Cartoonist Stan Drake had a gift for drawing from photographs. He easily turned photos into elegant line.
But a photograph couldn't show him how to draw those invisible motion lines. Look how awkwardly Drake expressed movement in this next picture.
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| Drake's motion lines are contradicted by the hair hanging flat and other body language |
Similarly, look how badly Al Hirschfeld-- a talented artist in other respects-- draws the path of this punch:
Contrast Hirschfeld's motion line with the line of Leonard Starr, who understood the arc of an arm:
Capturing movement with a static drawing requires an artist to imply beyond what is visible. To show what has taken place before or after the recorded instant, it helps to understand the distribution of body weight and support, balance and counterbalance, the function of muscle and bone, the flow of clothing and hair.
Photo reference is a great tool for artists who have already paid their dues but if you haven't, it leaves you exposed when it comes to the invisible parts of drawing.
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| Notice how there's no weight behind this punch. |
34 comments:
Well, I have a friend (comics artist) that cannot support invisible lines. He says that you don’t need them if you represent correctly the movement. It’s not idiot.
Photo reference is a great tool for artists who have already paid their dues but if you haven't, it leaves you exposed when it comes to the invisible parts of drawing.
It leaves you exposed in the visible realm as well... :)
Photo reference is only a handy, convenient way of harvesting facts. Nothing else. But those facts have to be recognised and selected as essential for the synthesising into a poetic whole. That's to say; facts are not the same thing as truth.
By the way, I'm not fond of the use of speed lines or movement lines. It's 'on the nose' and as cheesy as those POW!, ZAP!, KERRAAANG! captions in the 60's Batman TV series, but not as much fun.
Who was the first to use the lines this way? Or was the evolution unclear, muddled, uncertain, half-assed? Seems like the first use might have been both useful and mis-understood. We tend to belittle abstractions that were once marvelously inventive but now are banal e.g., air flight.
In sequential art the only invisible line is that which is drawn between writing and drawing.
Motion lines do not imply motion, they signify it. Usually, as in most of these examples, when the utilizing of movement lines irks the reader, it's due to poor syntax.
In the first example you provide, I can only assume that the woman was facing in another direction in a previous panel. Otherwise the lines make absolute no sense. But, assuming such a context: When read as a whole, first there's this massive bulk of text you have to plow through. Then, the woman, facing forward in a static pose. Then come the lines. This makes no sense...unless the woman is meant to be portrayed as turning away after having spoken her lines, which again relies on a following panel where she has, in fact, turned away.
In the second example, the path of the punch seems matched with the overall style of expression. The syntax is fine and readable, as we easily follow the fist from the moment of impact to its stop, via a comically exaggerated path, far away from the policeman.
The third example yet again examplifies poor flow. The distance from the bold "THAT" which seems meant to synchronically accompany the landing blow and the landing blow itself is unintentionally comical. The expression of all those words - so many words! - come before the expression of the strike.
And in the fourth panel, the punch happens before the movement initializing it. Time is all out of joint. Mirror-flip the panel, and the syntax is fine.
Anonymous-- I'm not sure what significance you attach to the difference between "implying" and "signifying" motion. In both cases, motion is not expressly shown, it is suggested. In a later comment, Kev suggests the difference is that "these are symbolic conventions, not sensual suggestions" but even if those terms correlated to "signifying" and "implying," I don't find his point terribly persuasive. A big swooping line that cuts across all the details and right angles and becomes the dominant line in the picture is closer to action painting than it is to a "symbolic convention." If properly drawn, the motion lines give more violent, vigorous release than any of the lines constrained by realism in the drawing-- a "sensual suggestion" if ever there was one.
One of the glories of drawing is that it enables us to hint what came before or after the scene (or inside or outside the crop line, or in the mind or in physical reality, etc.) in countless ways. I agree that "good syntax" is important to the staging of a picture, but for my taste, you place too much weight on syntax and the volume of text. In the fourth example, it doesn't matter to me that "the punch happens before the movement initializing it" nearly as much as it matters that the Phantom is standing ramrod straight and delivering a knock out punch from a foot or two away. "Mirror-fliping the panel" would do nothing to cure that.
