Peter Lawson talks about his Wonder Woman illustration

February 26, 2021 by Shane Syddall

Peter Lawson talks about his Wonder Woman illustration

Shane (00:25):
So the piece I’m looking at here is your Wonder Woman one. How, so what do you like about this one?

Peter (00:31):
That’s actually the second drawing over the top of the same pencils. When I did that really started the whole comic thing for me was seeing a line by George Hall and Gary Dellar at Reverie offered me the, any decent trade paperback way back and from that day it’s been Torn. So that’s sort of got the whole ball rolling for me. So that particular picture means a lot to me because it just, just got everything happening.

Shane (01:04):
Oh Awesome.

Peter (01:04):
All that was just hiding,

Shane (01:09):
Hiding your skills from everywhere.

Peter (01:10):
That’s the second version of it. The first one was a bit rough. I wasn’t great at women and I’ve been trying to get better at drawing women over since I started doing comics. And that one was sort of that version of it was when things started to come together.

Shane (01:26):
Okay. So I was going to say, cause that’s a really nice picture, so yeah.

Peter (01:33):
Um, but I’m still, I still haven’t drawn the perfect Wonder Woman yet. That’s sort of a goal.

Peter (01:40):
I don’t think any artist thinks they’ve drawn the perfect anything I’m starting to notice,

Peter (01:45):
But Wonder Woman’s the hard sell. She’s one from when I wasn’t here and I just want to get her a lot one day, but I don’t think I ever will.

Shane (01:57):
Is this goal? It’s a good goal. So was there any, any inspiration behind doing Wonder Woman or is it just because you’d loved her as a kid?

Peter (02:06):
It’s a kid of Wonder Woman and Captain America, which that really connected with me as a kid for whatever reason. So in spite of means, or when everyone was bored, I sort of draw them. And then of course, as a teenager with the Wonder Woman Show on and all that, like it’s sort of always been in the back of the head. So she’s always a bit of a go-to, and a bit of inspiration for when I’m trying to draw a strong woman.

Shane (02:36):
Right. Nice, cool.

Peter (02:38):
Without drawing penthouse pets just don’t want to do it that way.

Shane (02:42):
No, no, that’s understandable. Yeah. Um, so that would have been the challenge for you. The fact that you have a bit of a challenge with, um, drawing women.

Peter (02:52):
Oh, huge challenge at the start, they all looked very manly. Um, depends on what you’re after! And I’ve had to battle, listen, in while I’m being published, I’m doing this. I’m having a battle with, trying to get especially faces looking feminine. That was yet a real hard thing. It’s a constant battle. But one reason you do this comic thing is because you want to get better at it over time. You’re always pushing to improve yourself, but why wouldn’t you bother doing it?

Shane (03:26):
Yeah, that’s a good point. So, um, did you have to learn anything new to do Wonder Woman or, um,

Peter (03:34):
Yeah. In general, in general, a lot of, a lot of studying, a lot of studying, going through a lot of looking at a lot of stuff about how other people go about joining them. Uh, some advice from some other comic artists out there giving me advice on getting started, do…

Shane (03:53):
Okay, cool.

Peter (03:55):
To prop them up, um, elaborating with Darren Close on Torn and he’s frequently giving me feedback. Not only, it’s also very useful, very useful.

Shane (04:06):
That’s what mine is,

Peter (04:08):
But that’s what I want him to do. I want to make his job easier and he wants to make a better comic too. So it’s all probably

Shane (04:14):
Nice! Big collaboration. Always good thing.

Peter (04:19):
You’ve got, you’ve got to collaborate. You’ve got to take a little bit of that.

Shane (04:23):
Yeah, exactly.

Peter (04:23):
And he’s sent me a message going, “Right, that sucks. You’ve got to do this bit better.” I can [unintelligible]. There’s also 70 other ones going, “Dude, that page is awesome.” You know?

Shane (04:37):
Nice.

Peter (04:38):
While you’re there now you will always know what works and what doesn’t, when you’ve got somebody else, we can give you that second pair of eyes and tap at you. You gotta take it, cause that’s the only way you’re going to do a better piece of work.

Shane (04:50):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So is there anything about this picture that you think will connect with your fans or followers?

