Fast Food or Fine Dining
Fast Food or Fine Dining
My most effective process and my choice for ultimately picking quality over quantity!
Did you folks know that there was a point in my career that I was actually pretty fast? No! SERIOUSLY! A few of my editors who are cool enough to be subscribers are probably crying bullshit, but it’s true. For a short stint early in my career I had trained myself to pull off 2-3 pages a day consistently. I used to get gigs based on that. Especially during the time I was working for both Marvel and Hasbro (in the Marvel department) simultaneously. Now, admittedly, they weren’t great pages. Some, maybe even half, were downright bad, but occasionally I’d pull off some really solid stuff. To speed up my time I used all the tricks I’d learned to hasten the process like indicators for solid black fills, minimal rendering, and drawing on smaller paper. I was new, still a neophyte truly learning the craft, and super eager because I was living my dream, but quickly realized that speed meant more opportunities for work. The industry standard was (and for the most part still is) a page a day. However, now that usually includes inks when before it was mainly just pencils. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that in order to churn out 3 pages in a 24-hour period at a “decent” enough level that I’d also be pulling all-nighters or nearly all night for at least 2-3 nights a week as well. I was younger then and recovered better until my body and mind decided otherwise, but when I looked back at the work that hit the shelves I found myself disappointed by most of it. It’s the disappointment that comes when you KNOW you could have done better and you begin to wonder if the sacrifice for speed and quantity of output was worth the results of the final product. Not to mention your physical and mental health. That said, there was a lot of artistic growth as a professional, an illustrator, and a storyteller. So, no regrets. Amid all of the early work of earning my stripes it hit me that my absolute favorite part of the process was layout. For me, layout is EVERYTHING.
Thumbnails: Never Leave Home Without Them
Although I was regularly using layouts as part of my process and would catch a glimpse here and there of what layouts could and couldn’t be, it wasn’t until 2014 that I really saw it. After studying the storyboard books of anime films, for which I am a HUGE fan, I got an electric bolt of inspiration. I SAW it! I could read and follow the entire flow of the film clearly through what was nothing more than tiny gesture drawings. Much smaller than the 8.5x11 layout sizes I had been using. The staging and composition was ALL there! Even if figures didn’t have defined faces, hands were squares with whiskers, and backgrounds were just an eight line grid and a couple of boxes and squares. I knew exactly what was going on and it had just as much energy and movement as the finished product. The entire film was there and they did most if not all the thinking in the tiny squares. Some of them even had lighting & contrast for composition guides! These collected ‘thumbnail’ sized drawings with all the info and readability of the finished product. I later discovered other comic artists were thumbnailing entire comics. Chris Samnee being one of the best.
So, I was off to the races! Thus for 9 years now I’ve been doing 2x3in thumbnails and after storyboarding on Guardians of the Galaxy the Animated Series in 2016 I leveled up in both storytelling and thumbnail composition. Without distraction it takes me about a week to do the thumbnails for a regular comic.
Below is an example of my thumbnails for Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #42. Over the last few years it’s become painfully obvious that if I don’t get my thumbnails down for the entire issue at this level of information….I am totally lost! My production slows to a crawl until I the thumbnails locked in. Typically, my first thumbnail scribbles start right on the script after a few reads to grasp the entire story. Mostly vignettes to get the gist of the scenes and then I translate & transfer those ideas onto a page like this until every page is broken down.
From the PG1 thumbnail to the very tight pencils of PG1!
Every Stage Deserves To Shine. For Me And For You!
