Comic Related - John Wilson shares a "How To" review

Comic Artist’s Photo Reference: People and Poses

by Buddy Scalera

ISBN 1-58180758-9 - 2006 Impact Books - $24.99

Somewhere along the line in comic art, it became a bad thing to draw things as they really look. Using pictures as reference to draw your comic is considered to be unethical by some or what we call swiping. Now I’m not talking about blatant tracing here, that is never acceptable and thought who do it (and you know who you are) should be run out of Comicstown on a rail. But any Fine Arts instructor will tell you that it is absolutely necessary that you study life to become a better artist. And this is equally true for comic art. And while you will not be able to find someone the size of the Hulk to draw, you can use your normal sized friend standing in the proper pose and expand on that visual reference to build your puny friend into the spitting image of a gamma eradiated behemoth on paper. And in those times where you have no friends available, a photograph is the next best thing. And lucky for you, fledgling artist, Buddy Scalera has made it easy for you with People and Poses.

Scalera’s book is less of a “how to” as it is a “so that is what that should look like” kind of book. He has photographed male and female models of different ethic groups in a variety of poses that one might find characters posed in within the pages of a comic: standing, fighting, flying, wounded, scared, wielding weapons and even a small section on kissing. Scalera provides a page of facial features for each model showing a range of emotion from laughter to rage. In addition the book comes with a CD-ROM that has hundreds of additional poses for each model. It covers nearly every position that an artist would need to bring their character to more realistic life on the paper.

This is not to say that this book is without art instruction…au contraire! Scalera assembled a team of masters at their craft to take a photo and turn it into comics gold. The artists who offer demonstrations are Fernando Ruiz, Mitchell Breitweiser, Matt Halley, Sean Chen, Greg Land, Billy Tucci and the legendary Paul Chadwick. Each artist gives their own spin to the step by step process, letting the reader in on the secrets that they use to render a visually appealing comic image from a relatively flat photograph. The smart reader with go over these demos several times as there are tips and techniques to pop up in various places throughout each article. My personal favorites are Tucci’s Wounded Shi and Greg Land’s beautiful Jungle Woman. I also really appreciated the noir quality of Chadwick’s piece. In my humble opinion, if you aren’t at least familiar with Chadwick’s work, then you can not call yourself a comics fan.

All too often, comic artists forget that making something look “cool” isn’t the same as making it look “right”. They also forget that there are nuisances to drawing the human figure that give it its special quality. The visuals have to tell at least half the story in comics and it is up to the artist to get the message across to the reader. Scalera’s book is a valuable tool at doing just that.