Dracula Sketch / Comic Study
2mo
Dan Blodgett
It's a bad picture, and I ran out of room at the bottom of the page haha. Just want to see what people think as far as layout, design, composition, etc. Not my best work, but it was fun to take some images from a movie and think of them in terms of comic illustration. Ink is not my natural medium, and I tried to simplify as much as possible while retaining all the necessary information from the scene. I have ambitions to one day draw my own comics, so any tips and info is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Nice!
You should check out Topps comics Bram Stokers Dracula, it was done by Mike Mignola around the time of the movie's release. Probably one of my favorite comic book adaptations of any movie. Would be a good jump point to reference your work to it as well as the movie. In fact if you wanted to make a study of that story, you could get the movie script as well. I find hitting a story from multiple angles like this and just focusing on a specific genre such as this, dark fantasy/horror kinda makes sense vs jumping around to different projects and genres. Search for 'read comic online' + Bram Stoker's Dracula, should be able to find it, Im sure the movie script is freely online as well.
I kinda wish there was an official Matrix 1 comic book because I've studied the heck out of that film from a story and cinematics perspective! A fun one to explore on this thread is Back To The Future 1 & 2, I've got those scripts as well and would be cool to break down a few pages into a comic book format.
Thanks for the reply! Yep, Mike Mignola's one of my favorites. I looked into picking up a hardcover version of that book a while ago, the black and white version, after I completed this page, but for some reason I held off... then just forgot about it haha. Maybe I'll look for it again now that you reminded me haha.
Not sure why film studies aren't done more often, especially for comics. Great directors like Coppola, Robert Zemeckis, the Wachowskis, etc. have so much to offer illustrators in terms of visual storytelling.
And Back to the Future would be perfect! Show us what you got brother!
Very cool. I think it reads very well.
If I had one critique it would be that it looks like the character is winding up for a mighty blow but then gives it the over head stabbing motion as his last action. I know it's kind of nit-picky on my part but the the wind up of rising the sword over the head, the tension as he swings it back is setting the audience up for a certain action and it was a little jarring seeing the reverse grip stabbing the cross.
Still a very nice comic page. Love how fearless you are in spotting the blacks. It adds that old school horror movie vibe and contrast makes everything very readable.
Thanks for sharing always cool to see people aspire to comic book greatness.
Thank you, Michael! Appreciate you! I agree it's a little choppy. Probably should've added an extra panel or two (or page) to show the entire scene, but I wanted to fit it on a single page just as a quick study and was already running out of room in my sketchbook haha. No rewards for laziness in art, I guess. Haha.
