Our next session of Introduction to Comic Book Art begins August 4, 2014, with instructor Reilly Brown teaching the course for the first time! Our Intro courses are among our most popular, and quickest to fill. But a few seats remain – so if you’re looking for your opportunity to launch your education in professional comic making, this is a great time to get started.
Already taken Intro to Art? The upcoming session will offer a new curriculum from Reilly. So while your earlier coursework will continue to benefit you, you’ll find something new in this one – advancing your education while building on the foundation of what’s come before.
Reilly is already an established member of the Comics Experience community, providing professional art critiques and being an active participant in our Creators Workshop. His penciling credits include Cable & Deadpool, Incredible Hercules, and Amazing Spider-Man, as well as digital comics Deadpool: The Gauntlet and the creator-owned Power Play.
Here, Reilly answers some questions about himself and his take on teaching Introduction to Comic Book Art!
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What are some of your favorite comic projects that you’ve worked on? (Hint: the correct answer will include Cable & Deadpool, edited by me, Nicole Boose.)
I always love projects where the characters have a lot of personality, which is why I love drawing Deadpool stories so much (especially Cable & Deadpool, Nicole!), as well as Hercules, Spider-Man, and my creator-owned comics, like Power Play and Saint George. I really like to focus on what makes a character who they are, from how they dress, to how they walk, and the facial expressions that they make while they do it. I enjoy working on any story where the characters have their own unique way of doing things.
What can students expect to be able to do by the end of this course that they couldn’t do at the beginning?
I plan on taking the students from a blank page to a finished story. They’ll learn to take the things that they like to draw and turn them into stories that connect with their audience on an emotional level that readers can get excited about. They’ll learn not just how to tell a story with pictures, but how to grab the readers’ attention with their pages, and direct that attention from one place to another on the page. We’ll go over things like anatomy, perspective, and design, and why those things are important, and how they can affect the overall story.
By the end of the class, the students will have a clear grasp on the visual tools of comic book storytelling, and a clear path ahead of them for where they want to go with their art.
Comics Experience has offered Intro to Art courses before, but this is your first time teaching it. What will be different about taking this course with Reilly Brown?
Like I mentioned, I really like to focus on characters and their personalities in my own work, and that’s something I’d like to share with the students. They’ll learn how to tell stories that don’t just show off the actions in the plot, but also shows off the emotions of the characters that are going through those actions. Whether a character is happy or sad, safe or in danger, a good comics page can emphasize those feelings, and my goal is to teach the students how to make the most of that.
Who/what are some of your artistic and creative influences?
That’s always a tough question because I have so many! A short list would be Jim Lee, particularly his X-Men work; Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira work, Hiroaki Samura’s Blade of the Immortal, Olivier Coipel, no matter what he draws, but especially his Thor stuff, and Kinu Nishmura’s Street Fighter designs.
Those are all the things that come to me at the moment; if I thought about it any longer I’d probably have two dozen more names to add to the list!
When you’re not drawing comics, teaching, or participating in the Creators Workshop, what do you enjoy doing for fun?
Heh, there’s not much time to do things besides drawing comics, but when I can I like to go to life drawing events, or check out museums, or go to book release parties of other comic book artists. Luckily in the NYC area there are a lot of opportunities to do all three of those things.
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For more information about Introduction to Comic Book Art with Reilly Brown, visit the course page here.
For information about our other comic art, writing, production and other courses, visit the Courses section of our website.
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If you want to make comics, write, draw, letter, and color comics, or improve as a comics creator, you’ll find like-minded friends and colleagues in our online workshops and courses. We hope to see you there!
Posted by Nicole Boose
nicole@ComicsExperience.com
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