In the second example, it may be that "The syntax is fine and readable" but the motion line indicates that the punch was delivered as an odd, inverted swoop (which could not have mustered much force) and the reaction of the policeman's body wrongly suggests that he was hit from below (swooping upward rather than downward). Hirschfeld's scenario may obey the laws of syntax but defies the laws of anatomy and physics. Which do you think is more important?
Apatoff -
When considering if a line of words is beautifully wrought or not, there are many approaches. One might consider the typography (or calligraphy), focusing on the composition of linear flow and forms in the graphic composition. Is it aesthetically pleasing, does it look good?
Or, attention might be drawn to the precision and delicacy of syntax. Are the symbols arranged in a proper order according to the logics and rules of the language they spring forth from? Do they read well?
I might marvel at a page of Iranian script that makes no sense to someone actually able to read it as I might marvel (and despair) at receiving in return my own scripts, proof read and copy-edited.
Of course, such delineation is theoretical work. In practice, the ebb and flow of semantics cannot be so easily controlled.
But when considering artistic elements of style particular to sequential art, subordinating the specifics of sequentiality to general anatomy makes little sense to me. I could counter your critique of the Phantom's punch with a reference to Bruce Lee, but that would be beside the point. His punch lands before the swing as it does in this very sentence I am describing it in.
Does anyone know when and where these kinds of conventions appeared? I'm certainly no connoisseur of the strip cartoon idiom but as far as I can tell they seem to have arisen in this realm. I can think of no instances of these graphic conventions appearing in fine art before, let's say, 1900.
I’m fairly certain most fine art historians would categorize motion lines as typical of Modernism.
Kev ferrara: This has been the 349th time I've explained this on this blog."
I know, I know, and whether we call it "explaining" or "repeating yourself," I thank you for your patience. The thing is, lots of commenters here have developed strong feelings about their personal ipse dixits, and until we're able to identify who among us is the new Pythagoras, we seem to have no choice but to remain a little tolerant and open minded.
"Comics are the sequencing of graphic events. Not naturalistic pictorial expressions. The goal is that the sequencing be naturalistic, not the individual sub-events."
Why do people keep telling me I'm not allowed to look at a comic panel as a naturalistic pictorial expression? Fans of Chris Ware have been making the same claim for years. They insist that I'm not allowed to judge a panel by its design or line work or other "sub-events" by which a drawing is normally judged. They won't even let me call a panel a "drawing." I'm surprised to hear this from a fan of Frazetta whose comic art sequencing was anything but naturalistic. He, more than most, drew a series of staccato "sub-events" in Johnny Comet and his war comics, far better suited to be broken out in his later heroic paintings. Yet people have been able to enjoy his comic art anyway.
The motion lines we've been discussing here take place only when there is sequencing within a single panel. Sequencing between panels is an entirely different matter. Within the confines of a single panel, lines can be used to play with time and achieve all kinds of interesting things. A dotted line can be used to map the circuitous path home of Billy in The Family Circus, or the workings of a Rube Goldberg invention. A dotted line also can be used to show what Mutt & Jeff are looking at.
When Alex Raymond used imaginary motion lines to show how fast a rocket ship was speeding, it was early enough to be near the creation of the convention. But even if we assume such lines could already be viewed as "pieces of code, explicit communications; conventions," I don't know how anyone could look at those phallic shaped rocket ships, tarted up in gorgeous, lurid Sunday newspaper colors, blasting upward through space with those streamlines behind it, and say "nope, I'm sorry, those lines can't be a "sensual suggestion" of speed and power because they're "symbolic conventions" instead. The heart and the eye aren't bound by anyone's Mandatory Instruction Manual for Viewing Comics.
Kev Ferrara wrote: Is it possible that a comic book that succeeds at being lovely to look at as individual illustrations can miserably fail at the more essential job of creating a believable or compelling sequence of graphic-narrative events?
