[Music]
Hi I’m Ryan Benjamin I’m a professional comic book artist.
Stan: Oh bam!
Ryan: Yeah.
Stan: Oh, he's cool.
Ryan: I work for Marvel and DC comics and pretty much anyone on the planet that's willing to hire
me. I’m going to demonstrate some techniques that I use pretty much every day and that's something
I like to tell people - I like to tell a lot of students - people who want to get into comics,
people who want to get into just drawing for fun, you need to draw every day.
So, I try to tell this to people because if you don't practice, you're never going to get better.
If you're constantly having a lot of distractions around you,
it's going to slow down your improvement and your progress. So, put yourself - put your mind in that
state of - I’m working, I’m drawing and you're blocking out pretty much the rest of the world.
I like to tell this people because it's what I do. This is what I do. I do this
every day when I’m actually working. I put myself in that zone and I block myself out.
Sometimes I’ll put - I’ll play music in the background or I’ll have a movie playing
and I won't even watch it, I’ll just listen to it because it helps
feed the visuals that's in my head and it comes out on paper as I’m drawing.
First let me - let me go over my materials. I have a handful of materials here. Uh, what I
love to use, my red pencils. I use my red pencils to set up my pages and this is the first stage
that I go through and the reason why I do this is because you need a layout. Some people thumbnail,
some characters, they might do some quick little thumbnails over here and they might say - okay,
panel one, panel two, panel three, panel four and they might scribble some stick figures in here.
Some people might actually do a larger page and you know,
they'll - they can dissect the pages like this and say panel one, panel two,
panel three, panel four and then within those panels, they'll scribble
character here, character there, background here, background over here - they'll scribble stuff like
that. But to transfer that to the actual board, some people immediately go straight to the pencil.
What I like to use, uh, this is my standard pencil. I love using - I love these pencils,
these Tombows right here. But I typically use 2B. 2B is pretty dark you can get some nice strong
dark lines like this. It stays pretty clean and it doesn't smudge too much.
So, as your hand is moving around you won't smudge and
it won't get too dirty and too muddy, especially if you're going to noodle
in like little tiny little areas or you scribble something down, you're going to get someone's
eyes like this and then next you know, you're adding all these details and next thing it
starts to get a little bit muddy, like this, and then you start to lose the eye a little bit.
It's hard enough but it's soft enough where you can get a nice
strong - nice strong black which is why I like to use this. So, I use my reds to
create my layout and this is my thinking stage. So, now I have my thinking stages down.
From here, I don't have to think anymore - it's just execution.
When I actually going to draw my pages, it's literally just go in and you just figure out
where the character is, what is he wearing, is he wearing a jacket you know, you have here you know,
what is he looking at, does he have a weapon in his hands and as you - as you see, I’m
quickly jumping right into this. I’m not really thinking too much about it, it's just execution
because all my thinking is here and sometimes I’ll actually go in a little bit more detail.
Let's say there's a character's head here on this page right here
and it's a real - extreme close-up of this character in this panel.
I’m thinking about this - I’m going to lay out where I think his eyes are going to go,
I’m going to quickly lay out his jaw, the top of the head, the ear, his neck, his mouth, nose and
pretty much anything else that's going to go in here. If he has hair, I’ll quickly scribble that.
And now I have a rough of the pencils and now all I have to do is just immediately go in
from here... I always start off with the eyes
because once I have the eye, everything else flows from that and that's how you
communicate with people - you talk to them, you look at them - you look at them through the eyes.
So, I am actually gonna go straight to the eyes first and I’m just gonna make up a character here,
it doesn't matter. I try not to think too much. The best way to explain it to people is I try
to feel it because when I - when I think, I slow down and I’m like okay, I’m second
guessing myself and so I’m thinking "Hmm, maybe I should change this" and to do this or do that and
you know, it's more just explode on the page, you know? That's literally how I think about things.
So, from here, as long as I hit my key points, it's all instinct at this point, you know.
Drawing a page, I try and like I said, I try not to think - the only time I think about it is when
I’m reading a script. I’m reading, I’m thinking, trying to interpret this and like "Okay, what's
going on here?" blah blah blah, "Okay, I get it. Got it", boom and then from here on, it's me,
my background music, uh, whatever I’m playing in the background - sometimes I listen to news all
day, is just have the news on, you know. I love documentaries and I just listen to documentaries,
stuff that makes you think.
You can see how I’m quickly knocking this out. From here, now I have the base down. Now,
from here at this point, if I need to clean up anything, I’ll go in and I can - I use my eraser
and I’ll clean up you know, you can quickly go make any adjustments that you're making - let's
say this character has a logo on his chest or doing any cross hatching over here, you know...
You know, stuff like that.
Now, all this is going to live within this panel, now you know exactly what's going to go on. Now,
this is the process I use. I’m going to do another demonstration to show you
guys a cleaner version of this. I’ve been teaching this where I show my students...
Just create these dark areas like this. Then once you have a dark area,
go through quickly, block it out and you can go as detailed as you can.
You don't have to go this large because I’m going pretty large
right now. But after you block out these certain areas, from here,
you start to render out from that. Now, this is an exercise I recommend that you do because
it's going to help you understand your blacks, your grays and then your absolute white areas.
If you have a round object here and you have your shading,
you're going to want to know where your absolute blacks lie,
where your grays land and then your absolute bright areas. Now, those three in combination
that you can be using that over and over and over and over and over throughout your process.
So, this is a technique that I like to show people to use because I literally use this for anything
I do on a page. Let's say I’m doing someone's hair, all right? I’m gonna scrub some shapes
and then from here, block it out, start to render out from that.
Every time I draw this is how I - this is the technique I use.
Block it out, render out from that.
Now, the reason - again, the reason why I do this is for speed - quickly knocking this out. And
the beauty about it is that when you have an anchor who can read this, they'll pick up on
this energy that you're creating right here and they will be able to ink this pretty easily.
Stan:
Thank you Ryan. If you're digging Ryan's art, check out his website and Instagram in the links
below. Ryan also teaches at ComicProBootcamp.com where he and a few other legendary comic artists
teach the skills needed to become a professional comic artist. We got more lessons with Ryan coming
up, so if you're not subscribed, hit those buttons and we'll see you in the next video.