*Pitre-Durocher

And no, people think precisely of Stone and her action sequences in WB first mini, when she had worse than ideal, and sometimes hard to read, panels.

Her fight with terrorcons ain't a comic book masterpiece not to mention she was drawing both Blurr and Chromia in a very similar way and it was hard to tell at a first glance who's who.

Another point was drawing TFs with blue energon blood which was later retconned (?) as Camiens having blue blood, but originated as Stone's graphical mistake because she couldn't care less and drew it as a yet another TFP fanart. And then she handwaved the critique on her blog. Granted, it also falls to Scott who did nothing to enforce continuity or to comment (and Scott's basically writing her own headcanon continuity anyway) and an editor who should be looking for mistakes like that.


In terms of precision Pitre-Durocher's art is strict and polished, even if it isn't coming as cute. Her panel composition is cleaner and easier to follow, her characters are accurate either to their toys or designs, "sloppy" aint' a word applicable here.

Also, second WB mini was drawn by Howell, not Pitre-Durocher. But it was long after any comments about Stone's art were made.

What "quantify this"?
It is very easy to quantify when someone's fast. A number of issues passed for print and how fast it was is a quantity enough.
Nobody's saying Ramondelli's art is as much of an eyecandy. He does take a lot of shortcuts which sometimes cuts into quality (and sometimes this is severe). But he is fast and you can't deny it. Sometimes how fast the artist is is all what a publisher needs.

BTW - Ramondelli's actually not doing any heavy postprocessing. I'm willing to bet that his panels are done in a traditional pencil then color and textures are put on overlay or screen layers. Sometimes lightning effects are on screen layer as well. That's something that is a standard part of a digital color process these days. I'm almost sure his panels are made in a two stage process. First everything is drawn with a pencil, then colored.
Nothing to call "heavy postprocessing" here. In fact it's a rather straightforward process which (I suppose) is why he can be fast.
If he's doing all pages first in pencil, in bulk, then coloring them also in bulk, it may be a possible explanation. This kind of assembly could speed up everything considerably (it would also explain coloring errors, but also easy correct to them like Scoop'c color being fixed for CW trades).

Suuure. I write only out of spite and hatred.
You really need to loose this condescending stuck-in-your aft habit of assuming that everyone in an opinion different than you is surely more stupid/wrong/not progressive enough/has agendas, especially if it's expressed in such a long written "intellectual" manner.
It doesn't work and really isn't making any argument stronger, but it does look snob.

No, I write what I find a valid issue with overhyping Stone who's not as ideal as people are making this art to be.
You have to live with it, because I'm unlikely to ever change an opinion I consider founded.

Also:

"People like Liefield" succeeded not because they were magically and "unaccountably" popular with lowbrow unwashed masses who aren't worthy to read comics and should leave it to smarter people, but because at the beginning of their career they had drive and fresh ideas (also, Liefields early work in New Mutants is actually better than his later work after he totally stopped caring, he also used to be a fairly entertaining writer). This is why the Big Two promoted them in the first place.
They got popular because they earned it. It was after becoming popular when all they did was repeating old tricks with no progress at all - at which point it did devolve into a caricature.
Not a real comparison with Greg Land who's tracing things since his very debut in Crossgen at the "Sojourn" title, which makes for his only strong point of being very fast.

 

Bro, you really do come off like you have some kind of axe to grind against Stone.

 

That's the one way of dealing with someone not liking the same things you do.
It must be driven by an agenda.

No, I simply don't fall for hypes and I can actually point when something doesn't work on a purely technical level.
And I'm not saying she's a bad artist because she's not. But sure as hell there's a fair amount of plain worship here.

 

What do you mean by "Scott writing her own headcanon continuity?"

 

A one example for you:
http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/trans...rs-fans-have-been-waiting-6.html#post13511711

 

She mis-remembered something that happened in Spotlight: Arcee, but seeing as this aforementioned "physical sex component" has never actually come up in the comics, that doesn't really mean that she's not following continuity. Hell, we live in an age where any mistakes get pointed out on social media so quickly that they're usually fixed by the time the trade paperback comes out so I doubt it would have stayed even if it had shown up.

