We start this week off with a Red Hulk cover. I normally try to stay away from critiquing an artist's style, but in this case I have to say something. Basically, if you're gonna do an extreme close up of a face, you better bring it. This illustration feels more like a sketch for editor approval than a finished piece. I'm not saying it has to be photo-realistically rendered, but it just feels sloppy and unsure more than expressive.
Speaking of rendering, air-brushy rendering can't hide the lack of artistic ability to draw the female form. If I had this artist in front of me, I'd slap the J.Scott Campbell comics outta his hand and replace them with a Famous Artist course book or an Andrew Loomis "How-To" book and say the following: "It works for J. Scott. You? Not so much."
OK, can somebody tell me when Superman's costume changed to a shitty hue of blue-green? Then the colorists adds into the mix some "Prince Purple" to make me wonder if he/she is color blind, which would be supremely ironic. Or maybe he/she just hates Superman. It's hard to tell.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....snort,wha, ummm. Sorry, I fell asleep. This cover works better than Sominex....Boring angle, boring poses, and the expression on the Baroness is....well, expressionless. Maybe she's just checking out her drooping silencer. C'mon people, Baroness is supposed to be super hot. Her gun should be fully erect at all times!
This isn't a cover, is it? Seriously. It's really art on the side of a 70's van. Admit it. You can't fool me.
I actually like this cover. Well, what it could have been. As it is, it's just too dark, which is too bad, because all it needed was something like the red I added to make it pop; or for that matter, any light color. Dark tones like this are fine, but when the entire cover is dark, it's just too much. Also, the dead space is just screaming for a designer to get in there and do something cool with the title, but we're talking about comic book covers here, not major paperback book releases. And they have much bigger budgets.
Sometimes, even JSC cannot pull off his version of the female anatomy, but when it works, it is something to see.
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ReplyDeleteIn defense of the Action Comics cover, I've noticed the covers you pull come from the Diamond site tends to butcher to the colors they get from comic companies. I think it has something to do with converting CMYK to RGB. I had this problem once years ago when I posted comic pages I had colored myself (CMYK)on Facebook (RGB) and they were retina searing. I absolutely LOVE this blog and seeing your critiques makes my week, but I wish you'd post better (more faithful) versions of the covers.
ReplyDeleteWell, if you have a better scan why don't you post it? I've made changes to the blog in the past. And you're wrong about converting CMYK to RGB. It's not that big of a change. I do it all the time. And there's no way Superman blue changes to that shitty blue-green because of the conversion.
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DeleteActually, I think Billy is right. DC does something to their cover jpegs, and they show up with the colors very weirded out. Used to happen to my Blue Beetle covers every month. For some reason, it always seem to look like this on Newsarama, in particular. Is that where you got the image, by chance...?
DeleteYeah, the blue does look a lot better on DC's site. Think this link should work. The outfit blues still seems a little weak to me. But not as green.
Deletehttp://www.dccomics.com/media/product/2/1/21063_400x600.jpg
Nope. The colors are still wrong in my opinion.
DeleteThe red hulk cover looks like an octopus shitting out satan. That looks nothing like the hulk.
ReplyDeleteThe G.I. JOE cover really shows no storytelling skills...just a reference to a pose. The art isnt bad, but if you are going to do a cover, tell a story, and not such a boring one please. The shadow of th bad guy would have been a better fit for that cover...or something that says "yearbook" photo .
The girl with the books...who is she to tell dracula to keep it down? We all know frankenstien in 80's suit doesnt say much..so thats not a problem. for me, the amount of space the signature is taking up is proof the artist was not breast fed as a child. and one last note...name on nameplate please. At least its telling a story...
The girl with the skull pile cover ...I just like the fact that I got to say scull pile somewhere today.
I love your mangina Jimmy.
DeleteI don't know if it's a PC to Mac, CMYK to RGB, tiff to jpeg issue or a combination of all three, but something is definitely lost in translation.
ReplyDeletehttp://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a3v_9kuFqQA/Ty6mLVifGJI/AAAAAAAABIU/SrkK7vxzGug/s1600/CoverComparisons.jpg
You covers always look great, so whatever it is you're doing, keep it up.
I really enjoy it when you fix the covers, really good work
ReplyDeleteI love this blog! Way to go, Dave! I feel like I've learnt more in the weeks I've been reading this, than the many years I've been drawing. Keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteKeep this blog going! Can't tell you how helpful I find this stuff, I wish more comic types would post their unfiltered (or semi-filtered) thoughts on the work that's out there.
ReplyDeleteI do believe the "librarian" cover is supposed to be a caricature of Sarah Palin and Frankenstein is Obama. It's a parody/steal/homage of this image by Zina Saunders. http://www.drawger.com/show.php?show_id=36&image_id=1095
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