Crackpot fanart theories and Wraithfall

[mutecornett]

devildoll kindly scanned Wraithfall, so I downloaded it out of curiosity and uh. SGA tie-in comic, how is it that you trace so obviously and yet Teyla looks like a Korean girl with her hair bleached to a brassy red in that second panel of the first page, and Rodney looks freaky and utterly unlike himself?

Comments

[elfiepike]

have you ever checked out ex machina? in the trade paperbacks, they show some of the "making of" and the artist definitely draws pretty much everything from photos. but! it seems there is a GIANT LEAP between drawing from photos (which i have actually heard naysayed by another comics reader, but i don't know why) and actually tracing a photograph. i'm unimpressed by the samples provided. it seems like they just really didn't want to invest the right amount of time and money to getting it to look good or even passable, but since i don't expect i'll read it*, maybe i shouldn't make any judgements. :/

* because it doesn't look terribly good, because i have a higher standard for comics and don't like glossy pages and, oh yes, it would not be david hewlett saying rodney's lines. <3

[mutecornett]

I haven't read Ex Machina, but I like Tony Harris's artwork from what I've seen of it. And drawing from photographs is, I think, considered totally acceptable, whereas tracing... legally, the SGA artist is allowed to do it but it seems like a crutch--and a wobbly one at that, since it didn't turn out that well.

I know I'm probably expecting too much from a tie-in comic to a TV show, but it's curious that tracing doesn't get the *feel* of a character right most of the time, especially since it's a direct 1:1, unstylized thing.

(Is Ex Machina really good? I've been hesitant to try it because I haven't heard anything about it either way, and there is no pain greater than being sucked into a series only to find it gets really bad at the end, so.)

[elfiepike]

ex machina! i quite quite like the first volume! and i own the second, but haven't gotten around to reading it yet. sigh. i tend to be somewhat bizarre like that, possibly. i would recommend checking it out in your local comic shop of choice, for sure. it's a very intriguing premise and it's not over yet, to my knowledge. :)

[lobelia321]

Interesting!!!

[ileliberte]

I think somone mentioned on the thread (was it you?) about choosing the wrong things to trace and I think that's the major problem with drawing strictly representational art. I've been working on a piece with John and Teyla stick-fighting (is there a better name for it?) and my default attitude is to be fussy and pernickety, so trying to get away from a point where drawing every single crease on the face makes Teyla look like a 90 year old woman rather than a hot young 20s-30s to a place where the essential Teylaness has to be preserved but some artistic license has to be taken in what to discard from the original. In a lot of the Rodney pictures in the comic, the lines are there, but I think the artist chose the wrong ones to keep, thus probably making it a good partial tracing, if anything, but losing out on the personality and making it into a random person who has a vaguely Rodney-like face. Same with Teyla, if even more so since in trying to make it feminine, even less lines seem to have been included. With John, I think the

[mutecornett]

I think this hits exactly what's wrong with the comic--and it would explain why John ended up looking all right. But, er, yes, that was me in reply to fan_this up above. :3

[quettaser]

Oh goodness, I hadn't been looking at the scans of the comic, but those boggle my mind. It looks like he's very stingy with facial shadows and defining lines (unless the panel is very close) and the style of coloring doesn't complement that choice (which may not be a choice, just strange tracing) AT ALL. The color would have to be much sharper in order to define the facial features in a way the inking doesn't.

I mean, there's ways to be minimalistic in both color and ink, but this style of coloring isn't the right kind of minimalistic (or at all, really) to match the ink.

(Really, I just want to yell "Where is Teyla's nose?" and "There's a shadow at the bottom of the eyes tooo!" very loudly and then scamper off to make icons or something.)

[mutecornett]

I think he's probably working from low-quality screencaps? Some of his decisions are kind of inexplicable otherwise, like with the designs on the puddlejumper outsides.

And, totally agreed about the coloring.

Re: FAIL

[liviapenn]

Maybe I'm just coming at this from a different angle because I'm a major comics fan and so I want GOOD COMICS DAMMIT *g*, but honestly, I would rather have *expressive* art than realistic art, just because realistic art is so incredibly impossible to do well, unless you're Alex Ross or something-- unless you're *perfectly photorealistic*, you hit the uncanny valley and everything looks wrong.

Like, compare the way Angel looks here: lumpy and weird and just *not right*...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v38/liliaeth/new%20page/spikeoldwounds15.gif

to Angel on this page. It's not even colored in and his head is so tiny, but you can TOTALLY tell it's Angel right off:
http://geocities.com/ryansook6/spikedru2

Re: FAIL

[thundercrap]

Is it just a thing where fans will go into absolute reverie for chibis or minor representations, but will get all testy if you make a half-assed effort on drawing them and they're *gasp* not exactly how they should look in fanland?