Illustrator Reacts to Good and Bad Comic Book Art 2

it's almost like you can feel the decades of work that he's put in to getting this good. Big weird swollen bicep. He literally traced a meme to do this drawing in a professional comic book. Well people got really into that last illustrator react video so it looks like I've got to do another of these if not a whole series of them. For anyone who didn't see the last one my name is Christian Pearson I've been a professional illustrator and animator for about seven years now and in this video I'm going to go over some famous comics and comic panels and comic artists and talk about their work and what went right and sometimes what went not so right. I want to say off the top that all the artists I'm talking about in this video are incredibly skilled and I have a lot of respect for all of them... even though some of the art we're looking at today looks like this. Okay this one had to come up eventually if you look at any list of worst comic book covers this one is right near the top it's Das Pastoras' Wolverine Revolver and look there's a lot of stuff to defend about Das Pastoras' art but obviously first, let's talk about why this is so weird-looking. The first thing that jumps out to me is that big weird swollen bicep and it's not big in a traditional superhero comic kind of way it just looks wrong. It is very unsettling to look at and his hands the one that's closer to us looks like it's a bit smaller than the one that's farther away. I could be wrong they could be they're pretty similar sizes but with comic book art a lot of the time the style that you'll usually see is the perspective is exaggerated so the hand that's a bit farther back will be a lot smaller and the one that's closer to us will be a lot bigger and then of course I mean these expressions are just... (shudders) very very unusual. See an artist is going to practice different things depending on what they want to do with their art if someone wants to be a comic book artist then they kind of have to learn really good Anatomy and how to draw fluid dynamic poses so if you do work for Marvel or DC people are going to inherently compare you to the best of the best mainstream comic artists. So if your anatomy is kind of janky and your poses are a bit stiff people are going to say your art is bad but the thing is if you look at best Pastoras' art that's not superhero comic related it's all very painterly and bizarre and it's got really weird unsettling creatures and it's got this look to it and it's very clear from his paintings that he's really good at form and lighting and he's practiced the things that he needs to be good at for the kind of art he wants to make. So I really think that this is just a case where his style does not fit with a superhero comic because that is that is a nightmarish Wolverine face. I haven't read the comic maybe that's what he was going for but now speaking of talented painters let's move on to the single most requested person from the last video what can you even say Alex Ross is a living art God he hand paints his stuff he doesn't work digitally it's, like, realistic but in a stylized way and it it's interesting all of his characters suits kind of looked like they fit into the 1978 Superman movie like their their suits have that sort of texture to them and his metal all has a very specific very shiny look. It was really difficult to pick what image of his to look at because everything he does is just phenomenal I really like this one in particular because it's his riff on the original Avengers number one cover it's just gorgeous his style isn't even one that I'm normally drawn to but it's almost like you can feel the decades of work that he's put in to getting this good and something interesting about his work that not everyone might know is he uses reference images he takes photos himself sometimes using filters he's talked about this on his YouTube channel which I'll link in the description below and I've heard in the past people talking about reference photos be cheating and that depends on how you use them but every artist out there at some point uses reference images nobody just knows how to draw everything on the planet from memory I mean if Alex Ross is using reference images you know that they're okay to use but with that said some artists do take that too far. I can't... I really really love this one but obviously not for good reason. First of all it's weird-looking it's an Iron man suit I don't know if this was I think it was a bleeding edge armor maybe that's what this is but do you recognize the image? By looking at it does this does this look familiar to you he literally traced a meme to do this drawing in a professional comic book what.. like.. I mean.. okay, I have to think that he didn't know this image was a meme for context Greg Land is pretty famous for copying lots of different images he's copied photographs from Sports Illustrated covers he's copied images of actresses and actors he's copied his own faces multiple times over and over again he's copied from other artists he's pretty famous for doing all this and the important distinction between what he does and what Alex Ross does is Alex Ross is taking his own reference images and using those whereas Greg Land is pretty blatantly copying other people's art and photographs he's copied other artists work other comic book artists also he's pretty well known for his female characters to copy images of porn stars