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How do I subscribe to your My Neopolis
newsletter?
Contact me through my Mailroom
link and let me know. I'll add you to the list. It's not automated
or anything, I'll just type your email address onto the list.
If you get sick of the occasional extra email and I'll take
you off the list. I hate junkmail too.
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How can I get an original Gene Ha
sketch?
In general I don't take sketch commissions through my website.
I'm very committed to my published comics work and I'd never
get it done if I did that.
I do make sketches at cons and signings. If the event is
sparsely attended I might do sketches for free. If things
look busy I'll either charge enough to slow down demand (think
Adam Smith) or offer a dare to the collector.
If I have time I'll do quick head sketches for free, usually
of you as a superhero. I'm also liable to give small free
sketches to kids and bored significant others.
So if you'd like a really nice sketch free track me down
at one of the smaller store signings or regional cons. Check
the list on the homepage for events
near you!
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What materials do you use? How do
you work?
My technique has changed quite a bit since I first wrote this
FAQ. Here's what I'm using now:
- a lead
holder pencil filled with H
leads for sketching and 2B for shading
- a rotary
lead pointer
- french gray Copic
markers in the wide and brush tips
- nice 11"x17" inkjet paper. I like Xerox. Marker
paper tends to get smudgy and oily on the surface. I've
tried watercolor paper and may do so again.
- white chalk pencils and white paint
- Photoshop
For projects before July 2007 my basic tools were:
At some point, I really should make an illustrated “How to
Draw Like Gene Ha” web page. It mostly involves sitting alone
in a small room for most of the daylight hours. But here are
the basics.
Once I get the scripts, I make little tiny sketches of each
page, about the size of my thumb (thumbnails). Then, I make
layout sketches on shrunken copies of comic art board, two
per page. Both of these have to include word balloons (no
text), figures, major background elements, and panel layout.
This is also where I work out the light/dark balance of the
page.
Using the layout sketches as my guide, I might take digital
photographs of people modeling as the major characters. Usually,
these are friends. But if you’re nice, you can often get complete
strangers to model for you! I don’t know about the rest of
the country, but Midwesterners are incredibly gracious to
comic book geeks who want to take photos. For minor characters,
I just work from my imagination.
During a photo shoot good lighting is essential. A sunny
day is good, but a 500W incandescent photo lamp is better.
If you can’t get one of these, a 500W halogen work lamp does
a good job. They do get insanely hot, though. They’re available
at most hardware stores. Get one with a sturdy tripod and
good height.
Once I've taken all the photos I need, it's time to draw.
Actually, 90% of my drawings are done without using photo
reference. A big mirror helps as I often pose for characters
myself.
Here are some tricks I've learned over the years for my drawing
tools. I use a lead holder pencil because nothing else can
be sharpened as nicely.
I take a scan of the rough layout and blow it up to 8.5"x11".
I then draw a tight pencil on top of this. That gets scanned
and printed on 11"x17" paper in very faint blue
line. This is where I go all out with the markers, pencils
and other mixed media.
I like the markers because they let me get decently precise
"inkwash" effects but I don't have to clean them
or worry about spilling my inks. They're bulky but I can sit
just about anywhere (including airliners!) and get my work
done. It's damn hard to use traditional inking materials while
travelling. For outlines and precise shading I use the pencils.
The white materials are used for highlights and corrections.
Keep corrections to a minimum. If you have extensive mistakes
reprint your pencils and start over again.
The final result is sent to the colorist for tinting in Photoshop.
Here's some advice on tools I used to use.
Quick tip on refillable tech pens: shaking them is
an awful way to get the ink flowing again. I know, that's
what the manufacturer recommends. Instead, dab the point
against a moist paper towel.
When buying W&N brushes, buy them in the unopened
plastic shipping bags. I've never had a problem with
a Series 7 fresh out of the bag. Once the store opens
the bags to display them, they start to dry out and
fray. W&N ships the #1s three to a bag. I stock
up by mail order, then store the unused brushes in the
fridge like a fur coat. Sable is used for fur coats,
and is considerably more expensive than mink.
To clean them, pony up for a plastic canister of Masters
Brush Cleaner. I add some water to give it a gel consistency.
Don't mash the brush into the soap! Scrape up a dab and knead
it into the hairs, working from base to tip. Rinse and repeat
until cleaned. Gently swab the brush against the soap to leave
a conditioning layer to protect the hairs. Allow the brush
to dry tip down, ideally on a spiral
coil brush rack.
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How do you get into
comics?
I got into the industry in the early 90’s, when Marvel and
DC were looking for warm bodies to staff the books. It’s a lot
harder now.
At most comic conventions, there are no editors from the
big companies. The artists will usually give you good advice
if you have sample pages, but they don’t do any hiring. Smaller
companies might be there, and they often ‘hire’. However,
don’t expect to receive much in pay ($15/page isn’t unusual).
A lot of things can go wrong with small publishers, so be
prepared. It is a way to get your foot in the door.
You can go the orthodox route of showing up at a big comics
convention and trying to show your work. Or you can mail photocopies
to the submissions editor. This is almost impossible. Most
companies create a short waiting list for portfolio review,
and standards have improved since they hired people like me.
The best way to get into comics is to print your own. Hopefully
you want to do your own comic for it’s own sake. Even if you
want to work for a big company, doing your own comic first
proves you have the chutzpah and talent to get a comic done.
