When I first wrote about Zuda Comics back in July, DC Comics’ venture into creating an online comics community and developing a commercial line from it was barely more than a web page and a promise.

In the intervening time, however, the promise has begun to fill out, and there is now a substantial presence, with some 20 or so webcomics running, and more competing for viewer votes to gain a slot in the roster.

Basically, anyone can submit a webcomic, registered site visitors can then vote on the comics. There is also a provision for leaving feedback on the postings of individual comics and a more general message board.

Those whose submissions are chosen to run as features are offered contracts for a certain period, over which they agree to produce a certain amount of material. Unlike a lot of webcomics, there is actual payment and the potential for royalties here, though not at the same scale as in traditional print comics lines.

I have to point out that I have not read their terms and agreements in detail, and those interested in submitting webcomics for consideration should, of course, carefully do so. There are three agreements listed in their FAQ, and submission instructions here. I would be particularly cautious in making sure you understand the rights being assigned and how that is applicable to your ownership of the material.

On the reading side, after more than 12 years(!) of crabbing about how monumentally clueless Marvel and DC have been about how comics can work on the web, I have to admit that Zuda, at least, is getting many things right.

First of all they seem to finally be aware that computer monitors are horizontal, not vertical like a comic book page, and have created a standard size horizontal format within which all of the comics are presented.

The way the comics are presented is also well beyond the usual clueless interface disasters the the big companies think are appropriate for presenting online comics (which are usually focused on preventing you from “stealing” the pages, and shoving ads in your face in the process).

The presentation of the Zuda webcomics is within a very nicely implemented Flash interface. (This is not a contradiction in terms as my previous rant may suggest, such things are actually possible!) I’m not sure who designed the interface, but someone who worked on it had a good grasp of interactive information design and it works very well.

You can advance through the pages of an individual comic with slide-show style arrow controls, supplemented with a pop-up bar of thumbnail images. The interface tells you what page you are on and indicates the total number of pages currently available for that comic. The entire navigation can be tucked away at will. The Flash module even remembers where you are in a story if you click away and return.

The comics can look slightly pixelated in the window at first. This is actually because they are being scaled down in Flash. The comics are posted in high-resolution and they can either be scaled with a zoom slider within the default window, or toggled to full screen mode. In full screen mode only the comic is visible against a black background, and even the navigation bar can be hidden, leaving just a full screen of high-resolution comic page. This is a wonderful feature and my hat’s off to the Zuda team for making this call and carrying it through with such aplomb.

Of the 20 or so comics currently available, there is some variety of subject, approach and level of ability. If you roll over the comic’s panel in the selection page you get a brief synopsis and creator credits, with more detail provided to the right on the comic’s dedicated page. I haven’t had a chance to read through all of them in detail but there are a couple of standouts.

Bayou (image above, top), written and illustrated by Jeremy Love and colored by Patrick Morgan, isn’t afraid to take on topics like depression-era race relations in the American South, mix them with actual character development and throw in characters from fiction like Br’er Rabbit. The story is well paced and nicely drawn, particularly in zoomed-in or full screen mode, where you can appreciate the use of coquille-board style crayon textures. As of this writing, Bayou is up to 47 pages and feels like it’s just gaining momentum.

High Moon (image above, bottom), written by David Gallaher, with art by Steve Ellis and lettering by Scott O Brown, is only up to 8 pages so it’s hard to judge the story, though it seems to suggest “High Plains Drifter Meets the Werewolf”, but the art by Ellis is just terrific. Again, use the zoom or full screen feature to see his expressive line work, shape-defining hatching, solid draftsmanship and emotionally effective use of color and texture.

These two alone are enough to keep me coming back to Zuda, but I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more from this fledgling online comics publisher, and I hope this turns out to be a successful paradigm for the presentation of new comics stories and fresh talents.

Link Collector is just that, a well arranged collection of links to sites for illustrators, digital painters, concept artists, matte painters and comics artists.

The illustrators are primarily science fiction and fantasy, and there is an emphasis on concept art and digital painting. The category labeled “Traditional and Sculpture” seems to refer to traditional media, as opposed to digital, within the fantasy, science fiction and concept art genres, rather than to traditional genres of art. There is little in the way of sculpture yet, but I assume that will take the form of dimensional works in the science fiction and fantasy vein, similar to what one might encounter in the Spectrum collections.

There is a section of Art Resources, with links to other major collections of similar art and illustration, and a growing blogroll. Unlike most blogrolls, which are essentially just lists of links, the listings here, like the listings in the other categories, are accompanied by a short, succinct description of the site and a representative slice of image or a logo, making them much more useful than non-annotated links.

