African road

[Caimano]

Two new pages of my military project...hope you like them:)

http://www.guglie.it/images/Tav15.jpg

http://www.guglie.it/images/Tav16.jpg

[Agent Fire]

Really nice work... I know I like.

[Bruce Lee]

Good stuff. Allow me to do a little nit-picking via my usual "panel to panel" critique (which I haven't done much of lately):


First page:


Panel One: There's some perspective and proportion problems here. The foreshortening on the jeep seems a little too forced, and the jeep doesn't quite look like it's fitting into the scene right. If you follow the jeep's perspective lines to their vanishing point, they don't seem to work out with the rest of your perspective.

The other thing here is the size of the people. The woman on the right looks like a giant, and the children (?) beneath her look like midgets.

Definately a little weirdness going on here, but it's still a decent set-up for an establishing shot.

Panel Two: Again there's some problems--mostly with how you're hanging objects on the horizon line. The jeep looks too small in this shot when compared to the people around it.

Panel Three: I can't say that I really like the abrupt switch of the camera between panel two and this panel. It's a little too jarring for my taste. This is the sort of camera switching that works better on film than on paper. Within the context of a two-dimensional sequential page, it's a little distracting to the flow of the story.

Panel Four: Again, a 180 degree camera switch. Don't over do this sort of thing to often. Consider the left to right flow of the reader's eye a little more.

Panel Five: An abrupt camera switch once again. You going for a record or something?:p

Seriously speaking, your artwork is always amazing, and your individual panel layouts are usually good too, but try thinking more about the page layout as a whole. I'll bet your page would read and flow a lot better if you flipped panels three and five.


Second Page:


Page two flows fairly well and reads pretty well. I hope there's not a lot of dialogue and captions to be placed on the montage sequence at the bottom of the page. Doesn't look to be much room.

Btw, you must have hoarded the motherload of jeep reference materials. I'll be sure to ask you for some should the need ever arise, because you're the king of the jeep as far as I'm concerned.:D

Nice work as usual!

Loston
http://www.lostonwallace.com

[Caimano]

Agent Fire : Thanks a lot!

Loston,
thanks a lot for your panel by panel critics they're always a precious lessons from an artist ( and a friend) I really esteem.

I learned how difficult is drawing pages in a pro amount of time ( an average of 8 hours per page) keeping a good quality level...
I agree about all the points you raised up here, but as I said I don't know if I'll have the time to re- work the pages because I have the time just to finish to draw all the comic pages by the timeline and the publisher wants them inked as soon as possible in order to letter them etc. I asked him more time in order to rework some pages following the feedback I had from all of you, but he seems more concerned about the time than the art quality!

it's the last jeep page...now the new challenge is wheelchair! I have to draw tons of panel with wheelchair in the last boards

[Cuddly]

Simone,

some fantastic work. Loston's covered all of the crits (and more). Panel 4 on the first page needs a background. Losing the background in this panel is a bit weird when there's so much exquisite detail in all the other panels.

I just wanted to say that your inker had better do your pencils justice! Are these pages going to be colored for publishing? Or is this a black and white comic? If it's color, your colorist had better do a damn good job too. I'd be a shame to see your pencils let down by lacklustre inking or coloring.

Any chance we can see what an inked page looks like?

[Caimano]

Cuddly: Thanks pal:) This will be a black and white comic and yes I'm going to post some inked pages of it as soon as I can put my hands on some inked board!
Last new: they won't pay us (the inker and I) any money for this work, we can have just the 10% of the sales...they are going to print 1000 copy of it and sell it about 5 Euro each copy...so if they're able to sell all of them (almost impossible) they will earn 5000 Euro the 10% is 500 Euro I have share with the inker.

My two cents: Ask for a contract to sign every work you're going to start and don't trust anyone ;dvl;

[Cuddly]

Originally posted by Caimano
Last new: they won't pay us (the inker and I) any money for this work, we can have just the 10% of the sales...they are going to print 1000 copy of it and sell it about 5 Euro each copy...so if they're able to sell all of them (almost impossible) they will earn 5000 Euro the 10% is 500 Euro I have share with the inker.
WHAAAAAAAAAT?!? So if you split that 50/50, you get 250 Euro?? And IIRC, you said you were drawing some 26 pages for this comic? So you're working at less than 10 Euro a page?

Jeeez, man, I mean I hope to be doing some work for a small press guy soon and I'm not expecting payment, just feeling lucky to finally get published. But in my case, I KNOW beforehand that there's no money in it. But if you were led to believe that you were going to be paid a certain rate, then this just sucks and is plain WRONG. Thanks for the advice about the contract. If I'm ever lucky enough to make it in this business and get paid for doing this, I'll be sure to get that contract drawn up.

Will you at least get the original art back so you can sell it if you want?

[scattergirl]

I hope you get the original art back too. It'd be criminal for you to get so little dough out of this. I've been lurking for about a week but when I saw your threads I had to register and post.

Your drawing style is superb!! It's shattering whatever delusions I might have of being pretty good with a pencil. In a good way. ;) I'm dying to know what you do for reference, though I understand that you have a hot deadline and might not have time to go too deeply into it.

Really top-notch.

[Caimano]

Cuddly, Scattergirl, I'll have my original art boards back, however in Italy is not so common for no pro artist to sell original art.
Another very common trend in Italy is working for free, there are a lots of artists also very good one work for free just to have an opportunity to be published. The problem with this project has been a no clear agreement as soon as we started with the project.

Cuddly: so you're starting with a new project...show us something please:p

Scattergirl: Reference are really important for a realistic style and I often surf the net (google, corbis, gettyimage etc...) looking for the references I need.

[Mykro]

Yeah, I got screwed pretty similarly, but I was able to get out of it, no pay, but I ended up with a bunch of cool characters. It's like a free class...in life!

[Warduke]

You know, these pages remind me a lot of the better Phantom artists over the years. I'd try to get in touch with the people behind the international comics.

The Phantom was for a long time the best selling* "super hero" comic book in Sweden and the better artists blended european and american styles. It currently has two titles (in a country where X-men is published 6 times a year, in one title), of which one is black and white.

*I think it still is but it's circulation is down to about a third of it's highest selling number.

I'd be glad to give you the mail adress to the Swedish editors who can probably give you directions to the higher powers if you're interested.

And that's it for this edition of Warduke's Match Making. :)

[Justice41]

Every time I look at your stuff I'm just impressed. Your art for some Reason reminds me of the artist that does The erotic comic RAMBA. He does very normal looking people with lots of blacks and linework. Must be a European thing.

[Josie70]

Outstanding work! Checked out your website too. Very nice. It's almost a shame to ink those pages. Much success with the project!

J70 :)

[brendon]

I agree with most of the stuff that Bruce Lee said, but it didn't really faze me much at all. I was just stunned by the detail at the jeep, and realistic details of everything in the bg. I'll say...you're one hell of a penciler.

One major crit though, just in panel one. The little dude to the bottom left, it looks like his head is a photograph which has been tilted...

[Caimano]

Mycro: Thanks

Warduke: Phantom...I use to read it a lot's of time ago some artist was terrific!

Justice: Thanks man, Ramba is an Italy comic, several friends of mine wrote and drew it in the past...now they are pro in very popular Itlian characters...you're right is an Italian style I guess.

Josie: thanks, but the inker is doing a very good work on them

Brendon: Thanks, there is a very big reference work behind this project

[flamer]

I think this is really good, and there is a really authentic feel to the setting.
post more!
:)