from the transcript…
Welcome back. It’s Todd from Todd Young online. We’re going to do another flip through this chonky boy, 14 x 17 Marilla. I don’t know where I got this. But again, it’s mid-nineties. So turn of the century. I can say that it’s kind of cool. What’s even more interesting is I came across this and it’s a real example of me trying to do a comic book, paneling stuff out, trying to do character work that I had come up with and and get something down.
It’s not great by any means, but it was it was a start and it was, where I was at the time. And hopefully I’m a little further along, but I still have a long way to go and a lot of practice to do. Kind of the interesting thing is, for me anyway, the blank page completely overwhelms/ed me so, normally an 8 1/2 x 11 is what I use, or in that range.
And even then I tend to panel out the pages to make the space more manageable. So this was a big undertaking for me at the time to try and fill up the space. I look at this and see, how much empty space is here, and there’s part of me that wants to really go back and fill this up and I just might have another flip through someday.
It’s not going to be tomorrow, but my character work was crude. I think I have a better grasp on it now, even though it still needs to be worked on. I have been thinking more recently a lot of it is staying consistent, staying focused, and staying intentional in what you’re doing.
Especially for me, I have a lot of little doodles, and that’s what these really are, filled with doodles and ideas. But I never really fleshed out a lot. I had at one point, I remember, these last few pages, an opportunity had presented itself. There were some empty storefronts, and a friend of my mom’s wanted paintings on the windows.
I was coming up with some ideas but never got anywhere with it, I just wasn’t ready for that opportunity.
So , starting with a story and trying to panel it out and break it down. There was a story, The Lady and the Tiger, it’s a crude attempt at the time for me.
This wasn’t bad. This was an ambitious undertaking for me, especially at this page size. I had been working on this wolf character for a while, and all these other characters, trying to come up with this universe and a team book. This individual book and these ideas, which were kind of redundant but they have some merit. That’s all you can say about yourself sometimes, you know?
Yeah, it gives you a starting place. It may not have been great, but you were at least trying and exploring and practicing, and I need a lot more practice. It’s definitely something. I’m sitting here watching this with you. Some of them, some little doodles turned out better than other little doodles. And I wasted a lot of space, didn’t I?
Look at all that white space. Makes me want to go back through it. I tend to get intimidated, especially with larger sizes. And if you’re using like, a pencil and it’s making a thinner line, it makes the page even more overwhelming. But, when you use a larger brush or something that’s larger, that fills up the page a little bit better, a little bit bolder, a little bit more dynamically, it helps to it it helps to kind of overcome that feeling of what am I going to do with this?
I’ve got a lot of naked characters because I was still working on anatomy and had not yet progressed into drapery and clothing and folds well and then, I really have wasted a lot of space in this book. I know I can do faces better than this now. Maybe not a lot better, but I can do it better.
I doodled a lot of ideas, weapons, this wolf pack idea. I had this guy just kind of some of it was taking practice from the comics I was reading Image,, Marvel, and trying to break them down and learn some anatomy.
I’m still trying to find that style. Some of this like this I used for a project at school using 3D shapes. I took a bunch of boxes, created a bunch of images and then broke them down and put different images on different sides of the boxes.
So they were giant building blocks you could assemble. It was either abstract with all the different pieces of different images or you could put it together for the actual image. It turned out fairly well, the drawings could have been better, but the concept was there. I’d probably approach it a lot differently now. So working on poses or working on this was also before I really, you know, before I really kind of got into blue, non-photo blue, and blocking out my shapes better, looking at my figures better.
I started by doing outlines and it was a lot more difficult. I remember using muscle magazines. You know, all the poses to do some studies. Some of the women in the magazines, but it wasn’t as efficient as it should have been.
Now I block things in, knowing now what I didn’t know then, blocking things in, a lot of the characters, a lot of nudity. Children don’t look at this, but blocking things and breaking them down, then getting more detailed instead of trying to draw these shapes and stuff. But, overall, I have finished pages.
They aren’t great pages, but I do have something finished. so in terms of how I think now it would be, okay, now you’ve got these roughs, now go back and refine them , go back and redo this, go back and put some clothes on these people, do better. She’s definitely naked. That would have been a female bodybuilder at the time, probably from the swimsuit issues of Image or Marvel.
And here, a character that used runes…colored pencil. You know, people that use colored pencil effectively are awesome, but otherwise I think colored pencils are just a trash. But that’s only because I can’t use it very well. Those tiny feet and these weird, you know, you got to kind of, you know, if you go back and look at these, you could almost make something interesting out of them.
If you went back with ink and really leaned into how kind of raw they are and rough and, you know, appreciate them for what they are instead of what they aren’t. So I guess it goes back to, you know, you got to be you got to be kind to yourself. You know, you got to appreciate where you are and know that if you keep doing more, you will get better.
It’s just learning how to see how to how to do this stuff out. You know, and keep pushing yourself to keep learning and developing. One thing I was watching more recently, YouTube had I think Todd McFarlane and Rob Lowe fell, Jim Lee, and they were all talking. I think it was a Stan Lee thing and they were talking about how, you know, you’re not going to do everything.
You know, if they’re talking about breaking into the comic book business and how you’re not going to do everything well that, you know, penciling, inking, whatever, that to pick one thing and focus on that. And I, I tend to agree you know, it’s like but at the same time don’t be afraid to try and keep figuring out keep trying, keep leaning into it and seeing what really grabs your interest.
I remember we used to be able to where you had to send a way to the comic book companies and they would send you samples to ink, which was kind of cool things. Things used to be so much more complicated back in the day, you know, when you had to do stamps, snail mail and write checks, and now things are just, you know, do it digitally, download it, print it out.
Life is so much easier, you know, back back before the turn of the century. Yeah. Another thrill kill and techno demon trying to be kind of cool, trying to come up with something towards the end of this. But, you know, just to walk through, this idea that I had had one day, but no, thank you for sticking around and checking this one out.
And I appreciate all your thoughts and encouragement and, you know, interaction with these things. I got some more. I don’t have nearly enough. You know, it’s like where I am at this point. It’s like I should have a lot more and I’m working on it. I finally getting back around to trying to dig back into things. But thank you very much for your time and I will talk to you soon.
Thank you very much. Bye.