I remember telling my editors and the talent coordinator at Marvel that I didn’t want to ink myself anymore. I wanted to concentrate on doing the best pencils I was capable of because I KNEW that when it hit the shelves the quality of the line art meant just as much to the readers as the story does. To some readers (and art buyers) it meant even more! I wanted the readers to remember my work and I had a string of gigs where I hit my deadlines, but the work wasn’t as memorable to the fans. I guess that’s the purpose a fill-in, right? To be a smooth transition until the regular teams jumps back in. A couple were small enough that I inked myself as that’s pretty much the new standard with a few exceptions. Plus, on those gigs where I was supposed to ink myself and struggled time-wise….I was looking for a better way to keep the schedule AND deliver kick ass pages. Chris Robinson, friend and Editor of Moon Girl and Devil Dino at the time, was on the road to bringing this incredible series to a close and I had already been a regular fill-in on the book. He and longtime collaborator and co-writer of MGDD Brandon Montclare wanted to bring me back for issue 42. With the magnificent talent of regular artist Natacha Bustos having quietly exited the title and the last few issues brought to a close with a cavalcade of great talents Like Alitha E. Martinez and Gustavo Duarte, I asked Chris and Brandon for permission to do it in my own style. You see, I had been trying to keep consistency with Nat’s work as best I could (which I couldn’t even touch) every time I was on deck, but Brandon ALWAYS had something cool in store for me every time I jumped on. This time however was the best of the best. I was tasked to draw Lunella’s first encounter with the wall-crawler himself! Spider-Man! Oh boy!! I was psyched! So, my style, the timing of the issue, and the fact that I was focusing solely on penciling was perfect! Needless to say, it was one of my best issues not just on Moon Girl, but arguably of all the work I’ve done at Marvel thus far. Reviews and fans seemed to have felt similarly.
That experience reassured me of what I already knew about myself. I absolutely have to have the time to pencil as close to 100% of my ability as possible. Fans appreciate the work that’s been put into it (mostly) and I need to pencil tightly just for myself because I don’t have to think that much when I need to ink myself. The inking process for me should be 100% embellishment on my own pencils. No thinking allowed!
I still get asked to ink myself, btw. More on that at another time.
SUPERB Growth & Self-Discovery
Infinite love and appreciation goes out to Joe Illidge & Desiree Rodriguez for allowing me to do my thing of the Lion Forge Catalyst Prime book SUPERB! On that book I discovered the kind of comic storyteller and illustrator I was and COULD be! Learned what I was best at, what my best process was for maximum results, that I was more than just a hired gun but a contributor to the overall story, and the most important….that under the right conditions I was absolutely capable of not just doing a series, but LAUNCHING one! On covers AND interiors!
Below are examples of some of my self-discovery as a comic storyteller. In the layouts I learned that I really enjoy mapping out where the solid blacks/contrast was going to be. I dabbled before, but on Superb I purposely made it a point to figure them out at the layout/thumbnail stage. I also leveled up when it came to impactful double-page spreads and complicated scenes. Lastly, I truly found my voice as a penciler and how much I love bringing the scenes and characters to life in the rendering & details. Especially hair, clothes, & expressions! I also learned the value of picking pages you want to spend more time on to have shine versus pages that just need to get done. They can’t all be show pieces, but they ALL have to serve the story.
And When Time Isn’t On Your Side
This is an example of what happened when I ran out of time and just had to get pages in. I took my layouts and tightened them up just enough to be inked. No fancy rendering or fine tuning. Hell, I’m pretty sure I penciled right on the layout page, but it is what it is. My wife & I were going on a long vacation and the clock was running out, but I really like the folks at Archie and I got to work with Brian Augustyn & Mark Waid. An opportunity I may never get again. After calling in some help we got it done and this is just an example of the pages I had to rush. There are some really great pages that I’m super proud and the composition of these I still dig, but I wish I could have really stuck the landing here. I absolutely HATE to rush and it shows.
Find Your Perfect Schedule and Hit The Ground Running!
Nowadays this is my schedule Sunday-Friday (Saturdays Off):
5:45am – 9:00am – Wake up, Walk 3 miles/Gym, Shower, Coffee
9:00am – 12:00pm – Work
12:00pm – 1:00pm – Meal 1
1: 00pm – 4:00pm – Work
4:00pm – 6:00pm – Meal 2 & Walk the Dogs
6:00pm – 9:30pm – Work
9:30pm – 5:45am – Bedtime/Sleep
So, I’ve got about 9.5 hours a day allocated for work six days a week. Within that time I’d like to truly focus producing my best work. Understanding the importance of my own personal process instead of struggling to make anything else work when I know what actually works best for me is kind of silly.
Here’s to higher quality work in all endeavors without getting overwhelmed. Do it YOUR way!
-Ray