Drawing Cutting Edge Comics

by Christopher Hart

Comic book artists are now developing cutting-edge, extreme comic book characters that go beyond the traditional heroes and villains. The heroes are grittier. The women are sexier. The pages are designed for maximum impact. Heroes have been turned into highly cool antiheroes, such as the famous characters Spawn and War Blade. Cutting-edge comics venture beyond the traditional boundaries to extreme anatomy, extreme costuming, extreme special effects, and extreme methods of storytelling.

Drawing Cutting Edge Comics is the first-ever guide that shows readers, step by step, how to draw the radical characters and cutting-edge techniques that are the gold standard for designing extreme comics. Dozens of fantastic, how-to illustrations demonstrate the basics as well as how to create such intense coloring techniques as knockouts and glows. Plus, several leading cutting-edge artists describe how they spin original character designs, many created exclusively for this book.

Genres: Art, Drawing, Reference, Comics, Nonfiction, Visual Art

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

I started drawing character designs and storyboards for a small animation studio in while in High School. Cartooning and animation was a magical experience to me. I try to bring that experience, as well as art tips, to my readers. Their enthusiasm also motivates me.

Early in my career, my cartoon work got noticed by Watson-Guptill, a premier publisher of art books. They asked me to do a book for them on drawing cartoons. It sold 200,000 copies, which is a healthy number. So we kept going. I discovered that I enjoyed the art of creating books, which has its own special requirements. I also worked as an author for Random House, Quarto and Soho Publishing. In total, I have had 8 million books sold, and have been translated into 20 languages.

My book, "The Master Guide to Drawing Anime: How to Draw Original Characters from Simple Templates" has sold over half a million copies to date and is still very actively in print. An earlier book of mine, "Manga Mania: How to Draw Japanese Comics:" reached the number one art book in the country, according to Bookscan.

I've also been a cover story on the industry trade magazine, "Publisher's Weekly." And if you've read this far into my Bio, then I'm more impressed with you than you are with me!

Thank you so very much for letting me offer some inspiration to you in your art adventures.

Christopher Hart

Reviews

[Jay Goemmer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Drawing Cutting Edge Comics (2001) by Christopher Hart.

Cutting Edge? Not so much... The comic book equivalent of "extreme" sports. While comic book figures are obviously drawn "larger than life," this book takes that technique well over the top. If you're not distracted by recurring illustrations of women with proportions which don't remotely resemble reality (augmention notwithstanding), you won't mind this book.

Instead, I recommend Hart's books _How to Draw Comic Book Heroes and Villains_ for a less "extreme" treatment of his method, and _Human Anatomy Made Amazingly Easy_ for general guidelines on drawing the human figure without a live model, and checking the proportions of your subject by "internal" reference.

Others have suggested _How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way_ (1978) instead, and I concur. I also highly recommend _The DC Comics Guide to Inking Comics_ by Klaus Janson (2003) as a companion volume.

Make sure you look at this one in the bookstore before deciding to buy it.

(27 Aug 2005)

[Brennen Hunt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think that this is one of the better "how-to draw comics" books out there. Let me start be saying most of Chris Hart's books are not good at all. They are almost always some cookie cutter step by step anime and manga book that doesn't teach you anything. This book however is one of the few exceptions, I really enjoy this book and one of the reasons I like it so much is that I reminds of the old Wizard Basic Training books. This book features tons of different professional comic book artists that actually know what they are talking about. Some of the artists consist of Darryl Banks, Dave Hoover (one of my fav comic artists), Talent Caldwell and lots more. This book covers lot of different subjects such as perspective, designing page layouts, The Dos and Donts of expressions and composition, How to make a page feel more dynamic, and even some anatomy. Sadly, Christopher hart draws most of the full body anatomy, which in effect makes the anatomy look way to "cartoony" and disproportionate (for my liking). But for the anatomy of the head and facial expressions the featured artists do a superb job at showing clear and easy to understand basics. Overall, I think this is a great addition to anyone's how to draw comics collection. I would not say to spend a lot of money on this book, check and see if you can find a relatively good deal on it. If you want this book just for anatomy, this book just won't cut it. If you are looking for a good comic anatomy book, look at Chris Hart's other pretty decent book called Cutting edge Anatomy. Other than that of you can find a relatively good deal on this book, definitely pick it up. I'm decently sure you won't be disappointed.

[Centauri · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a bit timed. I mean, was there really a time where "cutting edge comics" mean 'curvaceous females for eye candy' and 'gritty make protagonists simply because the boy scout was overdone' in the comic industry? Sadly, yes. So part of the poor rating is how dated the information currently is. Beyond that, the instructions are also lacking, barely surpassing basic instructions. This was supposed to be a next step, next level, how to on how to make comics, and it felt like the beginners guide a child would pick up. Example you demand? I know I need to do foreshortening to help make depth; having characters come out at the reader makes it pop and seem more dramatic and spectacular. But exactly how do you do that? How do you create a real-looking version of that? Also, the foreshortening examples in the book don't actually look that great.
I did appreciate the examples of distorted perspective, using color in character design to change type of character, suggestions to think about how my work could crossover into other media (<-- my favorite chapter in the whole book, almost garnering an additional star, almost), hints on how to design a dramatic fight scene, and warning against doing too much on a comic page with the panels (less can truly be more, when working on a comic; allow the reader to fill in some blanks). These tips were helpful, but the book as a whole was a bit overdone and disappointing. This is solely because the book says do these things (as hints or suggestions) but does not really instruct how. If it was a beginners guide book, then give it an extra star, or even 2. But drawing cutting edge comics means I am wanting to learn beyond the basics.
The chapter about an agent is even scarce of details, recommending websites to get info. Um, thanks? I already knew I could do that. But I must admit, I did like the section where 1 character was interpreted by several different artists, and they did feel different (especially the old war-guy wearing fused hide-tech). So yeah, I did not get as much out of this book as I expected, and that sucks!

[Tracie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent book for comic creation ideas and tips.