Rob Liefeld...

[TedShatner10]

Rob Liefeld's Captain America looks morbidly obese and badly deformed.

I've done two drawings aping Liefeld's style:

Swordsman
Man and Woman

He got paid millions for drawing stuff not much better than that?! But I say again I admit that drawing stuff Liefeld-style is oddly fun and addictive, even if the output has relatively little craft behind it. And if Rob Liefeld does something quite good, you find out that he has blatantly ripped it off something better in a tacky way.

[Thespeckledkiwi]

As bad Rob Liefeld is, Jae Lee is a horrible, horrible artist.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Are you kidding? He's head and shoulders above Liefeld.



He might be a little moodier than some people might like, but I imagine that's why he sticks to projects like illustrating Dracula or the covers for The Dark Tower comic adaptations.

But there's no question that he's more skilled than Liefeld, based on anatomy alone.

[Broccoli]

A beaker full of death wrote:

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Balls. Being unschooled, untalented and incompetent is not a "style." The guy doesn't know the very rudiments of anatomy. He does have some knowledge of composition. His success is a slap in the face to those of us who bothered to actually learn the craft.

Next time Beaker, quote my whole sentence, because you are taking it out of context by quoting only part it. The rest of that contains the phrase "if not reigned in, he can go overboard." With Cap, he was not reigned in and it caused a lot of the goofiness that he's connected with (Cap Boobs being the most notable).

And regardless if you like it, if it's good, or if it is bad, the man has a style.

[Thespeckledkiwi]

Spaceman Spiff wrote:

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But there's no question that he's more skilled than Liefeld, based on anatomy alone.

He's possibly gotten better but when Jae Lee worked on Transformers/GI Joe Crossover, it was quiet possibly one of the worst pieces I've ever seen. Was it colorful? Sure, but...well...You can't tell which characters are which. His use of lighting and shadows is absolutely horrendous in the Crossover.

[Bishbot]

TheBolianChef wrote:

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He's possibly gotten better but when Jae Lee worked on Transformers/GI Joe Crossover, it was quiet possibly one of the worst pieces I've ever seen. Was it colorful? Sure, but...well...You can't tell which characters are which. His use of lighting and shadows is absolutely horrendous in the Crossover.

Oh God yeah - I was trying to place where I'd heard that name before. I have the tpb of that, its quite a cool idea for a story, a WW2 era crossover, but I'm damned if I can follow the art.

[God Magnus]

TheBolianChef wrote:

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He's possibly gotten better but when Jae Lee worked on Transformers/GI Joe Crossover, it was quiet possibly one of the worst pieces I've ever seen. Was it colorful? Sure, but...well...You can't tell which characters are which. His use of lighting and shadows is absolutely horrendous in the Crossover.

I agree that the TF/GI Joe crossover by Lee was super duper dark. He took his personal style and went too far. Still, his art is much better than Liefeld's by a mile. Some samples:

http://www.majorspoilers.com/wp-cont...dark_tow_5.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...0/Inhumans.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ateSpencer.jpg

[TedShatner10]

Jesus Christ, why is his crap so easy to parody?

Pic 5
Pic 6
Pic 7 (which is directly lifted out from this Akira pic)

I'm really having fun mocking Rob Liefeld's drawing style and the blatant plagiarism he always seems to get away with.

[FalTorPan]

I don't think I was consciously aware of this at the time, but I think that the prominence of Liefeld's style of artwork helped me decide to stop collecting comics.

[Thespeckledkiwi]

Bishbot wrote:

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Oh God yeah - I was trying to place where I'd heard that name before. I have the tpb of that, its quite a cool idea for a story, a WW2 era crossover, but I'm damned if I can follow the art.

It was a fantastic idea. I saw some of the early artwork for the Transformers and I fell in love. Then when I started picking up the comic, I quit because I couldn't tell who was who and what was what and what the hell was going on.

[middyseafort]

I was in junior high and early high school during the height of Rob Liefield's popularity, and Image Comics, and I hated his artwork while my contemporaries got on bended knee at his alter. His art was juvenile as were the stories he created for Image, which is why I think he exploded as much as he did with my then-age bracket. Liefield's stuff was the dreams of teenage boys-- oversized, unnatural breasted woman and testostrone laden "heroic" men.

[TedShatner10]

Here is my drawing of two Liefeld-style women; he really draws women like this (they have to have waists you could put one hand around, while the torso has to be snapped in two and weighed down by giant boobs). He also has a thing for oversized stiff 80s hairstyles, while his character's faces seem to be small with squinty eyes and high cheekbones. The only facial expression he could draw is scowling (with snarling mouths sometimes showing fifty to sixty teeth).

How has he not been sued or/and fired?! And why the heck did an artist who not only stole original (& superior) works of comic book art, but with such fundamentally repetitive, garish, derivative and scrappy drawing skills become so successful?!

[Jaron]

TheSeeker wrote:

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That was funny stuff. I can't believe he didn't include this drawing in his critique:

This picture is in perfect perspective as long as you realize the midget has opened the chest on his Captain America suit and crawled out.

[Mr. Adventure]

We laugh at the guy but the fucker's made a good life for himself. I was around in that early boom in the 90's and I have to admit it was pretty exciting (as comics go) when those guys hit. For a brief period I found myself really liking that "extreme" look Liefeld brought to X-Force though later the dime bin got me to appreciate Sinkiewicz's work on New Mutants. It's kind of embarassing to think about now.

[A beaker full of death]

The difference is Sienkiewicz does indeed make a stylistic choice. Liefeld is simply uneducated and unskilled. He's an amateur, and one without any evident talent, at that. His work is that of the average pre-teen.

See my avatar? I did it, in the fashion of Greg Land. It's part of a larger work in progress. It's hack work, but at least it's competent. Liefeld is incompetent.