Peter (05:02):
I still have a weird concept that I even have fans and followers, but then I read there that that’s a bit weird, but yeah.

Shane (05:12):
Well I’m one of them. So I’ll be watching you.

Peter (05:16):
Um, I just hope that that particular joy in people sort of will sort of know that it’s, it’s a point where things started to work for me. And, um, it’s a symbol of that, that moment when some things began to gel also I began to find small. It sort of started to get better for me.

Shane (05:49):
Great. Well, that’s really cool that you shared that.

Peter (05:53):[unintelligible]

Shane (05:53):
Well, yeah. There’s that cool.

Peter (05:57):
Look, I think every artist out there, I think any of us just sit back and look at any piece of work. Wow. That’s amazing. I don’t think any of us do that. Right. We’ve got that wrong. And I think that’s part of the battle to learn to live with what you maybe don’t always think isn’t quite right. Sometimes you’ve got to settle, you know, you’ve got to say, okay, this is as good as I can do now. What have I learned from it? And put that into the next one.

Shane (06:28):
Yeah.

Peter (06:29):
That’s all you can do. Otherwise you’re going to sit there on one page two months and getting nowhere with it.

Shane (06:35):
Yeah, exactly. That’s a good point.

Peter (06:37):
We’ve got to move on and learn as you go.

Shane (06:41):
Nice. Um, Thank you for your time, Peter. It was great to talk to you about your art. Um, it was very insightful on what goes on behind the scenes. Um, so yeah, thank you very much. And um, catch you around.

Peter (07:00):
You’ll find Peter’s art on May 2022 of the calendar. That’s the ComX 18 month calendar, um, to find out more about the calendar, go to ComX.link, and that’ll take you to the Kickstarter page and you can, um, register your interest so that it will notify you when the Kickstarter itself starts. Thank you for your support and seeing the next video.

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** All claims made by Comic Creatives are their own and not those of ComX.net.au
*** All art remains the intellectual property of the artist and may not be used or reproduced without explicit permission from the actual artist

Peter surrounded himself with cane toads for this one.

February 26, 2021 by Shane Syddall

Peter surrounded himself with cane toads for this one.

Shane (00:23):
So this one, you call this “Toad” in the file. Is that his name?

Peter (00:31):
Uh, his name is Mr. Cane.

Shane (00:33):
Mr. Cain.

Peter (00:34):
And he is like the, the leader of the, villains of the Torn comics. Basically big guy with the long game, essentially with him was come up with somebody with a frog head in a way that hasn’t been done a thousand times before.

Shane (00:55):
Yeah,

Peter (00:56):
They’re saying that Toad in the X-Men comics, [unintelligible] to try to come up with a way to do it that isn’t that again?

Shane (01:12):
Yeah.

Peter (01:13):
So essentially she actually started off in my head as mum, granddad.

Shane (01:22):
Interesting!

Peter (01:22):
Not true! Originally, he started off as Danny DeVito, but that was going to be a short little SWAT guy and Gary wanted him to be big and imposing so I went from Danny DeVito to Marlon Brando and I sort of swapped out the Marlon Brando, to get the look.

Shane (01:40):
Nice.

Peter (01:42):
Get a Marlon Brando in sweats and started doing it until it had what I wanted.

Shane (01:47):
That’s so cool!

Peter (01:49):
[unintelligible] Marlon Brando, but that was sort of where he started.

Shane (01:52):
Cool. And I guess the cane toad.

Peter (02:01):
And it would still have been Danny DeVito!

Shane (02:01):
Yeah. And the cane toad would make it a bit original too. Cause they’re, um, pretty distinct type of toad,

Peter (02:10):
Not distinctly Australian problem. Um, and isn’t, it’s an interesting character and what I know of his backstory, which the comics will explore further as we go. But, um, but yeah, he’s supposed to be sort of big and imposing, like hiding in the shadows farm loader mice kind of figure. So yeah, all that to do with keeping that line.

Shane (02:40):
Okay. Cool.

Peter (02:41):
It was really fun to design. Design took a long time to come up again and we had a lot. Yeah,

Shane (02:48):
Well it looks really cool here. It looks very, um, what’s the word imposing? No, um, is imposing the right word. Um, no, uh, I’ll continue. I’m horrible at forgetting words.

