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Making Comics! Podcast

Ben Bates — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 08:52:41 +0000

My friend, collaborator, and fellow studio mate Jeremy Barlow makes his first appearance on ‘Making Comics!’ along side Travis Hanson. Have a listen and you’ll gain some valuable information on what goes into producing web comics and some interesting thoughts on how the industry is changing. Or should I say thoughts on how it changed?

-Making Comics #10 Part 1-

You may recognize Jeremy for his work writing several Star Wars graphic novels, Metalocalypse comics, and recently the Kult mini-series.

OR you may learn to associate him with this short 10 page horror story he wrote and I illustrated titled; ‘The Stain’.

Read it -HERE- on his website!

And let me know what you think!

New Crusaders- Shield

Ben Bates — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 07:57:16 +0000

The ‘New Crusaders’ are coming.

Over at Comic Book Resources you can read this article on Shield and learn just how old he is. He’s pretty old.

Mega Man Issue 9- Dr. Wily Villain Variant Cover

Ben Bates — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:15:03 +0000

Hey I’m posting this Dr. Wily cover late, Mega Man issue 10 actually just came out this month. Its the second issue of the ‘The Return of Dr. Wily’, a four issue arc adapting the classic ‘Mega Man 2′ NES game. Its also the second issue I was lucky enough to pencil interiors for. Inside Mega Man battles Crash Man, one of my favorite robot masters from 2! If you read this issue, you should let me know what you think about the Crash Man pages.

Back to issue 9, I was thrilled to get to draw this Dr. Wily Villain Sketch Variant! Here it is without title text, bar code, or anything-

I originally came up with three possible ideas for the cover and quickly sketched out a set of thumbnails for Editor Paul Kaminski to choose from. Here’s what I sent him-

Option 2 here was playing around with the original ‘Rock Man 2′ box art-

It might be kind of hard to see in my rough but you’ve got Mega Man way down at the bottom along with a Met to the left. In the final I wanted to draw all the enemies on the ‘Rock Man 2′ cover in the same positions, along with the explosions. Could have been a lot of fun.

And here’s the winner-

Paul wanted something just a little more evil from Dr. Wily so I gave him these options-

You can see in the final I flipped Dr. Wily around to prevent Mega Man’s helmet from covering the “Sketch Variant” text that would eventually be placed next to the logo. (I also shrank Crash Man down because I wanted to draw his cool arms.)

And bam, thats a sketch variant!

iPhone Batman Sketches

Ben Bates — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:02:15 +0000

I’ve got a super basic phone myself which I hardly ever use, but my pal Bill Eckerson recently acquired an iPhone and downloaded Autodesk’s Sketchbook app tonight. Bill is a big Batman fan, and I like the character too, so occasionally we talk about the guy and his world and remind ourselves why he’s the coolest superhero of them all.

I just discovered artist Norm Breyfogle is given a lot of credit for contributing to Batman’s success in the late 80′s into the 90′s and that he is now the artist providing pencils for a couple Archie titles. I grilled Bill about his knowledge on Mr. Breyfogle shortly before he suggested I try out the Sketchbook app. As we had Batman on the brain these fun little drawings came up. Its just simple little fun stuff trying to doodle competently with your finger tip on a tiny screen.

You can zoom in but most of the time I tried to draw at regular size, I think this is pretty close to the exact size I was drawing at:

I want to do more with a stylus!

Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog issue 233

Ben Bates — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:48:23 +0000

The cover for 233! Which is out now, and probably has been for a little while. I haven’t seen the issue myself but if features the trial of Geoffrey St. John. Finally, he’s gonna pay for all he’s done.

Sonic 224 pencils -part 3-

Ben Bates — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 09:11:38 +0000

Back to 224. Wow, its been a long time since this issue came out.

Page 11-

One of the neat things John Workman does with his letters is stick word balloons to the edges of a panel and drop the border out for it. I think its stylish and looks super cool. This page has a lot of great examples of it but my favorite is Sally’s first word balloon in panel 03, it knocks out the whole corner and really helps her to pop out and further highlight her dominance over Geoffrey in the shot.

Bouncing back to panel 01 you’ll see I did the panel as a bleed but it was cropped with a border on the left for the final art. I think the crop looks better especially with the cool location title cut into the top of panel!

This page is also a good example to see that from my pencils to inks the characters get even more roughed up than I had originally envisioned. If you’ve dug out your copy of the issue you’ll see that Sally and Geoffrey’s hair become more frazzled and even their cheek tufts show some wear.

Page 12-

I’m really happy with the second panel. A big quiet shot to tone everything down after all the fighting .