If "creating a believable or compelling sequence of events" was truly the "more essential job," then Garfield or Nancy would be more successful comic art than the work of Frazetta or Raymond or Foster or Caniff or a dozen other cartoonists who lovingly craft traditional illustrations in each panel. You write, "What actually matters in comics is that the sequence is understood and the graphic style holds consistent." I would put "not drawing like shit" a little higher on my list of priorities, but I acknowledge that opinions differ.
When it comes to whether the motion lines around Raymond's rocket ships "are telling you nothing about the direction of movement," here's a little experiment for you: photoshop those lines away. At least when I tried it, most of those rockets looked like they're hovering in space.
As for your own experiment with the Leonard Starr panel (removing everything EXCEPT the motion lines) I agree with your conclusion: the swoosh starts with the star and travels in the opposite direction. I'm just not sure what that tells us. I don't think the swoosh can serve as a "sensual suggestion" when stripped of its context.
Anonymous wrote: "when considering artistic elements of style particular to sequential art, subordinating the specifics of sequentiality to general anatomy makes little sense to me."
It's not just general anatomy (although I think poor anatomy is as important as "poor syntax" in explaining why the examples here "irk the reader"). It's the whole range of illustrative skills that I prize more than how closely the writing and drawing "synchronically accompany" each other within a single panel (that is, whether the word "THERE" is too far from the delivered blow in that Starr panel.)
Hal Foster drew a series of panels that could be viewed like pictures at an exhibition. (https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-enormous-advantages-of-form.html ). To the extent they were knit together, it was largely through the text alone. Imagine Foster's surprise (as well as the surprise of the rest of the civilized world) to hear that Prince Valiant failed at the most important duty of a comic strip.
Apatoff -
You're looking at the panels, not reading them. You might similarly disregard catastrophic misspellings and grammar in the verbal text found in these panels, and instead focus on how, for instance, the curvature and line weight of the letters seems inconsistent with the lines delineating musculature or drapery of the non-verbal content. And that's fine. Iranian script looks pretty.
Anonymous and Kev Ferrara-- Kev says, "I do not find Garfield... believable or compelling as sequential art." But don't sell Jim Davis short; I think the huge popularity of Garfield-- far more popular than any of the other comics or artists you might advocate-- is largely attributable to what Anonymous calls "the specifics of sequentiality" and what Kev calls "a sequence of graphic narrative events."
If you've ever heard Davis lecture, he turns out to be a very intelligent man and a master of producing "readable" strips using the syntax, logic and rules which you feel are the most important part of sequential art. Davis says he tries to distill his strips to 25 carefully chosen words or less (he shares' Anonymous's aversion to "wordy" panels) He says he wants the average reader to get to the punchline in fewer than ten seconds because if readers spend longer than ten seconds, they might guess the punchline ahead of his drawings.
When it comes to Garfield's drawing, Davis eliminates those messy backgrounds and details that might distract the reader from the flow of the narrative (the way Hal Foster does). He doesn't play with different angles and cropping and lighting-- the kind of variety which was the self-indulgent style of prideful but now obsolete comic strip artists who cared about the quality of the drawing within panels. Instead, Davis may change only one element in three nearly identical panels, to focus readers on the sequence that really matters. No wasted effort trying to identify the transitions that matter, no confusion caused by shifting perspectives.
Davis has really created the superconductor sequential art-- perfectly frictionless-- "arranged in a proper order according to the logics and rules of the language they spring forth from." Anonymous wants to know: "Do they read well?" I don't know how you could argue that Garfield doesn't. Look at how Davis' syntax has revolutionized the comic page. The complex drawing of soap opera strips by artists such as Raymond, Adams, Drake, Starr, Kotzky, etc. is extinct, replaced by worse drawing but better sequential syntax.
> However, if the art in a comic is so compelling that one does the opposite; appreciates the pictures and then goes back to read the story, that too is a kind of failure.
Even if they read it sequentially, art that is too compelling breaks down the timing of the panels. You end up forgetting the dialog you just read, because you're busy soaking up the content of the art. Any amount of detail pulls you out of the story. To get the narrative pacing down perfectly, you have to strip the pictures down to very little.