 

Even though I like Sarah Stone's artwork quite a bit, I can understand where you're criticisms are coming from, and I also do see quite a bit of plain worship, but I think that's just another thing that comes with the territory.

You're criticizing a woman's artwork, pointing out people overhyping something mundane or criticizing a woman's writing, obviously you must have an "axe to grind." :^)

Its okay when people say pretty mean things about Livio's artwork, or the writings of Simon Furman, Shane McCarthy or Mike Costa, though. But don't you dare criticize Mairghread Scott or Corin Howell! God forbid there's a dissenting voice.

Also, fucking this. Women are people, therefore they are fully capable of saying something stupid on twitter or needing improvement in their artwork or writing.

Deal with it.

 

Everyone hold the phone! Novaburnhilde is here so we better start accusing people that the fact that Stone is a woman is the only reason people are defending her, even though her sex hasn't been brought up at all by either sides of the argument! This isn't about quality of work, it's about those hateful vaginas! Damn them!

Also, honey, that meme matches your behaviour far, far more then people who aren't constantly pointing out that people are women. Learn your memes, you tool.

 

The only thing I can think of is when Stone has drawn scenes with more action, the limbs seem to get kind of wonky. Still, her art is leagues better than Livio's style. I can actually tell who all her characters are in each panel. I don't completely understand all the criticism Stone gets, and I am bothered that some of the criticism is aimed at her gender instead of her skill.

Maybe you're reading too much into it. People can dislike something without an "axe to grind", bro. You do realize your post is borderline flamebait, right? You come in, imply something, and then cry innocence if the poster goes after you. I'm pretty sure you've been called out on this before. Maybe attack the person's position instead of making blanket accusations that don't help the thread at all.

Or hell, keep it classy and send them a PM if you're going to make an implication about them. That is far nicer than trying to publicly shame someone.

Word of advice when dealing with posters like that: It's best to ignore them. If you have any opinion that doesn't align with their narrative you're the problem because their view is always the correct one (In their head anyway). In my opinion, you've always had great posts and reasons for your dislike of a creator's work (I don't necessarily agree with your opinion on this subject). Unlike other posters (with obvious sexism) your opinion, as far as I can tell, doesn't come from a "mean spirited place".

To clarify: Making an implication is fine if you also address someone's position on the subject as well. But to ONLY make a declaration against someone without going after their argument does nothing for discussion.

I hate to say it, but even I notice a bit of that. There are fans that do seem to only defend Stone, and other female creators, because of their gender. I don't see it much on this board, thankfully, but I do notice it happening.

Hell, I've been told that I was sexist, and that I need to get used to stories that "aren't aimed at me anymore" when I've been critical of Scott's writing. I've read romance/erotica novels that weren't "aimed" towards me and enjoyed the experience because the story was just damn good. I don't care who writes a story, or who draws it, or if I'm the target audience, I'll be critical if I don't like a person's work if their work is sub-par.

I want Stone back on a book. Just not on a book with Scott as I can't stand Scott's writing.

 

Yep, Gator Jr has chimed in. Now we wait and see if Gator Sr shows up to impart his pearls of wisdom (aka "NO GURLZ").

Also, hilarious to see an MRA/Gator accuse others of being Fedoras. The ironing is delicious.

To be fair, yes there can be over-reaction to criticism for the wrong reasons, and over-suspicion of ill-intent. I haven't seen anything in here from Haywired that looks to me like a bias based on gender. Maybe a hint of reactive pushback against a perceived gender-related bias for Stone, but nothing that says "Stone=girl=bad".

More important is whether a poster has a history with the issue or not. There's only one poster in this thread so far that I've seen a history of anti-women posts from and it's not Haywired (nor you).

 

Yup, light them torches!

Her work is cleaner and 'stricter'... but I'm not sure it's better overall. I like Pitre-Durocher, but the impact of her work also seems to depend a lot on her backup team. As much as I loved her work in Combiner Hunters, most of her stuff since has been sort of serviceable but mundane. That may be due to the particular alchemy of the inkers and colourists she's been working with.

