1. devlopment of comics
A comic book also referred to as a comic magazine or simply just a comic. is a publication, first popularised in the united states. it consists generally of comic art in the form of sequential panels that represent individual scenes. these comics are then followed by a narrative or story of some type; usually a dialogue created inside speech bubbles or speech balloons in the form of the comics art. the first comic book appeared in 1933 and was a reprinting of earlier newspaper comic strips which has established many of the story telling devices used in comics. the term comic book arose because the first book sold as a comic book reprinted humour comic strips. despite their name; comic books are not necessarily humorous in tone; and features stories in all genres.
there were and are very different genres of comics which allowed huge gaps in between what people did and didn't enjoy. you had comics which were based around comedy, comics based around strange ideas and creations, comics created around heroes, and comics created around real life situations among many more creations of comic. comics came by in the mid 1800's with very light art forms which were influenced by art going back to 1100AD. art was created onto walls with images of characters and actions. this eventually influenced early dating artists to create comic book forms of art and speech. this then resulted and rolled into the comics that we know today.
2. The Development of characters and comics
The development of characters followed a similar approach through history; as basic characters were developed, more designers decided to join the cause in creating classic comic books. Marvel and DC comics became ultimately two of the most powerful companies in the comic book industry. Marvel and DC comics had eventually broke into the comic book industry by writing superhero comics based around various characters such as superman and spiderman or even batman to name a few. these characters were some of the earliest creations of comic books which lead into an industry of games, films and entertainment for the world. people gained influence from art inscribed onto walls which created an industry of entertainment for such a big audience.
3. art styles and colours
as seen from above comics can have different art styles, styles where comics are capable of being non serious all the way to being dark and serious. comics appealed to different audiences and the different audiences enabled writers to create different approaches enabling them to provide a wide range of entertainment to people. some people preferred a comic with non serious typography with " kapow " and " crack " in them, whereas other audiences preferred comics with more serious story lines. this in turn lead the industry across many horizons and places which made it what it is today and also created all of the characters and storylines that exist today.
the above images show different uses of colour and design, you can clearly tell that the middle batman image has a much darker and much more serious appearances compared to its counterpart above, its use of darker colour and detail lets its visuals really shine to the eye; making it appear much more appealing to those who would like a serious story line. its counterpart however may appeal to younger audiences as it has a much lighter and friendlier tone and use of colour and design.
4. Origins of the illustrator and where they're from
who I really wanted to talk about was Dudley D Watkins....
Dudley was born in manchester; england february 27th 1907 and was brought up in nottingham where he lived out a considerable amount of his life as he spent the majority of his time working on his art work as he grew up. he studied in nottingham school of art where he learnt the life changing skills and abilities to become one of the comic book industries's best illustrators and designers. some of his first publications came from an in-house magazine for boots while they were working as chemists in 1923. He then continued on to study at the glasgow school of art where he further increased his abilities to create drawings and have them show personality and character on paper. after finishing his course in art, he applied to various jobs in art, one of which was a private company called DC Thomson whom published magazines; newspapers and comics had a position open, which dudley had applied for.
He was a devout christian and an enthusiastic supporter of the church of christ in dundee where he had also met his wife. He contributed artwork for mission calenders, and from the 1956 he produced free of charge the comic strips william the warrior and tony and tina the twins for the young warrior which was a childrens paper published by the WEC Publications. Watkins and his wife built a substantial house in brought ferry which he had named Winsterly. He continued working with DC thomson for the rest of his life and on the 20th of august 1969 he was found dead at his drawing board; victim to a heart attack. thereafter it was a testament to watkins work that DC thomson kept reprinting Oor Wullie and Broons strips in the sunday post for seven years before a replacement was found. Watkins also had strips done for Desperate Dan in the Dandy which were reprinted for 14 years.
5. what comics did he write in?
The broons is a comic strip in scots published in the weekly scottish newspaper, the sunday post. It features the brown family, who live in a tenement flat at 10 Glebe Street in the fictional scottish town of auchentogle.
Originally created by writer R.D Low; Watkins had also helped create and illustrate the broons, his role in its development was absoulutely vital. Its strips made its first appearance in the issue dated 8 March 1936.
Since it's inception; the broons have their own biennial; alternating each year with Oor Wullie which was another comic that Watkins had a huge role in the drawing development side while he was helping develop the broons. sadly no annuals were published during 1943 and 1945 due to paper rationing in world war 2. oor wullie was abbreviated for Our William with the scottish accent.
6. Compare the artists to others?
in comparison to Nicolas Bouvier the other artist I had also been researching his styles of art and design are hugely different in comparison. while one worked for comic book development the other works for game development so the styles differ substantially.
while this image designed and developed by watkins himself you can quite clearly see there is a heavy use of colour and shading which allows the image to be very sharp and hard edged. the idea as such was not to create something normal, it was to create something that stands out and appears partially real while maintaining the comical appearance of a strip.
his work also maintains the use of several solid colours and focusing on the details while using them, but in comparison to sparth's art what Dudley lacks Sparth shows.
Sparth's images are highly detailed and must of taken considerable amounts of time in comparison, his images are of a highly detailed, highly finished quality using multiple if not most of the colours on a colour palette. Dudley's art was focused on the characters, whereas Sparth's focuses on every little detail there is in an environment by really going down into the grass on a country that's on a planet in the galaxy that he's painting, his attention to detail is incredibly focused.
one of the other well known characters drawn by Dudley was a character that went by the name of desperate dan, desperate dan was originally a desperado on the wrong side of the law hence the name desperate dan, but soon became to be a much more friendlier character.
desperate dan whom was originally drawn by Dudley up until his death in 1969 was a character that was meant to be the strongest living human in the comic book world called The Dandy; so strong he was capable of lifting cows with one hand. Dan eventually became the 2nd best loved superhero next to batman in 2011 so as each comic came into development desperate dan became increasingly popular.