The Link Collector was put together by Leonid Kozienko as part of his Leoartz site; which includes links to his portfolio of digital painting on CGPortfolio as well as his blog. The very brief bio on the CGPortfoio site lists Kozienko’s experience as concept design and illustration for videogames and film. Most of the pieces in the portfolio seem to be experiments and playful interpretations of images from films. The blog is in Russian, but the titles, interestingly enough, are in English; and the images, of course, are independent of language.

Link Collector is available in either English or Russian, and can be toggled between the two with a link at the top. The link I’ve given here is to the English version.

Note: I should give my customary warnings that Link Collector contains links to some NSFW material; and can be a major time sink. Have fun.

Born in Utah, raised in Illinois and California, Douglas Fryer returned to Utah to study, and went on to teach there and in other parts of the country in addition to establishing a career in illustration. His clients have included Warner Brothers, Harcourt Brace, TDK and Proctor and Gamble among others.

Fryer eventually gravitated toward gallery art, acquired his MFA in Painting and Drawing and transitioned into a career as a successful gallery artist.

His gallery work emphasizes landscape, though you can find engaging figure work as well. His landscapes have the wonderful characteristic of being simultaneously atmospheric and forthrightly declaring themselves to be paint on a surface. Bits of rough scumbling and textural strokes of color are often the essence of a given form; complexity is suggested, but turns to mist on closer inspection. His palette is often muted, but with an underlying feeling of the sensuality of the colors, as if they were whispered descriptions of the scene. Occasionally, it looks as though bright highlights have been laid on with little chunks of Rembrandt impasto.

Fryer now is a principle instructor at Brigham Young University. He doesn’t seem to have a personal site, and I haven’t turned up examples of his illustration, but his gallery work in visible online at the galleries in Arizona, New Mexico and Washington State where he is represented.

My thanks to David Malan, who studied with Fryer, for the suggestion and links. (See my post on Dave Malan.)

Maggie Taylor uses found materials, a flatbed scanner and Adobe Photoshop to create her wistful, atmospheric photo-collages. Her images have a feeling of 19th Century academic art and a consistency that puts me in mind of Max Ernst’s graphic collage novel Une Semaine du Bonté.

Taylor has applied her image making sensibilities, which frequently feel theatrical, with characters presented in front of backgrounds that have been manipulated to appear like painted cloth back-drops, to an often illustrated literary work in her upcoming book Almost Alice (image above). When traditional illustrators take on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I can’t help but compare them to John Tenniel and Arthur Rackham, a light against which few can shine, but Taylor’s soft, dreamy interpretation is different enough to be completely charming.

The flavor of her Alice is in keeping with her other work, which is suffused with Surrealist inspired dream nostalgia and visual non-sequiturs. On her web site you’ll find four galleries of images, the second of which is a preview of the Alice book, which is due out next year. There are also galleries of her earlier work and book illustration in the “extras” section. (I can’t give you convenient direct links because the site is in frames.)

You’ll also find links to her previous book titles, Adobe Photoshop Master Class: Maggie Taylor’s Landscape of Dreams, a “how it’s done” examination of her work by Amy Standen, which is complimented by a Maggie Taylor Landscape of Dreams 2008 Wall Calendar; and Solutions Beginning with A, a limited edition monograph by Lola Haskins and Maggie Taylor, which may only be available from the publisher. There is also mention of an exhibition catalog from the Museum of Photography in Seoul.

There is also an article about Taylor in the June 2007 issue of Adobe Magazine, which can be downloaded in PDF form from the Adobe Magazine web site.

[Link and suggestion courtesy of Daniel van Benthuysen]

James Paick is a concept artist for the gaming industry, working out of Los Angeles and is a graduate of Art Center College of Design.

Beyond that I know little, as his blog and web site don’t offer much in the way of biographical info, client lists or project credits.

I do know, however, that there are enough of his images online to get a good feeling for his work, which is atmospheric, full of artfully suggested details and often employs a limited palette to focus attention to the important parts of a composition.

Paick appears to work primarily digitally, but there is a nice section of traditional media sketches on his web site. The largest section in his online gallery is the environments section of the entertainment gallery.

Paick has a sketchblog called scribble pad and is a contributor to the joint blog clockwork, along with Stephen Chang, Eric Chiang, Steve Chon and Eric Ryan. He also has a portfolio on CGSociety.

Ilya Repin was probably the foremost proponent of 19th Century realism in Russia. He studied at the Petersburgh Academy of Arts, and was by reports uncommonly talented from a young age.