No, I think you've only demonstrated that Livio meets an industry standard. If you're going to call him "fast", that implies that he's remarkable for being exceptionally quick, a Frank Springer-esque workman who is pulled in to get something done on a tight timeline.

So if he is "fast", I'm just curious whether this is part of his reputation, or if this is something that has been specifically demonstrated somewhere. It sounds like something someone on the inside would be able to comment on. Otherwise, it's just an assumption pulled out of the ether, right? I'm asking if you have a special insight into the inner workings of the IDW bullpen.

I can't deny that he's fast, because no case has really been made to support his being 'fast' to begin with.  

Like I said, his work looks fast, due to his style and apparent working method. But I can't exactly say for sure. You seem to be sure, so I asked you to elaborate with an example or an anecdote. That's all.

And obviously, being fast is an asset in the American comics industry, which is held to pretty rigid regular schedules. It's slightly less of an issue if you're an independent with your own studio (which is the case for a lot of Japanese comics creators), and even less of an issue if you follow the European comics publishing model.

But being fast is never a weakness, unless being speedy hurts the work (and it almost always does). In the case of Livio, the level of his work doesn't seem to fluctuate as much... it's pretty consistent, if not all that great. Stone's work really seemed to get messier as the series went on, so it suggests that she was rushing more and sacrificing more. But even at that level, I'd rate it higher than Livio's normal work, so comparing the relative merits of their craft and speed may be sort of a moot point.

Um... in other words, postprocessing?

Ramondelli's stuff looks like it is sketched in at a very basic, rudimentary level, and then he relies heavily on the digital colouring, filters and layers. He has a postprocessing formula that (I'm guessing) means that the most labour-intensive drawing work can be skipped, as all that detail will get obscured by the heavily stylized and formalized digital treatment. I'm no stranger to this. In my own art, I often took similar digital processing shortcuts to achieve an easy 'stylized' look that can pass as finished, without needing to spend a lot of time refining. In that sense, Livio's method reminds me of how I would often work. It's a pragmatic and slightly lazy approach. I'm neither endorsing nor condemning him for it. It gets the job done, but I'm not sure if it cultivates a better artist.

Compared to someone like Milne, who (from what I've seen) puts exhaustive detailing into his pencils, it feels pretty clear that Livio's digital processing carries the bulk of the work, and the up-front drawing can afford to be a lot looser as a result. Sometimes this style works surprisingly well, like Cary Nord's work on Dark Horse's CONAN series from a while back. Nord would just loosely sketch the pages in pencil, and then the colourist would digitally paint in the colours directly. Because the penciler and the colourist had a good dynamic, the work came off well... though I definitely have heard some artists scoff, commenting on how "lazy" Nord was, and how he was "barely penciling"... even Nord commented on how fast it allowed him to work. Of course, it also helped that Nord's sketches had the gestural economy and tonal awareness of a classically trained artist.

No, I'm assuming not... but you seem to be particularly focused on portraying Stone's IDW career as a study in personal and professional failure. You've made all sorts of inferences, but haven't really supported these inferences with concrete details. It feels like character assassination by way of insinuation. It just feels odd, disproportionate, and conspicuous. I'm not the only person to have noted it... so that's why I keep asking if there's some special impetus there.

I'm not ascribing it to any kind of blatant misogyny, of course. You're certainly complimentary towards Pitre-Durocher. I'm not trying to build that case at all, to be clear.

Sure, but seriously... tell me how you really feel.  

So touchy. Offhand, if I were prone to armchair psychologizing, I'd say that you're projecting your own personal insecurities and self-awareness onto me. You're angry with me because you see yourself in how I express myself, and it's frustrating because you're afraid that you come off as similarly high-handed, truculent, and pedantic (you do, btw). But hey, that's just a guess. I figure that if we're going to get personal over a public discussion about a comic artist, we should at least put our guts on the table, right?  

And yes... please add "narcissistic" to my list, along with snobby, elitist, faux-intellectual, and condescending.

That depends... is it your opinion that Stone's work has issues, and you don't especially like it? Or, is your opinion that there is an overwhelming over-evaluation of Stone's work, and that there is a real need for someone like you to wade in and give us all a dose of hard reality about just what's wrong with her?

