G1 Comic Art

[STL]

I'd love to get stuck into Infiltration but this probably isn't the best place for it. But needless to say, I wouldn't even call it new. I'd call it incredilby misguided.

[Lord_Zed]

Yeah I thought Infiltration was a fairly good start to IDW's new TF universe, much much stronger than Dreamwaves first TF comic.

The main weakness of the title I think was the afforementioned crappy teaser issue 0 and the fact that it wasn't a straight ongoing series.

It was also a little sucky having to start again in a whole new universe just as Dreamwaves comic was reaching new heights. I'm kinda getting that same vibe again with AHM.

[Sky Shadow]

I just rediscovered this nostalgic piece of Pat Lee's work from before he started on the Transformers franchise. This is his 'money shot' final image supposedly demonstrating how to draw Transformers from a Wizard article. WTF? Is he sure he wasn't writing a how not to article? I can draw better than that shemozzle. Even though it looks like a collage of nonsensically and impossibly mismatched images, it's supposed to be a coherent scene of Autobots um... facing towards the right. Such action and drama. And perspective.



"When I'm finished, James Raiz, my right-hand man, will fill in background detail to complete the page - in this case, broken-down buildings."

I'm assuming this is the kind of right-hand that's probably being screwed over and not paid by the left hand.

(Hey... wow. Is that Twin Twist at the bottom left?)

[heroic_decepticon]

I don't like his art much, but his 'early' Transformers art was way better than the crap he produced for DW G1 vols 1 and 2.

And to be fair, those art pages in Wizard were some of the best Transformer art, at that time, that people had seen in awhile.

[Jhiaxus]

Pat Lee and the Dreamwave crop of artists... and IDW's crew vs. Marvel's artists.

Hmmmm... I think I'll mention three of my favourite Marvel artists, and then three important modern TF artists.

HERBE TRIMPE
The outright best comic book artist to ever work on Transformers was Herbe Trimpe. Herb Trimpe was a comic book artist with decades of experience who had become a MASSIVELY influential super-star of comic art thanks to his long and critically acclaimed tenure on The Incredible Hulk.

His work on Transformers comic covers and Transformers #11 and #12 is STILL some of the best Transformers artwork of all time. I can only think of ONE or TWO modern TF covers that could rank next to Herbe Trimpe's many insanely awesome comic covers. (He also did the 4 issue Transformers vs. G.I. Joe series.)



FRANK SPRINGER
Another veteran artist. Frank Springer did issues 1-4 of the original series, issues 1-4 of Headmasters and, randomly, issue 44 of the original series. Frank Springer was incredible.

I'll get this out of the way -- Frank had a LOT of trouble with the character models -- they were transitioning from more toy-based art to more cartoon-based art in the early comics, and in Headmasters everything was just a MESS. This is a MAJOR problem with his art.

On the other hand, his art is simply the most detailed and intricate Transformers art of all time. Seriously -- modern TF art just completely pales in comparison. Every single Frank Springer panel is BURSTING with things going on. Meaningful things. Incredible things. His Cybertron sequences are just... you have to SEE them to believe them. A single tiny panel tells as much story as whole ISSUES of modern TF comics.




DON PERLIN
Don worked on Transformers for a long time. He was another veteran Marvel artist relegated to a second-rate job on a licensed book. But he did fantastic work. Issues 17 and 18 of Transformers stand up as my favourite works of TF fiction ever -- and his art is a major contributing factor.

Scrounge, Wheezel, Straxus, he brought all these different made-up TFs to life with ease... and painted a detailed, intricate Cybertron that has not been equalled by any artist before or since. Don Perlin KNEW storytelling. Reading his issues is easy -- effortless. He knows how to frame a page, how to compose an image and how to make things READ right.

What more could you ask for?



Then there's the modern guys.

PAT LEE
Say what you will about the man... his art HAS been massively influential. And that's amazingly sad and depressing.

Pat Lee doesn't know squat about sequential art. His compositions are sloppy, with no thought put into them. His characters have no emotions beyond the infamous "Dull surprise" and he couldn't tell a story if you drew it for him.

Which people did.

Pat Lee's art is what my friend Andrew Hobart describes as "ooooo!... Oh." art. It's the kind of thing you look at and you go, "OOOOOO!" then you look at it for just a little bit longer and you go, "Oh." Because it looks flashy enough to catch the eye -- but doesn't stand up to actual reading.




DON FIGUEROA
The first fan-artist-made-good.

I don't like Don's art. I've never liked Don's art. But I like Don as an artist. I like that he experiments with his style and is always trying to improve it.

I just wish he'd improve some of the things that I think don't work about his style. Once again you have a limited range of emotions (angry, frowny, occasionally a smile), a limited range of poses and a limited range of compositions.

I am so tired of generically posed Transformers floating in space. I am so tired of comics without long shots where every single page is made up of closeups or mid shots. I am so tired of Don's boring, boring art.

Oooooo! ... Oh.



NICK ROCHE
Nick knows emotion. He knows expression. He's really great at it. But I don't like his storytelling. I find his comics... ugly to look at and difficult to read.

This is partly the colourists' fault. But also partly because his compositions are so busy and so oddly framed. He's one of those artists I desperately WANT to like... but I only enjoy about 50 percent of his stuff.

His Maximum Dinobots work in particular was just MESSY.



