Weekly Panel #8

Sorry I haven't posted a weekly panel in a while, so

TAKE THAT!!!

I promise to give you a panel once a week, and hopefully a couple of more blog entries, about this project and some other things I have brewing.

Later,

Anthony

R.I.P. Jeremy Mullins

Jeremy Mullins died this weekend from a 60 foot fall, while on a hiking trip. He was a classmate of mine turned Professor at SCAD. We were roommates for awhile. Those old days at Island Tree, good or bad they were never boring with Jeremy. I am still a bit in shock. He was only 32 and one of the guys who was in the trenches with me has we worked on getting our MFA degrees in Sequential Art.

His legacy should be the webcomics he inspired his students and peers alike to create. You can still read parts of his thesis on webcomics athttp://www.wadeaccosted.com/. Read the articles under news. They are excellent, and along with http://www.webcomics.com/, they are invaluable to anyone looking to create webcomics.

We had drifted apart. We still lived in the same city,but were not the friends we once were. Part of me is sad about that. I wished we had made time to resolve our differences, even if we could not have been the close friends we once were. Jeremy, you died too soon.

Update:

A Memorial Service will be held on 6/22/09 at Tybee Island at 5:30pm. People will be gathering near the lighthouse in the parking lot near the North Beach Grill. If you can make it come. If not take a moment of silence in memory of Jeremy at that time Monday.

Sincerely,

Anthony

The weekly Panel #7... so it is a whole page.

Decided I'd give you guys a whole page this week. I hope you enjoy.

-Anthony Summey

Weekly Panel #6

What could be more fun than a good old fashion bar room brawl?

Weekly Pnael #5

Here is an birds eye view inside the alehouse our musketeers frequent. I am not crazy about how turned out, but thought it was interesting enough to post. I've been working a lot of OT at the day job, but I am going to try and give you guys another new post where I rant about something comic book or pirate related.

-Anthony Summey

The Weekly Panel #4

A rapier at your throat will make even the most dastardly of pirates think twice before messing with the wench a musketeer has his eye on.

I like the sense of space created in this panel with the the silhouetted background figures. It is simple and effective, like most good things. But what do you think?

- Anthony Summey

The Weekly Panel #3

For this weekly panel, I give you the Cardinal. He is our mastermind type villain in The Pirate Musketeers, but he does underestimate his young king, who may prove to be more devious than himself.

I feel like this panel has a lot of Al Williamson and Wally Wood influences. Am I wrong or do you see any others?

- Anthony Summey

What I learned form Alex Raymond

I was born to late to have enjoyed Alex Raymond's strips in the newspapers, but came across him as a major influence to the artists that I aspire to be like (namely Al Williamson). Once I discovered his work I would search high and low for books about the master sequential artist, who inspired so many who followed. I studied the reproductions I could find and the images on the Internet trying to unlock the secrets that they held. What I discovered (to paraphrase Idol's Randy Jackson) if you can draw you can draw anything. Alex Raymond could. It did not matter if it was a space faring adventure, a super spy, big game hunter, or detective. Raymond could draw them all with equal elegance. It was the Rip Kirby strips that I felt was the pinnacle of his work, and that is where I focused my study. From these strips I learned the importance of well placed black areas, know what to draw and what to imply, and what you do draw, draw it well.





Raymond liked to refer to his spotting of blacks has pools of quiet, because they gave areas for your eyes to rest while taking in the story. If you compare his Rip Kirby strip to his earlier Flash Gordon work you can see a shift in how he utilizes his black area. The Flash Gordon strips were busy with hatching, while the Rip Kirby strips were a more refine work where there was hardly a wasted line. Each line served a purpose and each area of black helped balance the strip has a whole. It is this idea that I have tried to incorporate into my work as a sequential artist. Always mindful of choices of spotting my blacks and trying to not over render my work.



Raymond's seemingly innate ability to know just how much was needed to depict a scene, still astounds me. He knew how to make a panel have a sense of place by just drawing a few lines and a few background props like a simple light shade. Raymond knew how to cartoon with out it looking cartoony. In other words, he knew how to simplify without abstracting his figures to the point that they no longer looked like real people but animation characters (we can debate the merits of both in a later post). This is an area that I am continually trying to find that perfect balance of what to show and what to leave out, but somehow Raymond just understood that balance.



