Mastering Comics: Drawing Words & Writing Pictures Continued

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Mastering Comics: Drawing Words & Writing Pictures Continued

4.28 of 5 stars 4.28 · rating details · 18 ratings · 7 reviews

A new course of material to accompany First Second’s widely acclaimed 2008 comics textbook.
In their hotly anticipated follow-up to 2008’s comics textbook Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, School of Visual Arts cartooning professors Matt Madden and Jessica Abel bring their expertise to bear on the “second semester” of a course of study for the budding cartoonist. Cover...more

Paperback, 336 pages

Published May 8th 2012 by First Second

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The DC Comics Guide to Pencilling Comics by Klaus Janson

The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics by Dennis O'Neil

Vanishing Point by Jason Cheeseman-meyer

How to Make Comics

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Jun 06, 2012 First Second Books marked it as first-second-publications

Do you need a book that tells you how to make comics?

This is that book.

Jessica Abel and Matt Madden do an amazing job putting together the basics of how comics should be made -- not only for potential comics creators, but for the classroom. Each chapter has homework, additional reading, and a whole lot of examples from amazing authors.

This book is also great for teachers or librarians who are interested in learning more about the behind-the-scenes comics-making process. What goes into how your...more

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Oct 05, 2012 Tim Lewis added it

Premise: Many artists have the desire to create comics but might not know where to begin when it comes to layout, style, or the techniques necessary for creating print and digital art. Mastering Comics is a textbook covering topics including character and reader perspective, storytelling, artistic techniques, conversion to screen, penciling, inking, lettering, and much more.

Themes: One of the main things covered in Mastering Comics is creating thumbnails as a sketch of what an artist is going to...more Premise: Many artists have the desire to create comics but might not know where to begin when it comes to layout, style, or the techniques necessary for creating print and digital art. Mastering Comics is a textbook covering topics including character and reader perspective, storytelling, artistic techniques, conversion to screen, penciling, inking, lettering, and much more.

Themes: One of the main things covered in Mastering Comics is creating thumbnails as a sketch of what an artist is going to eventually make into a more detailed drawing through penciling, inking, and shading or coloring. The thumbnails are there as a guide as you go about telling the story without having to worry about spending too much time adding detail before the story or artistic details have been thought out.

Mastering Comics takes time talking about layout, especially as it pertains to how people will see the pages individually, as you turn the page, and as the composition as a whole. It looks at the visually pleasing aspects as you look at the page, as well as the natural progression of reading through dialogue boxes and narration, color schemes, and artistic style.

Another topic covered is considering the digital realm of publication. Mastering Comics talks about how to draw for the screen, especially with what resolution to scan at, how to save your documents for adding ink, color, and shading, and also for thinking about how it will be viewed on the screen when compared to the printed page.

Pros: Not only does Mastering Comics cover a wide array of topics for artists, it manages to do so in an easy to understand way. The artistic examples in the book are fantastic. I like that they offer extended examples and content on their website, especially if you haven’t read the previous book or are simply looking to expand your artistic knowledge. Having not read the previous book, I still felt like there was plenty of help in the drawing aspect to help a beginning artist, such as with perspective and size and placement relationships between people and objects.

Cons: Mastering Comics makes some assumptions about your level of artistic ability and knowledge, though it is fairly forthcoming about those assumptions. The authors give references to the previous book for guidance on art and beginning drawing techniques, though they don’t always go into much detail with those references. Some of the step-by-step instructions on creating computer graphics are not as clear as they could be (or should be in some cases).

Recommendations: This “definitive course in comics narrative” lives up to its claim. If I were going to look for a definitive place to research cartooning as a career or as a serious hobby, Mastering Comics would be a perfect starting place. There is so much in this book to talk about, it can’t be covered in a review, but must be experienced from reading through the examples and working through the exercises. After reading this textbook it made me want to get into starting a comic. I enjoyed going through Mastering Comics so much that I forgot I was reading a textbook.(less)

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Jun 10, 2012 K. V. Hardy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: art-books, reference

This is (in my opinion) a fantastic book to get anyone interested in creating absolutely any kind of story with sequential art. Whether you want to use stick figures - which is actually very good when you just want to get your idea for a story down - or eventually use complex drawings, this book takes the mystery out of it, if you are a beginner. The book is designed for groups to use, but us loners can easily use it to. After getting this book, I got some of Will Eisner's books (genius books) a...more

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May 30, 2012 Andrew Shuping rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novel

Matt and Jessica have extensive experience creating and teaching comics and in their first book, Drawing With Words and Pictures, they shared a portable classroom. Now they come back to us with further lessons in this companion book. The book covers more advanced topics in creating a good comic, such as story composition; coloring and formatting pictures; and even more importantly it has a section on how to self-publish and getting published, surely to be helpful to young writers/artists just st...more Matt and Jessica have extensive experience creating and teaching comics and in their first book, Drawing With Words and Pictures, they shared a portable classroom. Now they come back to us with further lessons in this companion book. The book covers more advanced topics in creating a good comic, such as story composition; coloring and formatting pictures; and even more importantly it has a section on how to self-publish and getting published, surely to be helpful to young writers/artists just starting out. Just like the first book, this one is divided into easy to read sections so the book can be used as a textbook or for an individual course study, which is extremely helpful and makes the book very versatile.