His image of Barge Haulers on the Volga (image above, with detail below, sometimes called “The Volga Boatmen”) was begun in his last year as a student (large image here).

He lived and worked in Paris for three years, returned to his home town in Russia and then moved to Moscow. He was a member of the group of Russian painters known as the Itinerants (or the Wanderers), who exhibited in traveling group exhibitions, along with Ivan Kramskoi, Ivan Shishkin and a number of other notable painters of the time. There is a short essay on Repin, Shishkin and Kramskoi by Vern Swanson on the Art Renewal Center.

Repin became head of a studio associated with the Petersburg Academy of arts and later served as the Academy’s director.

He painted landscapes, often combined with figures, still lifes, genre scenes and psychologically incisive portraits, including royalty and state occasions, but he is best known for his portrayal of peasants and subjects involving social commentary.

There is a semi-official web site maintained by the artist’s great great grandson, though one of the best online sources for images of Repin’s work is Wikipedia, which hosts a nice gallery of his paintings, many of them with hi-res versions (click to the individual image, then look for “full resolution version”).

Chris Ware, who I wrote about here and here, has just released The Acme Novelty Date Book, Volume Two: 1995-2000.

For those of you who are only familiar with Ware’s precise, carefully controlled marvels of precision comic art, these two volumes are something else altogether.

Basically they’re sketchbooks, not that different in essence from sketchbooks released by a number of comic artists and illustrators, with a mixture of sketches from life and fanciful doodling, often accented with handwritten notes.

You may notice a similarity in particular to the sketchbooks of Robert Crumb. Though not the marvellously expressive cartoonist that Crumb is, I think Ware is actually a better draftsman, despite his occasional notes of complaint about his own drawing ability.

What sets Ware apart from most, and invites comparison with Crumb, is the exceptional mind and original talent behind the sketches.

The drawings themselves are in turn loose, careful, freewheelingly imaginative, and when drawn from life, wonderfully observant, both of people and of everyday scenes.

Even those not familiar with Ware’s work, particularly if they enjoy sketchbooks, will find much to like in this volume. The sketches for the most part have a personal quality, the kind of honest, often casual, observations of what is a hand when one picks up a sketchbook. A far cry from the careful, self-conscious presentation drawings that many comic artists like to publish as “sketchbooks”.

Artists who frequently fill their own sketchbooks with observations from what’s around them whenever they get the chance will find common ground and inspiration here, quick sketches of people, sketched from angles the indicate the subject was often unaware of being drawn, and numerous room interiors and street scenes, drawn in simple line or detailed crosshatch pen and ink, and often colored with modest but very effective watercolor washes. There are travel sketches from Europe and “around the corner” scenes from Ware’s native Chigago. One is a very detailed watercolor and ink drawing of an airplane cabin, obviously filling as much time as possible on a trans-Atlantic flight.

There are lots of drawings of simple household objects, kitchen counters, tables, chairs and odds and ends like toy robots. There is also plenty of cartoon sketching, including sketches of classic early 20th Century comic characters, like those from Gasoline Alley, as well as sketches and doodles of his own characters, designs for his wonderful fake ads and other germinating ideas. There are lots of handwritten notes about where things were sketched, along with longer passages of various ideas, notions, ramblings, rants and diatribes, giving an unusual glimpse into his thought process.

There are also some comics stories, comics that are printed small enough to have you squinting, nose to the page, but comics nonetheless, and drawn much more freely than you will ever see in his finished comics.

I don’t know what size the original sketchbooks are, but most of the sketches have a feeling of being printed at the size they might have been done, so perhaps the comics were drawn that small.

Interestingly, the paper is off-white and flecked with spots and ink smudges, giving the book feeling of sketchbook pages that have been collected into a classic old library binding, another of Ware’s wonderfully imaginative an detailed book designs.

The image above is not an actual spread, but two separate pages I’ve put together to try to give an idea of the variety in the book.

All in all, this is a treat for fans of Chris Ware, and fans of sketching and sketchbooks in general. This is the second of two volumes, covering the years stated in the title. The first one was composed of sketchbook material from 1986-1995.

There are a few mentions of the first one on the web that include some images from that volume, and a scattering of mentions are begining to appear for Volume Two.

Here are two Acme Novelty Datebook Volume One posts on Book By Its Cover and Read About Comics; and and article from The Comics Reporter on Volume Two.

The new issue of Illustration magazine (#20) just came out, and the highlight is a beautiful and extensive (32 page) article on Andrew Loomis.

