Hello I'm Mike Manley, welcome to my studio Blog. I am veteran comic and animation artist and I created and edit Draw! Magazine. This blog is a chronicle of what's happening in my studio. Follow my process and path as an painter, cartoonist and teacher and find out how they inform and enrich each other!
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Mixed bag
A mixed bag of drawings today. Below is a quick charcoal sketch of my dog Buster
A drawing of one of my students from our on-the-spot-drawing field trip to a local mall, done in prismacolor pencil and some other quick gesture drawings done while in the mall with my students.
Fantastic Mike! I wish I had access to a course like this. I have no idea how to improve my "On the spot" drawing other than just doing a lot of it. The first mall drawing picture is very detailed. Did you add the detail after getting the rough sketch? Or are you just that fast at drawing.
Thanks -d. That drawing was done on the spot, and I worked pretty fast and figure it took no more than 5 minutes or so to do. I suppose I am pretty fast at drawing, and the idea with gesture drawing or that on-the-spot drawing IS to be fast. Sometimes you get 20 seconds to see someone walking past-BOOM!
You don't have to have a course to do this type of thing. All you need is a sketchpad, pencils and markers and a location like a mall or outside cafe. Just sit and go, draw what cathes your eye. I did plenty of drawings that were really rough as well. I had my students use the foodcourt in the mall as a base because you would always have a lot of people around.
Thanks BA. I think you could do any type of technique today for a comic you could think of. Doing it all in charcoal or gray tones would be a LOT of work though. My pal Blevins is doing just that very thing. He's doing an adaption of RED WALL and he's doing it in washes or greys.
Mike, sorry i don't know where to post this so i'll post it here. I'm a longtime fan of yours since your 'Darkhawk' days. I had never written to you before until i found your Action Planet site a few years ago. I emailed you a nice letter which had a few questions etc., but never got a reply. I found an alternate email address of yours posted on the Action Planet site(s) so i emailed you again about a year later...and still no reply.
So now its about 4 years since i first emailed you, and i'm just wondering what the heck's up? Did you not get either of my letters? Or do you just not bother to reply to fan emails? (both emails would have been from "Tyler McG.")
Tyler, Sorry about me not responding to your two e-mails. I get sometimes a hundred e-mails a day, several hundred a week between spam, business and chatgroups i belong to. I am even on the darkhawk yahoo group, ( lurker )so your name sounds familiar,and often with fan letters I set those aside to reply to later, as I have time. So maybe your letter got put aside or spam filterd, or lost in my big e-mail crash early this year.
But anyway...ask away! Always surprised to meet a DH fan. Funny, I meet several a year now, but it seemed when the book was going it had no fans, or hardly any at all. It was the red headed stepchild at Marvel. We got no love and little respect...it was all about Todd and the X-men in those days.
Come to think of it, it's pretty much the same way now :-)
Mike, wow i didn't know you got that many emails. That probably explains what happened to my emails. I'm relieved to know you're not a jerk :-)
Anyways, my letter probably went something like this: i've been a huge Darkhawk fan since the 1st issue, i was about age 11 at the time. He was always my #1 favorite superhero. Always bought like 2 copies of each issue. Loved your work on the book. The book really suffered when you left, the new guys they brought in were ok artists but they didn't have the dark style you had. But i was glad to see the success you had with Batman, & that you're still in the business today.
I just had questions regarding if you had any original comic pages/art from your Darkhawk run for sale? Also, do you still do any art commisions? I'd be very interesting in purchasing both.
Also had another question: did you ever have a picture in your head about what Darkhawk looked like under his helmet? That was always a mystery never revealed.
Tyler, I don'ts ell much of my artwork, and haven't ever really sold much DH stuff. If there is something you are interested in e-mail me off list mike--removethis--@actionplanet.com
Thanks for the nice words about my decade + old work. Yes I'm still in the game, but doing a lot of different things now, like my magazine, self published comics etc.
I do commissions, but be prepared to wait a while since it takes me time to get to them.
As far as what was under DH's mask, well nothing was from my POV...my idea was since this was a battle suit, a cyborg body, the helmet was the head of the 'drone' so to speak and Chris' conciousnes was sort of downloaded into it on a organic hardrive. the change happened vis a sort of vormhole technology which beamed in new suits or ne wversions of suits and sent the damaged suit back to the "factory' to be either fixed or scrapped while the fresh body/suit was sent.
He never even used all the bodies potential as he was both human and a kid. The helmet sent out some sort of "fear wave' as a defense mechanism to keep bad guys from taking the head containing any info, etc.
mike--removethis--@actionplanet.com? Uhh that means your email address is mike@actionplanet.com right? if i email i hope you get it, since i believe thats the address i emailed you with the last time.
And did you mean you don't like to sell your original artwork, or you just don't happen to do it a lot out of circumstance?
About your ideas for under DH's helmet, i think thats actually cool! Totally different than what i imagined. Always thought maybe it was some hideous green alien face (ala Toxic Avengers). My friend had a neat idea that the face would appear to be whatever looked most fearsome in their own mind to whoever saw it.
And the armor/swapping idea i like. That would explain it better than for the healing just being "magic". [/geek chat]
oh BTW, do you have any idea how i could contact Danny Fingeroth?
