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Give me a break (into comics...)Pro comic writer :iconzubby: Jim Zub has a blog where he's written a few entries on how to break into the comics industry. Well worth a read IMO!
The links -->
Part 1 - How do I break in? --> http://www.jimzub.com/?p=1725
Part 2 - Find an artist --> http://www.jimzub.com/?p=1767
Part 3 - Comic Writing --> http://www.jimzub.com/?p=1068
Part 4 - The Pitch --> http://www.jimzub.com/?p=1511
Part 5 - Pitch Critique --> http://www.jimzub.com/?p=1882
Part 6 - Comic Q&A --> http://www.jimzub.com/?p=1813
Part 7 - The Realities of Creator-owned Comics --> http://www.jimzub.com/?p=1953
In addition he links to Charles Soule's blog articles about Freelance work and Contracts called "Agree to Agree"
Here's the links -->
Part 1 --> http://charlessoule.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/agree-to-agree-part-one/
Part 2 --> http://charlessoule.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/agree-to-agree-part-2/
Part 3 --> http://charlessoule.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/agree-to-agree-part-three/
Part 4 --> http://charlessoule.word

MotivationMotivation to achieve your goals in life comes in many forms. I decided to take a look at some of mine throughout my life. Keep reading if you care to learn my deep dark secrets [ ultimately you can use them against me later in life when I'm weak and defenseless. ]
When I was a kid I wanted to be just like my father. He passed away when I was 28 but man he left a mark! By the time I was a teenager I was a lot to handle - so we hardly ever saw eye to eye. He was a tough and talented man. To me he was like a super hero. He had a very black and white philosophy about life. He defined right and wrong very distinctly - there was no grey in his world. As a kid, a philosophy like that makes complete sense even if it isn't very realistic. He was a former pro boxer turned commercial artist. Eventually he ran his own ad agency. He could play guitar and piano by ear and played baseball as often as he could. He also loved comi

Top 5 Mistakes (I've made over the years)To many people in comics, I only arrived a few years ago with Joe the Barbarian. Then came Hellblazer (completed in 2008 before I began working on Joe), American Vampire: SOTF, and finally Punk Rock Jesus. Once in a while someone will mention Off Road (an OGN I did with Oni back in 2004), but for the most part it seems like I've been published only these last few years when in fact I've been published professionally for a decade now.
This isn't a plea to have everyone go back through my previous work--in fact, I'm glad that a lot of the books I've done over the years aren't on readers' radars. I'm proud of it all, but the books above are a nice, tight group of titles to be associated with. They're all in a similar brand, they're all recent, they all have good creators/publishers associated with them, and the artwork is mostly consistent. Go back further than that, and you'll see artwork that looks nothing like the stuff I'm doing these days. (Although Off Road still holds up to some de

Experiment Part 1: Training Your EyeSo my buddy *karuvan is trying to learn how to draw properly. He's been on a roll as far as progressing. But he's stuck at a standstill. This is an experiment that I've done with him and that he's working on in order to train his eye. I decided to share the conversation and experiment with you guys for you all to apply to your study habits and advancement in drawing and art.
Read on!
__________________________________________
Karuvan: I randomly drew over my old pic. Ain't gonna do it over, was just curious on how much I could have done better.
Robaato: Quick question... like... who's work at this point do you really want yours to be close to? I'm tryna gauge what level you're trying to achieve.
K: lol... Joel is becoming a huge influence.
R: Ok. I have a test for you.
K: Ok.
R: I want you to replicate this picture exactly as it is to the best of your ability:

Cartoon face colouring videoI did a 1 hour video on Livestream last year. I just show how I use to paint ...
It's quite boring because I only use the soft round brush with low opacity

Here's the link : http://www.livestream.com/sergebirault/video?clipId

la_058a44c7-6d3a-46b9-a426-443d00b0d66b

Why are we slower?About a month ago I finally got to meet an art hero of mine, Klaus Janson, a well known pro who's been in the industry for over 30 years. A mutual friend introduced us, and we hit it off right away. The group of us went through the Village hitting pub after pub, and soon I was drunk enough to ask Klaus something that had been bugging me.
I asked him if modern comic artists are, on average, slower than we used to be. He said yes, and I agreed.
From the Golden Age until the 80s, pencillers were generally expected to turn in at least two pages a day, while an inker was expected to turn in around 3-4. There were a handful of exceptions, I'm sure, but most of the artists could pump out pages like human printing presses. In the current comic industry, it's completely reversed: while a handful of artists can still hit this speed, the vast majority can't. Pencillers today struggle to produce a page-per-day, while inkers (those who still ink with ink) are hitting around 2.
So what happened? I'v

