7th Dec 2022, 8:36 AM
In yet another example of “it seemed like a good idea at the time”, this page had me kicking myself for coming up with a four-armed character with a head bigger than its body. A character whom I was intending to draw in all sorts of poses, fighting and grappling with two other characters, one of whom also had a huge head, and the other with a cape! Who’s stupid idea was this?!! Oh yeah… it was mine… D’OH!
I have quickly learned that drawing the Multi-Armed, Really Strong, Highly Mutated, Artificial Lifeform Living Only for Walloping, also known as M.A.R.S.H.M.A.L.L.O.W. in almost any pose where his arms have to do anything other than extend, spider-like, from his torso, is a compositional nightmare that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy! (Well, that’s an exaggeration. I probably would wish it on my worst enemy - you know who you are, and you’d deserve it!) I am constantly struggling with which arm should be in front, which behind, and how do I place all those arms so that they can do what I need them to and still stay out of the way of that bloody humongous head?!! It’s a bother, I tell you!
This page was the hardest challenge yet. My original thumbnail layout was very different. Fewer panels and much clearer action. M.A.R.S.H.M.A.L.L.O.W. posed on the left side of a wide panel, facing to the right with all his arms extended out in front of him as he swung Steamroller Man and Night Knight by their feet to smash into each other, over on the right side of the panel. It was easy to depict that action with a few rushed strokes of the pencil in the brainstorming stage, but once I started to try and pencil it, getting the proportions of each character right, figuring out how a large hand wrapping around an ankle would look, from both front and back - semi-accurate (or at least believable) anatomy - a cape flowing around - who is overlapping whom - which limbs are overlapping which - and that HEAD, THAT ACCURSED GIANT HEAD!!
As Charlie Brown once said, “AUGGHH!!”
It’s at moments like these that I’ve found it pays to step away from the computer for a bit and go back to doodling and noodling in my sketchbook, to see if I can approach the problem from a different angle. In the end I adopted a “details suggests the larger picture” approach. I decided to show the moments of the ankles getting grabbed and the heroes getting smashed together in close-up rather than in wide shots showing the full bodies of all three characters. The pose of M.A.R.S.H.M.A.L.L.O.W. holding the heroes up by the ankles was also pretty tricky to draw, but necessary to set up the following close-up panel, and certainly much more achievable than what I originally planned. My hope was that the images I did choose to show were clear enough that, when juxtaposed with the others in sequence, the reader’s imagination would do the heavy lifting that my artistic skills were not able to.
You, dear reader, will be the judge.
Thank you, as always, for reading Steamroller Man and sharing it with friends and family who you think might dig it! Follow me on the socials - go to https://linktr.ee/steamrollerman/ for all my links! I’ve also recently joined both Hive Social and Mastodon as @steamrollerman. On Mastodon I’m @steamrollerman@socel.net. So far, Hive seems a bit laggy and buggy, which makes it a bit frustrating to use, but I’m really enjoying the Mastodon experience and the rapidly-growing community over there! So if you’re on either of these sites, give me a follow!
On to the next page!