Alan Hunt's Linklog

At times like that I’m drawing mostly with my mind’s eye, so it’s like I’m trying to trace what’s in my head with my hand, and telling my hand not to try and take control at all. I do it while sort of telling my hand it’s not allowed to assert itself or make the drawing it’s own.

The strong hand (drawing hand) is a thief. That might be useful when drawing certain patterns, but the A,B,C,D flow of an acting flow is all in the realm of the final experience. It’s a problem when my hand tries to steal that. In my comics I’m basically going for certain faces on my characters, or as we say “Face Manga” (???: kao manga). This is something I’ve been disliked for in the manga world; those long sequences of faces with word balloons. I think that’s probably because the editors have come to think that the faces the artist draws are just signs or symbols. However, I have come to question the general trend that shuns “Face Manga”. I feel like, “What’s wrong with going for the faces of the actors as they act!?” The angle of the face, the sight lines of the eyes, all of those things are of the utmost importance, so I couldn’t understand why I was being told it was no good.

I’m sometimes asked, “How is it that you are able to draw the same face over and over again?” and I always answer, “I never draw the same face again, even once.” A character that appears in volume one, panel one of a comic has a completely different face from that same character in volume 11.

They carry the burden of the whole story to that point, and they have specific expressions that only exist at that moment in time in volume 11. It’s exactly the same as actors. So there is a reason for even the angle of the drawing for an expression in a given panel. We (comic artists) are doing things that are so difficult, but it’s not often that people understand this. Many tend to think we’re just pumping out drawings with the same faces.