Transformers art has changed, a lot. The Marvel US artists had character models they were working from given to them from the animation studios. So their characters were based on these character models. They drew the characters according to those models and designs.

Nowadays, Transformers artists draw characters based on their own personal choices -- they use details from toys, from comics, from other random stuff. They make up their own designs. They character models used for modern TF comics are, unquestionably, far, far more detailed than in the old comics.

But that is the only improvement we've seen.

The composition skills of modern TF artists are not impressive.
Their storytelling skills are not impressive.
Their ability to draw emotions, and to make characters communicate, or sit in space, are, generally speaking, kinda atrocious.

The difference is pretty simple. In the old days we had comic professionals working on Transformers. We had guys who had decades of experience doing the comics and they did a good job telling those stories.

Now we have fan artists who aren't particularly GOOD at telling stories.

--Jhiaxus.
(At least, that's how I feel.)

[liegeprime]

Well one thing I hated about the early artworks is when a Tf gets hit is he does the dinosaur death split, which is ridiculous whichever way you look at it.... Im talking about they bend when hit by a blast 90 degrees backwards, like how the Optimus toy bends at the hips when transforming him. It doesnt follow physics properly you get hit in the midsection of course that portion goes back and then your upper part arms and legsremains abit back . you end up in the > position but nope early artist always drew them getting blasted in the misection they do < bend. and the hands oh my the hands.....

I like Don's art for it being mecha, but yeah he needs to work on facial expression ... his work on Macromasters is better than his work when he got under DW wing. but then I think this is due to the policy that company has on making coherent generic artwork...

I like the clean early work of Andrew Wildman, until he decided to get all melty face for the TFs on the later issues... that scene in an issue where Starscream in jet mode ( best/simplest clean one Ive seen so far) flanking Triggerhappy and Mindwipe when they deserted Scorponok is a fave panel of mine

As Gok pointed to me anyhow some of the artworks are really good but it depends on the ones doing the inking and coloringit either helps make the artwork even better or just ruins it totally..

[Lord_Zed]

Yeah the old artists art styles may not look as racy as modern TF art, but they knew their stuff, compasition, storytelling etc. And for his time Herb Trimpe was amazingly skilled at getting every detail perfect, Although he was better at drawing non fictional things.

One thing that really bugs me the way EVERYONE (in TF comics at least) can only draw cartoony human faces (and by extension TF's but I don't mine when there cartoony as much), I mean sure its was fun for a while early on but now it just plain sucks. Seriously do any of these modern artitsts actualy do life drawing every week? or even once a month? it's kinda essential for any good artist.

My all time favoutre TF artist is still Andrew Wildman, sure he used heaps of exageration, and people complain that's his TF's dribble and have eyeballs. But when Galvatron explains his mad plan to escape the bounds of Unicrons control in the old US marvel TF comic, you can see his emotions clearly in every panel. Obviously Wildman humanised his TF faces a lot more than most artists but it sure worked when he wanted to convey emotion.

[Jhiaxus]

Well one thing I hated about the early artworks is when a Tf gets hit is he does the dinosaur death split, which is ridiculous whichever way you look at it.... Im talking about they bend when hit by a blast 90 degrees backwards, like how the Optimus toy bends at the hips when transforming him. It doesnt follow physics properly you get hit in the midsection of course that portion goes back and then your upper part arms and legsremains abit back . you end up in the > position but nope early artist always drew them getting blasted in the misection they do < bend. and the hands oh my the hands.....

Are you talking about Delbo's usual hit-by-a-blast pose? That was pretty much exclusive to ONE ARTIST. Each different artist has their own repertoire of poses... and yeah, sometimes they can suck.

Modern TF artists are just as bad at this. But I'll point out that you're tarring a lot of different, unique, awesome artists with the same brush here just because of the art of one guy.

That's really bad.

I can be really curmudgeonly about treating new artists fairly -- but I always tackle them as individuals and look at their individual merits and failures.

I like Don's art for it being mecha, but yeah he needs to work on facial expression ... his work on Macromasters is better than his work when he got under DW wing. but then I think this is due to the policy that company has on making coherent generic artwork...

You can blame Dreamwave -- but Figueroa's never been THAT great at expressive art. IT's not just his faces. His figures have no expression either. They're just... well... big ole mecha. You can't tell what Prime is feeling, or what Soundwave is feeling...

Yet somehow guys like Wildman and Perlin could give those faceless guys character. Strange, huh?

I like the clean early work of Andrew Wildman, until he decided to get all melty face for the TFs on the later issues... that scene in an issue where Starscream in jet mode ( best/simplest clean one Ive seen so far) flanking Triggerhappy and Mindwipe when they deserted Scorponok is a fave panel of mine

Wildman always drew TFs with human faces and human hands. Mostly because he REALLY WANTED TO DRAW SUPER HEROES, not robots. It's a failing of his art, and something I don't like.

As Gok pointed to me anyhow some of the artworks are really good but it depends on the ones doing the inking and coloringit either helps make the artwork even better or just ruins it totally..

I definitely agree with that. So many modern colourists completely DESTROY what could be good artwork.

It makes me actually PINE for the days of Nel Yomtov. Sure he was sloppy and lazy... but at least you could usually READ what he'd coloured.

--Jhiaxus.
(I'm an old fuddy-duddy.)