. "It's great that you like his work, but you're liking it for all the wrong reasons if you think this stuff is good!" MW, do you mean your acknowledged favorite, Jim Aparo, here? Just wondering because I never thought that he was under supervision to that extent. And if he was, did it ever stop? Is there a clear demarcation between covers he designed and those that were designed for him? If it wasn't Aparo (or even if it was), what do you notice as the big differences between the covers that were designed for him and his own designs? I wonder if this kind of policy was in place at Marvel when Gil Kane was drawing covers for them. While almost any Gil Kane cover is worth the cost of buying the book, I did notice a difference between most, though not all, of his Marvel covers and ones he did fro DC. Now, part of that was due to the cramped conditions of Marvel's covers back when they "framed" the cover illustration and made it impossibly small that even the work of an artist with a style as dynamic as Kane's too often looked Marvel-generic, especially under the inks of artists like Romita and Esposito. It always seemed a waste of a talented draftsman like Kane to have him draw on a canvas that seemed the size of a postage stamp. Venturing even further into the weeds, and well beyond the range of my knowledge, I think the coloring at Marvel was quite different from that at DC. All I can say is that it looked flatter at Marvel and that worked against an artist like Kane in particular. Yeah, I was speaking of Aparo. As we might expect, his Charlton covers tended to be his own compositions--heck, Charlton even let him do his own cover lettering--but his DC covers were a lot more constrained by office-dictated sketches. It appears that he was able to put a lot more of his own composition into the work that he did for Murray Boltinoff and Joe Orlando, but when it gets to stuff like his Batman and Detective covers, he was hewing very close to the cover designs he was handed. It's most noticeable (and, to me, most objectionable) when he was working from Ross Andru's layouts. Look, I like Ross Andru's work in general, but his cover designs tended to adhere to a philosophy that "dynamic covers require bended knees", so he was always dictating awkward squats and leg bends that certainly weren't what Aparo would have done on his own. For example:
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Post by BigPapaJoe on Aug 29, 2020 2:36:47 GMT -5
I see those are two different skills though with different tools, so it's never really bothered me. And someone inking their own pencils doesn't mean it's always superior, because a lot of pencilers aren't great inkers. it's a division of labor for the final product just like the ones you don't like. Layout/design is a different skill set than pencilling the final product as well. Some can pencil anatomy and perspective just fine but have little sense of panel or page composition or design. They aren't the same skill, but they are both needed for the final product, just like inking. It's just that fans have gotten used to the penciller/inker split in the assembly line production of comics and it's become the norm so they accept it without batting an eye and often create rationalizations to try to justify it as being different than other labor divisions within the process. -M But different tools are being used that ultimately go on the page. Thinking about design/layout is irrelevant, because it's just that, thinking. Who puts the marks on the page? That's my concern. Is it one person using one type of tool, two persons using the same type of tool? One person using multiple tools? Or one person using one tool, and another using a clearly different tool? The gap of individuality between having one person ink and another person pencil is way bigger for me than someone that does breakdowns and someone else that does the final polished pencils over those same breakdowns with essentially the same tool. So no, I don't see it as the same. I'm not against division of labor. I'm against division of labor regarding essentially the same task. Breakdowns/finishes are to me the same task.
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