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3ď˴HTTP://LUKEPEARSON.COM˵ďHILDA
AND THE BLACK HOUND SHOWS HOW A GOOD COMIC SHOULD FUNCTION- FORM AND FUNCTION Matters of style: “For the
Hildathink my style comics, I
is pretty much a mixture of
Franco-Belgian comic art, Tove
Jansson, and the cartoonier
end of Manga (Osamu Tezuka,
Akira Toriyama). At
least that’s what I
consciously think about.”
Contrast action and
tone:has a big, “Hilda
expressive face and is fun to
throw around and do physical
stuff with. I like to play that
stuff up for certain
melodramatic scenes. But I
also try to pull back from it
and create a quieter mood a
lot of the time, which maybe
plays against how it looks.”A question of colour: “ My
colour theory consists of
spending forever picking
out a few colours that
complement each other
(and that Hilda looks good
placed in front of, as she’s in
nearly every panel) and
then only adding new
tones and colours into
the mix when it looks weird
if I don’t.”On the turn: “Breaking it
into pages is one of the most
important parts for me, as I like
to try and hit certain notes
on a page turn, and I’ll usually
have a good idea where in
the story I want certain events
to occur.”Grow into your characters: “If you draw a
character for a sustained amount of time, you slowly iron out all the kinks and your hand
eventually learns how to do it on its own accord. But the start always looks a bit ropey
in hindsight. If you draw the pages in order though, it’s a gradual change and the reader
doesn’t notice it.”Face the fear (and do it anyway): Pearson says
the one ends up being the longest comic I’ve ever Hilda comics are incredibly challenging: “Each
done, takes me longer than I think and usually ends up including a bunch of stuff I’m not
confident at drawing that I have to figure out in a short amount of time. I had some kind of brief
meltdown during each one.”- PICTURE
THE BIG SCREEN
© Luke Pearson/Nobrow Press
© Mako Fufu© Daniel de SosaManga artist Mako Fufu (www.makofufu.com)
says that “a good comic artist is the one who not
only tells the story, but also uses their talent and
creativity to make the pages visually interesting
yet easy to read. As comics must be thought of
in a cinematic fashion, the artist should be able
to read the script while their mind is creating and
playing a movie version in their head, which they
would translate to panels afterwards. In comics
you can (and should) play with the panel shapes
as well. That would make the page more visually
attractive, and at the same time it’s a resource to
accentuate certain acts, objects, emotions and
such. The artist has to direct and edit, being able
to figure out when the page needs a few panels
to describe an action, and when it’s time for a
change of scene or day, moving to the next part
by inserting a panel with different scenery (or a
sunrise, for a change of day, for example).”
Fufu fully embraces the manga aesthetic,
which gives her other visual elements to fill her
(cinematic) frame with. She says: “There are
many specific characteristics from this style, like
the sweat drop for uncomfortable situations, the
huge vein for anger, the dynamic positioning and
shape of the panel and also different types of
screentones, including abstract backgrounds.
Many of these have been popularised and may
be found in non-manga-style comics, though.”For Daniel de Sosa (http://oi.thecomicseries.com),
starting the first issue of his comic series Oi! Tales Of
Bardic Fury, which he did as his final project for his
illustration course at university, is still the most
challenging project he’s ever worked on. “I had never
made a long-form story comic before,” he explains,
“so there were a lot of things I had no idea how to do.
It was really overwhelming to sit down midway
through pencilling the first page and realise I had 20
more pages to go. There were also a lot of things in
the story that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to draw, as I’d
never drawn them before. I tackled this problem
simply by bombing forward anyway, and focusingon finishing one page at a time. It was hard work,
and took me twice as long to do as it would take me
now, simply because I was so clueless as to what I
was doing. Overall I hardly slept, made loads of
mistakes, but somehow managed to meet the
deadline I set for myself. The comic has had a really
good response ever since I started putting it online
and taking it to comic conventions, so the hard work
and sleepless nights definitely paid off. So that’s my
advice: every time you feel overwhelmed, and
unsure of your ability to tackle a project, just bomb
forward and do it anyway. You will make loads of
mistakes like I did, but it’s the only way to get better.”- DON’T POLISH, JUST FINISH
TIPS FOR COMIC ARTISTS