Should The Beano and Dandy have more detailed work..?

Peter Gray · Post by **Peter Gray** » 24 Nov 2006, 00:57

Should The Beano and Dandy have more detailed work..?

Looking at Leo Baxendales work and Ken Reid I'm amazed at the detail..

Also in the early 60's so many of the pages were packed with details and skills...

David Sutherlands Bash Street kid early 60's is super...

More recently Tom Paterson has done this very well...though his work is less detailed i.e Calamity James compare with the late 80's to now...

Do kids want a more simplier drawing...easy on the eye...graphic design style.
..like Jak, Blinky, Ollie, Numbskulls, Gnasher and Gnipper...etc..

My own Genie proves you can have a simplier style if you have good story and gags...

I miss the details.....
John Geering..Gordon Bell did some great background stuff as well

Cap Haggis · Post by **Cap Haggis** » 24 Nov 2006, 12:43

A good question Peter, I'm pretty biased on this as my fav UK artists are Reid and Baxendale by a mile - but sticking up for the new(er) crowd of artists there are some great pieces of work being produced - Jamie Smart does put in a lot of detail in his strips in my opinion (lots of little side gags) plus he has a fantastic modern style that the kids love - Tom Paterson is from the old school and is a genius to me (whats his obsession with socks lol?), ditto Steve Bright (probably the most talanted of the current artists - very versatile). Personaly, I would prefer to see more detail and better art/cartooning to be honest - I think some of it looks poor (not all some of the more bvasic cartoons i find are very good the guy that does Blinky I think is good) - but then again the 60s stuff being reprinted is the best of the best and in many cases there was a lot of filler material in the 60s/70s as there is today.

Peter Gray · Post by **Peter Gray** » 25 Nov 2006, 00:52

Another thing is adventure strips.......seems like theres no interest from readers for this...personally I love to see Billy the cat etc... every week..not just the annuals!!

The amount of time, talent that went into a Ken Reid Jonah for an example...is mind blowing...its almost a lost art form...

At least one strip could do this.....

.Baxendale...Reid even Dudley...Reg Parlett...Robert Nixon were brilliant draftsman..

Ken Harrison is good...

It seems everything is quick...gulp down work...

Sheldon · Post by **Sheldon** » 25 Nov 2006, 01:43

Think it depends on what's around and what the kids want. Loads of shows like Danny Phantom use that clean cut style. As much as I like the styles of Dudley Watkins et al, in a comic today it'd look cluttered and overdrawn compared to what Jamie and Nick Brennan do. That's just how the market is these days. Tom and Steve maintain a happy medium.

kevf · Post by **kevf** » 25 Nov 2006, 11:44

Viz seems to get away with squeezing 20 panels onto a page, but whenever I've experimented in the past with filling pages fuller it hasn't worked.

The thing that I've always thought was that artists drew things bigger back in the olden days, hence the tighter detail, and in some cases that's true. I spoke to John Burns at the Comic Expo this year, he had some Bionic Woman pictures from Look-In and they were massive. He bemoaned the fact that nowadays they have him draw things "on a postage stamp".

I saw some Ken Reid original art for Jonah at the Comic Convention Glasgow years ago and, as I recall, it was larger than A3.

My current Beano strip (The Ofsted Inspector featuring Julius Sneezer) is in part a parody of Asterix books, so I've looked closely at Uderzo's Artwork which is clearly drawn about A2 (ie 4 times up). I was tempted to draw my art that big, but it takes twice as long and you don't get paid twice as much.

Maybe that's why art has become looser as years have gone by, because page rates have not gone up enough.

Kev F

Shaqui · Post by **Shaqui** » 25 Nov 2006, 12:56

I was wondering if two factors are at work here...

1/ Page rates have not significantly increased (any pros here who know different please correct me) for comic art over the years - whereas, say, ?30 a page may have been a very good income in the 1950s and 1960s, during the 1970s it was okay but in the 1980s it was a joke. Obviously rates have increased but not to the point where an artist can devote, say, his whole working week to one strip of two to four pages.

2/ The digital age. Both Andrew Skilleter and Lee Sullivan, both modern day artists who work in comics, tended to now draw at pretty much same size, because companies want stuff provided digitally and both had only A4 size scanners! The standard size mark-up used to 50% but now, even with an A3 scanner (unless you want to scan in two or more parts and composite them in Photoshop), you're not really going to work much larger than 25% larger (if your art bleeds off the page edge).

kevf · Post by **kevf** » 26 Nov 2006, 12:54

I'd love to know what page rates have been in the past. I can confirm that I'm currently being paid by DC Thomson about 60% of what I used to get paid by the Viz-lookalike adult humour comics 15 years ago.

And I remember way back at a comic convention in 1980 or so Dez Skinn saying how he and some British artists had been greatly amused to learn how little their US counterparts were getting (it was, i think, Neal Adams who told him).

What were those figures? I know what I was earning from Marvel in the mid 90s, and it was slightly less than what my colleague Mark Buckingham was getting. What they get now I can't imagine.

Oh, also, royalties. I have a letter from Marvel telling me they overpaid me for an issue of Star Trek, so the next job I do for them I owe them $250!