Peter (03:06):
[inaudible] got cane toads at random and we thought immediately, clearly Godfather. Couldn’t cut it in hindsight instead of a [unintelligible].

Shane (03:17):
So is that what you like? So is that what you like about this piece is

Peter (03:23):
He’s designed some that are more refined by the time I got to that place.

Shane (03:31):
Yeah.

Peter (03:31):
And he, a lot of work to design and I feel sorry for anyone else who has to join because he’s not easy. It’s a lot of work and I liked the way it came out. So yeah, that’s about it.

Shane (03:50):
Um, so I guess that was the, challenge – he’s hard to draw. Um, is there anything new you had to pick up to, um, to do this particular picture?

Peter (04:06):
Yeah. I had to learn how to draw cane toads! Well, I actually had to sit down and do all of his little nose ridges and those they’re not just sort of random pointy bits, all of these little bits and bobs on his entire head or literally all kinds of cane toad stuff.

Shane (04:27):
Oh, okay.

Peter (04:28):
So I haven’t just put a frog here and there. I’ve literally demonised the cane toads. Every bump and region, eye shapes and the little line bits and all that, are all things cane toads actually have. So I’ve literally had to sit here with images of cane toads all over a computer screen while I figured out how to put a line to it. It was a lot of work and it was fun.

Shane (05:00):
Awesome. Well, that’s what matters. Um, so how do you think he’ll connect with fans?

Peter (05:10):
I hope, um, I don’t, I’m just typing words that when people read him in the, in the comics that the messaging I want to put in him comes across, and you don’t wanna know that until it comes out. I think it’s there in that drawer. And I think sort of like the powers and stuff sort of has that about it. Um, hopefully when it comes to shading comics, it all comes out and we’ll get that impression, really not somebody you want to mess with/

Shane (05:39):
But he doesn’t look like he is. So someone you want to mess with that’s for sure. He looks quite bulky and big and scary. So

Peter (05:48):
Yeah, that’s the idea. That’s what he’s meant to be. The hard part is getting that right. I didn’t want him to feel slobby. I could have done that, but that’s not the way Gary wants me to go with it. Originally, I had him quite fat and fancy

Shane (06:05):
Okay. Now he looks very scary and gangster like, so

Peter (06:11):
Yeah, that’s what we wanted. It’s all evolved into what we built him up.

Shane (06:15):
Oh, cool.

Peter (06:18):
Um, Thank you for your time, Peter. It was great to talk to you about your art. Um, it was very insightful on what goes on behind the scenes. Um, so yeah, thank you very much. And um, catch you around.

Peter (06:18):
Peter Lawson is contributing to the comics 18 month calendar, uh, to check this out, go to ComX.link. This will take you to Kickstarter pre-launch page, where you can get a notification by email when the Kickstarter begins. Thank you for your support and talk to you later.

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Up Up and Away… Red Gum to the Rescue

February 26, 2021 by Shane Syddall

Up Up and Away… Red Gum to the Rescue

Shane (00:02):
Hello, I’m here to talk with Peter from Reverie Comics. He, uh, who’s a regular on Torn. Um, he’s, uh, joined ComX in the ComX 18 month calendar. So we’re here to talk about some of his art, so we know what it is he’ll be bringing to the table. Um, I have a… we’ll just check out one of your pictures. We’ve got Red Gum here. Um, this particular drawing of Red Gum, uh, flying in front of that building. What is it you like about this picture?

Peter (00:36):
Um, I just liked Red Gum’s design. Yep. Uh, I got, then I got the [inaudible] opinion on issue one. When I got the brief from Gary Dellar about what he wanted. It was a very great, it was a character that’s designed by a 14 year old kid that comes to life. Oh, okay. And his name is Red Gum. Alright, so I just sort of got What would I, what would he do and worked off on that side I drew? I basically do it really, really simple and some of the details are my own design there, but, um, it was just as a 14 year old kid, I was copying other superheroes. So essentially I copied Captain America at the start and took off [inaudible] and added that and ended up coming up with that in design the flags on the slaves and all that to get that patriotic sort of Australian look. And, um, it was actually the first form of design I came up with and Gary just said Yes, and we didn’t change it from there. So, so that was good. That was the only one I didn’t redesign. Pardon?