They make great samples for a portfolio. Don
Simpson had a great quote on the subject, “Now that my
comics are on the Internet, I’m losing less money than ever
making comics!” And Don is a comic book genius.
Ideally, you’ll want to have some good drawing tools (NO
felt tip pens!) and a good computer. Advice on self-publishing
can be found on the net (Dave Sim is the patron saint of self-published
comics). Expect to blow a thousand or two doing this. I really
hope you’re not expecting to get rich in comics.
The second best way is to become a comics journalist. Interview
an editor in a bar and keep buying him/her drinks. Then threaten
to send the pictures from the hotel room to his/her spouse
and the police.
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What comics do you
read?
Of course, anything by Alan Moore. Anything by Kyle
Baker. Or Zander
Cannon. And anything written by Bill
Willingham. Fables is incredible and Jack of Fables looks
like a winner too.
Just about anything Top
Shelf puts out nowadays is wonderful. They put out the
latest Alan Moore/Melinda Gebbie opus, Lost
Girls. It is not, to put it mildly, for the easily shocked
or their kids. (Pssst - It's got sex!) And they've put Alan's
best work ever, From
Hell, back into print. I can't tell you exactly how it
differs from the movie because I've never bothered watching
it. The book is a work of genius; I've never heard this said
about the movie.
Top Shelf has
lots of other wonderful stuff, much of it kid friendly. Blankets
is one of the best comics I've ever read. Here's a preview.
And I'm seriously studying the work of Derek
Kirk Kim in Same
Difference and Other Stories. I love his elegant line.
I think the greatest “sequential artist” to show up since
I’ve been reading is Bill Watterson. I really miss his stuff.
By the end of Calvin and Hobbes’ run, it had become an ideal
mix of story, drawing, color, and design. Just amazing. He
never tired of experimenting. He even ‘invented’ the Sin
City style before Mr. Miller did.
Little rant: IMHO, what the comics industry needs now are
comics that you can throw at any of your friends (comic geek
or not) which they’ll enjoy. The
Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius is one comic
that meets this standard. But nowadays, everyone wants to
catalyze the next hot movie property. Oh well.
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The Life of Gene
I figure if you're reading this bio, you're either
interested in how I got a job in comics or how to keep your
kids from becoming comic book artists. Good luck either way.
Anyhow, I'll try to explain how I ended up working twelve
hours a day sitting alone in a small room.
I was born in Chicago, but raised in South Bend, Indiana.
The home of Notre Dame University. My parents were
well-educated Korean immigrants who hoped their three sons
would get prestigious degrees and move on to prestigious jobs.
Didn't happen...
I was the most introverted of the three Ha brothers. Being
both a geek and a first generation Korean-American made me
seek out escapist fantasy, especially comic books. While my
brothers were both more artistically talented than me, neither
of them had the patience to sit for hours on end working on
one drawing. Or maybe they just had better things to do. I was
the only brother not to play high school football.
I think there are a lot of parallels between my generation
of Asian-American comic book artists and the generation of
Jewish artists and writers who created superheroes in the
1930's. Mystery men with super powers, secret identities, and
absurdly Anglo names seemed to have attracted both
generations. We were all the children of immigrants struggling
to fit into America, and the fantasies of 1930's Jewish geeks
still held appeal to 1980's Korean geeks.
All of the typical comics names from the 80's were influences
on me: Byrne, Miller, Sienkiewicz, Simonson, Moore, etc. But
the most important was Matt Wagner. Mage
is still a magical series to me, and the stubborn Kevin Matchstick
and Sean the ghost are personal archetypes to this day. My
dream is to make a series that will be as powerful to you
(and myself) as that book was to me.
Art appealed to me, not in and of itself, but as a way of
creating comic books. South Bend public schools offered few
classes in realistic drawing, so I took few elective classes
in art. I mostly drew in other classes and after school. I was
quite good at taking notes, then caricaturing the teachers
before they moved on to a new idea.
My high school's newspaper, the Clay
Colonial, was where I really began to understand
the graphic arts. I won the Most Valuable Staffer award, an
unusual honor for the staff artist. I don't know where my
high school and college degrees are, but I know where that
plaque is.
The most important thing one must do before learning is figure
out what you don't know. When it came time to go to college,
I had no proper portfolio and couldn't get into any self respecting
school. Which is how I ended up at the Center
for Creative Studies (now the "College for Creative
Studies"). In my first two years, I learned how little
I knew. The last two years I tried to learn it. Art school
can be incredibly useful, but the degree itself is meaningless.
My art was still a mess when I graduated. I've met kids stuck
on farms their whole lives who can draw better than I did
then, and I've met art school grads whom I wouldn't want working
on the Clay Colonial. In Minneapolis I shared a studio
with two artists who held day jobs and hadn't been to art
school. They were incredibly dedicated and were better artists
than I was when I graduated.
In my last semester at CCS, I sent out drawing samples to
Marvel, and a week later to DC as an afterthought. Marvel
sent an unintentionally vicious letter criticizing my perspective,
anatomy, and technique, everything except my storytelling.
In retrospect, they were mostly right about everything but
the storytelling. Still, they were needlessly harsh.
DC was interested. They sent me a sample script, liked the
results, and I've had regular gigs ever since.
Recently, I moved back to the Chicagoland area with my wife,
Lisa. She fills me with joy, and keeps me from going crazy.
Feel free to write a note and let
me know how you’re doing.
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