I was recently lucky enough to correspond with comic artist Brian Robinson. He agreed to do a Question and Answer (Q & A) session for Comic Booked about art, comics and even Star Trek. Check out his awesome art in the Gallery posted at the end of the article. Here is the scoop on Mr. Robinson. This transcript has some minor editing.
Bio: In his own words
“My Dad was in the military so I was raised all over the place. But Clanton, Alabama is where I was born and it’s where I currently live and create. I set up my website as an online gallery mainly geared toward showcasing my artwork in various medias. Many of the mediums range from traditional pen and ink to digital inking and digital coloring. Most of the artwork is comic book-related… I do other type of illustration drawings, but creating sequential artwork for comic books is the area that I enjoy working in the most.
Also, be sure to check out my Comic Book Artist Tutorials Podcast. In this weekly podcast we’ll tackle such subjects as creating cell shaded anime artwork, coloring comic books and manga pages, digital inking, digital coloring, digital toning (aka ziptone for comic pages) and even comic book and manga lettering tutorials.”
Born: 1973
Hometown: Clanton, Alabama
Who are some of your favorite artists?
My favorite artists are John Buscema, John Byrne, Art Adams, Paul Ryan, Tom Grummett and my manga artists I like are Tite Kubo and Ken Akamatsu. I usually collect and buy tons of stuff done by those artists.
For those that may not know, who are the Incredible Amazing Five?
A group of 5 superheroes with super powers kind of funded or unofficially sponsored by the military to fight off unusual strange stuff. Kind of like Avengers meets the Marines or something along those lines, but with more humor. If you look close, each hero is kind of an homage to blends of old comic book and anime heroes. Even their powers kind of reflect a lot of well-known heroes. Why? Because I wanted to draw characters doing and using those powers in comics. It’s that simple.
I noticed a gallery dedicated to Power Girl. What is it that you like about her so much?
Two reasons: And no, I’m not pervert (well, no more than any other artist), but to answer honestly, her breast size. I always like to draw women with large breasts. Although I’m not really attracted to woman with super large breasts. Funny! From what I have heard the reason Power Girl’s bust got big was because artist Wally Wood (way back then) decided to draw her bust bigger and bigger until someone told him to knock it off, but no one ever did. I guess that’s why like manga artist Tite Kubo because he draws almost every female character in Bleach with either super-sized breasts or super-super-sized breasts! So I usually draw a lot big-busted women and Power Girl pinups I just post them to my Power Girl gallery for my site, via Deviantarts. Plus, I noticed since I added gallery it has helped bring web traffic to my sites from people doing searches for Power Girl. I have always liked Power Girl, in particular since she is always written with the attitude along lines of, “I have big breasts/isn’t it great,” type of attitude and she even cracks jokes using her breast size in battles.
What advice would you give to artists just starting out?
Of course, like most artists I recommend get good books like How to Draw the Marvel Way, The How to Draw Manga series of books are well done, as all those type of art books they have nowadays. I recommend you draw pages every day. Just draw. The only way you can get good at doing something is by doing it every day. If you draw a page per day you will pick up techniques that you won’t learn from just looking or reading about it in a book. New artists should try to replicate comic pages and see how their favorite artist went about doing things on the pages. Most artists fall in the trap of just doing pinups. They think, wow I can draw really good, so the sequential stuff will be a cakewalk. No! Work on the sequential stuff first so when you read an artist book or book on perspective you get what they’re talking about since you have attempted to draw those things already. Don’t ever give up learning and adapting. One thing I like about artists like John Byrne, Art Adams and even Jim Lee is they are always changing and adapting their style and picking up new things and getting better. Look at me, I’m basically still learning new things daily and my art shows it – or I hope it does. I’m always trying to improve instead just sitting back and saying well, “Wow I can draw pretty good. Well that’s it – mission accomplished.”
Tell us about some of your upcoming projects and how we can get ours hands on them.
Well, I’ve helped guys over at Phi3 comics complete another issues of Spiralmind, #3 and issue #4 coming out soon. I’m also working on my own comic, The Incredible Amazing Five issue #3 and #4 are almost ready and will be out soon. Plus, I have another comic coming out soon that I can’t talk about yet, but is pretty amazing and I will have information on my websites about it soon. The best way keep up with new stuff I’m doing is to check out my websites.
You admit that you’re a Trekkie/Trekker in denial, so I have to ask, who is your favorite Star Trek character?
Data off of The Next Generation was always my favorite. However, I’ve got to go with Spock. I mean think about it, he has been in or least mentioned in almost all the series, movies and even survived for new movies. Spock is pretty much universally the most well known character from Star Trek.
Brian Robinson Gallery