Watkin's who was the first artist to start drawing desperate dan I feel spent much more considerable amounts of time drawing dan as Dudley's art compared to other artist's who drew him per say david parkins who currently draws for the dandy, stands out much more. the reason for this is that you can quite clearly see the amount of detail that has gone into the drawings of dan by watkins, his arms are shaded several different reds to give the appearance of creases in his clothes, so dudley's attention to detail was very high in some of his work.
on the bottom left image you can also see his attention to detail on backgrounds, several different shades of red and black have gone into the door and the house to give appearances of shadows and paint fade. so its evident that Dudley's work was some of the best in the industry at the time.
In this image above which is an image of " the broons " which was another comic that dudley had drawn in you can see his attention to detail again. he took time doing shadows and shades to give the appearance of physical objects. for comics he took the time to ensure hairstyles; creases and posture was correct for each character.
now in comparison to the artist below whom I also favour as potentially one of the greatest artist's who lived and still lives today. Sparth in the modern day era has similar traits in his work. when you compare two artist's from two different era's and cultures you have two different types of arts. Dudley's art is comprised of characters built into an approach for young audiences whom like comedy and slapstick action with a cartoon like appearance. whereas Sparth went down the road of concept art for the games industry which lead him into an artistic style of the below. the art style which consists of sharp, very in detail and accurate art, which comes across very serious to an audience of all ages mainly 16's and above.
his detail in the images are incredibly deep, the above which shows a battlefield full of tripods no doubt inspired by the famous war of the worlds depicts such detail your clearly able to see right far back into this image of war. the backgrounds are so in depth you can almost deter what colours and approaches he has used to create such detail. one thing I have noticed about sparth's work is most of his work has a theme of colour, the above image is of a light brown and grey, whereas below is a theme of white and grey and the bottom is of brown and blue. he mainly uses from what I can see two main colours to set the image in, to give it a environmental colour, to imagine what kind of atmosphere this image or world would be.
the next two images follow a similar approach of two main colours and a theme as I mentioned above. you can quite clearly see how much detail sparth, like dudley in his own manner, puts into his images of art, these images no doubt have also probably had their run through photoshop, so already this places sparth at an advantage compared to watkins who purely had to do detail from the hand and mind, whereas many effects and settings can now be added to images in this day and age which no doubt enabled sparth to create some impressive visuals.
In detail this final image I can see that there are many different layers used in this, as there are in most of sparth's work. to some respect sparth and watkins have the same abilties as they are both more than capable of creating stunning pictures that show their attention to detail. Albeit they work in completely different areas of art but still share the same traits of being able to go down to the bone when it comes to bringing characters and pictures to life.
I think in this image there are 3 main layers of art, all layered within each other, there is the left side which consists of dark frames brought to the front to give the appearance of a perspective out of a broken building, while you have the ship and mountains lodged between that and the background ahead. The background no doubt would of ben drawn seperately then added at a later date. as adding all of the shades of blue and brown mixed with glows of white would of taken some time to create. I do understand that to create such incredible images an artist must take their time with any piece of work to create the most stunning visuals.
Nicolas " Sparth " Bouvier
Sparth whom is originally from france, is an extremely talented artist who spent considerable amounts of time doing what he loved, drawing and painting throughout his life. during his journey to adulthood his art became so noticed he eventually landed a job in the games industry and had earned the tasks of working on such games as Halo 4, Rage, Assassins Creed and prince of Persia. He grew up loving science fiction and so would often draw for his love of worlds created only by imagination.
He has been an active artistic director and concept designer in the gaming industry since 1996. He now lives in seattle, washington, working for microsoft. having had the privilege of travelling to many places at an early age he was able to get a real idea of landscapes and scenery. he visited such places as singapore, USA, china and europe, and also had the chance to go round his home country. during these journeys he was heavily influenced by many different cultures and during this process he was able to intake and feel for what different worlds are like, and how the lives of the living can be significantly different through another person's eyes. this had effectively enabled him to get a real view for all the tiny minor details that he was able to witness.
Sparth has contributed to the development of several released games since 1997 and worked with capcom and Namco. his work and portfolio with these companies had managed to eventually land jobs with ubisoft, which then lead him to work on the assassins creed franchise. his highly detailed work and influence for modern architecture managed to land him another job with MS in 2009, which lead him to work on Halo.
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and as you can see it is clearly shown by the images of his work. Most of his work focuses heavily on scenery which is of a futuristic origin, surrounded by ships, buildings and scenery from space or from other worlds. his work had been published in many books under the titles of Structura and Structura 2 from Designstudiopress. The work Sparth was capable of producing made him the star artist for the halo franchise. As Halo was based and set in the future of mankind; some 500 years ahead of time, sparth was capable of producing some incredible work for Bungee and 343 Industries at the time.
this which is of some early Halo design work, shows how detailed his art is, everything about the image shows how unique the world is, everything so intracately done from every cloud, graze and colour even detail on the air and atmosphere, no details have been missed. he focuses very heavily on colour, ensuring that each detail is correct and to the right standard; you can quite clearly see that sparth has an incredible imagination for such work as it is to a high quality.
Conclusion
Ultimately one person can use different styles and yet still achieve such incredible success with their talents, Watkins was a sharp and focused designer, who wanted to show characters for what and who they are, whereas sparth focused on landscapes and getting every tiny detail down to the tee correct while simutaniously using massive amounts of colour and layers. respectively they were and are still incredible artists, which shows how far and where art comes from and where it can go, and what it can become.
Sources 1 - Google
Source 2 - Wikipedia
Source 3 - sparthconstruct.blogspot.com
