Thursday, February 3, 2022

Moebius' Rules

1) When you draw, you must first cleanse yourself of deep feelings, like hate, happiness, ambition, etc.

2) It’s very important to educate your hand. Make it achieve a level of high obedience so that it will be able to properly and fully express your ideas, but be very careful of trying to obtain too much perfection, as well as too much speed as an artist. Perfection and speed are dangerous — as are their opposites. When you produce drawings that are too quick or too loose, besides making mistakes, you run the risk of creating an entity without soul or spirit.

3) Knowledge of perspective is of supreme importance. Its laws provide a good, positive way to manipulate or hypnotize your readers.

4) Another thing to embrace with affection is the study of the human body — its anatomy, positions, body types, expressions, construction, and the differences between people.

Drawing a man is very different from drawing a woman. With males, you can be looser and less precise in their depiction; small imperfections can often add character. Your drawing of a woman, however, must be perfect; a single ill-placed line can dramatically age her or make her seem annoying or ugly. Then, no one buys your comic!

For the reader to believe your story, your characters must feel as if they have a life and personality of their own.

Their physical gestures should seem to emanate from their character’s strengths, weaknesses and infirmities. The body becomes transformed when it is brought to life; there is a message in its structure, in the distribution of its fat, in each muscle and in every wrinkle, crease or fold of the face and body. It becomes a study of life.

5) When you create a story, you can begin it without knowing everything, but you should make notes as you go along regarding the particulars of the world depicted in your story. Such detail will provide your readers with recognizable characteristics that will pique their interest.

When a character dies in a story, unless the character has had his personal story expressed some way in the drawing of his face, body and attire, the reader will not care; your reader won’t have any emotional connection.

Your publisher might say, “Your story has no value; there’s only one dead guy — I need twenty or thirty dead guys for this to work.” But that is not true; if the reader feels the dead guy or wounded guys or hurt guys or whomever you have in trouble have a real personality resulting from your own deep studies of human nature — with an artist’s capacity for such observation — emotions will surge.

By such studies you will develop and gain attention from others, as well as a compassion and a love for humanity.

This is very important for the development of an artist. If he wants to function as a mirror of society and humanity, this mirror of his must contain the consciousness of the entire world; it must be a mirror that sees everything.

6) Alejandro Jodorowsky says I don’t like drawing dead horses. Well, it is very difficult.

It’s also very difficult to draw a sleeping body or someone who has been abandoned, because in most comics it’s always action that is being studied. It’s much easier to draw people fighting — that’s why Americans nearly always draw superheroes. It’s much more difficult to draw people that are talking, because that’s a series of very small movements — small, yet with real significance and that counts for more because of our human need for love or the attention of others. It’s these little things that speak of personality, of life. Most superheroes don’t have any personality; they all use the same gestures and movements.

7) Equally important is the clothing of your characters and the state of the material from which it was made.

These textures create a vision of your characters’ experiences, their lives, and their role in your adventure in a way where much can be said without words. In a dress there are a thousand folds; you need to choose just two or three — don’t draw them all. Just make sure you choose the two or three good ones.

8) The style, stylistic continuity of an artist and its public presentation are full of symbols; they can be read just like a Tarot deck. I chose my name “Moebius” as a joke when I was twenty-two years old — but, in truth, the name came to resonate with meaning. If you arrive wearing a T-shirt of Don Quixote, that tells me who you are. In my case, making a drawing of relative simplicity and subtle indications is important to me.

9) When an artist, a real working artist, goes out on the street, he does not see things the same way as “normal” people. His unique vision is crucial to documenting a way of life and the people who live it.

10) Another important element is composition. The compositions in our stories should be studied because a page or a painting or a panel is a face that looks at the reader and speaks to him. A page is not just a succession of insignificant panels. There are panels that are full. Some that are empty. Others are vertical. Some horizontal. All are indications of the artist’s intentions. Vertical panels excite the reader. Horizontals calm him. For us in the Western world, motion in a panel that goes from left to right represents action heading toward the future. Moving from right to left directs action toward the past. The directions we indicate represent a dispersion of energy. An object or character placed in the center of a panel focuses and concentrates energy and attention. These are basic reading symbols and forms that evoke in the reader a fascination, a kind of hypnosis. You must be conscious of rhythm and set traps for the reader to fall into so that, when he falls, he gets lost, allowing you to manipulate and move him inside your world with greater ease and pleasure. That’s because what you have created is a sense of life. You must study the great painters, especially those who speak with their paintings. Their individual painting schools or genres or time periods should not matter. Their preoccupation with physical as well as emotional composition must be studied so that you learn how their combination of lines works to touch us directly within our hearts.

11) The narration must harmonize with the drawings. There must be a visual rhythm created by the placement of your text. The rhythm of your plot should be reflected in your visual cadence and the way you compress or expand time. Like a filmmaker, you must be very careful in how you cast your characters and in how you direct them. Use your characters or “actors” like a director, studying and then selecting from all of your characters’ different takes.

