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Welcome to the professional website of Sean Murphy: illustrator, concepts artist, comic book artist and writer.
Blog/Updates
Just a quick heads up.
The Mocca convention will be in NYC on June 6th and 7th. I'll either be signing at the Veritgo booth, hanging around the Jon Adams table [link] , the Rick Lacy table [link] or crying into my lap off in some corner.
I believe my editor is going to grab a bunch of Hellblazer issues from last summer (245 and 246) and hand them out for free if anyone is interested. Not sure if I'll be doing sketches while signing, but if it's a short line then probably yes.
The sketches will only be free for people who are willing to sing The Safety Dance to me while I'm drawing. If I'm working for free, then so should you. And every stranger that joins in with you will also get a sketch. But if I find out that the stranger is actually a friend whom you planted in the crowd then I'll tear up your sketch, his sketch, and every other sketch being drawn by other artists sitting at the Vertigo booth. AND in artist alley. Seriously dude...not worth it.
I was at a house party in the hills of Studio City in LA a few years back, spending time with my buddy Jeff, an aspiring screenwriter and director. I was never one to go out clubbing and get crazy, mostly because I work best when I’m rested and not hung over. But a 100-person gathering with “ Party Jeff ” was always a good time and all I had to do was bring my own beer.
At the time I think I was working on an Activision gig for a game called Soldier of Fortune, which was turning into a nightmare. Concept art is fun in theory, but I was working under a committee—meaning 12 guys in suits putting their two cents in about each line I put down. Everything I did had to be redone at least once. I was being well paid but the stress was costing me my sanity. Some people HAVE to put their fingerprints all over a project whether they’re an expert or not. Some people want to change things simply because they can. Twice I got into a yelling match over the phone, telling them things like “I’m not a machine”, “you hired me to do what I do, so let me do it”, and phrases of that nature.
When Party Jeff heard this, he told me something I never forgot.
According to Party Jeff (who worked at Warner Brothers), the writers of Arrested Development where having similar problems working under committee and getting scripts approved. And what they started doing (according to an interview with David Cross, I believe) was making mistakes ON PURPOSE. They called them Purple Dogs (although I’ve Googled this and found nothing, so maybe I was more drunk than I realized).
A Purple Dog is genius, and let me explain why.
A committee, a studio or a tough editor will sometimes press himself to find mistakes even though there may be none. If he doesn’t find error, then his job doesn’t exists, so he’ll try and make a point to show HIS bosses that it’s a good thing they hired him, otherwise Sean Murphy would be screwing up Soldier of Fortune. Finding error justifies their egos and their positions.
So if I’m working on a project and I sense that my bosses are like that, I’ll start making Purple Dogs. If I’ve just finished a picture of a guy with a gun that looks perfect, I’ll open it up in PS and make his head HUGE. Then I’ll say it as a different file and send it off to be approved. An, like Chewbacca falling into an Ewok trap, I get word back that, while they love the picture, they feel his head might be a tad too big. After waiting a few hours (however long it would take to resize a head), I’ll send the ACTUAL original and not the Purple Dog.
Am I wasting their time? Yes. Are they wasting mine? Yes. But if they’re paid to find errors then I might as well make it easy…like spotting a Purple Dog. At the end of the day, they feel happy to have contributed and you feel happy about not having to make any fixes. No one ever has to know.
I know I’m not the first person to do this, but I would love it if we all started referring to these acts as Purple Dogs. To give something a name is to draw attention to it, and maybe overbearing committees will relax a little if Purple Dogs became a known phenomenon.
In one of my last journals I posted a bit about inking in comparison to co-op in Halo, and within that I dedicated a small paragraph to digital inking and how I wasn’t a fan. A lot of the comments were defending digital inks, and I realized that a digital inking post would (in and of itself) hold up a journal. So let’s talk a bit, as friends, about what digital inking is and let me explain my case as to why you should still try a brush, quill, or whatever you can physically hold.
(And when I say digital inking I’m referring to the use of a Wacom tablet, not the temptation to simply adjust your curves and levels in PS)
I know digital inking isn’t going away. As the world goes more digital there’s less and less to stop an artist from utilizing the computer more and more for whatever he can do. And digital inking makes sense in theory: you can create any brush, any texture, and can control EVERY nuance of the line work in ways that you couldn’t do with traditional art. And the fact that you can undo something and layer images makes it that much easier to correct changes that an editor may have. When it comes to commercial art (finished concept art and backgrounds), I think it’s crazy NOT to go digital because of the amount of changes that the bosses are likely to make. And I haven’t forgotten that even with digital art, there’s still a warm blooded, human artist driving the process and a talented artist will give you something good no matter what his medium.