5 Year Plan*Because I'll be teaching in about a week at SCAD, I've been thinking a lot about what to tell the students.  And I wrote it out so that I could solidify it in my head.  This stuff is for younger artists mostly, so feel free to skip.
When I spend time with another comic artist, sometimes I'll ask, "What's your 5 year plan?"  In other words, what steps is he taking in order to gain control over his career in order to move up the ladder?   Usually I don't get much of an answer.
The reason I think many comic artists aren't forward-thinking has to do with the way our industry is set up.  Whether by conscious design or through the neglect of its participants, younger freelancers get into a habit of complacency while hoping for a chance to suckle from the teet of a major publisher.  Waiting around for a career doesn't promote the idea of freelancers taking active control of their OWN careers.
If I had to sum up the 5 Year Plan

Exposure, Getting Better, & Having the ChopsEXPOSURE & GETTING BETTER AT WHAT YOU DO
I'm only going off of my own personal experiences talking about these few things. (And I'm not specifically talking about ONLY dA here.) So take it with as many grains of salt as you can.
I've recently been asked questions like "How do I get people to see my work?", "Why am I not receiving commission inquiries?", "Why isn't anyone following my work?", "What can I do to get better?". Often, and I answered it before, the answer is as simple as this:
Create.
Create, as in, DRAW. PAINT. RENDER. SCULPT. You have to do develop a tolerance (or the obvious definition: LOVE) for creating if you want exposure and to get better. You have to LOVE the drawing or illustration that you HATE how it came out in the end. You have to ask yourself after every piece, what could I have done to do that differently. And you have to do this frequently.
Some folks come on the scene, post once or twice a week, and expect an audience to flock yo

5 Art Selling TipsWhile I used to see "art sales" simply as bonus money coming in on the side, over the past few years it's become enough of an asset that it justifies an art dealer, record keeping, insurance, and taxes at the end of each year. It's currently 25% of my total income, and that has a lot of impact over my work. And just like storytelling, design and page flow--abstract principles that keep my career afloat daily--art sales also deserve to be studied, theorized, and understood.
These are guidelines, not rules. And while most of them usually work for me, they might not all work for you, so keep in mind that my market might be different than yours. Because not only do we not draw the same, we probably have different sorts of buyers.
1. Don't stay on a book for too long
I find that doing mini series of 4-12 issues is optimal for selling art. If you spend a year doing one-shots or 2-3 issue minis, you'll be hard for buyers to keep track of because it's too infrequent. And it's hard to make an i

Stop the perfectionismOn my Tumblr site someone asked me for some general advice for an aspiring comic creator. This is what was on my mind. Thought I'd share it here on Deviantart as well.
Right now all I can think of is something I've been thinking about lately. And that is the depression some of us artists get about our art. Like our expectations aren't just "My drawings need to be good!", they are "My art needs to be PERFECT."
So I would suggest always try to improve, gain confidence, but expect good/average output. Don't expect perfect art, ever. By doing this only causes you to be frustrated, which in turn causes mistakes, which pisses you off more, then you're stuck in a lame spiraling circle downward to the pathetic whiny artist. Which in turn kills your deadline. Giving yourself freedom from perfection makes drawing much easier and better art is produced and on time.
I'm currently working on this piece where it started out difficult, I had high expectations for it, I was in a bad mood, nothing was

2D Artist MagazineHey guys, just wanted to let you know I did a short interview with the guys at 2D Artist Magazine recently, check it out! http://www.2dartistmag.com/artists/issue085_jan13/interview01.pdf
Check out their website as well http://www.2dartistmag.com/
Also, for the latest info and art you can now subscribe to my Facebook account

( http://www.facebook.com/andree.wallin ). As much as I hate to promote FB it's a lot easier for me to interact whenever I post stuff
So yeah, hope everyone's had an awesome holiday and thanks again for the wonderful feedback on my latest deviations

cool shots #1

Enjoy

Opening UpCopy pasting from my blog at http://idiivilmodel.wordpress.com/
~
When I was younger, I used to keep a diary. It was black, leather bound, and its pages were tinted an off white color that was not so dissimilar from the pages of those old books you could always find at a garage sale. Long into the night, I would hunch over that paper and scrawl away all my emotions, translating the maelstrom of my mind into coherent thoughts.
I was peculiar when it came to that diary, though. For all the writing I did, I never actually went back and read what it was that I spent so much time putting down. I treated the diary as a place to expel all that darkness and teenage angst inside of me, locking each terrible moment away in a prison of ink...
... and I refused to look back.
When I moved out of my parents' house, I left that diary behind in my childhood bedroom. I moved on to university, came to model, and experienced the world. I made new memories to overpower the old, but all the while, they sat

An Interview...A guy on millarworl.tv forums asked me to answer some interview questions for what I think is a school project... Here're my answers
1. What is your process when coloring a page?
Convert the lineart to a channel to give it its own layer and a transparent background. Then do the flat colours to divide everything up. Some people do this all on one layer but I like to break the picture up into a series of layers for each of the major components of the picture. Then I usually do the background first as that helps set the scene, colour scheme, lighting, and overall feeling of the picture. Then it's a matter of doing all the rest!
2. How long, on average, does it take you to finish a piece?
Depends on the complexity and how distracted I get by whatever else is on the internet. My mind starts to roam as I colour stuff so I'm always stopping to look something up somewhere.

