Good references?

Three book, all by Scott McCloud; the first is crucial.

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art

Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form

Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels by Scott McCloud


The last isn't out yet, but from what I'm hearing, it's wonderful.

Susan,

Here is a good website. It's a forum like this, but it's all about comics. Near the bottom, there are some sections where you can actually interact with some pros, creators, writers, artsist, editors, etc. Might be good to check out for your reference.

http://forums.comicbookresources.com/

Comics & Sequential Art by Will Eisner

This book is also referenced in Scott McCloud's books.

I highly recommend Understanding Comics. Any book with a chapter titled "Blood in the Gutter" has got to be good, right?

I'd also suggest seeing if there are any comic book stores or conventions in your area. Might be a good way to pick up some ambience.

It depends on if the guy is doing mainstream superhero comics or more of the newer more artsy indy titles.

Does he pencil and ink the art, or only do one in the more superhero comic fashion?

Some folks have gone 100% digital and use a Mac (or PC) with a wacome tablet or mouse. Some work on Bristol with a wide varity of differnt inking and penciling options. they might pencil in blue pencil or graphite. They might ink the with an ink pen, brush and bottle of ink, or some other option.

But I use brush pens from japan that you can thow away when there out of in. I work on Bristol board and draw with a colorerase blue pencil, then ink the drawings with different pens. Then I apply shading in watercolors or scan the inks into the computer. The work always ends up in the computer where I add the word balloons and prepare it for print. Then a PDF is sent to the printer and so on

One thing you could do is find an artist you like the work of and find out what they do. Maybe even model some the charcters process on theirs. Many artist are very vocal on-line.

One of my favorites is Tim Sale. http://www.timsale1.com/home.html

The following URLs provide information on drawing manga that may be useful:

http://www.jptco.co.jp/book/bookson/manga.html
http://www.howtodrawmanga.com/

An insight into the manga industry is illustrated in "Comic Master J" -- cliche storyline, meant to be laughed at. (Btw, if you do read this series, volumes 1 - 5 give an adequate overview of the industry; further reading depends on if you want to find out what happens to "J".)

Authors: Tabata Yoshiaki,Yogo Yuki
Publisher: Shonen Gaho