Fantastic Mike! I wish I had access to a course like this. I have no idea how to improve my "On the spot" drawing other than just doing a lot of it. The first mall drawing picture is very detailed. Did you add the detail after getting the rough sketch? Or are you just that fast at drawing.
ReplyDeleteThanks -d. That drawing was done on the spot, and I worked pretty fast and figure it took no more than 5 minutes or so to do. I suppose I am pretty fast at drawing, and the idea with gesture drawing or that on-the-spot drawing IS to be fast. Sometimes you get 20 seconds to see someone walking past-BOOM!
ReplyDeleteYou don't have to have a course to do this type of thing. All you need is a sketchpad, pencils and markers and a location like a mall or outside cafe. Just sit and go, draw what cathes your eye. I did plenty of drawings that were really rough as well. I had my students use the foodcourt in the mall as a base because you would always have a lot of people around.
Thanks BA. I think you could do any type of technique today for a comic you could think of. Doing it all in charcoal or gray tones would be a LOT of work though. My pal Blevins is doing just that very thing. He's doing an adaption of RED WALL and he's doing it in washes or greys.
ReplyDeleteMike, sorry i don't know where to post this so i'll post it here. I'm a longtime fan of yours since your 'Darkhawk' days. I had never written to you before until i found your Action Planet site a few years ago. I emailed you a nice letter which had a few questions etc., but never got a reply. I found an alternate email address of yours posted on the Action Planet site(s) so i emailed you again about a year later...and still no reply.
ReplyDeleteSo now its about 4 years since i first emailed you, and i'm just wondering what the heck's up? Did you not get either of my letters? Or do you just not bother to reply to fan emails? (both emails would have been from "Tyler McG.")
Tyler, Sorry about me not responding to your two e-mails. I get sometimes a hundred e-mails a day, several hundred a week between spam, business and chatgroups i belong to. I am even on the darkhawk yahoo group, ( lurker )so your name sounds familiar,and often with fan letters I set those aside to reply to later, as I have time. So maybe your letter got put aside or spam filterd, or lost in my big e-mail crash early this year.
ReplyDeleteBut anyway...ask away! Always surprised to meet a DH fan. Funny, I meet several a year now, but it seemed when the book was going it had no fans, or hardly any at all. It was the red headed stepchild at Marvel. We got no love and little respect...it was all about Todd and the X-men in those days.
Come to think of it, it's pretty much the same way now :-)
Mike, wow i didn't know you got that many emails. That probably explains what happened to my emails. I'm relieved to know you're not a jerk :-)
ReplyDeleteAnyways, my letter probably went something like this: i've been a huge Darkhawk fan since the 1st issue, i was about age 11 at the time. He was always my #1 favorite superhero. Always bought like 2 copies of each issue. Loved your work on the book. The book really suffered when you left, the new guys they brought in were ok artists but they didn't have the dark style you had. But i was glad to see the success you had with Batman, & that you're still in the business today.
I just had questions regarding if you had any original comic pages/art from your Darkhawk run for sale? Also, do you still do any art commisions? I'd be very interesting in purchasing both.
Also had another question: did you ever have a picture in your head about what Darkhawk looked like under his helmet? That was always a mystery never revealed.
Thanks for the good memories Mike,
- Tyler McG.
Tyler, I don'ts ell much of my artwork, and haven't ever really sold much DH stuff. If there is something you are interested in e-mail me off list mike--removethis--@actionplanet.com
ReplyDeleteThanks for the nice words about my decade + old work. Yes I'm still in the game, but doing a lot of different things now, like my magazine, self published comics etc.
I do commissions, but be prepared to wait a while since it takes me time to get to them.
As far as what was under DH's mask, well nothing was from my POV...my idea was since this was a battle suit, a cyborg body, the helmet was the head of the 'drone' so to speak and Chris' conciousnes was sort of downloaded into it on a organic hardrive. the change happened vis a sort of vormhole technology which beamed in new suits or ne wversions of suits and sent the damaged suit back to the "factory' to be either fixed or scrapped while the fresh body/suit was sent.
He never even used all the bodies potential as he was both human and a kid. The helmet sent out some sort of "fear wave' as a defense mechanism to keep bad guys from taking the head containing any info, etc.
Geek chat off! :-)
mike--removethis--@actionplanet.com? Uhh that means your email address is mike@actionplanet.com right? if i email i hope you get it, since i believe thats the address i emailed you with the last time.
ReplyDeleteAnd did you mean you don't like to sell your original artwork, or you just don't happen to do it a lot out of circumstance?
About your ideas for under DH's helmet, i think thats actually cool! Totally different than what i imagined. Always thought maybe it was some hideous green alien face (ala Toxic Avengers). My friend had a neat idea that the face would appear to be whatever looked most fearsome in their own mind to whoever saw it.
And the armor/swapping idea i like. That would explain it better than for the healing just being "magic". [/geek chat]
oh BTW, do you have any idea how i could contact Danny Fingeroth?
Tyler, yes that's my e-mail.
ReplyDeleteI don't don't sell much of my art by choice. In the long run if I want to sell any, I'd rather control how it's sold.
Email me off list and I can put you in contact with Danny.