What You Talkin' about?: Paolo Rivera

Do you remember the first time you knew you wanted to be an artist?
It was right after I realized that I couldn’t be a superhero.

The first time I really "heard" about Paolo Rivera was on The Art Department blog by Tor art director, Irene Gallo. She posted a really good interview with him about the "Mythos" comic series he painted for Marvel. Unfortunately, as is often the case when tooling around on the inter-web I read the interview, went on to the next thing on mind, and Paolo Rivera was out of my head.

I got a second chance though, two months later with the Lines and Colors blog, by Charlie Parker. Charlie started off the post like this. "At one time the brief description line at the top of Paolo Rivera’s blog read: “I am a painter for Marvel Comics. Really, I am.”" How cool is that? So, interested, and read the article. Going to the follow-up links that Charlie is so good about adding at the bottom of his posts, I found Paolo's blog, The Self-Absorbing Man. Wow. He's not only extremely talented, but he does some WORK. Posting at least three times a week there's always really solid, exciting content. There's an fairly even balance between current works, Tips tricks and equiptment, and appearance announcements.

One of his segments "Wacky Reference Wednesdays" is especially entertaining, and I really look forward to it each week. In fact, it's what inspired this segment for me, and that's why he gets the dubious honor of first post. Last week, Paolo posted an example of how he uses Google Sketchup as refrence for his comic panels when he has a tricky perspective problem, or the same environment from different angles.


So, here's an example of the sketch up models, set against a backdrop of his initial layout drawing. He builds parts in the program, as well as importing elements from the sketchup warehouse.

And then here's how it all fits in with the finished page. I've given an extremely truncated version of the process here. To read more about it, go and check out his blog.

Just for fun, I thought I'd also share a handful of my sketch up models and a page that I finished recently for a personal project, I hope you enjoy them.


Well that's all for now. Until next time, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey

Paolo Rivera: http://www.paolorivera.com/
http://paolorivera.blogspot.com/
Lines and Colors article: http://www.linesandcolors.com
Art Department Interview: http://igallo.blogspot.com