Cory Walker has been doing a new Supergirl redesign every Wednesday as part of his “Sketch of the Day” series, which is probably where I got the impetus to do this one. Originally it was supposed to just be a regular quick black and white sketch like the others, but I just couldn’t leave it alone until I finally settled on what you see.

Along the way I went back through the “Project: Rooftop” Supergirl contest, a retrospective of various Supergirl costumes at Girl-Wonder.org, and a quick review of some lesser-known designs at MaidOfMight.net.

I took a slightly different tack with my attempt, choosing to design something for Superwoman instead of Supergirl. The classic mini-skirt red-and-blue original costume, its red-skirt heir, and the great Bruce Timm Animated Universe white-tee-shirt with denim skirt looks definitely emphasize the “girl” part of the character, which is entirely appropriate. Part of what makes her interesting is her youth, having these great powers while dealing with being a female child in a culture (both real-world and comics-fans) that’s still very much dominated by men. A young and hip look is, I think, key to her appeal.

But I was thinking about what happens to her later, after she’s no longer a teenager but living in an adult world with adult responsibilities. What would she look like then? What fashion choices would she make in her public persona, and what would they say about her personality?

I definitely wanted to keep the basic red, yellow, and blue Superman look, complete with the big chest-symbol “S”. I think she’d want to continue honoring what her cousin (or whatever that relationship is nowadays) had done in the past. But, I also wanted her to keep some aspects of her more youthful look. To that end, I wanted to incorporate some white into the design, honoring her white tee-shirt.

To age her up a bit, I went for a longer, fuller cloak, as I suspect she’d be less about zipping around like a hummingbird and more about raw power the older she got. Patience for games and frippery tends to lessen over time, and I think she’d probably be a lot more direct. That lends itself to a big billowing cape that enhances your presence.

I also wanted to use the long-sleeved, long-cuffed Kryptonian element from Byrne’s “Man of Steel” reboot. Something about long sleeves seems more adult to me.

I didn’t want her to be completely wrapped-up, though, so I introduced a more plunging vee-neckline, sporting a bit of cleavage, cutting into the chest insignia. Not too much, though — this isn’t burlesque.

One of the major changes I introduced was to do away with the skirt. I would argue that skirt was the key part of her old costume, the main ingredient that set her apart. It might be a mistake to lose it, but I thought it was the most dramatic way to mark a departure from childhood and clearly demarcate a new phase of her life. Mini skirts are for girls out to play, not for women getting a job done.

Not that I’m against mini-skirts in the workplace, mind you. Definitely carry on with that, ladies.

However, losing the skirt made for a major problem with her waist. Namely, if you don’t have anything to hold up, you don’t need a belt. And without a belt, what do you do with the area of her costume normally constrained thereby? Originally I addressed the issue by ignoring it:

Luckily my friend John was able to point out that a big useless belt like that was positively Liefeldian, so I removed it. In its place I tried various pseudo-belt treatments, but ultimately decided that if she’s going to be female, she should be able to do away with the straight lines and geometries of Superman, so I added the curving lines over the hips instead.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the attempt at a redesign and reimagining of the character. I don’t think this approach would be good for Supergirl, but I do like it for Superwoman, and hope you do too.

You don’t have to be an author to know if you like a book or not, and to offer a critique of it.

And you don’t have to be an illustrator to know if you like a particular drawing or not, and to offer a critique of it.

Several times on this blog, I’ve drawn (get it?!) some fire for coming across as too harsh on a given artist or character or series or costume. Which is fine, that’s why they pay me the big bucks. But critique is a perfectly valid — in some ways, an invaluable — method of refining your own understanding of what you like and, more importantly, why you like it. Any art form can be appreciated (or not) at a gut level, and it’s perfectly fine to live your whole life experiencing it there and no further.

But for a subject you love, like me with comics, there’s so much more you can get out of it with a little time and effort. Which is why this week, I’m going to give YOU the chance to play critic.

I want you to go to Marvel’s site and check out the preview pages at the bottom for Rob Liefeld’s “Deadpool” issue 900. And then I want you to come back here and offer a genuine critique of the work. You don’t have to be mean, or glowing in your praise, or sycophantic, or snidely hip, or anything other than honest. I want you to look at the pages of what will surely be one of the best-selling issues of the year, and I want you to think about what you do and don’t like. Maybe you’ll focus on the panel layouts, or the overall page design. Maybe you’ll focus on the costumes or the environment, or the dialog, or the way the action flows.

Whatever it is you choose to comment on, give it some thought and give me your reaction to it. You all know my opinion of his overall “oeuvre” at this point, so there’s no surprises there, but I don’t want this to just be a bash-fest. The point is for you to take something that generates strong reactions in the viewer (which Deadpool 900 certainly should!) and to examine why you react to it the way you do. To articulate what it is you do and do not like.

