BASIC TRAINING
written by George Pérez
transcribed by Vu
published in WIZARD: THE COMICS MAGAZINE #77 (Jan 98)

(continued)

Size DOES Matter As I said earlier, size relationships should always be kept in mind. Usually, larger characters are pushed further back, while smaller ones are in the foreground. However, make sure that relationships remain clear. Let's take the two size extremes: Giant-Man and The Wasp would look standing on the same horizon line, but without any perspective lines or backgrounds to indicate how far they are from each other. Without that scale, Giant-Man and Iron Man seem to be the same height, while the Wasp appears as tall as the Scarlet Witch. Then add perspective lines, and the illusion's exposed. If we drew Giant-Man taller in the first place, though, there's be no such illusion. So, to maintain Giant-Man's sense of height, always draw him bigger than other characters, regardless of where he is in the picture. Conversely, overlapping the tiny Wasp in front of any larger foreground character full establishes how tiny she is.

NOTE: Speaking of overlapping, try not to have characters butting elbows with each other, since that might fool the reader into thinking they're standing side by side, rather than on different planes of depth. Overlapping definitely solves the problem of who's in front of whom.

Frequent Flyers
Since we've got a vertical space to fill, we should decide which guys and gales are on the top and who's on the bottom. (Get yer minds outta the gutter, class.) The top is easy: to be in the sky, ya gotta fly - although leaping characters like the Hulk and the Beast also fit in this category. Flying characters are useful, since they can be drawn in deep perspective, so all you really need to draw is the character's upper body. This can save quite a bit of space.

Ground Control
The lower half of the page is usually where the non-flying members are relegated. Primarily, they're runners, but all runners aren't created equal - no two characters should run exactly the same way. Speeders like Quicksiver would seldom be at the rear of the charge, although we have to slow him down so he doesn't run out of the frame.

And not everyone needs to run. Some characters work better posing, like Hawkeye and Crystal pictured at the right. It adds variety to the shot and draws the reader to their area of the page.

Here, There and Everywhere
Then there are those characters who can have it both ways. Characters with expansive abilities, like Machine Man, could actually be in many places at once just by stretching out over various points of the illustration. (Check out the finish piece on page 138 to see what I mean.) Gimmicks like this brings a sense of design and unity to a group shot.

Right

Wrong

Black + Black = Black
Be careful to keep characters clear. Drawing two black-suited characters overlapping each other makes it hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. If you're not sure who will be inking the piece, you may be asking for trouble. Either avoid the problem, or make it easier by throwing some highlights on the outlines of the conflicting characters (as I've done in the example on the left.) And since we're drawing in black and white, pencilers often fail to consider color's effect on a group shot. Thanks to modern coloring techniques, placing characters with the same color costumes together is much less of a worry. (Although, for the sake of balance, try to avoid having all your red guys in one group and all your blues in another.)