12) Beware of the devastating influence of North American comic books. The artists in Mexico seem to only study their surface effects: a little bit of anatomy mixed with dynamic compositions, monsters, fights, screaming and teeth. I like some of that stuff too, but there are many other possibilities and expressions that are also worthy of exploration.

13) There is a connection between music and drawing. The size of that connection depends upon your personality and what’s going on at that moment. For the last ten years I’ve been working in silence; for me, there is music in the rhythm of my lines. Drawing at times is a search for discoveries. A precise, beautifully executed line is like an orgasm!

14) Color is a language that the graphic artist uses to manipulate his reader’s attention as well as to create beauty. There is objective and subjective color. The emotional states of the characters can change or influence the color from one panel to the next, as can place and time of day. Special study and attention must be paid to the language of color.

15) At the beginning of an artist’s career, he should principally involve himself in the creation of very high quality short stories. He has a better chance (than with long format stories) of successfully completing them, while maintaining a high standard of quality. It will also be easier to place them in a book or sell them to a publisher.

16) There are times when we knowingly head down a path of failure, choosing the wrong theme or subject for our capabilities, or choosing a project that is too large, or an unsuitable technique. If this happens, you must not complain later.

17) When new work has been sent to an editor and it receives a rejection, you should always ask for, and try to discover, the reasons for the rejection. By studying the reasons for our failure, only then can we begin to learn. It is not about struggle with our limitations, with the public or with the publishers. One should treat it with more of an aikido approach. It is the very strength and power of our adversary that is used as the key to his defeat.

18) Now it is possible to expose our works to readers in every part of the planet. We must always keep aware of this. To begin with, drawing is a form of personal communication, but this does not mean that the artist should close himself off inside a bubble. His communication should be for those aesthetically, philosophically and geographically close to him, as well as for himself, but also for complete strangers. Drawing is a medium of communication for the great family we have not met, for the public and for the world.

Monday, March 6, 2017

Paolo Rivera's 10 Rules

1. Don't draw, sculpt. No, seriously. All your favorite superhero artists are also great sculptors — it's just that their final artwork is limited to one point of view.


2. Storytelling involves 2 major stages for me:
What does your character know, how do they feel?
What should your reader know, how should they feel?

3. I'm not a writer, but I am trying to be. My favorite nuts and bolt technique (especially when I'm stuck) is not to write, but to ask questions. I feel no pressure asking questions, but the process of answering them often solves larger problems.

4. Composition: Watch your tangents! You should still be able to read your panels from far away, or as a tiny icon on a computer.


5. Composition trumps perspective, Gesture trumps anatomy. (But you should still learn both).

6. Don't make a to-do list, have a calendar where you block out activities. Email and social media too. And keep track of your hours, even if it's depressing.

7. Use models and reference. If you don't know what something looks like, your reader can sense it. If you do, they won't even notice. Be knowledgeable, but invisible.


8. Writers: avoid stage directions. Concentrate on motive, dialogue, emotional beats. Weird, unexpected things happen when you start to put characters on a stage. It can be difficult to predict, so let the penciler handle the logistics.

9. Start small. If you want to paint comics, draw one first. If you want to draw a graphic novel, draw an 8-page story first.

10. Throw crap at the wall. See what sticks. Clean up the mess.

You can view Paolo Rivera's work at: https://www.paolorivera.blogspot.com/

Thursday, June 2, 2016

Matt Kindt's 10 Rules

1. Write what you know.

2. Constantly be learning new things. This way you can write about more than you know right now. Listen to people. Ask questions. My best conversations I’ve ever had were with a friend that would constantly ask questions. Nothing was off limits. As a result, he has a data bank of the most interesting stories of any living person I know.

3. Stop trying to perfect it. It won’t be perfect. You’ll be able to draw or write it even better ten minutes from now, tomorrow, a year from now. Forever. What you create in this moment is just an artifact of who you were at that moment in time. Don’t hate your old work because it’s bad. Love it as proof that you’re improving. You’re better now than you were then.

4. Inking. If it even crosses your mind that a page or panel needs a darker or bigger shadow or more blacks spotted – it does. Don’t be lazy!


5. Don’t describe your story idea to someone. Let the finished story tell it.

6. Movement and production. The two words my printmaking instructor Leon Hicks, at Webster University, said over and over again. Keep making work. It’s how Jack Kirby made his career. Ideas and art spawn more ideas and art.

7. Get an honest critique. Find one person in your life that will give you the honest hard truth about everything you do. True honest feedback is like gold.

8. Be honest with yourself. Look at your own work critically. Don’t be down on yourself. Stay optimistic, but try to recognize your own weaknesses so you can address them. If you hate drawing hands, there’s probably a reason. Spend an entire sketchbook.

9. Amazing art can’t fix a bad story. But a good story can fix mediocre art.

10. Read, Research, and Refine. Read everything. Only good comes from reading comics and books. Constantly be studying the process of other artists, writers, directors – everyone. Always be looking at your process for ways to refine things. Adopt advice and try it out. Take some and leave some.

