The "KIRBY CRACKLE"

[amadarwin]

kinda sorta. Besides, you never answered my question Loston - so get answerin!

-the Burger King hath spoken

[Bruce Lee]

I'm curious Loston, how do you do the Kirby Krackle on a object filled with energy such as that sword in Johnson's pic? Everything I've tried really distracts my eye from the composition and the rest of the pic...

Well, let me start off by saying that I don't know as to whether Jack Kirby ever used the Kirby Krackle in this manner as an aura or glow-effect around an object (such as a sword, etc). I've seen the krackle-effect used this way primarily by other artists like Perez, Adams, etc. Kirby would have probably been more inclined to use radiating outlines or zap lines than use the krackle this way, I'd wager (If anyone knows differently, I'd love to see a posted image where Kirby does the effect this way!).

Looking at the Johnson cover, the first thing I notice is that he isn't really pulling the krackle effect off very well, because he hasn't left enough negative space between the dots, and his dots do seem to be rather uniform, and lacking the random element that gave Jack Kirby's Krackle its unique..well, ENERGY!

Personally, I probably would have gone for much smaller dots around the sword, and probably would have strived for a more radiating, pulsating, energy shape around the weapon's blade. That seems a far cooler way to go about it. Johnson's effect sort of gives the impression of a chainsaw blade to me. heh. I might have contemplated placing the dots WITHIN the blade, allowing the blade to appear to be composed of crackling energy, instead of being simply surrounded by it. Yeah--that might be what Kirby would have done to, come to think of it.

If I had more time, I might experiment via Photoshop, but I don't at the moment. Sorry.

Loston

[Goff]

Question for Loston or anyone for that matter.

Your example is excellent but I'm curious about a couple of things.

I'm assuming in your example that you saying the kirby dots are essentially the same color as the background (black) Thus it's really the white that is being rendered as the energy and that makes perfect sense. But then my question is basically what if you didn't want your entire panels background to be black does this render the kirby dots pointless?

As an example to what I'm trying to ask. In your example IF the energy was not radiating around or out all directions but instead was only being shown coming from your initial one direction would the whole background still need to be black to convey the effect? Again in other words if there was only one "beam of energy" hitting the character or coming out of the character instead of it coming out in different directions can you use the same effect?

That's a complicated and over worded question but hopefully you get my meaning.

Eric

[F!NCH]

Well, boss man, I reckon the use of the solid black dots comes down to two things:

- it provides high contrast to allow the energy/positive area to seem that much brighter;

- a lot of the technique's use came from Kirby's cosmic stories, so the black negative area was most likely slivers of the space background.

From examples I've seen, it doesn't work so well with a regular background showing through in the "dotted" areas.

[F!NCH]

This article was pretty informative.

[Bruce Lee]

But then my question is basically what if you didn't want your entire panels background to be black does this render the kirby dots pointless?

Eric,

I'm not sure I completely followed what you were asking, but here goes:

Well, one has to make a decision when to and when NOT to use the Kirby Krackle effect. Jack Kirby didn't always use it for everything. He usually used it for energy effects, most often regarding cosmic energy (but sometimes for fire effects too). Sometimes the effect just isn't going to be appropriate. It does work best, IMO, when the background is encompassed with the dots, but I've seen it work well within the confines of a cloud or blast shape as well. It's all in the execution.

As an example to what I'm trying to ask. In your example IF the energy was not radiating around or out all directions but instead was only being shown coming from your initial one direction would the whole background still need to be black to convey the effect? Again in other words if there was only one "beam of energy" hitting the character or coming out of the character instead of it coming out in different directions can you use the same effect?

It could be used in much the way I used it on the energy beam in step # 3 of my tutorial, with perhaps a few more free floating dots to give the cloud-like outlining of the beam a little more energy. That might work fine with an energy beam or even with a forcefield type situation.

Here's a couple of quick "down-n-dirty" marker sketches that might shed some lights on how one might go about using the effect without filling the entire background with Kirby dots. This method isn't really the Kirby method exactly, but rather the evolution of the effect by other creative comic artists:



I hope that was helpful.

Loston
http://www.lostonwallace.com

[dbclemons]

I've used the Painter program to make these. It's pretty simple to adjust the random spacing and just draw them down. Love the look. Mignola does nice crackle.

[CWmax]

Heh- I was reading about Jack Kirby on Wikipedia and noticed that this tread is linked on teh Wikipedia page....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirby_dots

Pretty Cool!

[Inkthinker]

Wow... that's very cool. Decent example of how Kirby used the Krackle to delineate deep space in that cover, too.

[Justice41]

Also the black dots don't have to be black. they could be the same color as the background color which would really set of the white areas.
Isn't anyone learning anything from the old masters or are they just old guys not to be looked at for inspiration or guidance?