The only context you should need for the above comic: In Ultimate Comics Spider-Man the Human Torch (Johnny), Ice Man (Bobby), and Spider-Man (Peter) all live together. I don’t think I can express how much I am of a fan of Spider-Man and the Human Torch when they get to yell at each other. Now they live together?! Thank you Brian Michael Bendis.
The idea given for these next four posts was a duel. When I emailed Mr. Hipp I included a lot of words about dueling because I was challenging him to challenge me. Dang, he did well: “You actually throwing your glove down. Now, I could tell you a few different scenarios that would make that picture awesome, especially when you consider some of the various gloves that have existed in nerd-dom, BUT……that’s the actual challenge. Â YOU have to figure out how to make that awesome. Â Aww, look at that, you asked for a challenge and you got it :) . ”
That might sound easy, but it totally was not! I racked my head for a week on it and came up with nothing! I kept asking people what would look cool, sketched what I thought was cool, I really had a hard time with it. Eventually my problem boiled down to: Who did I want to fight, why did that person work, how could I make it look good? I wanted to fight everyone! This is a blog of a comics nerd!
As for the layout? I don’t flippin’ know! I had ideas, but I couldn’t label any one of them the best since I’m not 100% on what I’m doing. In the end I resolved that I would do several pieces. That way I could look at different ways to lay out the picture, use different characters, and finally move forward with the project.
This really is not a bad thing to hold against the amazing Dan Hipp of Amazing Joy Buzzards. For the first time I got to use: Comic Art, Inking Pen, Correcting Fluid, a “B” and a “C” nib pen, and my arm as a glorified washcloth. That is the entire point of this blog, me learning how to do new things, so I guess the title of the posts should be “Thank Dan Hipp”. Then again, that would make people assume that they should expect goodness from the art. Hmm. Don’t do that.
Weaknesses in this piece abound and astound! The most obvious to me is that I do not know how to shade. I’m scared of taking the gradients of the piece darker because I don’t know 1) How to effectively implement them, and 2) I’m scared that if I ink something and I don’t like it I won’t we able to take it back.
So, to address this difficulty I’m going to have to crack open a few books and read up on how these professional people handle it.
Oh…and the lettering, let’s just acknowledge there’s shortcomings and move on.
