THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Wednesday evening of last week, my friend Paul, came over to my desk and handed me a drawing. It was a copy of a drawing he had done of Hellboy (Dark Horse comics) filing down the horns of The Demon Atrigan (DC comics) while he struggled to get away. It was a very silly drawing.  He then explained to me that the day before he and Tommy (my friend and my Assistant Director), had gone to lunch and started talking about how there are a lot of comic book characters from different companies who either looked a lot alike, where of the same archetype, or who had similar names.  They thought it would be fun to draw them fighting each other in some way. They even went so far as to write up a list. The drawing he had given me was the first drawing he had thought up to do.  He then asked me to join in. I thought it sounded like fun so I did.

It’s funny how the same idea can get interpreted in different ways.  Tommy was taking his drawings very seriously.  He wanted to have the characters he drew, fighting each other in a very dramatic fashion.  Meanwhile, Paul was all about being silly.  He wanted to find the humors side to the conflicts.  I sided more on Paul‘s side than Tommy‘s.  If I was going to join in, I wanted to find the humor in the situation.

Little did I know how much I was going to get into doing the drawings.  Something about the “assignment” really sparked my imagination.  During my initial conversation with Paul, and after I had seen the list, I had noticed after looking at the 67 couples they had thought up, they were missing Superman (DC Comics) vs The Sentry (Marvel Comics), which I thought would have been an obvious one.  Paul told me I should probably draw that one.  I spent the rest of the day thinking about  how to draw them.  In fact, I spent the rest of the day trying to come up with ways to draw many of the characters I had seen on the list.  I ended up coming up with quite a few ideas and by the time I got to work the next day, I couldn’t wait to start drawing some of them.

For the rest of the next two days, whenever I had a break or some time (like during lunch), I would spend that time drawing something up.  I quickly found myself at once enjoying the process and getting frustrated at how limited my drawing abilities where.  My first drawing was the most painful, mostly because I was trying to get the hang of drawing in a completely different style than I’m used to.  Also, I need to come up with the shorthand I needed to be able to produce a drawing in a “comic book style” quickly. When I was finally done with the first drawing, I was a bit disappointed with myself. Mostly because, (1) it didn’t come out the way I wanted it to and (2) it felt a bit stiff.   I had intended to make the drawing a bit more exaggerated and cartoony but  somewhere along the way, is went a bit too far in the other direction.  What I ended up with is a weird drawing that is not quite cartoony and not quite realistic, and for some strange reason, The Sentry’s proportions don’t look quite right. Also, the hands I drew are a bit wonky.  You can always tell the quality of an artist’s draftsmanship by how well they draw heads, hands and feet.  These are the most difficult part of the body to master.  In the end, the result was a drawing that I was not too happy with, but it was a drawing that helped me gauge where I was at artistically and where I  wanted to take the next drawing.

I was much happier with the next drawing. Not only do I think it works much better, not only did I draw what I intended, but I also drew it in a shorter amount of time AND I learned a lot drawing it.  Suddenly, all I wanted to do was draw this stuff all day.  I didn’t want to go back to doing my work (although I did).  I haven’t had this much fun drawing in a long time.  I’m most likely going to be putting these drawings up on the blog for the next couple of weeks.  And if you notice that I’m not writing as much, it’s probably because I’m spending more of my time drawing the silly superhero drawings than writing on the blog.  I’m actually in the mood to draw again. That’s just amazing to me.  I better ride this wave while I can.  I don’t know how long it’s going to last and I’m learning and improving more with every drawing I do.

So here are some of the drawings we did this week:

Tommy‘s first drawing was Captain Marvel (DC comics) versus Captain Marvel (Marvel Comics). They have to fight because they share a name.

Paul’s first drawing was Hellboy (Dark Horse comics) versus The Demon Atrigan (DC comics). They fight because they are both demons.

My first lousy drawing was Superman (DC Comics) versus The Sentry (Marvel Comics). They have to fight because they are practically the same character.  Even down to the fact that they get their power from the sun.

My second drawing that day and the one I was a lot more happy with, was The Question (DC comics) versus Rorschach (…er…DC comics. Okay so this is a cheat but at least they are from different comic books universes). They have to fight because they are pretty much the same character as well.

Okay, that’s enough out of me, I gotta draw.

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