which makes a lot of his female characters have this look that's kind of I don't know what I can call it and keep this episode PG but it's it's like it's like... sex face... (instant regret) now that definitely wasn't the right term to use but at least you know what I mean now probably you can all kind of make up your own mind about how morally wrong you think this might be but regardless that's a lot of copying I think this is from when they you know like re, re, re, re rebooted spider-man started it with a new number one again but I do love this image it's just it's stylish but none over-the-top way and I really like how your eye has guided through the image when I look at this I kind of start by looking up in the top left corner of spider-man's web then looking down his web and rhinos shoulder helps emphasize this line by being in line with the web I go down his web to his hand then look down his arm to spider-man's head and my eyes kind of stop there and pool and just look around at the other characters like Mysterio and lizard... that's a that's a kind of cool lizard design I like the rendering on the sort of wrinkles on him that's pretty cool and that the beady little eyes make him a lot freakier looking and I also really like how Rhino his gray is a little bit green to make sure that spider-man pops out more. Cuz Mysterio and Lizard are green. Rhino if I'm not wrong his gray looks like it's got some green too so that the spider-man's red just really pops out from them and that's something I was thinking about the other day a few people have pointed out before that spider-man has a lot of green villains I mean we've got we've got Sandman scorpion vultures electro Mysterio lizard Green Goblin Doctor Octopus there's probably more and I don't know if this was a conscious choice when a lot of these characters were being designed presumably most of them were designed by Steve Ditko co-created by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee but green and red are complementary colors so they work really well together so making spider-man is predominantly red his villains are green they're gonna look really good in a panel together that's something that I don't know if they were consciously doing when they were creating these characters my guess is that they were just good enough artists that they did this naturally which I've mentioned before is the point practicing anything in art so that eventually you can just do it naturally without thinking about it oh yeah let's cover really fantastic the longer I look at this piece the more things about it I love this is by Jorge Jimenez and I followed him on instagram for ages I hadn't seen this Superman drawing before and it's just I don't even know where to start everything about it is so gorgeous I love it first of all this trope is just a really great one a lot of the time where you have a superhero in movement and you have a bunch of their different poses through the movement and this is just the best example of that I think I've ever seen and like like in that spider-man Wanda we were talking about green versus red I love that the Clark's in the background as he's transforming our hewed a little bit green to blend in a bit more with the trees and the background so that this one in the front with the big red s just pops that much more and then everything about the composition is just bringing us to that the the clouds are doing that sort of toilet bowl effect focusing us in on Superman and those light streaks in the background are cutting in front of all the the background Clark's but are going behind the main Superman and just framing him and they're acting like arrows pointing us to him more and then just Jorge Jimenez style is it's beautiful I mean that part's obviously very subjective but I just love it and I and I really like the simple rendering on the clouds in the background - that's really nice they don't draw too much attention away but this this might be my new favorite Superman art I've ever seen I know people are waiting for my reaction of this one John Romita jr. this is probably gonna be a divisive one in the comment section I love this drawing john romita jr. his art I think works really well for characters like Wolverine and Batman I think it worked well in World War Hulk I thought it was just great for all of those his streaky black lines and use of black and just the the shape of his characters I think it all works well for grittier darker characters which is why I love an image by him like this but really really don't like any of his Superman art and this is obviously down to personal taste but when I heard he was put on Superman I was just so confused his Superman drawing to me kind of looks like in Spider-man 3 when Tobey Maguire swoops his hair down so that he's more emo looking and Superman is a character who's supposed to be very uplifting and and hopeful and this sort of dark gritty emo II look I personally don't think it really works here and I suppose one of the main points of criticism to talk about for John Romita jr. art i'd say is probably that all his characters are very similar shape like they're all the generally the same height the same build in talking about good art versus bad art that's obviously a hard thing to distinguish but one thing that I think about a lot when I'm thinking about something like this is is the artist achieving what they're trying to achieve so with John Romita jr's art he is very consistent and it looks