Scott McCloud

Cartoonist Scott McCLoud first came to my attention when I purchased his brilliant book "Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art" prior to starting my time at university. The very, very highly-illustrated book is set out itself as one big comic book,with all text written in speech/think bubbles or boxes, all in very precise points. A great read that helped me immensely in getting to grips with the way that comic books work properly and effectively but also it introduced me to a whole new form of "art" as comic book-style work had never been very prominent in my previous findings. The book opened my eyes for sure!

A good example of the way "Understanding Comics" is
set out (from start to end).

McCloud, hailing from Boston, Massachusetts, decided from an early age the career path that he wished to go down and found himself soon enough graduating from Syracuse University with a Bachelor in Fine Arts. From here he went on to establish himself as a professional designer with the creations of pieces such as "Zot!" (1984) and "Destroy!!" as well as being employed as a writer for the already well-established DC Comics name.

McCloud begins his work using basic pencil sketched and then completes/adds to them using digital software such as Illustrator for the typographic elements and Photoshop for the imagery.

Although publishing brilliant and widely-recognised work, Scott is nowadays perhaps most known for his work elaborating on the 'theory' of comic books with his published books, one being the aforementioned "Understanding Comics" (1994) but also his follow-on to this, "Reinventing Comics" (2000), which also took the extensive comic book layout as it's predecessor.

I'm very inspired by McCloud's work with it being, as I said previously, a big eye opener to the world of comic books and a really helpful and effective way of introducing me into a field of work which I had previously never really had an interest in.

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Chris Ware

Chris Ware is a notable American comic book artist who is perhaps well know for his affiliation with the ACME Novelty Library cartoon company as well as his own series of graphic novels. Interestingly, Ware is not your typical cartoonist in the sense that his subject matter is quite dark and covers matters including mental health and negative elements within today's society.

An example of Ware's precise work, which
graced the cover of The New Yorker.

Resembling work that would have been popular and 'current' at the start of the 20th Century, Ware's designs comprise of meticulous detail (for both typography and general illustration) and influential components from the 'Rag Time era' such as classic cut out toy designs, music sheet designs and classic newspaper cartoonist-style illustrations.

All of Ware's precise and immaculately drafted work is done by hand with ink, although sometimes appearing to be at first glance digitally created. Using a range of geometric tools such as T-squares and rulers, Chris only uses digital elements into his work for the purpose of adding colour, nothing else whatsoever.

I'm a huge fan of Chris Ware's work, finding his attention to detail and meticulousness absolutely out of this world. The way in which he crafts an image or design is an art form in itself, with an unimaginable amount of time consuming geometric-based formatting involved. I myself can never see myself working in such a close-knit way due to being quite an "urgent" person, however I have total respect for artists and designers, like Ware, who do.

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