Criticism gets a bad rap, because it’s awfully easy to slip from knowledgeable commentary for the purpose of enlightening your own understanding to schoolyard heckling. But it’s an important part of how we understand art, and I think it’s very much worth pursuing.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

I’ve put the actual “inked” illustration lines in pink so you can see them more easily. The final illustration itself is here.

The large reference photo in the background is from a great book/DVD set called the “Comic Artist’s Photo Reference: Women and Girls”. Author/photographer Buddy Scalera put together photo shoots with a variety of models in a series of different poses of use to illustrators working in comics or related fields. You get them leaping into the air, holding swords, swirling capes around themselves, that sort of thing. Having all of the images (and more) from the book on the accompanying DVD is a great aid for me, since I work completely digitally; I just cut and paste the image into Flash, slap a new blank layer on top, and off I go.

The key thing when doing something like this is that you must understand what it is you’re drawing. For instance, you can see I’ve lengthened the figure’s right arm considerably, and made her hands much larger. Obviously the photo is anatomically correct, but the mind doesn’t process images literally. When you see a photo of someone who is supposed to be heroic, you expect the proportions to be heroic as well. The head should be smaller in relation to the body than average, the hands and feet are usually a bit bigger, the legs are longer, etc. You need to be aware of that when using photo reference, or your super-heroes are going to look like … well, like the people they’re trying to save, rather than the one doing the saving.

Halfway through the illustration, I realized I didn’t like having her left arm up around her face, so I had to move it down and in front. I wanted to be able to see her face clearly, to get a better idea of what kind of character she is. I also wanted to give the impression that she’s about to take off running, which is her super-power. Meaning super-speed, not cowardice, that would hardly be a good power, now would it?

Anyway … yes, the arms. I found a reference photo of a woman’s arm in the right position, and sketched that out, copying and pasting it into the original figure and sizing it to fit. I did the same with a more appropriate smile. Once I had the basic figure down, I added the other elements like gloves, costume, braids, etc. I also had to fill in the bits that were previously covered by her arms but which were now visible.

And then she was done, and Ian was pleased, and there was much rejoicing.

Hope you enjoyed this little behind-the-scenes look at how some illustrations are put together. And that you realize that the figures you see in comics, or in advertising in general, are idealized figures and not terribly accurate ones at that. Even photographs of famous models have the legs stretched, blemishes removed, eyes artificially re-tilted, hair highlighted and thickened, on and on. The world is full of illusions, my friends!

Character illustration — [super villain]: [super villain] is an enormous brute of a man, 6’8″ tall and with the super-muscular build one would expect of a man who can lift 400 tons. He’s technically white, but the internal solar fires that give him his powers have “burned” his skin a sort of charcoal grey and caused all the hair on the top of his head to fall out. His costume is a sort of gold-colored leotard and tank top that resembles a professional wrestler’s outfit; he doesn’t wear gloves or a mask, but does have oversized black boots (“the better to stomp you with,” as he sometimes puts it).

And here’s how I proceeded.

First I needed some kind of reference for what I wanted him to look like. I did a Google Image search for “wrestler”, and one of the images that came up was for Goldberg, a popular pro. I thought he had the right kind of look, so I did a new image search for “Goldberg wrestler” and found that really nice photo below from here.

When using reference materials like this, it’s important to take it as inspiration and not just to copy it. The character I am drawing is not Goldberg, after all, but a totally separate person. Plus, I needed a full-body image and this one is just the head and shoulders. So I imported the photo into Flash, put it on a locked layer, made a new layer over it and traced the basic lines in lime green (so the new lines would show up on top of the dark image). I refined it as I went, for instance leaving off the beard and changing the shape of the eyes and nose a bit, and ending up with this rough sketch:

The top half was pretty close to what I wanted, but I was much less sure of what to do with the legs. So those were sketched in a much rougher manner with placeholders for the boots. I did another search for “combat boots” and found a nice reference, and again copied that with some changes. I had to move the feet around so they’d fit in the boots I’d found and as a result the stance was much stronger. I also had to stretch his right leg to make it fit, as it started out too short. Finally, the shoulders were not broad enough for a “super” villain, and the head was too large. So I shrunk the head down (which has the effect of making the whole body seem much bigger) and broadened the shoulder. This involved essentially reconstructing the entire deltoid area and eliminating some of the shoulder blade showing behind Goldberg’s arm. Here’s what I ended up with:

Another key part of the art spec was the leopard skin leotard he wears. I initially drew some in by hand, but it didn’t look quite right. So instead I found the image shown, imported it into Photoshop, desaturated it (since this was for a black and white/grayscale image), and cut and pasted it into the shape of the leotard.

Finally, I colored the “fire-darkened” skin using a 10 pixel feather on the lasso and filling it with a gradient, and added the smoke effect. My mental image for the scene was that this villain had just gotten blasted by a flying energy blaster type of hero, and was glaring up before going and finding a car to hurl at his nemesis. The final version is at the last picture in the set you see here:

I hope you enjoyed this look into the creative process. This was a genuine professional gig for one of my favorite gaming companies; the art director was excellent, and the character came out really well. I had a great time drawing him, and I think the client was happy at the end of the day.

