Pierre Speaks: Crisis on Infinite Earths

That is what turned me into a DC fan.

No, I did not buy it right away.

I had given up on comics for some time. Some foolish notion that I was getting "old enough" and it was time to give up on buying them "silly comics". ;)

So I only kept an eye out on what was coming out from time to time just to keep up with what was going on in the world of comics without ever really buying anything. I would buy an occasional issue of GI.Joe or something. But that was about it.

Until one day while I was waiting for the bus and started going through the various magazines and comics at the newstand where I was waiting.

Then I was hit over the head with a warhammer.

I saw the cover of Action Comics #594 by John Byrne.

I bought that comic and HAD to go buy some more.

It made me go and buy a truckload of DC Comics. At first... mostly Superman and Action Comics back issues by John Byrne, Batman Year One...

...and Crisis on infinite Earths.

I did not know much about the DCU at the time.

I had only a handful of Batman comics. A handful of Superman comics. Very few Wonder Woman, Kamandi, Karate Kid, Legion of Super-Heroes comics.

About a dozen issues of the New Teen Titans, and about 27 issues of the Flash (the DC series I had the most issue of at the time).

And equipped with that knowledge, I would read CoiE featuring the entire DC.... not Universe... Multiverse.

It literally blew my mind away.

Damn that was good.

Although I was very okota over the Flash's death. I loved the Flash and was not happy to see him die. :(

Perez' artwork in that series has been a feat unmatched by anyone to this day. The closest that came to compete with it probably has been JLA/Avengers..... strangely enough..... also by Perez. ;)

So although John Byrne's Action Comic issue is what attracted my attention and made me want to read more DC comics, CoiE is what introduced me to the richness of DC comics. It is what made me realise the huge tapestry that was DC comics and the rich history behind it.

So after getting all the Superman and Action Comics that I could by Byrne, I discovered other comics.

I started buying Batman drawn by Jim Aparo. Little did I know at the time that the issue I had just bought was the first issue of Jim Aparo's latest run. The timing was great.

Green Arrow the ongoing series. I loved it so much I bought the Longbow Hunter mini as back issues for $20 each issues.

Legends. Cool mini-series also drawn by Byrne.

The Wrath of the Specter. Awesome mini series with some great artwork by Jim Aparo.

Watchmen... what can be said about Watchmen that hasn't been told a thousand times already.

Same with Dark Knight Returns.

Hawk & Dove. First the mini series... then the ongoing series. Loved both for different reasons. But I was just the right age to identify with the characters being in college myself at the time.

Strangely enough..... although I loved the Teen Titans by Perez in the early 80s, I was not much of a fan of the series at that time.

The Deadshot mini series then the Suicide Squad (strange, but reading the Deadshot mini is what turned me into a Suicide Squad fan).

And the series which got me intrigued about the JLI..... The Weird. Loved it. It got me to try the JLI comic (Around the time of Millenium I think).

And I fell in love with the JLI comic. The artwork, stories and humour was like nothing we had seen before. And I even got a letter published in the column of JLA (no longer JLI by then) issue 31. And then we got Justice League Europe. Even better.

So imagine how happy I was when I saw the "Formerly Known as Justice League", and later the "I can't believe it's not Justice League". It was like seeing some old friends that I had not seen for years.

And yes I did cry when I reached this page;

What can I say. The creative team really got me to care for these characters. ;)

Am I still a DC comics fan???

Although I don't buy/read as many comics as I used to... I think that I still am.

Although for a while.... I was getting my DC fix, heck..... my super-heroes fix mostly from the Justice League cartoon. Loved that series.

But then there was The New Frontier. So good.... I can't find the words to properly explain how good it is.

The Green Lantern/Sinestro Corps War (awesome event). Although since "Rebirth" and "Recharge" Green Lantern and the Green Lantern Corps have been pretty good so far.

The Booster Gold series is pure fun.

And although Final Crisis has been craptacular so far.... The Legion of 3 Worlds is GREAT.... so far. ;)

And we have Darkest Night to look forward to.

Even if it is only half as awesome as the Green Lantern/Sinestro Corps War........ it will be great.

We shall see.