My objection is mostly to the fact that you have presented a lot of inferences about Stone and her professionalism as facts and foregone conclusions, and I (reasonably) questioned whether you had inside knowledge to this effect, or whether this was speculation and/or personal bias.

Liefeld's early work was 'better'. I had his first series (the 80s Hawk & Dove mini), and also his first work for Marvel (the Atlantis Attacks Spidey annual). I'm not sure if 'better' necessarily has any actual correlation with 'good' though.

The most basic description would be that he started as perhaps of 'average' quality, and mostly degraded from there, in seemingly direct inverse proportion with his popularity/success. Artistic self-indulgence can be observed in many comic artists, especially once freed from the constraints of a rigid system... but Liefeld might be the poster boy for that phenomenon.

I think we can pretty objectively evaluate Liefeld's artwork as being mainly awful for the most part, and tacky with the benefit of hindsight (but that's always the legacy of decades past). I was never impressed with his writing, since you mention it, but whatever. I think we can say that Liefeld was popular because his work had some kind of novelty attached to it, a certain style-over-substance which the '90s embraced... and that popularity cascaded and carried him forward through his Image years.

I have no particular issue with holding an 'elitist' view on the matter, and I'm not sure why I would/should be stigmatized for that. I believe Liefeld's popularity was simply a trend and a lapse in popular taste. While I'm sure Liefeld hustled and worked hard to get to the sweet spot, I hesitate to say that he "earned" it, since I'm not sure if I should congratulate him for the dumb luck and happenstance that elevated him above all the other talents that were also working just as hard, if not harder. I don't subscribe to the notion of a retroactively self-affirming meritocracy (ie: he succeeded, therefore he must have 'deserved' it). I think the world is far too chaotic for that.

I mean, good on him. He made so little go such a very long way. To me, he proves that quality work is not necessarily a metric for success... which is heartening, because there are always people who are going to be smarter, more skilled, and harder-working than I am. In a true meritocracy, I have no chance. Liefeld proves that there really are radioactive spiders out there, just waiting to bestow wish-fulfillment upon the unworthy. And what could be more comic-booky than that?  

Not quite true. He penciled for DC before that, and seems (perplexingly) to have been reasonably capable without tracing. Obviously, he just realized that a large portion of lowbrow, unwashed comics-buyers were perfectly happy to buy thinly-veiled porn traced on a light-table, so there was no reason for him to actually work hard to produce "good" art.  

zmog

 

Friggin This Man! ^)

 

Word

 

Now that's a mental gymnastic. You now need an insider to confirm it. That he's called for fill-ins is just an assumption out of ether. It isn't supporting anything because you say so. A practical presentation is not a proof.
Sorry, But I take a purely practical outcome over any other proof needed.

But feel free to call an "assumption" anyway.

You're kinda right I'm pedantic. I have very little appreciation for "artsy", I value workmen and artisans more than artists. An illustrator who's better at industry standards means more to me than the one who isn't.
Pragmatic reasons. I want a monthly book and I don't like art shifts.

If a craftsman can find a reliable method for automatisation of art? Good for them. Provided they're not tracing. Technology's here to use it.

The same goes for evaluating comic books. I look how readable the composition is, how on model are characters, how polished it feels, how fluent the narrative is. These are the most important things for me. Other concerns are secondary.

In short - yes, I value (and consider her better) a current artists solicited for TAAO higher than an artists solicited for the first WB mini. Problem?

And there's a real need for someone like you to wade in and appoint yourself as a homemade authority of which opinions are valid, and which you can grace with a label of "overwhelming over-evaluation"? Hate it to break it to you, but you do realise that nobody's need your approval for their opinion to validate it?

The case of Japanese comic book creators is also working with assistants if they work for monthly magazines like Shonen Jump. At which point it is as much an assembly line as are US books, except the workload is divided differently.
The European model means that a book may be published as sparsely as one per year. That's not an optimal model for a monthly ongoing. Has no use for US-format titles outside for an occasional special issue.

Your absolutely personal opinion, also coming like you were reading more than I wrote. I was pointing at things when she's not that great. You have to live with it.

If you dislike opinions about art that are different than your, you might consider blacklisting posters.