The black and white drawing is done in Flash in layers as I’ve described elsewhere. I fill the inside bits with white, then export it as a high-resolution Adobe Illustrator file. Now I’ll import that Illustrator file into Photoshop for the color work, which I’ll post as soon as it’s approved. This is fun!

Talon Ironhawk

This illustration was for the “Legends of Steel” RPG being developed by my friend Jeff Mejia. He wanted a character sketch of young nobleman Talon Ironhawk. Here’s my first pass at it (click on any of these to see them at their actual size, without distortion):

Jeff replied that the character was too old, that he should be much younger and not quite so grim. Now, when you’re an illustrator, time is money. Having to completely redraw something takes hours, hours which you’re not spending getting new dollars to roll through the door. (Believe me, getting dollars to roll in the first place is plenty hard enough, you don’t want to do anything to make it more difficult.) So I tried to get away with just redoing the face and adding a Three Musketeers type of facial hair effect, because nothing says “youthful exuberance” like a beard and mustache that went out of style 200 years ago:

Close, but no cigar, was the reply. He told me to lose the facial hair as Talon wasn’t really old enough for that sort of thing, and so I ran off and did a color version with those changes:

Luckily Jeff was not to be distracted by pretty colors, and rightfully declared that this was still not really what he was looking for. At all. Talon was supposed to be a young noble, just starting out on his life of adventuring. He’d have nice but functional gear, no flashing gems and whatnot. This pose was just too flamboyant and frivolous, and he still didn’t look young enough. Realizing that I’d just not done a good job at all on the first illustration, I started from scratch and redrew the entire thing, finally ending up with this:

The final result is so much stronger than the initial versions; I’m really glad Jeff had the vision to know what he wanted, and the intestinal fortitude to ask for it.

This was actually a pretty easy project, I’ve had some that went through many (many!) more revisions before finally being accepted. And some never got accepted at all. So next time you look at that pretty illustration in your favorite magazine or comic, don’t kid yourself that it was done all in one fell swoop. Behind every elegant line and perfect color is hours of tweaking; don’t get discouraged if it takes you a long time to get your drawing just right. Believer me, you’re not alone!

You go old school, baby! You need a pad of tracing paper, which is thin and see-through, a pencil, and some regular paper to start off with.

First, make a rough sketch on your regular paper. I scanned in a scribble from a ten year old sketch pad I had next to my desk. As you can see, once you go over your basic freehand drawing a bunch of times to get it looking right, you’re left with a bunch of unnecessary lines and you can’t tell what’s really supposed to be going on. Not good.

Once your sketch is roughly how you want it — or at least, when it’s at a point where you can tell where you want it to end up — put two “x”es in either corner. Lay your tracing paper over the original, and tape the two together. On the tracing paper, trace the two “x”es. These are your registration points, so you can make sure the two pieces of paper stay lined up properly while you’re drawing.

On the tracing paper, trace your original sketch, using only the lines you want to be your final ones. You’ll find yourself moving small bits here and there to make sure everything lines up properly. For instance, I had to move the background figure’s hand further down, as it wasn’t in the right place originally. Here’s what the tracing paper looks like while over the starting illustration:

Once you’re done, remove the tracing paper and see the final pencil sketch. It should be much tighter and cleaner than the original. If you want to be adventurous and take it to the next and final stage of inking, there’s a trick for that, too. Flip the tracing paper over and, with your pencil held flat, scribble all over the paper behind the traced drawing, leaving a good film of graphite. Tape the tracing paper right-side up on some high-quality inking paper, and trace back over your lines once more. The graphite on the back of the tracing paper will get pushed onto the nice white sheet, transferring your line work.

Congratulations, you’ve now gone from a rough sketch in a drawing pad to a ready-to-be-inked, nice-looking, clean illustration, and all without having to plug in a single thing! Here’s what the tracing looks like without the original beneath it:

Harry is a character by Neil Ma from the Uberworld Play By eMail (PBeM) shared universe I’m involved with. Take special note of Harry’s face, because I chopped it up and put its pieces into the HeroMachine expansion.

I created the original set of facial features in HM2 by drawing the eyes, noses, mouths, eyebrows, and ears all separately. As a result, they don’t always look great put together. So with the Expansion, I took pre-existing faces (either from photo reference or from prior illustrations I’d done, like Harry) and cut up the individual features. That way, when they’re put together, you come out with a pleasing whole that fits. As an added bonus, they still look good mixed and matched, too, which is always nice.

This sort of thing is much more widespread than I think most people realize. It’s not a bad thing to recycle artwork you’ve used before, and having your originals available in a digital format (especially a lossless vector format) makes it that much easier. I’ve even duplicated entire figures as background elements for a different illustration, saving a ton of time and making the final result that much better.

So if you’re going to steal, kids, steal from yourself!

(Harry Kruger character © Neil Ma.)

(Batman image, name, logo, etc. are © DC Comics, Inc.)