Taking out the breaks, I'd say an average is about 10 hours.
3. Is it that difficult to get your

I joined a new art blog, THE BOGSo James Harren :iconJharren: and I have started a new art blog called THE BOG. So far it's fuggin fun as hell. It's not like the Sindicate where we would draw other peoples characters and do tributes, which was still a lot of fun to do. But this blog we decided will be mainly around the monsterish, creature type, our own designs. We pick a theme, our first one being BIRTH. We both post scans of our pieces as a work in progress until the final piece. So check it out here> http://the-bog.tumblr.com/
Ryan

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Tools of the Trade

by ~ChristopherStevens, Oct 23, 2012, 3:52:13 PM
Journals / Personal

Hey guys. I figured I'd go ahead and do a FAQ journal entry. Just a basic list of the tools I'm currently using for my marker work. I have a new tutorial for my markers that I'll post when I'm able to share the art I used for the progress shots. Feel free to fire away with any questions and hopefully, this can be a go to guide for basic info on my tools. I'm not going to talk about oil painting materials as I'm still figuring all that out and I doubt an answer I give today will hold up in the future.

Ok Here goes...

Markers: Prismacolor Cool and French grey markers. I think "Copic" has become another word for "marker" these days, so it's assumed that I'm using Copics for all of my work, but I actually use Prismacolor for all of my figures and detail work and only use Copic markers for backgrounds. I use to use "Warm" greys but I like the sepia look of French more now. I also occasionally use Copic color markers when I'm doing a full color marker piece. Why do I like Prismacolor markers? I think I've just always useed them and now it's what I'm comfortable with. I like the flexibility of the wide tip and I like the look of their inks when they dry.

PAPER: Strathmore 300 series Vellum finish Bristol board. I buy the 19 by 24 pads and just cut them in half for my 11 by 17 work. I used "Smooth" bristol for years, but eventually decided on vellum fora couple reasons. One, it bleeds more which I actually prefer when working with marker. It makes blending easier. Two, it's easier to paint on. The rough texture grabs the paint nicely and holds water well.

Paint: Dr. Ph. Martin's Bleedproof White. I use this because it was the first one I bought and it seemed to work ok. I haven't experimented with different paints and I probably should, but for the most part, this paint has done well for me. It's a liquid watercolor paint that comes in a little jar. Gives you a nice opaque straight out of the jar and nice washes when you dilute it.

Brushes: Windsor and Newton Series 7 #2. Classic comic inking brush. I use it because it holds a nice point and seems to be durable. I haven't experimented much with brushes either as this was one of the first I tried and was happy with it.

Pens: Sakura Pigma Microns. Again, I've used them forever, so it's what I know. They're not great at....anything TBH, but I've used them for 20 years..give or take and I'll probably use them another 20.

That's about it. I hope this helps and if not, ask your questions here and I'll try to answer.

Thanks!

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Tools of the Tradeby ~ChristopherStevens

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~MrCHavoc Apr 24, 2013

I'm so glad you posted this! Can't wait to see the tutorial!
I do have a question tho... What color shades of red do you use in your Deadpool and Thor pieces and so you use the Copic blending makers?
Thank you for the great work! It's always a treat when you post!

*JFKART Jan 4, 2013 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

I honestly cant wait to see the tutorial, I liked the last one you did on hulk. I am not a " fan " of others artist I have my likes but I really am a fan this style its completly original and it looks amazing! keep up the great work you are truly talented.

*silvertales Oct 31, 2012

Thanks for sharing! It's always interesting (I think) to see what materials artists prefer to use for personal works, and why.

I hadn't thought of trying French grays for a warmer-than-warm-grays tone.... to be honest, I've never even picked up the French grays, just stuck to warm and cool. I'll have to give them a spin.

~Chialupa Oct 24, 2012 Student

thank you for sharing!!

*Selkirk Oct 24, 2012 Student Traditional Artist

cool notes here bro

...and thanks for posting. just out of curiosity what do you luse to lay out the pieces? pencils(if so which kind

...

) or do you work digital and then print it on bristol?

~ChristopherStevens Oct 24, 2012

Thanks. Nah, just an old fashion mechanical pencil for the drawing.

*Zach-Starker Oct 24, 2012 Professional General Artist

How often are you buying new markers? I found that I would just use up a prisma marker on one drawing. I do like the application of prismamarkers, and have enjoyed using them on that slick marker paper. I have recently gone to copics though as all my prismas dried up and I just don't want to keep buying new markers.

~ChristopherStevens Oct 24, 2012

I don't buy them often, but when I do I buy a bunch. 6 or 7 of each shade. That usually lasts me a decent amount if time. If it's a medium you want to use, you just have to spend the money. Using a combination of the two can make them last a bit longer.

~Fgore Oct 24, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

thanks for sharing!

*Mecha-Master Oct 24, 2012 Professional General Artist

thanks for sharing!

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