Feeling Cranky
Well...the Patriots lost. I'm from New England, so this is a big deal to me. On the other hand, the Giants aren't so bad, so it could be worse. I mean, it could have been DALLAS or something.
*shudder*
Nevertheless, I'm in something of a funk this morning. And I came across THIS little tidbit.
Greg Land, at his most tracey.
And since I am feeling curmudgeonly, I can only look upon this and feel compelled...COMPELLED to point out that This Picture Does Not Work!
For one thing, where is the light source? Is it coming from Nightcrawler's "Bamf" effect? If that were the case, the figures would be backlit, but that doesn't seem to be the case, although I notice that the male figures all have a lot heavier blacks and shading.
However, Emma's light source seems to be coming from the right-hand side of the page. Likewise for Cyclops and Wolverine. However, both Nightcrawler and Colossus seem to have their light source coming from the left-hand side of the page. As for the young female figure in the center, (and who the hell is that anyway?) I'm not exactly sure WHERE the hell her light source is coming from. Also, she only seems to have one wing. Must make it a bit hard to fly, if that is indeed her "schtick".
Perhaps there are multiple light sources. If that were the case however, how can Colossus and Cyclops and Wolverine be so deeply shadowed?
Also, the little winged girl, is posed as standing behind Wolverine, and yet, her arm is in front of him, yet not touching him, which is physically impossible, at least in this particular application.
I know that Mr. Land is capable of drawing, I've seen some of his old artwork, and it is pretty darned good, but this mania for tracing has really become ridiculous. It looks as though he has just randomly traced a variety of figures and then cobbled them together.
Other people than I have pointed this out before. I have to admit however, that this sort of thing drives me nuts, possibly because I like to draw myself. I'm always VERY careful to put in a consistant light source. Perspective is another nice thing to use. And backgrounds. And FEET!
Wanna see a nice piece of work? With shadows and proper lighting and stuff?
That's how it's done.
posted by SallyP @ 9:11 AM
6 Comments:
I looks like he wanted Wing-Girl (or whatever her name is) to have her arm resting on Wolverine's shoulder, but he couldn't find an image of that to trace, so he just used whatever was handy.
How does this man still get work?
-Phil
The only light source I can identify is the lightbox that Land used to trace these figures.
To see a similar type of shot that Land used to handle much better, try this:
http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=64051&zoom=4
He was a damn fine Nightwing artist.
I LIKE his old stuff. He did some very nice work in old Birds of Prey too. Why in the world did he decide to give up actual drawing?
His new stuff is very slick and showy, but it never actually...fits...right, because he just pulls poses out of various magazines or whatever, and they don't actually RELATE to each other on the page.
If he didn't know how to draw, I wouldn't be so mad, but he does, so I guess he's just lazy.
hi
the winged girl is Pixie, one of the ex (new) New-mutant or new x-men or whatever the team of youth could have been called.
she can fly, she's got "pixie dust" which causes hallucinations and recently she gains a souldagger which can harm magic creatures and she seems to have learned a little of magic.
well it was like a Sally's CSI comic episode, I liked it ^^ and you explained right all the problem.
N.
Pixie or not, she's going to have trouble trying to fly with only one wing.
I think part of the reason he's started relying so much on tracing is to increase his output. I remember back in his NW days he wasn't exactly Wally West in the speed department and had to have other artists, most often Patrick Zircher, fill in for him frequently.
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