Page 13-

I think my personal favorite background character I’ve drawn is the pink girl in the background of panel 01. I can’t recall if I mentioned this before, but the dog peeking around the pointing guy is a design from Dave Manak in issue 24. I think he was an apple salesman? I draw him in every crowd scene now. He gets all over town.

In panel 03 there I like everything but Nicole’s mouth.

I feel weirded out about doing some references so she doesn’t look exactly right, but in panel 04 down there the girl in the back is, in my mind, Maka from Soul Eater. I remember thinking I should not show the x pattern of her straps otherwise it’ll be perfectly obvious. Now I wish I had, I dont know why I chickened out. And I should have drawn her skirt as a plaid.

Page 14-

I recall having a miserable time trying to figure out panel 01. Sometimes the simplest shots can be the hardest apparently. I really like how it turned out in the end though. In fact, I really like how this whole page turned out. There’s a lot of fun drawing in there.

I dislike Hamlin’s design. He’s a generic cartoon pig, totally lifeless and very un-Sonic to me. Sometimes I have fun sketching out redesigns for characters and I did Hamlin a little while ago. I wanted to include the drawings with this post but I can’t find them. Maybe they’ll surface later.

Page 15-

I frequently find Naugus annoying to draw because he’s almost always doing the same “evil smile” facial expression. Throughout this issue I tried to bump up the range of expressions he would make. I think this page (along with page 16) are good set of different kinds of evil smiles.

Matt Herms colors on Naugus in panel 03 are particularly excellent. You get a real sense of him existing in 3d space and are probably my favorite color in the entire issue.

Mega Man Universe Style

Ben Bates — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 09:04:11 +0000

Mega Man issue 8 is out this month which means the end of the ‘Time Keeps Slipping’ arc. Starting next month is the ‘Return of Dr. Wily’ arc that I was lucky enough to pencil! I thought I’d draw some different styles of Mega Man, just for fun, as we build up to the release of issue 9.

I thought the art for Mega Man Universe was pretty cool. The game itself didn’t really look like my kind of thing, but who knows, maybe it would have won me over if it had been fully developed.

Sonic 224 layouts and pencils -Part 2-

Ben Bates — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:21:39 +0000

Page 06 layout-

Page 06 final pencils-

I’m unhappy with how I did a lot of the special effects in this page. I’m not into the chunky blur on the sword hilt for panel 01, or the less than spectacular effect of Sonic blocking a bunch of ice needles in panel 04. I should have done much, much better.

What I am happy with is the sense of movement throughout the entire page. I feel like I captured a very natural progression of the characters bouncing from one panel to the next.

You’ll notice if you’ve got a copy of 224 anywhere nearby that you can see Naugus’s left arm in panel 05 in my pencils but the panel is cropped in the actual issue. I’m assuming this is a choice made by Terry Austin, the inker. I’ve been noticing this more and more as I compare pencils to inks and I think this can be a good choice on his part to cap a lot of the bleeds I draw and focus the action as well as balance the page. As much as I enjoy the full pose I’ve drawn here for Naugus I really like that white space underneath the full bleed panel you find in the actual comic. I really, really like the choice to drop the right panel border on panel 01 up at the top. Looking in the actual comic you’ve got just that little sliver of Naugus and I love it! Makes me think of the stylish little panels Bill Watterson would do for Calvin and Hobbes.

Page 07-

Ah, okay here we go. I was surprised to find how much I was liking my art in the first five pages of 224 when my memories of my work in the issue were less than favorable, but here’s a page I’m not too keen on. Mainly its all in Panel 02. Many problems.

I do like Naugus’s flailing backward while shooting fire in panel 04, thats a good pose and a fun little piece of character reaction.

I also really enjoyed the idea of Elias coming in and totally whaling for a moment. I don’t know much about him aside from he is Sally’s brother and the current King, but man it would be cool if that guy did more stuff like this! The guy has clearly got some skill. And he’s a squirrel right? He’s got an awfully fox-like tail for a squirrel. You can see in the layouts I drew him with a standard cartoon squirrel tail and I may have briefly considered drawing the tail different for the final pencils. Not like the layouts though as that is standard cartooning and too literal, not very Sonic like. I would go with a tail like Ray’s from Sonic Arcade if I was allowed. With his current tail you could argue the point that Elias is a squirrel-chipmunk and that perhaps the cross breeding has altered aspects of his tail, but that seems uselessly complicated to me.

Oh, my absolute favorite thing about page 07 is Naugus’s face in the last panel in the layouts. I love that frown.

Page 08-

This is my favorite of all the layout pages and my least favorite for the actual pencils. I absolutely love the two little stick versions of Hamlin and Dylan running off to do battle in panel 03. I love all the little stick characters! I also think Hamlin’s expression and drawing in the layout for panel 04 are far superior to the actual drawing I did for the pencils.