like he's doing exactly what he's trying to do regardless of whether you like the style this is what he's trying to do yeah as I said I really loved this Wolverine drawing oK we've given enough love to Marvel and DC let's move on to some not Marvel and DC. Okay now Mike Mignola for those who don't know most people probably do he was the creator of Hellboy and he is incredibly stylish just one of the most stuff you can tell his style from a mile away his style isn't even one that I'm personally normally drawn to but I find it incredibly impressive how great he can make his images look with such simplicity and you'd be hard-pressed to find any artist doing covers with more black he uses black very liberally and it works so well for the tone and style of his work now I chose this cover specifically because I've seen most of his Hellboy covers like I just love looking through his covers and this one I never seen before I'm not sure that the comics called Ragnarok I guess looks like we've got some variation of Thor on the cover and I love with a lot of Mignola's art he's frequently got some kind of streak of desaturated color in the background that's just forcing your eye to look through the image through that streak it just gives you no other options like your eyes have to go that way it's it's bold and it's almost controlling but it works so well and it's amazing how how he does all his shading with just blacks like it's pretty much all just flatted in a bit of a watercolor II ish kind of color flatted being a term in the comic book industry for when you're starting the coloring process you lay down just flat colors first before adding lighting and shadow it's not the process that necessarily everyone uses but it's kind of the the common comic-book rendering style. Just so simple but so beautiful Fiona Staples art is incredible for anyone that hasn't read Saga it's very I mean it's definitely targeted at an older audience but it's really really great I'm about two volumes in so I don't know too much of it yet I don't think I've seen this cover before today which is why I picked this one and also it just stood out to me so much because of how yellow it is for people that don't know you you might have noticed that a lot of people use yellow and their YouTube thumbnails because yellow is one of the most eye-catching colors and it's also a very like generally positive color like different colors give off different emotions and yellow kind of is is very bright and happy that's why you'll see like happy faces are usually yellow so this one obviously caught my eye right away I think she's got other yellow covers but this one I also really like with such a simple image how much I really like the composition and how my eye goes through it for me personally when I look at this I start looking at the character's head which and I like that both the characters heads are in different directions she's looking off into the distance and the horse where the Z Rainbow zebra I guess is looking forward and in the other direction and what I personally start by kind of starting to read saga and then I look at her face and then down her body to the the mane on the horses head and then down the horse's head and then I kind of just my eyes pull back and take in the whole image and it's so nice I love how she feels a little bit more in the background because she's got more of a yellow hue to her and the horse pops a bit more because it's a bit more just stark white and then it's got its own colors but that's all we've got for this episode also be sure to check out some of my other drawing and animation episodes I've got a whole bunch of my own art on here that you can go tear apart if you're mad that I was tearing apart some of your favorite artists I'm sorry I know a bunch of people wanted me to look at some manga stuff I definitely will in the next episode so recommend me some really good and some really not-so-good stuff in the comments also a few Corrections from the last episode that people pointed out it's it's apparently Rob Liefeld I was missing for Rob Liefeld is the one who is not great at feet and tries to hide feet and Jim Lee is just kind of in on the joke and pokes fun at him about it a bit also I had an image up by Mike Deodato jr. when I did put up a collage of Rob Liefeld work so sorry about that last one is Rob Liefeld was the co-creator of Deadpool with Fabian Nicieza, sorry if I'm saying that wrong I think that was all of them if I got anything wrong in this episode please let me know in the comments below beside that that's all for this episode I'm Christian Pearson this is PopCross Studios home of the nerdiest art videos on YouTube and I will see you all in the next one goodbye everybody videos on Mondays and Saturdays by the way yeah goodbye

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Views: 839,855

Rating: 4.8909421 out of 5

Keywords: artist react, illustrator reacts to good and bad comic art, react, professionals react, artist reacts to comic art, lawyer reacts to it's always sunny in philadelphia, artist breaks down comic art, animator reacts, alex ross, best comic artists, pros react, comics, worst comic covers, das pastoras, greg land, greg land copying, marvel comics, dc comics, hellboy, mike mignola, fiona staples, best comics, jorge jimenez art, worst comic art, vfx artists react to bad & great cgi

Id: Zi8uUK42iXI

Length: 17min 25sec (1045 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 17 2019