 

So the problem is you and not her art? You keep posting and posting, trying to bring your point across that she's not that good and now we know it's just your perception. You are derailing this thread just because you like other artists more. If you don't like the art as much as others, that's OK. But trying to convince us just out of your preference for other artists does not make it better than others who write things like "livio ramondelli's art is shit". You're just more eloquent and persistent. And that's why people can't believe you don't have an agenda. Maybe you really don't have and just like to talk about this. But that's how it comes across.

 

So much panic.

"The problem is your perception".

The problem was that as soon as any criticism about Stone was mentioned some people here started hysterising as if the world was about to end. Apparently if you like something then any flaw in it may kill you, if perceived in any way.

And when a suggestion was made that it is possible that Stone may never be back at TF book because of practical reasons like keeping up or not with work schedules (for whatever reason), hysteria went even further.

Terrible, terrible crimes indeed.

It's almost as fun as going to MTME fandom to criticise Roberts and see people loosing their... heads over it.

Stone's a good artist. But I don't really believe in seeing her again anytime, or at least any time soon. Maybe if IDW's planning some more one-shots like the Combiner Hunters.

 

I resemble that remark! LOL!

Look, I'm not a huge fan of Land's stuff, but I can't deny that he makes the pictures pretty with the comics he "draws". That's really all I ask from the comics I buy. Livio, however, might be fast, but his stuff is just bad at times. I remember back during Dark Cybertron wondering who the hell it was on that final reveal page. It looked nothing like Kup. Also, his stuff during Combiner wars was downright terrible as well, could anyone tell what was going on in those panels? Was it someone's back being torn open, or their chest? I mean, yea, he can keep with a monthly schedule -- I guess, but his stuff is just bad by any measure. Hell, I'd rather have someone like Land tracing from porn shots and movie stills. He can, minimum, present a story with his art.

With Stone, her art is crisp and clean, I can plainly see what's happening with her frames (That's why I don't get Haywired's criticisms), but from what I can gather, she seems to not be able to operate on a monthly schedule. There are plenty of great artists that can't, and that's why they have to get started well in advance of the actual release, and even then, some (Ethan Van Sciver) still can't keep up with a monthly release.

Haywired, you're just not a fan, but I can kind of see Smog's point. Your criticism does, to an extent, seem to be coming from a bad place. If you just weren't a fan of her work that would be one thing, but you do phrase some of your posts in such a way that it comes across as adversarial. I don't agree with the methods of some of the... posters that have responded to you, but I can see their motives for doing it.

 

Last year at Botcon, Ramondelli had his original pages for sale. I can't remember if they were inked, but I actually dug them. I even had him do a quick pencil and ink sketch card for me which I thought turned out really well.


In short based off of what I saw in person, I really would like to see what a different colorist with a brighter, less textured palette could do with his pencils. His bots would still be blocky (which is fine to me), but things would be probably easier to make out.

 

Maybe Ramondelli should give it a try to be paired with a colorist, instead of coloring himself. He could always use his technique for grayscale only.

He's also losing points on my personal scale for, well, not always staying on model with characters.

Ugh... I wouldn't call Lands's art pretty and that's using my pedantic criterias.

His trademark, like female characters being very thin in tighs and hips - that's because of tracing and it's painful to look at for anatomy reasons.

Thing is, Land oftentimes 100% traces thing from a photo, but those photos, especially for female characters, are indeed taken from porn or glamour magazines. And photos for said magazines are often heavily manipulated with viewport, lenses and whatnot. These are not 100% clean stock reference photos that sometimes are used for tracing anatomy or reference. They already have altered focus, perspective and proportions and Land is tracing them "as is". Hence funky body proportions and anatomy.

I had to ditch Uncanny X-Men 2016 because he's an artists there. It became painful to look at after four issues and there was no end in sight.
Shame.
Because I absolutely love Magneto's character.

I can't recall any TF artist ever making me walk away from the book, and that's including Wildman and Farinas.

The pretty you see coming from Land is most of the time coming from the colorist.

 

"Health reasons" might not even have meant HER health. One of my favourite artists in the world had to step away from one of my favourite games last year for his family's sake.