Thursday, 28 May 2015

1500 Word essay - Compare and contrast

1500 Essay:
The artist I have chosen to research is Carlos D’anda. He is one of the comic book artists for DC comics.
I have chosen this artist because I want to become a comic artist too, and I find that his work looks extremely professional and I really like the style of his characters and how much emotion he conveys through their expressions.








These are two examples of his character designs. Unlike me, he uses the computer to line and colour them, where as I like the use Copic markers. The lines I find are very bold, which really works well the the characters and the style. I find it makes it look very striking and is very eye catching.
These images are from when he was creating the concept artwork for the video game: Batman: Arkham asylum and Arkham city. He also used these creations for the comic book the was created from these games, as you can see them as character designs in the back of the comics that he has illustrated.

I find that his work is very creative and that he looks at every detail when designing the clothing, facial expressions, etc.

He does work with traditional media as well, which is another reason I really like him because he can work well with both traditional and computer generated.
These images, from what I have seen on his website on
Deviantart are some images he's just quickly sketched for
the fun of it.

I personally prefer his computer generated work because it looks cleaner, but I find that his traditional work shows a lot more talent.
Carlos D'anda obviously does all of the inking and colouring (digitally and traditionally) himself, which is another reason why I really like him. Usually when doing a comic, you would have two separate people doing the colouring and inking, but he takes the time, even though it's so time consuming and does it all himself! He even stated on his blog that it took up most of his days and he literally had to stay cooped up in the house, but he didn't mind as long as he got it done, which I find really inspiring.
His linework I find is very bold, which is extremely effective due to him drawing for a comic, it makes it stand out. But I find his characters have a certain realistic feel to them. Even though they are slightly out of propertion in some areas, I find that certain features are very realistic and give the comic a slightly eary feel to it, (which I'm guessing he was trying to get across due to the storyline of the comic.)
His colouring is very unique. He uses so many different tones to give his artwork lots of depth which works in his favour as you can tell his style apart from any other artist dramatically; It's very different.
I also find some of his digital work to be quite pop arty, such as this piece:
This piece was just a random illustration he drew randomly. I don't think it's of anyone specific, more like just a random sketch made up in his head.





Pop Art piece:


As you can see, the imagaes are very similar the way they are portrayed. Though the pop art works a lot with pointilism, and Carlos D'anda doesn't, they are still very similar as he uses very vibrant colours like the pop art style, and the way the image has been done is very similar to a lot of the pop art pieces, such as the one I have shown above.
I find he uses thicker lines and random colouring and shading to give this effect. I really like how he does this because it shows he is able to work in more than one style. Though I prefer the way he usually works.
Another thing I find really admiring about his work is that he is able to fit a characters personality with the way they look, with things such as their hair, clothes, the way the character expresses their emotions through their face and body language and so on, and I find he is able to do that really well, he's probably the best artist that can convey the characters personality through the way they look.
Carlos D'anda isn't a recurring artist for the Batman series as far as I know, they usually use a lot of different artists, hence the reason the Batman comic book franchise has so many different styles. Carlos did the artwork for the comic book: 'Batman Arkham city' which is based off the video game version of the story. He has done other art for other comics such as: Deathblow, Starwars and many more, so he is quite a famous artist and works for many different, famous series.
He designs all of his own characters for the comics as well. Granted they aren't HIS own, made up characters, but he designs the way they look and then designs all of their outfits to fit the story he has been told to illustrate. He does do a lot of his own characters though, as shown above, there are a few images that are his own, such as the womans face done in the pop art style.
I think with a lot of his works, he practices different styles, as you can see in the images above, he has worked with a variation of different styles and I think this is due to the fact that he gets commisioned, because from what I have seen on his website, he gets a lot of commisions and I think that would be because of him illustrating the Batman comics and characters, so he tries to work in many different styles so that he can work in any style that the commisioner asks.
This image shows another way he works. This image looks a lot more scratchy and rouchly done, but you can definitley see the style of his character designs in this image. He seems to work with typography in his images a lot too, mainly with random pictures like this image, which I find works really well because he does it in a certain way where you know it would be Carlos D'anda's work.
Another example of the way he works with typography. He really knows how to make the style of the text fit with the actual image. So obviously here the image is very dark and scratchy and he has chosen graffiti styled text for the writing in the background which goes very well with the image and the style of it.
I find that Carlos D'anda is definitley one of my favourite comic artists and find he is definitley talented in working in lots of diferent styles.   

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