I found Scary Go Round
I have a few moving boxes left over from a year ago containing stuff I lack the shelves/cupboards to store. I had to pop one of them open the other day, and found the 500 or so pages of hand-drawn Scary Go Round art from 2005-2007, neatly filed.
I drew very differently back then, there's not really any perspective, everything is quite flat, and then I would use colour to pick out the composition. So the black and white line art is, to my eye, not beautiful. But it worked!
To amuse myself after lunch, I redrew one of the pages I had photographed for social media with only the tools I had to hand - a Rotring Art Pen that I have never liked, a Tombow felt tip pen, and some scrap A4 paper. I think the resulting 30-minute drawing is quite funny. The original is below for comparison. I wasn't trying to better the original (let's face it, that was drawn by a long-lost version of me, and readers loved that era of my comics) but just to see what I would make with imperfect conditions. It's riddled with mistakes but I still like it.
Comments (18)
At great expense, I had acquired a massive computing network, and fed into it all of John's work to determine empirically which of John's art styles is *best* objectively. After a near civilization's worth of energy usage and machine learning training, it returned this: "More Erin Winters please What's up with Desmon Fishman? Blobby...what...why...how?" And has not responded further. Efforts continue.
Love the new stuff. So free and energetic.
I do have a fondness for your old style, especially the faces. You acheived a simplicity that still made each character identifiable. But my goodness! Your current style is so beautiful , dynamic, and fluid. It tells the story without needing words--not just events, but the underlying emotions and motivation, as well.
I love your imperfect conditions
Fantastic archaeological find! And present-day Esther sure looks great!
I, for one, appreciate the zoom out to see more of the characters, as it allows more room for expressive postures dialogue-free communication. The evolution in style is also an evolution in storytelling - working out which visual elements are necessary, which are not, and which are simply fun. Altogether a much stronger command of the medium!
He could have been thinking about that for 15 years...!
Dang that earlier work is cute! But even with that as a guide, you must be speaking your artistic language fluently and deeply to do an entire page in 30 minutes. Wow! I'll say it again: Wow!
Neat! I know a lot of artists who lament that the scribbly-scratchy looseness of the initial sketches often kinda goes away as one "finishes" the art. I feel like modern you is more assured in retaining that looseness (as well as being more adventurous in the "shot choices"). FUN!
This kind of thing I could stare at back and forth at for hours. And I had to search out Nine Chickweed Lane. That's...something...for a comic strip.
One of my favorite arcs! Le Garçon becomes L'homme!! In the updated drawing, Esther has a very Shelley vibe to her look. Like some dark & bubbly unholy mashup!!
It's the big Wales adventure! I loved that arc. It's also interesting to see how your style has changed in the decade and a half, your camera/viewpoint is so much more dynamic than the original.
It's still nice work. This must be like finding treasure, seeing what you were up to (and trying to do) so like instant >>WHOOSH!<< From the Past. This is what's so good about old cardboard boxes!
The thing that strikes me most is the greater amount of full and 3/4 bodyshots, greater confidence in your drawing skills or 9CL style leg fetish?
Nick, we're behind a paywall so I'm not gonna lie. I'm down Nine Chickweed Lane every freaking day with all the classic characters as they get horny about piano concertos and each other. I don't know what's going on but what I do know is it's the finest gam show since the Folies Bergère and I am Henri Toulouse Lautrec just pure drawing what I see.
I find I like the art better in the new version, though I may be influenced by it being what I'm used to from your other recent work, or by the decision to have them holding hands and skipping in the last panel (it's a delightful composition), or something else.
YOU DID THAT IN 30 MINUTES???
Esther really has come a long way in the past two decades