[Music] Hi I’m Ryan Benjamin I’m a
professional comic book artist. Stan: Oh bam! Ryan: Yeah. Stan: Oh, he's cool. Ryan: I work for Marvel and DC comics and pretty
much anyone on the planet that's willing to hire me. I’m going to demonstrate some techniques that
I use pretty much every day and that's something I like to tell people - I like to tell a lot of
students - people who want to get into comics, people who want to get into just drawing
for fun, you need to draw every day. So, I try to tell this to people because if you
don't practice, you're never going to get better. If you're constantly having a
lot of distractions around you, it's going to slow down your improvement and your
progress. So, put yourself - put your mind in that state of - I’m working, I’m drawing and you're
blocking out pretty much the rest of the world. I like to tell this people because it's
what I do. This is what I do. I do this every day when I’m actually working. I put
myself in that zone and I block myself out. Sometimes I’ll put - I’ll play music in
the background or I’ll have a movie playing and I won't even watch it, I’ll
just listen to it because it helps feed the visuals that's in my head and
it comes out on paper as I’m drawing. First let me - let me go over my materials. I
have a handful of materials here. Uh, what I love to use, my red pencils. I use my red pencils
to set up my pages and this is the first stage that I go through and the reason why I do this is
because you need a layout. Some people thumbnail, some characters, they might do some quick little
thumbnails over here and they might say - okay, panel one, panel two, panel three, panel four and
they might scribble some stick figures in here. Some people might actually do
a larger page and you know, they'll - they can dissect the pages
like this and say panel one, panel two, panel three, panel four and then
within those panels, they'll scribble character here, character there, background here,
background over here - they'll scribble stuff like that. But to transfer that to the actual board,
some people immediately go straight to the pencil. What I like to use, uh, this is my standard
pencil. I love using - I love these pencils, these Tombows right here. But I typically use 2B.
2B is pretty dark you can get some nice strong dark lines like this. It stays pretty
clean and it doesn't smudge too much. So, as your hand is moving
around you won't smudge and it won't get too dirty and too muddy,
especially if you're going to noodle in like little tiny little areas or you scribble
something down, you're going to get someone's eyes like this and then next you know, you're
adding all these details and next thing it starts to get a little bit muddy, like this,
and then you start to lose the eye a little bit. It's hard enough but it's soft
enough where you can get a nice strong - nice strong black which is why
I like to use this. So, I use my reds to create my layout and this is my thinking
stage. So, now I have my thinking stages down. From here, I don't have to think
anymore - it's just execution. When I actually going to draw my pages, it's
literally just go in and you just figure out where the character is, what is he wearing, is he
wearing a jacket you know, you have here you know, what is he looking at, does he have a weapon
in his hands and as you - as you see, I’m quickly jumping right into this. I’m not really
thinking too much about it, it's just execution because all my thinking is here and sometimes
I’ll actually go in a little bit more detail. Let's say there's a character's
head here on this page right here and it's a real - extreme close-up
of this character in this panel. I’m thinking about this - I’m going to lay
out where I think his eyes are going to go, I’m going to quickly lay out his jaw, the top of
the head, the ear, his neck, his mouth, nose and pretty much anything else that's going to go in
here. If he has hair, I’ll quickly scribble that. And now I have a rough of the pencils and now
all I have to do is just immediately go in from here... I always start off with the eyes because once I have the eye, everything
else flows from that and that's how you communicate with people - you talk to them, you
look at them - you look at them through the eyes. So, I am actually gonna go straight to the eyes
first and I’m just gonna make up a character here, it doesn't matter. I try not to think too much.
The best way to explain it to people is I try to feel it because when I - when I think,
I slow down and I’m like okay, I’m second guessing myself and so I’m thinking "Hmm, maybe I
should change this" and to do this or do that and you know, it's more just explode on the page, you
know? That's literally how I think about things. So, from here, as long as I hit my key points,
it's all instinct at this point, you know. Drawing a page, I try and like I said, I try not
to think - the only time I think about it is when I’m reading a script. I’m reading, I’m thinking,
trying to interpret this and like "Okay, what's going on here?" blah blah blah, "Okay, I get it.
Got it", boom and then from here on, it's me, my background music, uh, whatever I’m playing in
the background - sometimes I listen to news all day, is just have the news on, you know. I love
documentaries and I just listen to documentaries, stuff that makes you think. You can see how I’m quickly knocking this
out. From here, now I have the base down. Now, from here at this point, if I need to clean up
anything, I’ll go in and I can - I use my eraser and I’ll clean up you know, you can quickly go
make any adjustments that you're making - let's say this character has a logo on his chest or
doing any cross hatching over here, you know... You know, stuff like that. Now, all this is going to live within this panel,
now you know exactly what's going to go on. Now, this is the process I use. I’m going
to do another demonstration to show you guys a cleaner version of this. I’ve been
teaching this where I show my students... Just create these dark areas like
this. Then once you have a dark area, go through quickly, block it out and
you can go as detailed as you can. You don't have to go this large
because I’m going pretty large right now. But after you block out
these certain areas, from here, you start to render out from that. Now, this
is an exercise I recommend that you do because it's going to help you understand your blacks,
your grays and then your absolute white areas. If you have a round object
here and you have your shading, you're going to want to know
where your absolute blacks lie, where your grays land and then your absolute
bright areas. Now, those three in combination that you can be using that over and over and
over and over and over throughout your process. So, this is a technique that I like to show people
to use because I literally use this for anything I do on a page. Let's say I’m doing someone's
hair, all right? I’m gonna scrub some shapes and then from here, block it out,
start to render out from that. Every time I draw this is how I
- this is the technique I use. Block it out, render out from that. Now, the reason - again, the reason why I do this
is for speed - quickly knocking this out. And the beauty about it is that when you have an
anchor who can read this, they'll pick up on this energy that you're creating right here and
they will be able to ink this pretty easily. Stan: Thank you Ryan. If you're digging Ryan's art,
check out his website and Instagram in the links below. Ryan also teaches at ComicProBootcamp.com
where he and a few other legendary comic artists teach the skills needed to become a professional
comic artist. We got more lessons with Ryan coming up, so if you're not subscribed, hit those
buttons and we'll see you in the next video.
