Drawing this page seemed a neverending process, I prefer comics where two people have a very brief discussion in a featureless room, perhaps viewed from an undynamic angle.
Well, then, he’d just love Noise to Signal.
I love drawing, and I love looking back on a drawing that was especially hard to pull off. But I have to admit that most of my cartoons – and most single-panel cartoons – rely more on the joke than on a drafting tour de force. Sure, I’ll lay down a few perspective lines if it helps lend a sense of depth to the room (most of my cartoons are set indoors), but only rarely do I brave the kind of three-point perspective you’ll see in John Allison’s panel (and do click the link to see it on Flickr).
It’s nice to know that even long-established artists can find that process daunting – whether because it’s difficult or just from the sheer tedium of laying down grids and rendering chairs out of boxes.
I keep getting tempted to buy this book on perspective for comic book artists… but I keep putting it back on the shelf because anything complex comes up so rarely.
Then again, maybe I subconsciously stifle ideas and approaches that would demand a more rigorous approach to perspective. And maybe just owning the book would make me a better artist… or at least allow me to consider those approaches, knowing I can always look it up if I really need to pull off six-point perspective.
