Favorite Artists: Alfonso Azpiri and Vaughn Bode

Haven't updated in a while, so I thought I'd post a couple more of my favorite artist. The reason why I lumped Azpiri and Bode together is because they're not in my top favorites but I do like some of their art. 

Azpiri has a nice, loose style, and of the most unique I've seen in the comic field. I love his flamboyant gestures and soft colors. He is most well known for his character, Lorna.

Bode on the other hand, has a completely cartoony style, but I really like his use of thick outlines and vibrant colors. I also like the fact that although his work is cartoonish, it has a real technical style to it, especially apparent in machines or guns.

Review: Ranx Integral

I ordered Ranx: Integral from Amazon France a couple of weeks ago. It's a  hard cover collected volume of all of the Ranxerox stories, including the first ones drawn by the writer, Tamburini. The art in the original comics is okay, but the art of Liberatore(whom I will update on this blog sometime in the future) is where the series really shines. The book is well put together, printed on nice quality paper, and the colors look great. The book is divided into 5 chapters: The Origins, Ranx 1: Ranx in New York, Ranx 2: Happy Birthday Lubna, Ranx 3: Amen, and a bonus section of sketches by Liberatore(many of which I hadn't seen before).

Sorry about the bad photos, I didn't want to use my scanner and ruin the integrity of the book's spine. Too bad I can't read any French, but I have read all 3 volumes before. Out of the three Liberatore volumes, I still think that Ranx 1 is my favorite, both in terms of art and story. I find the style to be the most unique of the three, and in my opinion, Liberatore seemed to go overboard sometimes in his rendering of Ranx 2. Ranx 3 still has a great style, and Liberatore also manged to get a better grip on drawing female faces in this one, but the story, as other people have said, wasn't quite as good as the first two(most likely due to Tamburini's death before it was finished). As a bonus, I uploaded a couple of the sketches from the back of the book.

Shadowrun Sketches

Phobos here, wanted to show off a couple of sketches I did. These two characters are "runners" you can hire in the awesome game, "Shadowrun" for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System(or SNES).

Here they're pictured in their in-game portraits:


And here are the sketches I did.

Favorite Artists: Burne Hogarth

Along with Andrew Loomis, Burne Hogarth has to be one of the best anatomy instructors you can find. He practically defined the word, Dynamic with his drawing books. Besides his Dynamic Library, Hogarth is best known for his comic adaptations of Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan. The way his figures are built are just so simple to understand, and easy to follow. Every aspect of his style is just plain Dynamic (I hate to use the same word more than once, but you'll find that it's very appropriate). I don't have much else to say about the guy, but the addition of his books to my collection have vastly helped me to improve with my own artwork.

Here's some amazon links to his books, if anyone's interested.
Dynamic Figure Drawing

Drawing Dynamic Hands

Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery

Drawing the Human Head

Dynamic Light and Shade

Now you know why I used that word so much.

Favorite Artists: Paul Bonner

Paul Bonner is one of two artists that I enjoy(the other being Alex Horley) that I was introduced to through looking up artwork from the obscure RPG, Mutant Chronicles. I instantly loved his style, and soon bought his artbook, "Out of the Forests".

Earlier in this blog, I mentioned how Frank Frazetta can be best described with the word "dynamic". I think the word that best suits Paul Bonner is "fun". Paul is great at mixing two different genres. He perfectly melds together the menacing, dark subject matter with just the right amount of whimsy. His monsters, while intimidating, often have quite cartoony expressions and exaggerations, everybody's muscles are comically enormous, the weapons are absurdly giant...etc, but each component works so well with each other.

Another impressive tidbit about Bonner is the fact that he paints completely in watercolor. No computers whatsoever. In addition he's also quite modest. Quoting his artbook, he says "I don't find myself particularly good at drawing." Even though his book is littered with amazing sketches and prelims.

Favorite Artists: Moebius

Born in 1938, Jean Giraud, later adopting the pen-name, Moebius, is one of the most prominent French comic artists of all time. He earned his first amount of fame for the creation of the western hero, Blueberry. In 1975, he co-created the french magazine Métal Hurlant which became known as Heavy Metal in the US, the most famous sci-fi/comic magazine of the 70s and 80s. He has collaborated with the talented Geof Darrow below, and is considered Katsuhiro Otomo's favorite artist. One of his other most famous creations, Arzach, has starred in a few very influential comic strips, heis shown on the left. Moebius has also worked as a concept artist on such films as an uncompleted Dune adaptation, Ridley Scott's masterpiece, Alien, The Fifth Element, and Disney's Tron, among many others. What tells you he's a great concept artist is the fact that while he was on the crew of Alien for only a few days, several of his concepts were mostly realized in the film. Giraud is really also one of the most imaginative artists I've ever seen, and develops very rich, fictional cultures to go along with his creations. His artwork to this day is still very fun to look at.

Favorite Artists: Geof Darrow

Haven't updated in a few days, so sorry about that. Next up on my list is the incredible Geof Darrow. He is most well known for his great work on Frank Miller's "Hard Boiled" and his concepts for The Matrix trilogy. Darrow's level of detail and technicality astounds me. I have no idea how he does it! Looking at the image to the left, working with that much detail would confuse me! I'd probably mess up somewhere and have lines intersecting where they shouldn't be, items out of perspective...etc. Either that, or I would just run out of patience.

Now, some would complain that Geof Darrow's work is too detailed, with no good spot to rest your eye on. That can definitely be the case sometimes, but Darrow's work, like a Where's Waldo picture, is incredibly fun to look at and take in every last minute detail.

He also collaborated with Moebius on a portfolio of prints entitled "City of Fire" or "La Cite Feu", where Darrow did the layouts and pencils, while Moebius rendered the whole picture in his style. The prints were really large, and I would love to see them all. I included one of them at the bottom of this post.

1st image from:
http://grantbridgestreet.blogspot.com/2009/04/yay.html
2nd Image from Gil Chaya at Comicartfans.