Is using LAYOUT artists CHEATING to you? Use of layout artists in general...

[Steveberger]

I noticed Jim Lee's "Batman: Europa" stuff was laid out by Giusseppe Camuncoli. It made me wonder about the idea of using layout artists in general. If you're an artist and you're hiring one - is that cheating of some sort? And if you're just a reader - does that matter to you that the artists didn't do it all themselves? It's still a lot of work to finish the page, of course (as seen here on Ryan Ottley's blog: http://www.ryanottley.com/archives/291 - how he went from Capullo's layouts to finished pencils), but a lot of artists say that layouts is where it's really at, it's the boring grunt work that really shows what you got as an artist.

Just wondering here. Trying to draw my own comic, really having a boring, brain-crushing time with the layouts. The idea of hiring somebody to do them for me just doesn't feel right, though. I don't know.

What's your take on this?

[Speed Force League Unlimited]

I sat through that discussion numerous times, and the answer remains no.

[CaptCleghorn]

My opinion is that the layout is where the most creativity is needed. Deciding size and progression of the panels as well as deciding what positions the characters will have and what the point of view will be seems to be less gruntwork to me than drawing Spider-Man on a wall for the hundredth time.

Answering the original question, though, i don't think having artist A do layouts and artist B do finishes is a cheat. We certainly don't consider different pencillers and inkers a cheat.

[Kirby101]

Finishing another artist's layout, especially one that excels at it, is a good way to learn how to layout.

Buscema and Romita learned it from Kirby after all.

[Shalla Bal]

Finishing another artist's layout, especially one that excels at it, is a good way to learn how to layout.

Buscema and Romita learned it from Kirby after all.

So true, Kirby was all over 1960s Marvel. As we know, Stan had him provide layouts for artists new to Marvel as a way of indoctrinating them to the look and story pacing Stan wanted. Ditko and Colan may have been the only artists who didn't start out at Marvel by drawing over or "finishing" Kirby layouts. But nearly everyone else in the early-mid 1960s did.

And by the time Neal Adams did some work for Marvel, in 1969, Kirby had stopped doing layouts for other artists. I've read in The Jack Kirby Collector and elsewhere that he was disgruntled by the pay--he didn't receive his normal pay rate for layouts, even though as he has said in interviews the "layouts [provided] the heavy lifting"...in other words, the layouts (his, anyway) constituted the storytelling.

[ed2962]

I don't see it as a cheat at all.

[t hedge coke]

Collaboration is for chumps! Real artists work with no one! Just like... virtually no artist any of us care about. Ever.

Seriously, someone doing the layouts is s valid contribution, but it's just a contribution. Sometimes it's a big one, sometimes it really isn't. But, especially in comics, you'll always have divers hands.

[Speed Force League Unlimited]

Finishing another artist's layout, especially one that excels at it, is a good way to learn how to layout.

Buscema and Romita learned it from Kirby after all.

That explains why Romita sr shadowing was sometimes Kirby inspired in the 60s.

[dancj]

Outside of stealing from another artists without crediting or paying them, pretty much any technique is fair game. It's the end result that matters.