Going back to panel 03 though, its important to create compelling and dynamic “camera” angles in comics, especially in Sonic. You also want to make sure the shot you choose is telling the appropriate story. I love the layouts for panel 03 because its very funny to me, but that’s exactly the problem as it should not be funny. The two characters are running off to do battle and hearing something that stops them in their tracks. It should be dramatic or intense. So I rotated our camera a little to get a more interesting view of the situation and hopefully take an originally boring shot into a more exciting one. If you’ve still got your 224 around compare the eyes of Hamlin and Dylan in the pencils to your issue.

Page 09-

Here’s a couple of nice differences between layouts and pencils. Panel 01 changed completely and panel 02 was reversed. I think the layout of panel 01 is very exciting and you’ve got a lot intensity with Hamlin’s large figure. I also think the small Sonic off to the side changes the tone of his dialog for the panel to be more humorous than the final result. I think this is overall a cool possibility for the scene but it has a flaw and some missed opportunities that I luckily caught on to and adjusted for the pencils.

If you check your issue of 224 you’ll find that Hamlin speaks first, followed by Penelope, and then Sonic. The order that characters speak in comics is all important and the artist needs to make sure characters are placed to allow for the correct order. In general, you want the first character to speak on the left and move to the right accordingly. My layout mixes the order up and complicates the readers progression by placing Penelope first instead of Hamlin. You can of course get a little creative and place Hamlin’s text below Penelope’s to solve this problem but I gained more opportunities to provide better storytelling for the following panels by shifting my camera in panel 01.

In the layout my view allows for only three characters but when I shift the view behind Sonic in the pencils I’ve suddenly gained room for twice as many characters and their reactions to the argument. Most importantly though I’ve given the reader a clear understanding of where all the characters are currently located so that when we move to panel 02 its immediately understood Rosemary is standing higher than Rotor. This gives her more authority in the panel and maximizes the impact of Rotor’s frustration and weakness. By excluding Uncle Chuck in panel 01 it helps sell the story that he stalks toward Rosemary in panel 03.

I was super happy to get to do some exaggerated expressions in this page. Penelope slamming her hands in panel 01 and especially Rotor’s ‘One Piece’ style exasperation compared to Rosemary’s collected demeanor in panel 02 were a blast. I love stylish and exaggerated storytelling when its appropriate. (And in my personal opinion with something like Sonic the Hedgehog thats almost all the time!) My personal take on this moment when reading the script was that because Naugus was manipulating emotions we got a lot of characters overreacting and behaving like fools in a fairly serious situation. A perfect opportunity to get a little wild with these characters.

And bam, page 10!-

I went digging through my files and could not find layouts after page 09. I think what happened is I forgot to do layouts for the rest of the comic and I’m lucky that the editor Paul Kaminski trusted me to carry through the rest of the comic without seeing what I intended to do. At this point I was starting to feel very tired and burnout with the 2010 Christmas holiday and the amount of work I was doing. I’m pretty sure this was the first and last time layouts just slipped my mind.

This page was a lot of fun and hard work to do though. When designing this room I did a lot of research for Eggman styled headquarters in past videogames, especially Sonic Adventure. That door for example in panel 02 is lifted straight out of the game. While you’re looking at that door right below it is a second Egg mobile station. That one belongs to Snively, and although you can’t see it, to Eggman’s left is where Lien-Da’s Egg Mobile is. They are both set lower than Eggman so its clear who exactly is in charge here.

Speaking of Snively, I think he is a hideously designed character and can’t stand him. I’m always looking for ways to make him more palatable.

Up next 224 Part 3!

Sonic 224 layouts and pencils -Part 1-

Ben Bates — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 14:22:20 +0000

Wow, its been nearly a year since I drew this issue. I recall working on the pages of 224 around the time I was supposed to travel back home to visit family for Christmas last December. Some friends suggested showing my layouts would be cool this time around as they might provide some fun insight into creating Sonic comics.

So all right, let’s do it.

First, just in case anyone is not familiar with the process of making comics, I as a penciller receive a script from the writer describing how many panels are on a page and what actions and dialog need to be in those panels.

My job is then to come up with the most exciting but easily readable sequence of those descriptions. I’ll start by making thumbnail versions of each page showing my intended layout of the entire comic to the editor so he can make a quick judgement on whether or not its working and if anything needs to be changed.

I use to do my layouts as rough versions of the final pencils like page 4 here from Sonic #218.

And now compare it to the final pencils and you can see I did the bulk of the work during the layout phase.

