Kung Fu Action Comic

Here's a pretty old comic I did at Pratt. I was way more into layouts, pacing and story telling than I was finished artwork. Well, of course I would've loved it if the finished artwork was nice too, but I really didn't have my head together at the time and my productivity was limited by nothing but doubts about my drawing ability. My Sequential Art professor, Floyd Hughes, seemed impressed when I told him I drew this in "one night," to make the latest issue of the Pratt Institute submission based comic book, Static Fish. I then followed up telling him it was one long, 28 hour night. He laughed, somehow he seemed to have a preexisting understanding (which others find difficult) that a young illustrator's measurement of time has less to do with marked hours and minutes, and more to do with how long they've gone without sleep.

The story for this comic came directly from my teacher, Grandmaster George Crayton Jr., Zong Shi, and is my best interpretation of his telling. Sorry I wasn't able to get the likenesses better! Click the title for a link to my school's website - Looang Foo Pai.






At the time, these were probably the best layouts I was able to muster. Clarity in story-telling was at the top of my priorities and the art looks more like roughs than finals! A highlight for me was the bottom half of page 4, where the action is linked by camera angles through the slats of train tracks as the main characters run across them. I still think the composition has a good flow. Lettering was by Eric Chun, who already had his homework done.

-Kung Fu Mike