You can view Matt Kindt's work at: http://www.mattkindtshop.com/

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Bill Griffith's 10 Rules

1. Cartoon Characters have souls.

2. As Freud meant to say: "every cartoon character you create is you."



3. You're the auteur of your comic. You write, cast, light, film, direct and edit...you have final cut.

4. Each panel, strip, page and spread is a graphic unit. Compose them that way.

5. Comics are equal parts drawing and writing. With writing being a bit more equal.

6. Ambiguity is OK. Ask the reader to meet you halfway.


7. Don't just look at comics for inspiration. Stare at Hopper, Rembrandt, Magritte, Durer, Hiroshige and Marsh.

8. It isn't necessary to completely write out your strip or story in advance. Let the characters speak to you.

9. While you work, take breaks to stretch your neck and upper back.

10. Never listen to anyone else's advice on cartooning.



You can view Bill Griffith's work at: http://www.zippythepinhead.com/

Ben Granoff's 10 Rules


(When I say "you" -- that's just me talking to myself.)

1. Know your process. It'll help you create images you like with efficiency and consistency. One process per project.


2. Adjust your process. You'll build a bigger, better toolbox to draw from by playing with different approaches.

3. Find the drawing gestures you want to make and make them. Your muscle memory will build and expand its own visual language and style. Make curly-cues and shark-teeth as often as possible.

4. Find the good stuff and study. Who's on your Mount Rushmore of comics? Figure it out, tear it down, build a new one. Never meet your heroes. Obviously, read more than comics and fiction. Get over the crippling social anxiety that made you a cartoonist in the first place and mix it up with reality...maybe later? Maybe later. At the same time, comics is your medium of choice for a reason--read as many kinds of comics as you can and build a reference file--mine's on tumblr: http://thousandwordcomics.tumblr.com/

5. Contrast devices against grids. If every layout-move you make is a special effect then nothing is really special. Only Sam Kieth can get away with this kind of thing and you're no Sam Kieth. Grids and right-angle-centric layouts are great for setting the meter; once you do that you can break the meter with soooommmettthiiiinnng craaaazzzzyyyy.

6. Use the tools you want to use. Pencil and crayon? Pudding and dirt? I knew a guy who drew a book in his own blood! It was disgusting! Go for it, Rembrandt. You're the man now, dawg.


7. Balloons and text are a part of compositions. You're gonna waste a lot of time and good compositions by shoehorning text into images if you don't plan accordingly.


8. Letter first, balloon around. Squashed lettering is strictly amateur-hour...but I still did it a few times in my new book.

9. Edit text to accommodate acting. If the speaker you've drawn isn't saying the words you've written then redraw that face or change that text. Unless your character is a ventriloquist then their mouth should be open when they speak.

10. Image/text balance. If you have a ton of text in a panel then you need to pair it with either a simple image of the speakers (like a silhouette) or an image that isn't of the speakers. When you combine effectively drawn body language with text that reads as an image, a voice is produced in the readers' head. When you have too much text, that voice is diluted. Conversation panels with multiple dialogue exchanges back and forth between characters produce no voice as characters change their tones and conversation shifts. Don't be lazy, give every moment its due or cut some of that dialogue.


You can view Ben Granoff's work at: http://www.picturesforstories.com/

Monday, May 16, 2016

Benjamin Marra's 10 Rules

1. Draw things you have a deep emotional connection to and make you want to draw. 

2. Emotional accuracy is more important than emulating reality. Realism is overrated and reality is an illusion anyway. Just make a good drawing.


3. Balance light and shadow. 


4. Don't create walls. You'll only run into them later. Avoid Puritanism of materials, tools, techniques, methods, and approaches. Don't be a perfectionist. 

5. When you feel like you hate how a drawing is turning out, that's when it's the most important to keep going. Don't be too harsh a judge, but don't believe the drawing is any good either (you can never plan to create a masterpiece). You want to be right in the middle, in the zone. 

6. You can only progress if you finish things. Reflecting on finished work, seeing what was successful and what didn't work, you can learn what to keep or change moving forward. 

7. Style comes from what you do unconsciously. Embrace your deficiencies instead of hiding them. The struggle to draw something is more interesting than casual success in facility. 

8. Strive for the best you can do, accept what the drawing is when you fall short. At a certain point the drawing becomes its own thing beyond your control. Let it be what it will be.

9. You gotta know the rules before you can break the rules. 

10. There are no rules.

You can view Benjamin Marra's work at: http://www.benjaminmarra.com/

Friday, May 13, 2016

Tom Hart's 10 Rules

1. A struggle is a good thing. Be in it.

2. A surprise is a good thing. Respond to it.

3. Study how others did it. 

4. If you steal, become better for it.

5. If you copy, copy deeply.

6. Composition is everything. 

7. Characters are runes.

8. Activate the space.

9. From Joe Chiapetta: This is not the bomb squad. Take unnecessary risks.

10. It should mean something, it should express something, it should be something.



You can view Tom Hart's work at: http://www.tomhart.net/