Monthly Archives: March 2011

Dick Tracy!

I’m not a regular newsprint reader, so I missed the fact that artist Joe Staton and writer Mike Curtis have taken over the Dick Tracy newspaper strip.
Joe is a favorite comic book artist of mine and a frequent face at NYC-area conventions. A couple years ago, we both contributed strips to the Flash Gordon 75h Anniversary hardcover book.

Here’s the first Dick Tracy strip from Joe Staton and Mike Curtis, dated Monday, March 14th, 2011:

Dick Tracy

I’ve just discovered this website, Comics.com, where you can read many daily newspaper strips for free. The rest of Staton’s and Curtis’ Dick Tracy strips seem to be there, along with a lot of other strips.

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Building it.

I’m slowly working on an illustration. Here it is in its preliminary stages.
I started with this rough sketch:

There’s a central figure, surrounded by a ring of vignettes, a title at the top, and a credit at the bottom. Kind of a movie poster approach. I made a series of subsequent drawings to clarify these ideas. First:

A little easier to make out the faces and figures, but almost a setback in other ways. Maintaining the circular composition is important, but the central figure is getting overpowered by the other elements. An easy fix. Just a matter of paying more attention to the size and placement of all the elements.
Another draft:

Now it’s starting to fit together. As I add and delete different elements, I’ve moved them around and grouped them differently. Characters and things that go together thematically are now next to each other, so the entire image is developing a sort of narrative, even if the meaning isn’t noticeable to anyone else yet. I can see, though, that the large head towards the top is going to make it hard to place a title without throwing the whole thing out of whack. The head needs to come down into the illustration more.
Another draft.

That large head at the top is comfortably out of the way and working better with the rest of the design. This is about all I need to move forward from these thumbnail drawings to a stab at finished pencils. I’m letting it sit for a few days, though, so I can look at it with a fresh eye later on.

Either more of these layouts or finished pencils soon…

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Joe Sinnott

One of my all-time favorite comic book artists gives an overview of his career.

Interview with comics legend Joe Sinnott, Part 1 from The Comic Archive on Vimeo.

Interview with comics legend Joe Sinnott, Part 2 from The Comic Archive on Vimeo.

A couple years ago, I had the great pleasure of hiring Joe to ink this variant cover, penciled by Sal Buscema, another comics legend himself, for “The Life and Times of Savior 28” issue # 1, the series I co-created with J.M. DeMatteis. Colors by Andrew Covalt.

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Joe Sinnott

One of my all-time favorite comic book artists gives an overview of his career.

Interview with comics legend Joe Sinnott, Part 1 from The Comic Archive on Vimeo.

Interview with comics legend Joe Sinnott, Part 2 from The Comic Archive on Vimeo.

A couple years ago, I had the great pleasure of hiring Joe to ink this variant cover, penciled by Sal Buscema, another comics legend himself, for “The Life and Times of Savior 28” issue # 1, the series I co-created with J.M. DeMatteis. Colors by Andrew Covalt.

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail