Create The Thing You Want To Exist In The World

So I've been working on my own project outside of Disney for quite a while. In July, I will have put three years into it already. I've been thinking a bit about personal projects and what I think are important considerations to think about before undertaking one. So this is the first in a series about things to consider when planning a personal project.

Every one of us is all too familiar with the life cycle of creative endeavors; countless personal projects are started with a ton of passion and the best of intentions, but are abandoned at some point along the way and never completed. Sometimes it's simply because the passion burns out. Passion is, by its very nature, a powerful but ultimately short-lived phenomenon. Sometimes other priorities take over your life and the project doesn't seem important anymore. Sometimes time just passes and you end up with a new perspective on your project, and what seemed like a great idea a while ago just seems silly now or not worth pursuing anymore.

I can't speak for how anyone else is able to maintain their passion and stamina while working on their own personal project, but the single biggest factor that's enabled me to stick with my project is a concept that I didn't invent, and I wasn't even aware of back when I started working on my endeavor. I've heard other people talk about this idea since I began my project, and once I heard people discussing this concept, I realized that I been following this principle all along.

Basically, the concept is: Create the thing you want to exist in the world.

This is also the reason that I started this blog. Back before I started this thing, I was constantly searching for a website where someone would talk about drawing, writing, film and storyboarding...all the stuff I was passionate about. I was searching and searching for a place where someone else was wrestling with all the stuff I struggle with and talking about it. And then I just started writing stuff down, mostly in the hope that it would inspire others to start doing the same.

Anyway, my personal project was a similar story. I began working on a graphic novel three years ago, and although I didn't realize it at the time, what initially got me going on the project was the desire to create something that I really wanted to exist in the world.

Here's the backstory: I've always really, really wanted to love comic books. Comic books are stories told with visuals, which is similar to storyboarding and film, and should be right up my alley. Many of the people I work with are big comic book fans, and they're all super smart and amazing artists, so naturally I figured I was just missing something. I didn't walk into comic book stores very often, but when I did, I always really wanted to buy something. But most times I'd look and look, and in the end nothing would really catch my imagination, and I'd leave empty handed and disappointed.

So over the years, I formed a foggy idea of what I wished comic books were...but weren't. And those things--and my burning desire to want to love comic books--eventually became so strong in my mind that it drove me to start on my journey to create the thing that I wanted to exist in the world.

So ask yourself what is missing in the world that you'd desperately like to see. What kind of movie do you wish was being made these days? What kind of book do you wish you could read? What kind of music do you wish you could listen to? If you feel that way, it's certain there are others out there that feel that way too. And by hanging onto that desire to see that element out in the world, you can sustain yourself through the tough times that come along with trying to create anything that's original, fresh and inspired.

Expanding Your Mental Toolbox

I apologize for letting so much time pass since my last post. I've been spending all my meager spare time working on my own project, as well as writing and re-writing long-winded blog posts that aren't ready to be published yet. So, in the future, inbetween these longer posts I will make an effort to create smaller posts in an effort to update things around here more often!


When I was animating at Disney long ago, after your first attempt at animating a scene, you would show your animated scenes to the Supervising Animator of whatever character you were working on. You'd give them your stack of drawings, and they would flip through the scene and put your drawings on their animation desk so they could draw over your drawings and give you some instruction while improving the scene.

When I got into Story, things were very different. Nobody draws over your sketches in story. In a story meeting or a hallway conversation, a director or another Story Artist might sometimes draw a sketch to explain an idea they have or to illustrate what they think could be better about a certain pose or expression you've drawn, but storyboarding isn't about the exact precision of the drawings as much as it's about big ideas, story structure, entertainment, staging, cutting, pacing and acting. So we almost always talk in broader terms than just what could be improved in a single sketch. And we don't go over each other's drawings, we just pitch to each other in groups and talk about what's working and what's not working and could be improved in a bigger, more general sense.

So it's interesting for me to compare the two ways of learning and improving. Thinking back to when I was first starting in Story, the biggest steps in learning I made weren't because someone showed me how to improve something, it was because of what people talked about in story sessions. After a storyboard pitch, somebody would say that they felt a sequence was missing a certain something, and sometimes it would be an element that I never would have considered putting into the sequence. It had just never occurred to me.

For example, after someone pitched an action sequence, someone would say something along the lines of, "I just feel like this sequence could have a bigger sense of scale", and suddenly you realized that the idea of "scale" wasn't a concept that you usually considered when you were boarding a sequence. But it should be. And the next time you worked on a sequence, you considered the idea of scale and all that it implies.

Storyboarding is often compared to juggling a lot of different balls or spinning a lot of different plates. There are a ton of things to consider and manage while trying to find the right way to board each sequence. And every time I'd hear what someone felt was lacking in a pitch or a story, and it was an angle I hadn't been considering before, it was like another ball got added to my list of things to juggle.

Joe Ranft did this illustration once of what it feels like to board a sequence. He used juggling as a metaphor for how a board artist needs to balance several considerations at once.

So to mix metaphors...you could also look at each of these considerations as a different "tool" for your toolbox of how to build a sequence.

So this idea of hearing different opinions and getting a peek into what other people think, and incorporating that into my mental toolbox has always been very exciting to me and seems to be a very effective way to learn.

 The good news is that you don't have to work in the Story department at a major animation studio to have this kind of experience.

I see a lot of films. I think it's important for every Story Artist to do this. The thing is, as we all know, not every movie is a masterpiece. So, yeah, I end up seeing a lot of mediocre movies. And sometimes I get almost as excited about seeing an average movie as I do about seeing a really good movie. For this, I take a certain amount of guff from people.

But the thing I get out of a movie that doesn't work is a great opportunity to identify exactly what didn't work and challenge myself to figure out how I would fix it. Don't get me wrong, I love great movies. Obviously. We all do. And we learn a lot from them. But a movie that almost works can be just as much of a learning experience because you can see which notes are played just right and which ones are sour, and how they could be better.

I find that this is another great exercise for expanding my "mental toolbox". Anytime you can look at a work of art and ask yourself what works and what doesn't work, you're teaching yourself in a really active way that sharpens your skills and will stick with you way longer than if a teacher just told you these things.

Another way I like to compare my opinions to those of others and expand my mental toolbox is by reading reviews of movies. If I like a movie, I'll read the negative reviews and figure out what faults I didn't find with the film that the critics did. If I don't like a movie, I'll read the positive reviews and try to see the other side. It's always interesting and informative.

Also, if you're interested in this method of listening to other opinions and measuring and weighing them against yours, try listening to podcasts. This is going to sound like hyperbole, but I am really amazed at how much incredible information is now at our fingertips--for free--in the form of podcasts.

There are many screenwriting and film making podcasts that I find interesting. There are also great podcasts about comic books, writing, painting...you name it. There are also podcasts for every other subject you can think of. In addition, I like general information ones that cover a different topic every podcast. It's exposed me to interesting subjects that I never would have heard about otherwise.

If you're interested in exploring the world of podcasts, they are well organized within iTunes (or within an App that sorts them), so if you're interested in a topic, it's easy to find the most popular ones on that subject. I don't want to recommend any, because--just as I like to read reviews that are contrary to my opinions--I listen to quite a few podcasts where I totally disagree with the opinions expressed within them. Sometimes I get quite passionate about how much my opinions are at odds with the ones they espouse! So I can't say there's any one podcast out there that I agree with all the time and endorse completely (and if there were, I'm not sure what the point of listening to it would be).

I find all these techniques helpful for expanding my "mental toolbox". When I hear strong opinions about certain topics, I weigh those opinions against my own. It helps me to clarify and solidify my opinions, and it helps me test whether my point of view is valid, or whether there's another perspective that I haven't considered yet.

Too often, I think artists (and people in general) like to be surrounded by opinions that are identical to theirs. I think it brings people comfort to think that they're "right" because everyone around them agrees with what they think. But I think that's a sign of insecurity. If you're truly secure in your opinions, I think you enjoy the opportunity to test your perspectives against those of other people and you welcome the chance to change and alter your opinions as you're exposed to new ideas and ways of thinking.

I've worked as a professional artist for almost 20 years, and I can sincerely say that if there's one thing that can lead an artist to stagnate and stop improving, it's becoming rigid and inflexible in your opinions and ways of working. The best artists, in my experience, are always open to new ideas and know that they still have a lot to discover and learn.

Drawing Tips From Comic Book Artists (Part Two)

All these examples come from the same two sources as last time: "The Mighty Thor, Vol.1", artwork by John Romita Jr. and Klaus Janson, and "Jonah Hex #30", artwork by Jordi Bernet.
 
Surface Lines

Romita and Janson's work on Thor has a lot of surface lines covering every character. Surface lines, when used correctly, can add a lot of depth and form to a drawing. But they can also quickly turn into a mess if you don't use them right.

It sounds obvious, but they should never be added arbitrarily and they should always describe the form they're on. In this example they are drawn so that they wrap around the forms of the muscles. That's how surface lines are used almost all of the time.

 

 

In the page above, the large image of Thor at lower left is another example of surface lines used well. They describe both Thor's form and the lighting in the scene very effectively.

In the large horizontal panel below of Thor flying, notice how Romita and Janson use surface lines in a slightly different way. In this case, all the surface lines are drawn in the direction of his movement to accentuate and emphasize the direction that Thor is traveling in.

If, in the drawing above, the artists had drawn surface lines going the other way (that is, perpendicular to his direction of travel), it would have clashed with the feeling of speed and motion of the drawing. It would have made Thor look slower.

When surface lines don't wrap around muscles, or emphasize the direction of travel, they're usually drawn to indicate the way the light is falling. Take a look at the first panel in this Jonah Hex page by Jordi Bernet. Most of the lines are drawn in the direction that the sun's rays are falling on the figures (except for a few lines that follow the surface detail of their faces).

The only other way I can think of to use surface lines is that sometimes they are used to indicate weather (like rain or wind). In this Jonah Hex page, all the figures in the second panel are trapped in a dust storm, and all of their surface lines are drawn in the direction of the wind gusts of the storm (this example is actually from "Jonah Hex #59, artwork by Jordi Bernet).

This is a well-known drawing principle, but it bears repeating: the number of surface lines on a face can have a big effect on whether a character looks old or young. The more lines, the older the character tends to look.

Here, to keep Jane Foster looking young and beautiful, Romita uses very few lines...

...in contrast with how he draws the face of the ancient and wizened Odin.

Check out the difference in the way Romita and Janson draw Peter Parker's face and Aunt May's face and how surface lines make a difference in their perceived ages (yes, they both appeared in "The Mighty Thor").

Surface lines can be used to create depth and a sense of space as well. Here, in the right middle panel (below), Romita uses the surface lines of The Destroyer to do that very effectively. It's easy to see which parts of the figure are above us, at our eye level, and below our eye level based on how the surface lines curve.

Simple vs. Complex

One basic drawing concept that I feel never gets expressed enough is that you should always put complicated areas of a drawing next to simple areas. This creates contrast and visual interest, and is the only way to make complicated areas work. So many times I see drawings where the opposite is true: complicated areas next to complicated areas, and simple areas next to simple areas. That's just not interesting and often creates visual confusion.

Here, the flames in front of The Destroyer create empty, blank flat areas that contrast nicely with all the reflections and texture on his surface. as well as the complicated background texture and the splintered wood at his feet. This technique creates depth and visual interest, and it keeps the drawing from becoming a complicated mess where everything has an equal amount of busy texture and visual emphasis.

In the top panel of the page below, more of that idea on display: the simple flames in the foreground contrast well with all the complicated little figures in the background and create some nice depth.

A simple panel (that I cropped from the rest of the page) showing how the wrinkles and creases on the back of the delivery man contrast well with the blank areas of his outfit. Notice how all the lines wrap around his form as well.

Lastly, another variation on the theme of simple vs. complex is a method that I find helpful in creating layouts with a lot of depth.

It works really well to create a layout with layers of complicated background structures separated by layers of a simpler form, say, trees and foliage, or, in this case, smoke.

The effect of complex layers (of architecture, usually) interspersed with simpler layers (of smoke or foliage, usually) can create an effective sense of space and depth, and it's much easier to draw than, say, a complicated bunch of buildings receding back in perspective.

Drawing Tips From Comic Books (Part One)

Lately I've been using the Comixology app on my iPad to buy and read comics.

I still like buying comics on paper too (and I want to support comic book stores), but one of the best things about the app is how easily you can take snapshots of the pages.

I took a few snapshots and thought I'd just point out some basic drawing and composition stuff that occurred to me as I was reading. None of this is really groundbreaking or mind-blowing, I suppose...but there's not much to be said about art that is. It's just the basics, reworked and reapplied in different ways, I find.

All these examples come from the series "The Mighty Thor, Vol. 1" (artwork by John Romita Jr. and Klaus Janson) and "Jonah Hex #30" (artwork by Jordi Bernet).

Drawing crowds
Crowds are always tricky. A crowd is rarely the point of a drawing; they're usually just there to provide a background. And so they need to read as a group and not a bunch of individuals, otherwise they become a distracting mess.

One way to make sure your crowds read as a unified group is to make sure they all have the same attitude. Everyone in the crowd should have the same reaction to what they're seeing, whether it's terror, admiration, awe, anger, etc. Otherwise, their expressions and attitudes become a jumble and detract from the idea that they're one group.

Another helpful trick is avoiding the temptation to color them in a realistic way...if they all have different colored skin, shirts, pants, etc. then they become a mess of patchy colored shapes. They can begin to look like a bag of Skittles and don't read as a unified group anymore.

Some examples from "The Mighty Thor" where the colorist uses color to group a number of figures together.

 You can see how, in the page below, in the bottom panel, the crowd is colored in sepia values while the main character and the girls on the sofa he's lifting are colored normally to make them the focus and make them come forward in the frame while the background crowd recedes. Even in the top panels, when there's no main character to be the focus, the crowd is handled with different values of sepia to keep them reading as a group, to minimize their importance (they're not the heroes of this story, and we won't ever see them again), and to avoid the trap of coloring each of them with different colored shirts, pants, skin, and hair, which can quickly become a mess of color.

 Same thing here. Coloring the crowd with a consistent color groups them and tells you they're not the focus of the panel. Thor becomes the main focus of the drawing because he's full color, and his colors have more contrast than anyone else's as well.

 You'd think that kind of caricatured, simplified color would look strange and have a distracting effect. But it works really well, and I don't find it distracting or strange. It feels right.

Another example: the complicated crowd is drawn with a lot of detail...but by making them all a unified color, they become a group and the main characters remain the focus of the panel, since the main characters are colored with a fuller palette (and more contrast). This helps the main characters come forward in the field while the crowds recede into the background.

Below, another similar example: in the second panel, the colorist uses different values of blue for everything in the background to minimize them and keep Thor the focus. There's a lot of detail in the background of that panel: figures, a crowd, and scenery, so the different values used really help with readability.

Another similar example: this time, the background in the second panel is drawn into distinctly separated planes; the colorist has assigned each one of them their own color, which helps create a feeling of depth without becoming distracting. If you tried to color each building a different color, it would be distracting and  the feeling of atmospheric perspective probably wouldn't be as strong. Also, the simplified way the background is colored helps our main heroes in the foreground pop nicely.

More Caricatured Color

Another caricatured use of color that you'd think would be distracting (but isn't) is from Jonah Hex #30 by Jordi Bernet (colored by Rob Schwager). In most of the panels, the foreground is painted in a warm purple and the background in sepia. The effect separates the planes from each other and provides a nice sense of depth.

Another use of that effect below: in the next to last panel, the effect is reversed...sepia for the foreground and purple for Hex who is in the background. And in the last panel, the color becomes completely caricatured: the background goes completely red to suggest the violent feel of the scene. Again, it might seem like a strange way to approach color, but it really works well.

Like most aspects of art, color seems like it needs to be complicated and a lot of work to be effective. But simplicity is often the most effective approach to color.


Shadows

Shadows can be helpful for creating variety in composition or for showing things that won't fit within the frame of the picture plane.

In this Thor example, the last panel of a character ducking into an alley is drawn in silhouette because the action can be shown clearly in silhouette, and staging it that way creates variety and interest in a pretty straightforward action. Also, the silhouette supports the feeling of the moment: in this case, ducking into an alley to hide is an act of secrecy and I feel like the choice of putting the whole thing into shadows enhances that idea.

 In this page below, in the lower left panel, Romita chooses to show Thor's feet as he lands in an alley and uses his shadow to suggest the rest of his body. Again, it's an interesting way to show what could otherwise be a straightforward and boring action. The texture of the alley wall is more interesting visually than just seeing a standard drawing of Thor coming in for a landing (which we've all seen before).

 

In the panel in the middle of the page below, Bernet shows Jonah Hex's gun and his shadow cast into the frame. There's no other way to show that angle and get Hex within the frame, and it's a great choice...it makes him look especially imposing to stage him that way.

More to come in Part Two.

"Out of the Question"

Veteran Disney animator and storyboard artist Marc Smith has created a new interactive storybook app called "Out of the Question". It's now available for the iPad and kindle fire. Here's the link to check it out.

 It's the first in a series Marc is creating that follows multiple characters through multiple books. It looks great!

Writing Lessons Can Come From Anywhere

There's a good lesson to be learned from the book "Curious George Goes to the Hospital" by Margret and H.A. Rey. I remember this lesson from reading the book when I was a kid.

In the book, George swallows a puzzle piece and doesn't feel well. The Man In The Yellow Hat takes him to a hospital so they can figure out what's wrong. This is the page that I recall:

I remember being struck by the fact that the author didn't tell you explicitly that George felt scared. Instead, the author describes an action ("George held his big rubber ball tight as they walked up the hospital steps") that creates the idea in your mind that George is scared.

That is such a great lesson in how to write: give your characters actions and reactions that clue the reader (or viewer) into how they're thinking and feeling. You feel the impact of a character's emotions much more powerfully when you perceive them in your mind this way, as opposed to a character just coming out and saying, "I'm scared".

Saying "I'm scared" is also not very realistic behavior for a character. For a variety of reasons, people rarely come right out and say "I'm scared" when they're scared. That goes for every other emotion as well. Humans are very complex, and our feelings are complex too. Most of the time people aren't really cognizant of exactly what they're feeling, and why, and even if they were, they probably couldn't articulate it. Also, most people tend to hide their emotions pretty well (this is different from person to person and from culture to culture, but it's a general truth). So when a character uses dialogue to announce what emotion they're feeling in a movie or TV show, it never feels real to me and it sure isn't very satisfying. And when a character does that, I tend to think they're lying, anyway. Think about it: in your life, have you ever had a reason to tell someone else that you're feeling happy at that moment? Or sad? I haven't. I'm not sure why anyone would be interested in a running commentary of my emotions. If I'm feeling happy, I'm just going to experience that feeling....I'm not sure why I would announce it to anyone. The same goes for every other emotion.

That's why if a character in a movie ever does announce that they're happy (or sad, or whatever), I always assume that's a lie that they're telling to cover up what they're really feeling (and then I'll try to figure out what they're really feeling, and why they're lying about it).

So for those reasons, it always seems like really poor writing to me when a character says out loud what they're feeling, and what they're saying is actually the emotion that they're feeling.

When you're writing anything, getting the audience inside the head of the characters and letting the audience know what they're feeling and thinking is one of the most (if not THE most) important aspects to communicate. So, if we can't have characters tell us what they're feeling, how do we make it clear to the viewer?

Well, because humans are so good at hiding their emotions, we humans have gotten good at reading the tiny clues people show and inferring their emotions from those little hints. So, just like in the Curious George example, use your character's actions and reactions to give the audience insight into the mindset of your character as they react to the events unfolding around them.

Sometimes that means giving your character reactions that are universally obvious (like George gripping his ball tighter to show that he's afraid). Or sometimes it involves setting up that your character has a certain behavior that he does when he's feeling a specific emotion, and then when your audience sees the character do that certain behavior, they know what he's thinking or feeling (for example, in Michael Bay's "The Island", there's a set up that Ewan McGregor's character smiles in a certain way when he's lying, and that serves as a setup for a plot point later).

The point is this: what a character does in a story - the actions he or she takes, and the reactions he or she has to events in the story - should tell us about who they are and what they're feeling. Not speeches where they announce what they're feeling.

As a writer (or storyboard artist, animator, comic artist, etc.), it's imperative that you know what your character is thinking and feeling at all times and why. If you don't know these things, then you can't communicate it to the audience, and then the story just becomes a series of meaningless events. Nobody watching it will know what they're supposed to be feeling or what they're supposed to think about the story you're telling. So the first step before you can communicate those feelings to the audience is making sure that you know the emotions of your characters (and that those emotions make sense...but that's a whole other topic).

Face Shapes

I was recently reading a comic book and I had a hard time telling the characters apart, because they all had a similar face shape, similar facial features and similar body types, and it got me thinking about face shapes.

I think sometimes when artists are first learning, they're taught to draw a generic face shape and then they stick with that shape. I also think that when people are designing characters for a "serious" story, they think they can't caricature the shape of the face too much or their drawings will start to look "cartoony" and not appropriate for the serious tone of their work.

But even in real life, there's an incredibly variation of shape within the faces of people. The University of Massachusetts has compiled a database of faces from all over the internet. It's categorized in several different ways, but to give you an idea of how big it is, here's what you get if you click on the category "first names that start with Jav through Jes".

So that database is a great resource if you're looking for face inspiration.