Shane (01:59):
Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I was just saying, I didn’t realize that you actually designed Red Gum, so that’s pretty cool. Yeah.

Peter (02:06):
Yeah. All the characters in Torn are the design I look for.

New Speaker (02:11):
Oh, okay, great.

Peter (02:13):
Yeah. Um, in, in the first four issues of it anyway. Um, so yeah, basically it was like, here’s what we want, what that look like and then we went from there, so that was a big deal. Um, and the funny thing was Red Gum was one of my early sketches that I didn’t show anybody. Whereas most of the very first ones I did, excuse me, [inaudible] from the time we first drew him, Dylan drew a slightly simplified version of Red Gum we use now. And it’s actually what I do the first time, even though he never saw it, which is kinda weird, considering what I originally drew, which was quite strange. And then yeah, if you know what I mean?

New Speaker (03:15):
Yeah.

Peter (03:17):
Yeah. So in Toby, he’s a bit simpler, but he goes and appears, and then he appears, wakes up in Torn, because probably just drew him with a different routine. And that’s what I originally drew Red Gum is even though I’d never shown anybody that just the normal reoccurences.

Shane (03:37):
Yeah, that is

Peter (03:41):
Sort of couldn’t believe it when I first saw it, you gotta be joking. Um, but yeah, Red Gum, is just this design that I liked,

Shane (03:49):
I like it too.

Peter (03:52):
A lot of people have said they sort of really likely to come up with them. It’s really fun to draw cause he’s never, he never takes off seriously now.

New Speaker (04:02):
Nice.

Peter (04:02):
He’s got that little smirky grin on his face and what not. He’s just a lot of fun to do.

Shane (04:11):
Alright, cool. So what was your inspiration for Red Gum?

Peter (04:19):
Just Captain America.

Shane (04:22):
Yep. Oh, sorry, sorry. Sorry. You already said that. I wasn’t thinking. Okay. Um, were there any challenges during this particular piece?

New Speaker (04:34):
Um, just, you’re going to bet that, if I had it side by side with the original red drawing that I’d done, you’d be really amazed how that does essentially the same pose but a lot better. Um, Actually something I’d like to do is take an old drawing and compare it to a new one just to go, “Oh, okay. I am actually progressing.” That’s good to look back.

Shane (05:04):
Well, it’s, it’s all it flows. So yeah. You wouldn’t see it, the improvement unless you actually can prepare it. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, did you have to learn anything new to, um, do this particular drawing that you’ve got here with him flying?

Peter (05:25):
I think that’s the first time I did some deep focus and stuff like actually using a digital platform more like, cause most of my work I do on, on my Surface are digital. So almost watch things on that. And I think that was the first one I started using that or that like that, as the background, see how they work.

New Speaker (05:46):
Nice.

Peter (05:46):
No, that’s a nice one. And I tried to draw that with a slightly more comedic slant to it than what I normally do. So, so it was a lot simpler than what I normally do. So that was a bit of a challenge. It’s a lot more serious sort of, darker, than how I would draw him

Shane (06:07):
Oh, okay. Um, so I guess this particular picture, um, how will you think it will connect with people?

Peter (06:19):
I just think it’s a little bit of fun. It’s just supposed to be a fun drawing and get an idea that, that it’s a fun character. That’s really all I was aiming for, rather than – What I do, any character, I try to put character into it. I don’t just want to draw and make [inaudible] heroes. That’s got to be, they’ve got to have to be putting something out there.

Shane (06:48):
Yeah. A bit of personality. Yeah,

Peter (06:51):
A bit of personality exactly. That’s that’s the goal: they stay [inaudible] and the hard, the hard part comes when we do an, a comic page with all that. That’s part of the job,

Shane (07:10):
I guess so, that would be tricky. Um, well I like his little smirk it’s. – you can see that he’s having a bit of fun that’s for sure.

Peter (07:19):
My daughter calls it the [inaudible].

Shane (07:24):
No, no, that’s fine. Thank you for your time, Peter. It was great to talk to you about your art. Um, it was very insightful on what goes on behind the scenes. Um, so yeah. Thank you very much. And um, catch you around.

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