Loomis was an influential editorial and advertising illustrator who is better known for his instructional books than his classic illustrations. Hopefully this article will go some way toward correcting this.

Loomis’ art instruction books are classics in the genre, and are generally considered “must have” by knowledgeable illustrators, comic books artists, concept artists and others who must construct the human figure from their imagination.

Unfortunately, they are mostly out of print except for disappointingly slim excerpts printed in large pamphlet format by Walter Foster as Drawing the Head and Drawing: Figures in Action.

Fortunately, some scanned archives of the original books in their entirety are available on the web. I’ll list some at the end of the post. For more information see my previous post about Andrew Loomis.

Loomis’ commercial and editorial illustrations are even harder to come by than reproductions of his books, though Leif Peng comes through again with a nice but brief Flickr set and a good blog post from Today’s Inspiration.

The Illustration article, however, is a treasure trove of both information on, and illustration by Loomis; and, unlike web images, the illustrations here are in their natural environment of crisp, high-resolution printing.

The article covers a range of fascinating information that even many dedicated Loomis fans may not know.

It was written by illustrator and designer Jack Harris. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Jack since 1996, when he interviewed me about my webcomic for Buzzcutt, his pioneering online zine devoted to comics, film and pop culture.

I’ve been privileged to see a more extended version of his research on Loomis, which may hopefully make it into book form at some point; but in the meanwhile, this article is probably the most definitive source of information available on this highly influential artist, illustrator and author.

It includes a biographical background, overview and analysis of his work, history of his career, study of his techniques and methodology and descriptions of his books, some well known, some less so: Fun With a Pencil, Figure Drawing for All it’s Worth, Creative Illustration, Successful Drawing, 3-Dimensional Drawing, Drawing the head and Hands, and The Eye of the Painter; including stories about their creation and development.

These books are out of print, but they are treasured used bookstore finds for comic book artists, concept artists, illustrators and any other artists who must invent constructed figures without the recourse of a model, and they’re also inspirational in terms of Loomis’ method of developing ones skills as an artist.

It looks like Ken Steacy is intending to publish reprints of Loomis’ most famous and sought-after titles, but there are no publication dates and I’m not certain it’s a done deal.

I’ve been lucky to have found some of the Loomis books over the years, and have collected others in the form of photocopies from friends’ copies, and recently the web based scans. I’ve considered some of them (notably Figure Drawing for All it’s Worth and Drawing the Head and Hands, to be at the core of my art instruction library.

The Illustration article also includes the first mention I’ve seen of a lost Loomis title, I’d Love to Draw: Maybe You Can, Says Andrew Loomis, a drawing instruction manuscript that never saw print.

It wraps up with a look at Loomis’ legacy, his influence on a generation of aspiring artists, and his continuing influence today, particularly among certain illustrators and comic book artists like Glen Orbik, Laurel Blechman and Steve Rude, who all contributed information and images to the article.

It also mentions the influence of his teaching methodology along with that of Fred Fixler and Frank Reilly. The Loomis Method, as it is often referred to, has been influential in areas where it may not be mentioned by name. Many of the Walter Foster how to draw books carry on his ideas; there is a story in the article from Diana Loomis that the Disney corporation buys up copies of Loomis books from used bookstores and uses them in their training programs; and I see his influence strongly in the Famous Artist School approach and I see Loomis in the work of Harry Anderson, Haddon Sundblom, Gil Elvgren and the other “old School” illustrators of the mid-20th Century.

The Harris article in Illustration #20 is a fascinating look at a key figure in popular art instruction and illustration in the 20th Century.

As if the Loomis article wasn’t enough, this issue of Illustration doesn’t stop there; it also features in-depth articles the great classic sports cartoons of Willard Mullin and the striking illustrations, murals and gallery art of Alton S. Tobey, in addition to the usual book reviews and exhibition listings.

To say the articles in Illustration are “lavishly illustrated” is to belabor the obvious. Worth noting, though, is that the quality of the images and production values of the magazine in general are outstanding. Not that I want to give publisher Dan Zimmer any ideas, but I’m consistently amazed that the cover price is only $10, and not the $16 or $20 charged by other magazines that don’t come close to matching it for stunning images.

Also, one of the great things about Illustration magazine is that the ads are as beautiful as the content, particularly those from classic illustration dealers like Charles Martignette, GrapefruitMoonGallery, Illustration House and Heritage Art Auctions.

You can view a preview of the magazine in the form of thumbnail images of the entire issue on the Illustration magazine site. You can order single issues or subscriptions directly from the site.

See also my previous post about Illustration magazine and its sister publication illo.