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

Simplified Anatomy for the Comic Book Artist

by Christopher Hart

ISBN 0-8230-473-3 2007 - Watson-Guptill Publications - $19.95

Prolific how to book artist Christopher Hart has again touched on a specific need to be covered in art instruction books. All too often, books on anatomy drawing tries to be a mini Gray’s Anatomy (the book not the show), detailing every bone and joint, sinew and muscle and naming them all as if this were the comic book guide to Chicago Hope( or ER or the show Gray’s Anatomy depending on your generation). Hart wisely realizes two very important facts when dealing with young artists: that much detail scares the CRAP out of them and that until they learn the basics, all the other stuff is wasted on them anyway. In Simplified, Hart embraces what many refer to as the retro or animated style and uses that to offer the reader the true basics that they need to begin drawings that actually look like a hero (or villain as the case may be).

Hart begins with the simplified skull and then takes several pages to show how different characters’ faces need to be built on distinctive styles of skulls. He then offers how to take traditional facial features and simplify them, first, the all important eyes, next the often overlooked shapes and styles of the nose and its importance in defining the character, and finally the mouth. This section completes with a detailed analyze of drawing the heads of a male, female and mutant showing all the angles, tilts and perspectives that are needed to bring the character to life.

The next section details how to build the simplified body, again starting with the skeleton and building the musculature and form of the three archetypes of male, female and mutant again. The unique aspect is that Hart offers views and angles that are rarely covered elsewhere, showing how the turn of a hip or bend of a leg does as much to inform a character as the most elaborate costume. Hart then shows how the body types of different characters all build on the basics going so far as to build from start to finish the comic book standards of the femme fatale, the strong man, the frail inventive genius and the kid sidekick.

With the basics now covered, Hart tackles how to give your hero those impressive chest and stomach muscles, “barn door” backs and super powerful triceps, biceps and legs, first men and then women (which are the most often difficult drawing challenges for artists, new and old.) One of the best sections in the book is one that deals with how to address the odd positions that comic characters find themselves in by showing how to draw forced perspective. Good perspective can make a good drawing great, bad perspective does the complete reverse. Hart offers just a few but does each of these genre defining perspectives well. Hart also does an excellent job of getting important tidbits of information across by actually having his drawings speak to the reader in purple speech balloons, making the book a comic in its own weird way.

If I have one complaint about the book it is that Hart waits until page 138 to address the proper drawing of hands and feet but all and all, this is a good book for the artist that is starting to make those first cautious steps into the world of creating the characters of tomorrow.