Even though he simplified what he drew, he always drew it well. This is probably one of the biggest lessons I have learned from his work. Make sure what you draw you draw it well. If you have to go find a reference to draw it correctly. Go and find it. It will make all of the difference. If you try and fake it it will look fake, and distract the reader from the story you are trying to tell. Raymond often used models and it shows in his work. Most of us can not afford models, but the Internet is a rich resource and easily accessible to us, so there is no excuse not to find some sort of reference (I'll try and do a post about how to properly use reference in your sequential work soon).

Alex Raymond was a master to masters. His work has inspired generations and shaped the world of sequential art. His work is a high water mark for the art form, and holds countless lessons for the aspiring sequential artist. Alex, you died too soon.



-Anthony Summey

The Weekly Panel #2

I thought it might be interesting this week to pull back the veil a bit and show a rough pencil version of a panel and its final inked version. I find myself feeling too tight to really let loose on the bristol board, so I have begun using copier paper to do my rough pencils on. I then light box it to clean it up for inking. And after I go to town with the inks this is the final product.

- Anthony Summey

Anthony Summey's Artist Statement

What is my work about? Seems like a simple enough question, but it is hard and somewhat limiting for me to define myself and my work. I know what I want my work to be, but often times finding it lacking. I know the artist who I would like to be like, but when comparing my work to theirs I tend to see my shortcomings in the light of their brilliance. Upon countless heart wrenching hours of self analysis I know what my strengths are and where my weaknesses lie.





I want my work to be part of the illustrative tradition in sequential art ( I'll explain the the two categories, the cartooning and the illustrative tradition, as I see them in a future post). I would like my work to be more realistic than abstract in terms of how I represent my characters and the world they live in. Simply put I would like my work to look more like Prince Valiant than Peanuts or Garfield. The preference is not merely aesthetic, but I believe that this more illustrative style lends itself better to the stories I wish to tell. That is not to say that an artist like Bruce Timm could not tell the same story in his style, and it be a good story. The difference in art styles would effect how the story is perceived by the reader and make it a different type of story. I want to tell adventure stories interwoven with elements from the horror and fantasy genres (i.e. zombies, vampires, mythical beast, monsters, etc.). I feel that the more illustrative tradition in comics offers a better platform for me to build these stories.





I would like my work to be like Mark Schultz, Al Williamson, and Alex Raymond. I find a grace and confidence in their work that I'd love to see in my own. I instead find a rough dark quality to my work which I am sure can be attributed to my study of horror comics. I see elements of Bernie Wrightson, Gene Colan, Graham Ingels and Tom Mandrake competing with the Schultz, Williamson, and Raymond aspirations. I have even had someone at a portfolio review compare my work to Wally Wood (which is one of the highest praises I have ever received). I find when I am able to reconcile these two aspects that my work becomes something of its own. It is no longer trying to be like someone else's work, but becomes its own unique thing.





I find that my strengths as a storyteller are in blending the genres of fantasy adventure and horror. My work is at its best when there are dominate shadows and my lines have enough character and weight to them. I find my work does not hold together as well with thin dainty lines with little contrast in them. I believe my work is more effective when I keep a high level of contrast between the black and white areas. It becomes weaker when I try and to do too much hatching to denote values. My feathering and brush stokes create a dark dreamy world where it is possible for pirates and musketeers to meet dinosaurs and zombies.





My work is about merging fantasy adventures with horror. I achieve this by combining the illustrative influences of Schultz, Williamson, and Raymond with the masters of the macabre (Wrightson, Colan, Ingels, and Mandrake) that have shaped my way of rendering shadow and light. My goal is to have my work be an effective partner to the stories they depict, and hopefully to be enjoyed by others.





-Anthony Summey

What is "Oldschool Adventure"?

Artist are often asked to write an "Artist Statement" to define their work and the recurring themes that permeate them. I know I was asked to go thorough this process more than once during my course of study at SCAD. On some level it is a process of critical self analysis. You tear apart your work and evaluate what it is about your work that makes it unique. You critique what you were trying to do and where you were successful and how you failed to achieve these goals. You find out what your natural tendencies are in terms of rendering technique and subject matter. But probably more insightful, you start looking at the things you avoid drawing and why.

