Friday, August 25, 2006

Wally Wood's 22 panels that work



Wallace "Wally" Wood was an American comic book writer, artist and independent publisher mostly remembered for his work in EC Comics and Mad Magazine. He was born in 1927, and took his own life in his mid-fifties, in 1981.

He created hundreds of comic book pages and illustrated books and periodicals, as well as working in advertising, commercial design, product illustration, gag cartoons (I'm thinking of those risque little cocktail napkins from days of yore), and record album covers and posters.

He also worked on those fantastic Topps "Mars Attacks" trading cards.

Below, is a reasonably high-res. scan of his "22 panels that always work." He apparently created this as some sort of primer for others (and a reminder to himself). He described the panels as a primer, "interesting ways to get some variety into those boring panels where some dumb writer has a bunch of lame characters sitting around and talking for page after page."


click to enlarge, right click to save

A lot of his lessons seem to apply across the board--not only to comic illustration, but to easel art, trad. animation, and digital art--the whole tamale.

It's a little unclear who actually released this scan...BoingBoing says http://joeljohnson.com is the guy. He says he recently purchased the original very cheaply. He has some really high res scans on his site.
---o0o---

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