Free Comics Monday: Police Comics

So after about an hour researching the public domainess of these comics, I was able to determine this:

Plastic Man and BlackHawk are definitely NOT in public domain. Yet the issues of Police Comics, published by Quality which featured Plastic Man, apparently ARE in public domain.

However, DC has trademarked Plastic Man, which might make these comics problematic. So if someone at DC sees this, don't flip out. Just email me. I'll pull these from my site. I wouldn't want to scuttle any movie deal you guys might be cooking up with the character.




[ Police Comics 28 ]


The real reason I'm posting these comics is because Police Comics also featured the adventures of The Human Bomb, and that guy rocks.

Here's what wikipedia says about The Human Bomb:




[ Police Comics 36 ]


Note: If I have to pull these comics, you will most likely still be able to get them at http://goldenagecomics.co.uk/ which is a great place to get public domain comics. Check it out!

Enjoy!

Touchscreen Comics - Format for the Future

Recently I've been thinking about making a comic specifically for a Mobile Internet Device (MID) or SmartPhone like the the iPod/iPhone, Google Android, BlackBerry Storm and HTC Dream.

IT pundits are predicting that the growth of these type of devices is going to be huge over the next two years, and I think there are some advantages to designing comics for this platform.

Typically the (touch) screens are only big enough to display a single panel of a web comic at about 320 x 480. However, bigger screens are coming. The BlackBerry Storm is going to have a 480 x 360 screen size and doubt any new phones on the drawing board will have *smaller* screens than what's currently available.

Still, 320 x 480 is a small size when one is used to reading comics that are typically about 8.5 by 11 inches (or larger if you count both pages.)

I think that size presents some interesting challenges and decided to view a few comics on an iPod to see what works and what doesn't work. These samples are from http://www.ClickWheel.net

Some notes about ClickWheel - I will do a full post on the site sometime in the future. There are good things about it and some bad things about it, but I want to use it more before I pass judgement. One of the coolest things is the DO have 2000 AD available for download in CBR format! One of the bad things is the site is a little awkward to use in some ways and is apparently broken in IE 7.

Here's what I downloaded from the site:

Example 1 -here is what I see when I read Judge Dredd on my iPod Touch.

Example 2 - here is a screenshot of Perwell, a fun comic by Chuck Whelon and Adam Prosser This was was labelled as an iComic and seems optimized to take advantage of the iPod screen size.

Example 1 didn't really impressed me as being optimally set up for viewing on an MID because of the way the page is laid out, I have to zoom in too much to read the captions. On the flipside, Perwell was a great iPhone reading experience!

When thinking about how best to utilize this new size/format, one thought has come to me that seems to be causing quite a stir among my other creators I mention it to: I don't think this format is well suited for superhero stories.

Comics in the 40's (like Bozo the Robot left )were more akin to today's comic strips than our current breed of comics. They had lots of little panels and the action was encapsulated in these panels.

However, during the Silver and Bronze age, as the comic book format began to mature, artists started to experiment with both page and panel design. As a result we saw more and more full panel pages.

Now, I love a good full page splash, and have used the heck out of them in Flashback, but such pages loose their gravitas when reduced to a small screen.

You take a *wide screen* type of comic like the Authority and remove the big splash pages from it and you've lost a large part of the appeal of such a book.

Superhero comics are typically written and drawn to take advantage of big splash pages, and for the past 40 years, we've come to expect these type of pages from our superhero comics.

There are quite a number of notable exceptions to this rule, but by and large, a superhero comic that doesn't have it's fair share of wide screen high action full page splashes is usually seen as a boring or (even worse) experimental and deconstructive.

Today's readers want a full page splash of Galactus standing in Manhattan, but how will that look on an iPhone?...

And here is the same page on an iPhone...it sort of loses its impact. Not mention how tough reading it will be.

When the Digital Comic Haters are bitching and moaning about how they hate to read scrunched up type, that is exactly what they are talking about. Hell, if all Digital Comics looked like that, I would have never started Flashback.

So, I'm suggesting that perhaps the comics that will be most successful on this new platform are going to be ones that take their cues from Golden Age Comics and, strangely, Harvey and Disney Comics. Look at how the separate panels in this Hot Stuff comic would fit perfectly on an iPod (dividing the first panel in two possibly.)

