That process takes likely half a workday of two to four hours, depending on complexity. I look at the pictures’ various details and select what I’d like to alter my drawing to reflect, hoping to create a more realistic, grounded image. The guidance of the photos often helps while I’m initially transposing my original drawing. The drawing is done by blowing up my initial tight sketch to trace over with a light table. Sometimes other models than myself pose for me, sometimes it’s statues and action figures I use, all lit clumsily in my basement. Once layouts are approved by whomever they’re for, I take photo reference for all of the separate compositions at once. Working out designs for covers I do every month usually are all done at the same time, where I keep the raw pencil rough thinking process to a day or two in my schedule for three to four covers. I might have finished sketching out a design for said cover while you drank that mocha, but that’s about it. It can be a wonderful experience to go, but when it had become the major force driving the industry of comics or how everybody makes a living, it seems like a bummer.Ĭan you describe your timetable and process for completing a new commissioned piece? What I can tell you is that I never thought the value of reading comics or following pop culture was necessarily intertwined with needing to go to a large public gathering to keep those passions alive. Speaking as someone who almost never goes to conventions, I’m not sure if my insight is worth much. Do you see this as a healthy necessity or an indication of a slip in fan interest? The comic convention scene is suffering inevitable growing pains and consolidation after a monumental expansion period.
#ALEX ROSS CHALLENGE OF THE SUPERHEROES TV#
So many things from TV shows I loved as a kid to my favorite obscure comics and toys have seemed to be things I get to work on. You can be a Beatles fan your whole life and never think that you’d be able to illustrate them for the world to see. Seriously though, I’m always surprised by how many opportunities I get to create art based on properties I never imagined my life would intersect with. Enter the mind of the Midwestern man often cited as the “Norman Rockwell of Comics.”ĪLEX ROSS: I’m glad to know I’ve got you fooled. Ross chatted with Den of Geek about keeping his game at such a high level, the state of convention madness, his new cover work with Marvel, and pondering the purity of the business as Hollywood comes a-courtin’.
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Recently he’s been the main cover artist for Marvel’s All-New, All-Different Avengersand The Amazing Spider-Man. His photo-realistic painterly style and dramatic, classical compositions were revolutionary at the time and operated in direct contrast to the bulging, mega-muscled crimefighters of the mid ’90s. Ross entered the comics arena in 1994 with the iconic Marvelsminiseries, and followed it up with DC’s Kingdom Come in 1996. In covering the comics scene it’s always a revelation to observe a superstar artist ascend to even greater heights of creative expression. Alex Ross has been burning up the comic book cosmos for over two decades, redefining the way superheroes are portrayed and setting the artistic bar somewhere over the rainbow and beyond the stratosphere.