I think this is a major problem with the art form as a whole. Most of the best comics I've read from a narrative point of view stink when viewed as art, and vis-versa. Lots of young idealists out there think "I can make the first comic that doesn't suck -- it just needs good art AND good writing." Not entirely sure that's possible.
Kev Ferrara-- your historical examples surprise me. The Swinnerton strip is like a three ring circus, with all kinds of chaotic action. The Harold Gray strip is laden with more text than a typical soap opera strip, and all kinds of plot complexities. Yes, the joke from the Little King is a simple joke, but we wade through a lot of unnecessarily ornate drawing to finally get there. The Teeny Weeny strip has all the angle shots and varied backgrounds and changing characters that Garfield eschews. So perhaps I am missing the point of these examples?
I agree that Frank Miller has some excellent moments combining words and pictures, but he has also given us many dense pages to wade through. I would put Kirby in the same league with Toth.
Kev , what was that Toth panel from - incredible ! My scanner is down , but there are several Johnny Comet panels I'm sure you are familiar with : several of Comet's car flying and warping in mid air and Comet punching a goon out , breaking a chair in the process , some of the best use of motion/activation lines I've seen . And do you think Mignola has in some respects matched Toth ?
Hi Al!
I believe that Toth page is from Bravo For Adventure.
I'm fairly sure I know which panels in Johnny Comet you're talking about. For example, late in the series, Comet wearing a flat black shirt punching out a goon in a bowler (Frazetta probably did it in late '53 or '54 when he was really starting to get good.)
I love Mignola's Hellboy storytelling, and find it enormously effective. But even leaving aside his technical expertise and pictorial rigor, Toth's depth of thinking and originality is startling to me. He did comics in something like ten or fifteen different styles, each effective in its own right, as he toyed with different graphic methods and ways of orchestrating narrative events. (It was no surprise to me that Toth attended lectures by Harold Von Schmidt, because his level of thinking about pages and panels and pictorial effects parallels a lot of Brandywine composing ideas.)
To Movieac - I don't know of any that concentrate on 20th c (mostly american) illustration that are as good, but there are plenty that have occasionally covered it; don't have links, sadly, but when searching a particular artist's name under 'image search' I've found a few (usually blogs). James Gurney's blog has a list of a few on the left hand side if you scroll down ( https://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/ ; he also often covers illustration there, alongside his generous art instruction). Other than that there's the concrete of paper: the now sadly ended Illustraion Magazine from the Illustrated Press, plus their books http://theillustratedpress.com/ and the Illustrators magazine (similar but slightly different emphasis https://bookpalace.com/acatalog/illustrators-all-issues.html
Sorry if you already know these. (If you know of anything else yourself, please share it here !)
Much thanks, I will check these out.
Movieac—Here are a couple of sites I find very interesting:
Art Contrarian by Donald Pittenger, artcontrarian.blogspot.com
and Lines and Colors by Charley Parker, linesandcolors.com.
Now, Art Contrarian features a different painter or illustrator each Monday. Many of his recent features have been European artists or illustrators from the mid 20th century. He covers a wide rage of artists. Lines and Colors is also very good but concentrates more on representational fine art. Occasionally Charley features an outstanding illustrator. Both of these sites are accommodated with a brief background of the artist and work displayed.
Sites like this are a labor of love and are very demanding to maintain. I don’t know how James Gurney has the time to do such a fine site with daily posts covering instruction and featured artists.
Thanks Paul, just what I was looking. For.
Thanks for a very interesting piece. I've been studying the Stan Drake panel and trying to work out why it fails so badly - it isn't just the lack of hair movement. There's a failure of observation here: when a person turns, they start with the neck and the head, and then the torso follows. The woman is supposedly turning her entire body as one object, so it reads falsely.
From what I've seen of Leonard Starr, he seems to me far ahead of Drake as both an illustrator and a comics artist. Would you agree?
Scott Gray—No. This is a cheap shot.
Scott Gray-- Yes. You're right.
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