Now compare the Hot Stuff on the iPod against the FF example above and see which one is going to be the easiest to read without a lot of fiddling with your views.

Pretty obvious, isn't it?

Bottom line: I think if today's artists are going to take advantage of tomorrow's technology, they are going to have to look to the past for guidance.

- Jim

Pierre Speaks: Breaking into Animation

There probably are as many stories about breaking into animation as there are people working in animation.

There is not ONE magic formula.

So all I can do is share the story of how I broke into animation.

Breaking into animation was a lot of work.

But unlike comics, where all I could pretty much do was send my submission by mail to various publishers and hope to hear back from some editor who might like my work, I could actually go to the studios and meet the people who might be interested in hiring me.

I could sell myself in person as opposed to through some blind submission package. Although ironically enough, I got the job on Bob Morane through blind submission.... but that is a story for another Blog.

It took many meetings and many tests to do before I broke in.

Usually meeting someone and showing them my portfolio was not enough. Especially since I had no experience in animation and did not have many samples done in a cartoony style.

So what would happen is that I would meet someone to look at my portfolio, and I would be given a test. I remember the first time I went job hunting, I came back home with 2 tests in the same day. A layout & posing test, and an inbetweener test.

I had no idea of how to do the layout & posing test. So I went to the bookstore and got the "Animation from script to screen" book to try to figure out how to do the darn thing.

So after lots of reading and lots of work, I finished both tests as best as I could and went back to hand them in.

I got neither of those jobs. ;)

But it was a necessary first step in teaching myself about animation.

After many tests, I was told that they needed someone on the design team of "The busy world of Richard Scary". I went and applied for the job..... which meant one more test... and finally got the job.

So the first animated TV series I worked on was "The busy world of Richard Scary".

But that story is for some other time. ;)

When you look out for work, you don't just apply for one job. You apply to as many jobs as you can for as many studios as you can and hope that at least one of them decides to hire you.

So once I started getting job offers, too often I ended up getting more then one job offer. So I would have to make a choice and turn some work down.

It was a strange feeling first not having anyone wanting to give you work, then later having to turn some work/job offers down.

Although tests are not only given to beginners.

There are times when even and old warhorse is asked to do a test. I have seen many veterans being insulted from being asked to do a test.

But I see it as a tool.

Tests serve multiple purposes. They allow a studio to see what you can do, and to see if you can adapt to the style of their project they want you to work on.

But also, it is a tool for you to see if you will enjoy working on the project they are offering you. To see of you want to work in the style of the project.

There were projects where after doing their tests I was the one who said "F%$# that! I am not working on that".

It happens.

So a test is good for the studio to test your skills, but it is also good for you to test the project they are offering you to work on. ;)

Next time we will talk about "The busy world of Richard Scary".

Until then.

Free Comics Monday: Crime Does Not Pay

I'm taking a break today from posting my normal faire of golden age superhero comics to give you two titles that are a little different.

The first one is Lev Gleason's Crime Does Not Pay. The only comic dedicated to the erradication of crime!

From Wikipedia...


Crime Does Not Pay is the title of an American comic book series published between 1942 and 1955 by Lev Gleason Publications. Edited and chiefly written by Charles Biro, the title launched the crime comics genre and was the first "true crime" comic book series. At the height of its popularity, Crime Does Not Pay would claim a readership of six million on its covers.


Although continuously popular in terms of sales, Crime Does Not Pay and other crime comics increasingly became the targets of concerned parents, clergy, and other groups who were disturbed by the content of the comics and saw the stories as one of the root causes of a variety of societal ills, including illiteracy and juvenile delinquency. In the wake of books such as Dr. Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent and the investigations of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, many publishers, including Lev Gleason, censored their own comics and adopted a strict code administered by the Comics Code Authority. The sanitized Crime Does Not Pay that resulted lasted only a few issues before being canceled with issue 147 in 1955.



[ Crime Comics 69 ]

This next title starts with a Spirit inspired character, The Boogeyman, but from there Red Band Comics 1 is all over the place (The Sorceror, Sgt. Strong, Captain Milksop...) The end story is probably the standout - Satannas, the most evil man in the Universe!