I think if you're working on a comic book, or animated film, or any other endeavor where you're got to design a group of characters and you want them all to have a distinctive look, you ought to make a "Bible" of what face shape each character has so they're instantly recognizable, even in a rough scribble.

I challenged myself to see how many different face shapes I could come up with in three minutes, using the same facial features for each one. Here's what I came up with:

So you can see the kind of variety you can get, even in a quick exercise like this. Once you start creating variety with the features within the face, you can see how easily each character can have a very distinctive look and would never be confused with another character.

Here's an interesting flow chart from a beauty website that's supposed to help you figure out what kind of face shape you have. Some might find it to be a helpful tool in generating faces. It incorporates jawline and hairline shape as well, which I think could be very helpful.

And here's another picture from an online article where they break the basic face shapes into these seven categories (and also talk about the best type of haircut for each):

In the comic book that inspired this post, all the men had beards, which made it even harder to tell the characters apart because all the beards looked the same. Again, I think artists can fall into the trap of thinking there's a standard beard "shape", and then they repeat that on every character. In reality, there are as many variations in shapes and types of beards as there are faces. Here's a sample of the variety you can get just by Googling "beards":

Or you could check out beards.org to see a wide variety of beard types. Again, I challenged myself to come up with beards for my face shape template in a minute. This is what I came up with:

Obviously, what is stylish in beards changes with the times. If you are working on a historical project, make sure your beard types are accurate for the period.


The whole thing about making choices of face shapes, facial features and beard shape is that it should all come from the personality of the character you're designing. Every choice you make should accentuate and enhance the personality of your character. In that regard, it's always best to base your characters on somebody that actually exists, at least as a starting point.


If you're designing a shifty, weasely type of character, you might look at actors who seem to play those type of roles (say, Steve Buscemi or Paul Giamatti, etc.) and ask what gives those actors that kind of appearance. So whatever type of character you're designing, look at actors who play those type of parts and look for ways to get that look into your character.




Even better than actors would be to base your characters on people you know. That can lead to much more original and interesting designs. So think about the people you know and what type of personality they project, and why. Getting that type of thing into your own characters is really satisfying and makes them really rich and unique.

Finally, it can be tempting to rely on color to distinguish between characters (like, say, these two characters look similar, but one has red hair and one has blond hair). You never know if your work will be seen in black and white, or reproduced without color. And then there's people who are color blind...they may have a hard time with discerning between the two characters. You never know.


So, if you're working on a comic book or an animated movie and you're creating a group of characters, I think it'd be wise to sit down and make a chart of the different character's face shapes so that you have a guide to keeping them separate from each other and distinct.

More Great Comic Book Resources

If you enjoyed Michael Cho's inking handout, here are a few more comic book resources that I've posted before (but not for a while). All of them apply not only to comic books, but storyboarding and drawing as well.

I haven't reposted this in years, but the artist Carson Van Osten created this handout years ago when he was drawing Disney Comics (I briefly worked with Carson when I did a short stint at Disney Consumer Products). I think most of it is printed in Frank and Ollie's book, "The Illusion of Life".

Carson's handout is a great primer on common mistakes made in comic book design and layout. I posted some xerox copies of it years ago and it got a bit of attention on other websites. Carson heard about it and contacted me, and eventually he sent me an original, higher res version of the whole thing, which I scanned and posted (you can see his hand-written note to me on the first page). All of his thoughts are great and have really stuck with me over the years and saved me hours of frustration.

Legendary Comic Artist Wally Wood did a piece that shows up everywhere on the web entitled "22 Panels That Always Work".

If you're wondering what "Ben Day" refers to, they were transparent sheets with dots on them that comic artists would cut and lay onto panels to create grey tones or colors.

I always cringe when I think about this last great comic resource, because it's a brutal critique of Steve Rude's work by the great Alex Toth. Apparently Rude asked Toth to critique a "Johnny Quest" story and Toth did so, writing all his notes in the margins. Toth was a legendary curmudgeon and didn't bother to hide his clear scorn of Rude's work. I don't like posting it because it takes a lot for any artist to open himself up for such criticism and I doubt Rude knew it would become so public. But it's such a great glimpse into the mind of Toth and what made his work so great that I think it has a lot of value.

 

I find Toth's notes to be very inspiring, despite how tough they may seem. I think about his comment "When was the last time you lifted a heavy box?" every time I draw someone lifting anything. Great stuff...I wish more artists would leave us such a great glimpse into their thinking.

I reposted these images from this forum.