Mark Millar Illustrations for 4Talent Magazine
Every now and again a dream project comes along, and 4Talent magazine (an offshoot to Channel 4 in the UK) were kind enough to send such a project my way. They commissioned me to illustrate a biography of comic writer Mark Millar's career, over two double-page spreads. You wouldn't need to know much about comics to be familiar with the name, but for those of you who don't, you'll almost certainly be familiar with the characters he's written about - Judge Dredd, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America, X-Men, Fantastic Four, The Hulk and many more. I'll explain more in a moment, but here are the pages for you:
In the first spread, I've covered Mark's career in terms of being inspired by the first Superman movie, and then moved onto Judge Dredd and Big Dave (that's the guy with the pint!) which he worked on at 2000AD. With DC he created Red Son, the famous Superman graphic novel where the American icon crash-lands on Earth twelve hours later, becoming a Soviet symbol of power instead. Also shown are the characters from The Authority, which Mark took over from Warren Ellis, and led to his big break with Marvel...
In the huge Civil War 'Marvel Comics Event', Mark took a look at what might happen if superheroes were forced to reveal their secret identities, and needless to say, some take it better than others. With Ultimate X-Men he refreshed the characters for a new era, and it saw Magneto reprograming the mutant-hunting Sentinels to seek out humans instead. The Wanted movie is very different from the graphic novel, but I, er, wanted to show both the outfit from the comic and illustrate the actors too. And then below that we have two of the characters from Kick-Ass, which is currently being filmed, and starts Nicholas Cage.
Now for some details from both pieces, and shortly I'll explain a bit more about how the project took shape:
Born and bred in Glasgow, Mark started out at 2000AD, later went to DC, and in recent years has worked for Marvel, often acting as a consultant on their movies, whilst getting his own material onto the big screen at the same time, with Wanted (starring Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman and James McAvoy) being the first this year. He's well known for bringing a postmodern twist to his stories, and has worked on a number of high profile projects within the industry.
Naturally one of my first questions, (once I'd got over the initial shock and excitement!) was to find out which characters I'd be able to draw, and amazingly I was basically given free reign to illustrate anything that Mark had worked on. Which given the reams of awesome characters he's worked on over the years, was also slightly daunting. Still, the key thing was to be able to take the short article, and place the text around the collage of characters in a meaningful way. And whilst I wanted to get my own favourite characters in there(!), I also had to be mindful of being true to Mark's career and getting the overall emphasis and balance roughly right. So of course, the pieces evolved slowly in pencil, and only after I had read a shelf-load of his work.
As ever, it always comes down to the overall composition, so key elements come to mind first, and then I tend to work around those, seeing how to lead the eyes around the page. This is how the pencils were looking about halfway through - as you can see some part are still much looser than others:
In case you weren't sure, this is all drawn freehand, but digitally with a Wacom tablet and pen combo and Painter software. Once I was happy with the pencils, it was time for the ink, which is always an exciting moment. There's something so gratifying about seeing how your initial concepts have taken shape, and are now becoming permanent and sharply focused. I have no doubt that anyone who has ever produced comic art, whether inking their own pencils or someone elses, has felt this unique rush.
Perhaps most scarily, Mark was getting to see the work as it progressed. This is a guy who gets to work with the most talented comic artists in the world every day of his working life, so I was both thrilled, and bricking it at the same time! Thankfully he was really chuffed with it, and even found time to send me his thoughts once we were through: "This looks amazing. Have sent a copy to lotsa friends and family and everyone v impressed. Thanks again for doing such a great job!" Talk about making my day - that basically made my week/month/year/career. So I'd really like to thank Mark for his support, and Helen Byrne at 4Talent for giving me this awesome opportunity in the first place. I hope that the four year old version of me that drew this would have been happy:
In the first spread, I've covered Mark's career in terms of being inspired by the first Superman movie, and then moved onto Judge Dredd and Big Dave (that's the guy with the pint!) which he worked on at 2000AD. With DC he created Red Son, the famous Superman graphic novel where the American icon crash-lands on Earth twelve hours later, becoming a Soviet symbol of power instead. Also shown are the characters from The Authority, which Mark took over from Warren Ellis, and led to his big break with Marvel...
In the huge Civil War 'Marvel Comics Event', Mark took a look at what might happen if superheroes were forced to reveal their secret identities, and needless to say, some take it better than others. With Ultimate X-Men he refreshed the characters for a new era, and it saw Magneto reprograming the mutant-hunting Sentinels to seek out humans instead. The Wanted movie is very different from the graphic novel, but I, er, wanted to show both the outfit from the comic and illustrate the actors too. And then below that we have two of the characters from Kick-Ass, which is currently being filmed, and starts Nicholas Cage.
Now for some details from both pieces, and shortly I'll explain a bit more about how the project took shape:
Born and bred in Glasgow, Mark started out at 2000AD, later went to DC, and in recent years has worked for Marvel, often acting as a consultant on their movies, whilst getting his own material onto the big screen at the same time, with Wanted (starring Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman and James McAvoy) being the first this year. He's well known for bringing a postmodern twist to his stories, and has worked on a number of high profile projects within the industry.
Naturally one of my first questions, (once I'd got over the initial shock and excitement!) was to find out which characters I'd be able to draw, and amazingly I was basically given free reign to illustrate anything that Mark had worked on. Which given the reams of awesome characters he's worked on over the years, was also slightly daunting. Still, the key thing was to be able to take the short article, and place the text around the collage of characters in a meaningful way. And whilst I wanted to get my own favourite characters in there(!), I also had to be mindful of being true to Mark's career and getting the overall emphasis and balance roughly right. So of course, the pieces evolved slowly in pencil, and only after I had read a shelf-load of his work.
As ever, it always comes down to the overall composition, so key elements come to mind first, and then I tend to work around those, seeing how to lead the eyes around the page. This is how the pencils were looking about halfway through - as you can see some part are still much looser than others:
In case you weren't sure, this is all drawn freehand, but digitally with a Wacom tablet and pen combo and Painter software. Once I was happy with the pencils, it was time for the ink, which is always an exciting moment. There's something so gratifying about seeing how your initial concepts have taken shape, and are now becoming permanent and sharply focused. I have no doubt that anyone who has ever produced comic art, whether inking their own pencils or someone elses, has felt this unique rush.
Perhaps most scarily, Mark was getting to see the work as it progressed. This is a guy who gets to work with the most talented comic artists in the world every day of his working life, so I was both thrilled, and bricking it at the same time! Thankfully he was really chuffed with it, and even found time to send me his thoughts once we were through: "This looks amazing. Have sent a copy to lotsa friends and family and everyone v impressed. Thanks again for doing such a great job!" Talk about making my day - that basically made my week/month/year/career. So I'd really like to thank Mark for his support, and Helen Byrne at 4Talent for giving me this awesome opportunity in the first place. I hope that the four year old version of me that drew this would have been happy:
posted by Sam G at 2:11 PM
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