MOTIVATION
I would wager that 9 times out of 10 artists who ink their work digitally begin doing so simply because they’re afraid of the brush. And that’s a poor reason to ever do anything. Think of computers like you would any other tool, be it a brush or a sword. When you’re choosing your weapon, why would you want fear (or laziness) effecting your decision? If you take the easy way out of things then you’re not challenging yourself as an artist.
DIFFICULTY
Historically, the tools of the trade have been brushes, quills, correcting ink or various pens. All the guys that you admire who are now dead made ample use of these tools, so why wouldn’t you? Because it’s frustrating to use a stick with hair on it? I understand that a brush doesn’t always do what you want at first, and a 102 quill will snag every now and then, but it takes about as much time to get comfortable with them as it does with your Wacom, your custom brush creations, and your quick keys.
ABILITIES
I can’t remember ever seeing digital inks that looked as good as competent traditional inks. Not that I seek out digital inks, but I do see a fair share at conventions when people show me their portfolios. And even though they don’t see the difference between digital and traditional, I CAN. And most professionals can, too. Digital inking, in the minds of most professional artists, is synonymous with amateur art.
SPEED
As far as I know, digital inking is no faster then traditional. But maybe I’m biased because I’m fast. For 4 hours a day I’m twisting my page, slapping down ink, twisting again, using quill, rotating to the left, right, then left again, then splatter, then using a ruler, adding more detail here, there, splatter, brush, here again, etc. When you’re good with a brush, quill, pen, or whatever then nothing can beat the speed and skill of the human hand. I’d argue that digital inking is actually slower because of the amount of “undo” you can do. If you’re constantly rethinking each line (which digital inking allows you to adjust) then what’s to stop you from obsessing into the night and not moving forward? Traditional inking forces you to boldly commit and move on.
MISTAKES
Yeah, I make mistakes with my tools. But usually I can adjust the lines around it and compensate without using Pro White. There’s more soul in keeping your mistakes, rolling with the punches, thinking on your feet and adjusting your technique every second than simply hitting “undo” each time and making everything perfect. There’s no soul in perfection. With digital inks your final piece is more likely to be “exactly what you planned” as opposed to “close to what I wanted, errors here and there, happy accidents throughout, but heart all the way.”
VALUE
With digital inking there’s no original to value and nothing to sell in the end. You created something that doesn’t even exist. Sure you can make prints and get some extra cash on the side, but I can do that with traditional art as well. Plus I can sell the original, which is worth more anyway and likely to be more highly cherished over the years. Human created artifacts will ALWAYS be worth more, especially in an age when more products are made with computers. Even the layman appreciates this. It must be in our genetic makeup. People will always appreciate something that looks perfect and flawless but especially when it was made my hand. Then they do this: “No way! I can’t believe it. You used a computer, didn’t you? No? A brush? You used a stick with hair on it to create these tiny lines? Amazing!”
SIMPLICITY
Again, I support digital painting. Painting deals with more variables than inking. Painting is like inking, but inking with any color you want and the infinite ability to blend those colors however you like. But comic book inking deals with only black and white. Either something is there (black) or it’s not. I don’t see how the complexity of computers has any advantage at this step. For coloring, yes. But not inking.
Again, I imagine that being a traditional inker will eventually make me a dinosaur, but as things stand right now I don’t see a worthwhile benefit to using a Wacom when you have so much to lose by doing so. I love computers, but they’ve taken away small bits of humanity little by little and replaced it with something close to cold perfection. And its improved human existence in a billion different ways. And it’s here to stay.
But art has always been the arena of human expression, be it painting, poetry or music. And although computers can help us here too, I surrender that right with great hesitance.
I wish I was in San Diego for the con.
I watched it on G4 and it made me sad. ALL my comic book friends are there and I'm not. Dustin Nguyen even had some art shown on G4 with his awesome Batman pages. And where am I? At home sweating over my Hellblazer pages. Next year...
Also, I added some Hellblazer pages that recently came out for issues #245 and #246 from Vertigo. If you're looking for more updates and art then check me out at Seangordonmurphy.deviantart.com
Thanks.