[ Red Band Comics 1 ]

Enjoy!

Paper Comics DeathWatch: Inflation vs Comics

I'm going to start this Paper Comics DeathWatch with a simple statement that preceded the August Marvel Sales Numbers from the Beat

...as DM periodical sales have now been sliding for seven straight months.

Now that's seven months where we had:

• Secret Invasion
• Final Crisis
• Trinity <-anybody reading this? Is it any good?
• Ultimates vol 3 <-- why is anybody reading this?
• Batman RIP
• All Star Superman
• All Star Batman
  
  Now the NEXT seven months will be sorely lacking some of the big titles mentioned above.

Now, the hype for Secret Invasion was what, a year in the making? Longer than that maybe? And Final Crisis had a entire year of weekly comics building up to it.

So, yeah, DC and Marvel might find *another* mega crossover to pay the bills, but so far, they are going to have to sell that mega crossover without the year long hype that Final Crisis and Secret Invasion got.

Bottom line, I don't think 2009 is going to be a good year at either company. I just don't see either one of them producing anything that breaks 5 digits in sales...maybe New Avengers will do it. Maybe Ultimates vol 4. Maybe *BIG Maybe* that Green Lantern event Pierre is so fired up about. ;)

Bottom line: I think the comics industry is headed for a Subprime Megastory Meltdown.

PCDW Points: 50,000

Chart's from Kirkman

From the Beat is this bit of news coverage(?) on the Bendis/Kirkman debate on comics and the state of the industry (or something like that. Hard to tell from the transcripts exactly WHAT was the thrust of this debate. At least no one said Preconcessions over and over again...)

Anyway...Robert Kirkman presented this chart that apparently caused much gnashing of teeth because it dared say that the monthly numbers that appear on the Beat (which are often dismissed by industry pros...) might actually be more accurate than said Pros would care to admit...

I don't know - I think the most dooming thing said during the debate was Bendis' recounting of the night he won and Eisner Award...

“I remember very, very clearly winning an Eisner and leaving San Diego that night because I had to get to a gig doing a Bat Mitzvah that night.”

Now, granted, Brian is making huge Hollywood money now, but reading that is sort of discouraging. I don't think he meant it to be, but the reality is, making money in comics industry is probably damn tough on all sides.

A friend of mine once remarked that it is sad that in this day and age, when it is easiest for a independent comic creator to *produce* a comic, that the marketplace is perhaps the most hostile it has ever been for such new comics. I don't see that changing anytime soon for paper comics.

Anyway...seeing Kirkman's charts made want to show you a chart of my own...

Not really sure what to score that Kirkman/Bendis debate, but I really like Randy Rhodes, so...

PCDW Points: 666

Big City Newspapers Dying?

Over in BusinessWeek Media report Jon Fine has a nice article about the impending demise of Big City Newspapers and what might replace them (short answer: nothing...) - well one of the things I haven't seen anyone say is WHEN all these newspapers dry up, a lot of ancilliary paper and printing related companies are going to suffer. (I suspect they are already in major cutback mode.)

For the Love of Pete Jim! What does this have to do with how JMS' slow ass Thor run is destroying comics?! you ask?

Well, I'm thinking some paper companies are going to just close down. And as prices on paper and production are helped by volume of demand, a lessing of demand is just going to drive those prices up even higher than they already are. So the poor Canadian government, with their newly refinanced Quebecor is probably going to raise prices on printing again, which means that comic prices are gonna go up again.

As a matter of fact, they may have already done so, suggest Rich Johnston...

Lying in the Gutters had an interesting bit about the lack of advertising in some current Marvel comics and how it might be affecting prices. At the end of the bit, Rich asked...

Anyone care to do a general inflation rate/inflation in the cost of a monthly comic comparison chart?

Well, I'm not sure this is what he wanted, but I did the legwork and came up with this chart.

Now before you send me a kajillion emails telling me that Flash 230 only cost .35 in 1979, I had to base my numbers on Amazing Spider-Man for the most part up until the 90's when the title got discontinued, then I sort of had to just pick titles at random (Captain America and Avengers were the fill ins) I avoided anniversary issues and gimmick covers, trying to stay with what I considered average issues.