This text is heavily illustrated with examples to help guide readers on seeing the lesson in action. Jessica and Matt use examples, not just from their own works, but examples from other professionally published artists so that readers have an extensive bibliography of images to look at (and look for.) They also supplement the text with “further reading” sections, which allow a reader/student to continue their learning and more importantly to get an additional point of view from other working artists. I also really like how they've broken down homework assignments in the book. Not only do they put assignments at the back of each chapter to help readers learn the concepts that they've been reading about, but they also put some right after they've talked about a particular aspect, such as scriptwriting. They walk the reader through how to start the process step by step and offer examples of things to do along the way.

My favorite section in this book might just be “The Horror of the Blank Page,” which lists ways to overcome the fear of a blank page and getting some ideas on where to go next. It’s helpful to know that even the authors, experienced artists that they are, still struggle sometimes with overcoming that scary empty white page. And I think that's something else that is helpful, that Jessica and Matt share some of their own personal experiences in this book, which for me helps make reading the book easier knowing that yes, they've encountered some of these same issues that have plagued me. An important addition to this book Matt and Jessica talk about webcomics, even encouraging the students to give them a try to gain experience with not only how they work, but to help artists/writers improve upon their skill set.

This this is a great book for providing practical lessons that will be useful to readers whether they are doing a self study or in a class. Even more so it’s a great book for fans of comics/graphic novels to see what type of work goes into creating the these items that they enjoy. I give the book 4 out of 5 stars.

Review copy provided by Gina at FirstSecond(less)

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May 04, 2012 Eli rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read so many how-to-books, that I was waiting for those who went in depth and MC, did not disappoint. It went in depth on subjects of production, coloring, and scripting. It was concise and there several exercises to do to work that creative muscle and vanquish the BLANK PAGE.

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May 15, 2012 Victoria rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book has so much great information. A great start for anyone that wants to get into creating comics!!

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Oct 26, 2012 Anthony rated it 5 of 5 stars

Great intro to drawing book; doesn't focus on realistic life drawing but a good 101 for ppl new to drawing; tips from how to sit properly were interesting!

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Shelves: resource-books

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About Jessica Abel

Jessica Abel (Chicago, 1969) started making comics in college, at the University of Chicago. Her early efforts appeared in the student anthology Breakdown. After college, in 1992, she won the infamous “Stinky Date” contest in Peter Bagge’s Hate comics, and, since she had arranged to meet the artist at the Chicago Comics Convention, she decided to put together a sampler of her comics to show him an...more Jessica Abel (Chicago, 1969) started making comics in college, at the University of Chicago. Her early efforts appeared in the student anthology Breakdown. After college, in 1992, she won the infamous “Stinky Date” contest in Peter Bagge’s Hate comics, and, since she had arranged to meet the artist at the Chicago Comics Convention, she decided to put together a sampler of her comics to show him and his publisher, Fantagraphics. She printed 50 copies of Artbabe #1, but Fantagraphics editor Gary Groth, who claims not to remember this encounter, didn’t take the bait. Four issues (and four years) later, she won a Xeric grant, put out the first full-sized and professionally printed issue of Artbabe, and thus finally appeared on Groth’s radar. She began a new volume of Artbabe with Fantagraphics in 1997.

Abel won the 1997 “Best New Talent” Harvey and Lulu awards and she completed Artbabe Volume 2 in early 1999. She took time off from fictional comics in 1999 to complete a 32-page comic for This American Life, a Public Radio International program, written in collaboration with host Ira Glass, and then 2000 saw the publication of Mirror, Window, a collection of the second volume of Artbabe. Soundtrack, a compilation of early comics work, was published by Fantagraphics in 2001. La Perdida, a graphic novel thriller set in Mexico City, was originally serialized by Fantagraphics, during which time it won the 2002 “Best New Series” Harvey Award and was featured in the first Best American Comics anthology from Houghton-Mifflin. La Perdida was published as a complete book by Pantheon in 2006 and has been translated into French, Spanish, and Italian. Abel’s most recent books are a vampire romantic comedy called Life Sucks published by First Second Books, and, in collaboration with her husband, Matt Madden, a comics textbook called Drawing Words, Writing Pictures, also published by First Second Books in spring 2008. Abel’s upcoming projects include a prose novel for teenagers for HarperCollins, and a script for a graphic novel about roller derby on Mars. She is also co-series editor (with Madden) of The Best American Comics, and teaches at the School of Visual Arts. She lives with her husband and daughter in Brooklyn. (less)

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