Welcome to Marvel’s The Art of Storytelling! I’m Stan Prokopenko and It’s time for you to
get SCHOOLED in the ways of making comics. Since my experience is in classical figure drawing,
I’ve gathered many of the best Marvel artists in the comic industry to show you their process,
their techniques, and how they make every drawing enhance the story they’re telling.
Storytelling
Now, Storytelling isn’t just in the words in the speech bubbles, it’s in every aspect of a
comic book. It’s in how the panels are laid out. How the characters are posed and composed on the
page. What their wardrobe and living space says about them. The lines, the marks, the color. ALL
of this will affect how your audience reacts to your art, and the emotion in your story.
And there’s so much to cover. In this course we're going to tackle one topic at
a time so you can practice and focus on a single skill before moving on to the next.
As you internalize the lessons from one section, these concepts will start to
become second nature, growing your skill set as you advance through the course.
Course Structure
We’ll be covering 9 topics in this course
Our first section is Writing! We’ll cover basic story structure and more complex
topics like build-up, pay-off, ideation, planning, and brainstorming. To create
engaging comics we need to understand the beats of storytelling and develop interesting characters.
Marvel Super Heroes are known for their strong motivations, emotions, and flaws,
so think about not just what’s great about the hero you’re writing for, but what they struggle
with as well. A great story combines these aspects with challenges for the characters.
Next is Penciling where we’ll go over techniques for drawing everything,
from simple shapes and textures to complex characters and storytelling.
Comics are a fast-paced industry: you work on finding the right balance between drawing quickly
to maintain energy and momentum and ensuring your work is clear and understandable. When you try
penciling, start loose: Begin with loose sketches or scribbles to discover shapes and ideas,
then gradually tighten up, erase, and refine your forms. And try using red or blue pencils for
underdrawings. They can help you plan and refine your work before committing to final lines.
Inking can enhance pencils with lighting, rendering, and shadow to make strong
compositions pop. We cover the tools of traditional inking and practice techniques
to boost your confidence when laying down lines. You’ll want to practice different
stroke techniques involving various types of lines with different line weights, from thin to thick.
Practicing different stroke techniques will help you create dynamic lines and convey form, texture,
and light. Inkers also need to collaborate closely with pencilers. Gaining knowledge in
both skills is crucial for better collaboration, whether you want to pencil, ink, or do both.
In the Cinematography and Perspective section, we’ll look at what shots work
best for the emotion you’re trying to convey in your story. We’ll establish
narrative through shot selection and bring the eye of a cinematographer into your comics.
You’ll want to compose your panels in a way that guides the reader's eye through the page. Use
elements like vanishing points, character placement, and panel transitions to create
a smooth reading experience. And familiarize yourself with various shot types like long shot,
medium shot, close-up, extreme close-up, worm's eye view, and bird's eye view. Use
a mix of shots to create visual interest and emphasize key moments in the story.
How do you take a comic from a script to a drawing? That’s what you’ll learn in the page
and panel layout section. We’ll give you tips on page composition, planning your layouts,
and how you can dictate the tempo of a story with panel placement. When composing a page,
think about what the most important piece of information is. Everything else on the page
should either aim to lead up to that panel or move beyond it. Use diversity in panel
layout to keep your readers engaged. Avoid tangents and keep the composition simple.
Focus on making each panel clear and easy to read.
Characters are why most people read a comic and we’ll show you how to
approach designing and drawing characters, silhouettes, and teams. If you want to make
expressive and dynamic characters, you need to practice your gesture drawings:
Practice drawing small, head-to-toe studies to improve your understanding of body movement and
structure. Keeping the gesture studies small will help you simplify the figure and get
more figures done quickly. And practice various poses too. Show strength, power,
cowardice, confidence, sassiness, and humor. Try to tell a story with body language alone!
Then, we’ll work on Environments. We’ll show how the location can tell a story of it's
own and how to assemble an interesting environment for your scenes. Treat your environment like a
character. Environments can help convey the mood, tone, and atmosphere of a scene. Don’t just draw a
character on a flat background in every panel or your story won’t feel grounded in reality… even
if that reality is in space! When designing your environment, think about what kind of character
it is and how it can support the story. It’s also important to do a pass where you focus
on small details. Small details can make a big difference in the believability of an environment.
You can enjoy a good black and white comic, but getting that pop of color can make the
book even more engaging. We’ll cover how to find harmonious and pleasing colors,
and how to use color as a dramatic tool. Coloring is important in defining spaces. To do this,
you need to separate planes, create contrasts in value and color temperature,
and decide on light sources to define the spaces in your artwork. This will help guide the reader's
eye and improve your visual storytelling. And make sure to prioritize what you’re
doing! Spend your time on the most important parts of the page, and give less important
areas less detail. This will help you manage your time effectively, help you focus on the
most impactful elements, and draw the reader's eye to the most important parts of your image.
Finally at the end of all things, we’ll tackle the first thing any comic fan sees when they reach for
a book. The Cover! Covers need to be approached differently than the interior of a book and we’ll
go over the do’s and don’ts of making a cover. Be mindful of trade dress: Remember to consider
elements like logos, title, and credits in your design and you’ll have a cohesive
and professional-looking piece. There are title designers who can add those elements to your cover
art, but if you want the title to really interact with your design, you can do that stuff yourself!
By the end of this course, if you’ve watched the lessons and practiced the concepts,
you should see a dramatic improvement in your craft as a storyteller and artist.
You’ll notice the small details that add up to a stronger comic and composition,
and you'll understand the complex work that goes into each issue. You’ll grow
as an artist and appreciate the craft more in the process.
And you can take concepts from this course and translate them to other fields
in the industry. Storyboarding, animation, Manga, illustration,
and character design. The skills you’ll practice here will come in handy in many other projects.
Now, what materials will you need for this course? Most of the lessons can be completed with standard
pencil, ink, and a sketchbook. You’ll get a peek at some fancier materials you might not be used
to, but what’s great about comics is that one person or a small team can create epic worlds
and scenarios without worrying about a VFX budget. There’s no budget! For now, I recommend gathering
a sketchbook, some graphite pencils 2H, HB, 2B, 4B, blue or red colored pencils, some erasers,
ballpoint pens, brush pens, and 300lb bristol paper for when you work with ink. There’s a
lot more you could get, but using this as a base will start you off on the right foot.
We’ll color the comics digitally since that’s the industry standard. And actually, the whole course
can be done digitally with a computer and a drawing tablet if that’s your preference.
Assignments
Like all Proko courses, we’ll be giving you assignments. At the end of every section you’ll
get a project to practice what you learned. If you want to really improve, I highly recommend
you do these. You don’t have to be good at them. If you’re really struggling, you can
do them multiple times, do them again at the end of the course, or ask for help in the community.
And like all Proko courses, there will be some free lessons for everyone to enjoy, but this
course in particular is very heavy on the premium content. All these instructors recorded days of
content each. You don’t want to see my server’s hard drive space. So you’ll be getting a ton of
premium exclusive content, extended lessons,
and resources at proko.com/marvel. And it supports our goal of creating the best
art curriculum with the highest quality production value. So please check it out.
On proko.com/marvel we’ll be releasing videos and resources regularly. You can follow the
course to get alerts whenever a new lesson comes out and you can talk to other students
taking the course in each lesson’s comment section! Alright, let’s make some comics.