What's interesting about this chart it the amount of increase in the last 3 years.

Lying in the Gutters suggest that $2.99 has been the comic shop price while most newstand versions of comics have already gone to $3.99. However, recently, Marvel has been soliciting comic shop versions at $3.99.

Rich ends article in a manner I can appreciate, saying...

Will this be a turning point that sees a number of fans go digital?

It's hard to say what *go digital* means in this context (Marvel's Digital Comics Universe or Torrents) but I think that what you are going to see is a definite drop off an all but the core titles as people migrate to illegal downloads or the TPB collected editions.

PCDW Points: 20,000

That's all for this week. Join me next week when I bitch and moan about how you can only code applications for iPods and iPhones on a Mac! :(((

Pierre Speaks: Animation 6 - Layout & Posing

To try to keep it simple, layout & posing is a step between the storyboarding and the animation process.

The layout and posing artist takes the storyboard, and uses it to make key drawings of everything that moves within a scene for the animators, and he also makes the final drawing of the BG (background) for the BG painters to color.

To do that, the layout & posing artist will take a storyboard panel and blow it up to the final size that the scene will be shot at.

Eons ago, a scene would be shot using a special camera that would shoot each animation frames one frame at a time.

Later on, it became more a matter of scanning all the drawings and putting them all together in the computer in a step called "compositing".

Usually, the same artist would do the layout and the posing of a given scene. But sometimes you would have one artist do the layout, and one artist do the posing.

It happens sometimes.

On Bob Morane, I did the posing for the layouts of a guy called Norman De Repentigny. Although I worked with him for about 10 months...... I never met the guy.

It happens too.

So on Bob, most of the time I would do Norman's posing. But once in a while, I would do the whole scene.

Early in my career, I would be labeled a "character artist". So I would end up doing character related work like posing or character design.

We will separate the layout & posing process in two steps;

1) Posing.

2) Layout.

The Posing

The posing is every elements that is animated in a scene (characters, props, fx).

So the artist will blow up the storyboard panel, then he will use it to draw everything that moves in the scene on a piece of paper called a "level". Sometimes, only one level will be needed for a given scene. Sometimes, a scene will require the artist to use multiple levels for various elements of a scene.

For example, the artist may have to draw a character on one level, a second character on a second level, a door that will be opened in the scene on a third level, and maybe a car on a 4th level.

That way, the animation department will be able to animate all the elements separately. Separating various elements on multiple levels is mostly useful/necessary when various elements overlap each other.

On some series, various fx will also be added by the layout & posing artist like various shading fx or light fx...etc

Like the storyboard.... the posing is NOT the final artwork. So it does not need to be a clean drawing. It can be rough. Heck it SHOULD be rough.

The Layout

The layout is essentially the final line art of the BG. At some point, it was not the final drawing. In ages past, the line drawing was re-traced for example on watercolor paper for the BG painter to color.

But as time passed, more and more productions started to simply scan the artwork and color it in the computer. So in those cases, the line art of the layout & posing artist actually became the final version of the BG.

But now, the trend is to draw the BG (heck.... not just the BG.... the whole show) straight in the computer (will have to do a Blog about that someday ;) ). So there is no need to even scan the artwork anymore. Not every production does this yet.... but it is just a matter of time until they all start to do this for various reasons.

So once the layout & posing artist is done with his scene, the posing goes to the animation team to use to do the animation. And the layout is given to the BG painter to color.

At least that is how it used to be.

The layout & posing step is pretty much a thing of the past by now. Especially here in Montreal. And whatever projects that may be left that still uses the layout & posing step send the work overseas to China or India. Much cheaper to have them done over there (will have to make a Blog about that too ;) ).

So it pretty much is a thing of the past for someone like me. It makes me sad because I really liked working as a layout & posing artist. Guess I will have to settle with drawing silly comic books from now on. ;)

Now that you guys are somewhat familiar with how an animated production works..... I will go back from time to time on some of the steps of an animation production and explore some of those steps in more details.

I will also from time to time talk about some of the productions I have worked on.

Also in my career, I have gathered tons of artwork produced for animation (character designs, location designs, storyboards, etc) which I will try to share with you guys from time to time.

Until next time.