Arsenic Lullaby-Judge Fear commission finished and progress pics
When Last we left I started to show you a commission I was working on...then got distracted by making fun of the deathtrap known as Elon Musk's "cybertruck". If you are a fan of my work...don't ride in the front seat of one of these contraptions, a frontal collision of any meaningful impact will almost certainly spell your death. Before I was a comic book illustrator, I was a mechanic...just don't do it.
Anyways...here was the commission request- Judge Fear and Captain Britain...
In a lose interpretation of this famous scene with Judge Dredd fighting Judge Fear
The sketch originally had Captain Britain in a newer costume, fighting Judge Death
...but he decided he wanted the old version of Captain Britain vs Judge Fear. Fine by me...it's no more or less challenging. so off I went with the finished pencils...
Then inking...
Now the hard part...those impact lines.
Impact lines are something I pretty much never do when I'm illustrating. I don't have anything against them, per se. And they are very effective.
I just...I dunno...I feel like it's too jarring for my personal style of visual storytelling. Every single panel I do has some hint of the background in it, and I prefer to not have the figures in a panel absent of that. In real life the background doesn't vanish and get replaced by beams of light when someone gets punched. It feels a little like "breaking the fourth wall", because it is completely admitting/betraying to the reader that this is a comic book not an event.
Just so I'm being clear, and because none of these terms have been written in stone anywhere...an impact line would be different than a "motion line". Look at this page below.
The boxes I put a red border around have what would be "motion lines' they are used to imply motion. Repeated shapes imply motion the the sub-conscious, is why I think illustrators came up with using these. It's an obvious directional signal anyway, even if they weren't being that cerebral when first coming up with this technique.
and the panels with blue borders around them have "impact lines" they all converge on ...well...an impact, usually a punch or kick or sometimes the point at which something crashes into something else. These are repeated lines, but all converging, which sends a different signal to the sub- conscious.
I dunno...like I say, it doesn't bother me when I see it, and often it is very effective...but there is give an take to using it. and the "take" is breaking the illusion of this being some event happening somewhere because the background and sometimes even part of a character is just completely replaced by them. Know what I mean? The motion lines do this a bit also...as does writing out a sound being made. But words and sounds being written out is going on continually and can happen without leaving out any background.
anyways, Rather than having them all come to one focal point in the picture, I gave it two focal points and winged it in the middle...so it would be a bit less oppressive to the readers eye.
...I guess it turned out alright. I am currently taking on commission. I did BUNCH last year during the Holidays and winter, I won't have as much time this year, but I can do a few. Send me an email if you'd like on douglaspasz - at-- arseniclullabies.com
Later
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I think the key thing from a narrative and design perspective is that impact lines aren't obscuring the background – because for one narrative beat nothing in the background is important in that area. The reason that they are effective is that human consciousness focuses on moments of impact, of specific imagery which communicates a single important second, and all else fades away. This is why people are notoriously bad at reporting what has actually gone on around a significant event, because their consciousness is focused at that single beat.
Doing that within a paneled framework makes use of that subjective experience that everyone has had.
So, for example, if we take the Captain America page that you reproduced and highlighted, look at the composition of the panels where significant impacts occur. It's important to note that even if there were no impact lines, the background wouldn't convey any more information than we already have from previous panels. In the first, all that would be there would be the chest of the Leaper. In the second, all that would be there is Captain America crouched and uncoiling. These are things that we already know exist in that narrative; the only thing that's important is first the uppercut and then the Roundhouse. That and the agonized expression that says how effective those impacts are.
It's absolutely true that impact lines are a purely abstract representation, and as such, certain methods of storytelling in graphic art are more suited for using them than others, but seeing them as replacing or leaving out background isn't how they are usually presented. They are, instead, probably better thought of as ways to focus the attention of the viewer on a specific moment for narrative purposes, just like using a shallow depth of field shot in cinema in order to focus the viewer's eye on action that's occurring at a specific point.
All very true and well said. The drifting into abstractness, where the impact lines are more of a symbol than an actual visual that we would see, is what bothers me about using it in my own work.
My stories, to my mind as I am writing/illustrating them, are being done in comic book form because that is the medium that is the most readily available to use and distribute in most cases. I don't imagine impact lines being on a cartoon or film, so I don't imagine them when I'm making the story in comic book format.
Having said all that, they are effective when used correctly, and accomplish giving visual information the the reader ( the dramatic force and impact of a given punch or such) in ways nothing else quite could.
There's give and take with any set of techniques you use. If you look at Wally Wood's work on EC comics (I'm gonna assume, by your in depth answer/understanding that you know who he is. if not I can find some examples for ya) He used no abstract devices like impact lines of motion lines, and his work then, while beautiful, was quite boring compared to the excitement in a Jack Kirby page.
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