The problem I had with this approach was that I put a lot of time and energy into practically drawing the final pencils for each page when I couldn’t be certain any of them would be approved. I was taking a risk that I wouldn’t have to change anything and taking a lot of time doing it. I started to stress out about getting my layouts done as fast as possible but still produce rough completed pencils. It began to feel like an unhealthy expectation.

So about half way through issue 223 I decided to simplify my layouts to increase speed and make layouts fun.

When issue 224 rolled around my layouts looked this:

Page 1 layout-

The script describes a splash panel along with all appropriate text, titles, credits, and roll call. When laying out pages I also like to plan for balloon placement to make sure the page reads correctly. This is mainly just for myself as in the end I leave all final placement of speech balloons and titles up to the letterer.

My only responsibility is to provide pencils for the art.

Page 01 final pencils-

Now if you happen to have your copy of 224 around you’ll see that somewhere down the production line it was decided that the Naugus I drew for the roll call should be replaced with a different character.

Page 03 layout-

Page 03 Final Pencils-

Here you can see I switched the placement of Geoffrey and Sally in panel 02 from layout to final pencil. The basic rule of thumb is to have whoever speaks first in a panel on the left. I accommodated for her being on the right in the layout by placing her speech balloon at the top of the panel, forcing the reader to see her first before moving down to Geoffrey. My idea behind making this choice was that in the story Sally and Geoffrey are in the middle of a confrontation and I wanted to give the sense that Sally is agitated and in motion as she circles around a confident and calm Geoffrey. I felt this would be easily achieved as Sally is on his right in panel 02 and as we progress to panel 03 Sally has shifted to his left indicated by the direction of her body and literally by the placement of her in the panel above Geoffrey. If this wasn’t enough I’ve got three little motion lines intended to help show Sally’s quick change in position.

Apparently I must have chickened out and went with a safe storytelling approach. I still have some action lines in panel 03 but this time to me they don’t necessarily indicate Sally physically moving but the rising intensity of her dialog.

Oh yeah, I use to absolutely loathe those two main background characters in panel 05. Sometimes when doing roughs I’ll quickly sketch out some shapes and i interpreted those to create those two. I had intended to go back and create better looking fellows but as time wore on and I had more artistically demanding pages later on in the issue I reluctantly accepted they had to stay. I don’t hate them as much now because I realized the city can’t be entirely populated by cool characters, some of them have to be normal or like these two, a couple of buffoons.

Page 04-

I’m fond of this page. I like when the characters get to do cool things. There’s a lot of action packed into this one page but it doesn’t feel forced or rushed.

Page 05-

Huh, I like this page too. I’m kind of surprised because when I think about issues 223 and 224 I just recall being burnt out and tired all the time. I’ve got kind of a negative memory about it all I guess. But now that I’m looking at these I feel like this stuff is pretty cool. It was a lot of fun designing the Engine Room there for example. I just started playing Sonic Colors around this time and I looked to that game to influence Eggman’s tech. I had fun, as simple as it may be, trying to imagine if the engine room were in the games how would this be designed to allow Sonic to run around it. In the background you’ll notice a couple of platforms sticking out, a hint of a track that runs around the base, and several tunnels that allow Eggman to move about the Death Egg 2 as well as Sonic to grind through with the little rail seen at the bottom of panel 05.

There are more pages to talk about but that’ll have to be in Part 2.

Nancy Thompson

Ben Bates — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:20:10 +0000

I think Nancy is pretty cool and a great adversary for old Freddy Krueger. She was the only one in the whole show who was with it and she turned out to be pretty tough too. It would take a lot of guts to walk away with Krueger at your back.

While finding reference for this I found that Heather Langenkamp recently created ‘I am Nancy‘, a documentary about whats happened to her character in the past 30 years. I’m looking forward to checking it out. Go to the blog for some neat behind the scenes stuff and memories of her experience making the original ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’.

Something I really love that I found there is this little doodle below that Langenkamp did of Nancy for a t-shirt design. I thought including the coffee pot was the coolest! I’m not sure if I can accurately explain this, but I love little defining details and accessories for characters. One of the biggest reasons I did the above image for example is just to draw the streak of white hair. I was pumped to draw the Alice the Dream Master last time because of all the accessories she has representing each of her fallen friends (and brother).

Maybe what I’m looking for is icons? What is iconic of a character? Here for this little doodle Langenkamp got all them perfectly. I’m not totally sold on the phrase but I’ll get this shirt for the drawing anyway.

It also occurred to me how cool it would be to meet “Nancy”. A new goal of mine is now to find and attend whatever necessary convention I must. Unfortunately it looks like I discovered an interest in ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ right as she ends her appearances for this year. Hopefully there will be something set up for next year and damn it would be cool if Robert Englund was around as well.