On the Title Page of Super City: Arrival

Art Styles and How I feel about them.

 

So If you're able to fully inspect the cover of Super City: Arrival, you'll notice some things that are quite different from how I do the rest of the pages. I really wanted to hearken back to traditional comics with this cover, which is why I went for the font I did, and the blocking. However, there's an even more subtle change. I did not do line art for this/digital work on this page. Normally, I'm a big stickler on having a clean look. But I wanted to do the hand drawn aesthetic at least once.

Now, don't get me mistaken. Each page and panel of Super City is initially hand drawn before it is scanned and digitally edited. However, when I do edits, they can be really heavy. My tablet just allows for greater detail that I can't do by hand. Not to mention it's fun to just add Easter eggs.

I don't remember if I even used a reference for this image, (I think I must have?), but this just reminds me of Silver Age Comics (Specifically Super-man, Lois Lane, and Lex Luthor), after the crazy stuff of the Golden Age. Of course, there's certainly a manga aesthetic to the series, as that's my specific art style.

Development of Super City

I mention this in my Webtoon profile, but Super City has been in development since I was kid. Back in the days of Saturday Morning cartoons, after school cartoons, and the earliest version of Toonami. I've tried starting this series several times, to no avail (just see my earlier Facebook posts...). I've written quite a lot of it, so here's hoping it doesn't flop like a dead fish.
If I were to describe Stupendous: Super City, I'd say it's two parts Street Fighter, one part Super-man (because of his broken powers), one part Spider-man, and a dash of every Shonen anime I ever watched growing up. It's funny, because I think I started the series when I was nine and my older brothers were watching Love Hina (ha ha, I have no idea why they let my twin brother and I watch that at that age). of course, to me, it was a terrific comedy and I didn't know about fan service. I remember wanting to create a ridiculous and funny comic just like that series. And so, Super City was born. Now I realize there are parody Super Hero comics (One Punch Man, Gintama, Dead Pool, uhh... others), but it was quite a novel idea to me when I was ten.

Principles

I am not a formally trained artist. I haven't taken a drawing class or anything like that. I've just read a ton of drawing books. One of the things I wanted to highlight with Super City was the angle work. You can see in the image that we follow the classic triangle seen throughout artistic history. Obamashu's arm extends to Angela, Angela's left arm extends down to Joey, and Obamashu himself is peering down at our focal point.

You may notice that Joey's stance isn't static. He's off balance. That was intentional. Not only do we get the sense of him running after something, but it causes the viewer (at least for me) to feel disconcerted.

I don't know if I'll do this for every page/panel, but definitely for things I want to highlight that I can't on Webtoon.

Joey