So how do I define myself and my work? I defined my work simply has "Oldschool Adventure". A phrase I coined while I was working on my thesis project (part of which has evolved into The Pirate Musketeers ) in graduate school. "What is 'Oldschool Adventure?'" you ask. Quite simply it is a style of art that follows closely to the illustrative traditions set not in the comic books, but in the adventure strips that appeared in the newspapers from the 1930's to 1950's. It is work that is directly inspired by Hal Foster, Milton Caniff, and Alex Raymond. Though I have coined this phrase to help define my own work at present I believe current artist like Mark Schultz, Steve Epting, and Jay Potts epitomize the spirit of these strips more than myself. I plan to do a series of post to further define "Oldschool Adventure" as a style of sequential art, and how it applies to my own work. I also plan to explore in more depth the fore fathers of this illustrative tradition in sequential art. I'll try and touch on why artist choose to follow in this tradition, and even include a few in my "What I've learned from..." post. Until then, I leave you with a panel of mine that I believe was one of the first to really define my rendering style and begin to create a look solely my own.

- Anthony Summey

The Weekly Panel #1

This is a new thing I am going to do and post a panel from The Pirate Musketeers once a week. This is an establishing shot of Versailles. I had to take the time to do the research to get this right. It is always necessary to research the subject matter of your work. Because if you try and fake it, you'll lose your reader and come off like a hack (which I find myself falling into time to time).

- Anthony Summey

What I learned from John Buscema:

I remember checking out How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way from our public library, and pouring over each line that John Buscema used to demonstrate the art of drawing comics. I have recently rediscovered this gem, and believe despite my Master's degree in Sequential Art, that this book contains all the vital information that one needs to understand how to draw comics. Granted Stan and John simplified the process somewhat, but all the basics are here.

This book helped me to draw not just the contours I saw, but to draw the forms that made up my figures. In short they gave me a new way of visualizing what I was drawing. Instead of drawing outlines and shapes, I began to conceptualize things into 3-D objects and began to draw parts of the figure that were hidden from view.


The book also broke down perspective drawing for me and got me thinking not only about my figure drawing skills, but about how the camera angle played apart in the storytelling. The name of the game was drama and the book gave excellent examples of how you could utilize camera angles to heighten the emotion of the panels.

John Buscema and his work were and will continue to be a recurring influence on me as a comic book artist. I value the effort he put into this book, and the lessons I've learned from it are still with me every time I pick up a pencil to layout a page. Thank you "Big John".

- Anthony Summey

The Pirate Musketeers #1 cover

This is the black and white version of the cover to The Pirate Musketeers. I will post the color version once I've completed the interior pages and have some time to work on getting the coloring just right.

I know I've been a bit lax with my post. I am going to try and update more often with a weekly panel and some articles about the artist who've influenced me, pirate life, musketeers, dinosaurs, and my thoughts about creating good comics. Hopefully I'll get this blog a rocking in the next few weeks.

- Anthony Summey

The Pirate Musketeers: Meet the Crew #4

Name: Darius "The Daring" Dontez

Height: 5'-10"

Weight: 175 lbs

Country: Nomadic, currently serving has a Musketeer in France.

Occupation: Musketeer, adventurer, and pirate.

Darius was born the grand child of Manuel Garcia Dontez, the King of the gypsies that roamed the hills between Spain and France. He was the most beloved of all of Manuel's grandchildren, because of his boldness and confidence. This nurtured jealousy in the hearts of his cousins and they sold him into service of a pirate crew as a cabin boy.

It was aboard the ship where Darius learned to weld a sword, and his skill quickly became legend to any sailor in the Mediterranean. He rose to become the captain of his own ship and lead a fairly prosperous pirate life, until the day he saved the king from asasination. He lost his ship and crew in the process, but was rewarded by the king and given a position has one of his musketeers.

- Anthony Summey

The Pirate Musketeers: Meet the Crew # 3

Name: Captain Elijah Byrd



Height: 5'-9"



Weight: 235 lbs



Country: England



Occupation: Privateer




Captain Byrd is the elected leader of the privateering ship "The Purgatory". He is an odd sort of pirate, who holds a strict moral code and expects his men to be of noble character (which they are often times found lacking). He has taken this mission from the Cardinal not just for the gold promised, but he feels compelled by some higher power to find this lost treasure.

He is a stern, but fair captain as long as you mind your manners around his daughter, Bonnie Red, who he has raised on the ship for the past 15 years. She is constant reminder of the love he once shared with his departed wife,who was lost to consumption when Bonnie was but toddler. He would face any army or manner of devilish beast to protect her.

- Anthony Summey