Also I've been told Leo Baxendale was paid a lot more than other artists back in the 1960s, to such an extent that he ran a studio of assistants who did much of the drawing on his behalf. Is this true?

Anyone know more?

chrissmillie · Post by **chrissmillie** » 26 Nov 2006, 13:33

Bellardinelli also had a team of artists to help him. I believe it was more common then. Don Lawrence helped out Mick Anglo too.

Marvel are rumoured to be very poor payers for new artists. Though I think it can be difficult just talking page rates. A US comic would have more pages so perhaps a lower page rate but more work, so an artist could make a living from just doing one comic.

Cap Haggis · Post by **Cap Haggis** » 27 Nov 2006, 11:36

Kev - I managed to pick up about 20 Odhams (Smash, Pow Whams) in Glasgow a few years ago that were file copies - these had a small white sticker on them that showed the page rate per artist - I will look them out to be certain, but I remember , considering it was 1965ish the amounts were considerable , also taking account of the number of pages Leo Baxendale was creaqting he must have made a few quid (saying that the guy must have been exhausted creating so many pages week in week out) From memory Ken Reid was getting ?50 a page whicgh was a lot lot then and in an article he stated this was 3 times as much as DCT were paying at theat time - saying that these guys sold 100 's of thousands of books and must have made companies a lot of money.

Peter Gray · Post by **Peter Gray** » 10 May 2007, 17:37

Looking at the book
Great British comics by Paul Gravett

its great looking at the orignal work by Leo Baxendale...
it is drawn on 2 pads A3 size to make a whole..............I read it then looked at all the funny details.......the next day I spotted more.........almost a surprise!.like Giles did.......

Who will be the next artist in The Beano and Dandy to produce gems like this...?

Keep up the good work..David S..Tom Paterson...etc..

tonyodonnell · Post by **tonyodonnell** » 14 May 2007, 14:29

Page rates!? I think it is generally accepted that drawing UK comics in the 1950's and 1960's was better paid than it is now. I remember reading an interview with Ron Embleton and he recalled earning as much as his Bank manager, and this was in the early part of his career. Frank Bellamy spent most of his career producing about two Colour pages per week but I would imagine that he was on a HIGH page rate.
Marvel UK paid around ?60 per page for pencils plus ?40 for Inks in the late 1980's..there was probably a lower rate for Nursery titles and a higher rate as well but that is what I got for ' The Real Ghostbusters.'
DCT have always lagged behind on page rates..but in compensation they pay within 10 days usually. There is still no set page - rate but I was getting ?92 per B&W page from The Beano last year.

Lew Stringer · Post by **Lew Stringer** » 14 May 2007, 16:19

Shaqui wrote:I was wondering if two factors are at work here...

1/ Page rates have not significantly increased (any pros here who know different please correct me) for comic art over the years - whereas, say, ?30 a page may have been a very good income in the 1950s and 1960s, during the 1970s it was okay but in the 1980s it was a joke. Obviously rates have increased but not to the point where an artist can devote, say, his whole working week to one strip of two to four pages.

Rates depends on what comic you're working for but without giving specifics I can say that Egmont and Viz pay far more than the two digit sums mentioned here. It is still possible to make a decent living out of UK comics.

Regarding detail and art size: most pages are now drawn half up or less, but over the last couple of years I've been drawing my Viz pages (Suicidal Syd) twice up. Reasons being: the amount of panels per page (around 25) and that the comic is a spoof of Fifties comics, so drawing twice up adds to authenticity.

I only have an A4 scanner, so each page is scanned in six sections and reassembled on screen. If the publisher needs it to fit a specific template (A4 or A3 for example) I can reduce it to suit, after I've cleaned up the art, filled in blacks or colour etc.

Lew

David · Post by **David** » 14 May 2007, 17:59

tonyodonnell wrote:Page rates!? I think it is generally accepted that drawing UK comics in the 1950's and 1960's was better paid than it is now. I remember reading an interview with Ron Embleton and he recalled earning as much as his Bank manager, and this was in the early part of his career. Frank Bellamy spent most of his career producing about two Colour pages per week but I would imagine that he was on a HIGH page rate.
Marvel UK paid around ?60 per page for pencils plus ?40 for Inks in the late 1980's..there was probably a lower rate for Nursery titles and a higher rate as well but that is what I got for ' The Real Ghostbusters.'
DCT have always lagged behind on page rates..but in compensation they pay within 10 days usually. There is still no set page - rate but I was getting ?92 per B&W page from The Beano last year.

Hi

Do DCT still hire cartoonists?

I do cartooning just for fun at the moment, I didn't know you could just send it in un-coloured. I colour my stuff with paintbrushes, but most people seem to use computers.

Thanks,

David

Post by **AndyB** » 15 May 2007, 18:29

I believe that Jimmy Glen and Dave Gudgeon are still DCT Staff Artists, but everyone else is freelance. Even the freelancers are being cut back.

Peter Gray · Post by **Peter Gray** » 17 Apr 2009, 21:25

I've brought this topic back due to whats been discussed on the Easter fun post..

I love detail..maybe artist should be paid more to do this...would it increase sells to pay more..

Comics UK