Yup, we're back again, and this time, we're going to focus on the artwork side of the house.  If you'll remember yesterday, I talked about why it's necessary to have a good but brief script.  You can have the greatest novel ever written and it won't matter a bit if you have to have the script to the greatest graphic novel ever written.  The two are not the same.

So it is the same with artwork.  The artist spends most of his time focused, learning from the great and the grand, mastering the styles and finding his voice.  It is a worthy endeavor, as any artist worth his salt would never want to populate his pages with drek.  In fact, you'd think a good artist would craft his work to perfection, giving nothing other than grand endeavors to the writer to work with.

Right?

Uh oh….

That's right, it's not right.  Like the writer who has to be brief, the artist has to be "brief" as well, though his brevity comes in a different way.  Once again, we turn to a master of comics for a hand.  Read pages 48 and 49 of Scott McCloud's work Understanding Comics.  There, McCloud details as to why not only much the writer reach for the artist, but the artist much meet for the writer.

 In short, the two must meet in the center to achieve comics perfection.  The art must compliment the writing and vice versa.  If the artist is trying to paint epic artwork, and the writer is working on Volume 17 of 25 for the first page of dialog, you end up with a slight gulf of understanding between the two.

For the artist, a few things must be kept in mind:

1.  Keep the DaVinci Code at Home.  As Ayne even admits, unless you're doing a showstopper of a page or something that requires the need for detailed art, fuggedaboutit.  They're painful, they slow you down, and – gasp! – people will generally skim over them.  They are, after all, reading a comic, not gazing at an artbook.  And there is nothing wrong with artbook art.  That's where you really want your artwork to shine, where you want to show all the folds in the dress, the engraving on the hilt of the sword, every blade of grass in the prairie.

But in the actual story itself?  It's a waste.  Worse, it might even detract from the writing, making the art seem all that much lesser, especially if it's a week story.  Yes, you might want to show the world that you can painstakingly reproduce marble patterns by hand, but that's what art prints and bonus art is for.

2.  Keep It Simple.  Do not go overboard on panels.  Experiment with pages, try to find the right balance, but don't do an Andy Warhol on each page.  There have been generations of artists long before you, from Will Eisner to Carl Barks, from Bob Kane to Osamu Tezuka, from Herge to Prinz, and they have all experimented on the medium, found what works…and what doesn't.  Don't slavishly stick to their styles, but don't ignore what they found didn't work, either.  Again, guides such as The Marvel Way or a myriad of other art books are a treasure of resources.

3.  Keep in Contact.  Through all this, don't forget to work with your writer.  You might be the one who shapes the view of the world, but he's the one that puts down the frame.  However, if he's not an artist himself – or worse, comes from a different artisitic discipline, such as film – he likely won't see the finer details of how things mesh (for example, film is in constant motion, something comics are implied but not actual).  As a result, the writing will reflect that, and it's your job as artist to ensure, via meetings, storyboards or even corrections, that everything meshes.  For those of you who handle both duties, it's just as important; take off the writer hat for a bit and put on the artist one long enough to see the problem.

And because we have none, tomorrow we'll take a different tack.  Scheduling.