I’ll have a more formal review up about Astonishing X-Men #25 in a couple of days but for now, I wanted to highlight something that stood out to me– Simone Bianchi’s page layouts.
Look at the strong angle on that page, leading you from the upper right hand corner down to the lower left and then immediately into the lower right. Throughout this issue, Bianchi designs the pages to lead the viewer’s eyes where he wants them.
He does a similar thing on this page where the entire focus is to get you to look at the bridge. The curves of the first and third panel and the strong vertical of the second panel lead you directly into the bottom part of the page.
And here Bianchi keeps you focused on the top panel, with the repeating circles that create swirls that keep your eyes centered on the image of Scott and Emma in bed.
I’ve been staring at this book for four days now, amazed by the artwork and how Bianchi controls the reading experience and makes sure you’re going just where he wants you to. That’s not even talking about how well he uses the space and lets the white space have room to breath and be part of the actual design of the page rather than just being mere gutter space between the panels. I don’t remember him using creative layouts like this in Seven Soldiers: Shining Knight but I’m now curious to see if he had these kind of sophisticated layouts in the Wolverine story that he did.
At Wizard World Chicago, I was able to look at some of Bianchi’s original artwork and his linework is much more bold in the original inked stage before the coloring comes in and softens up his line a bit. I may end up spending the money and picking up his Astonishing X-Men sketchbook this week.
I’ve been staring at this book for four days now, amazed by the artwork and how Bianchi controls the reading experience and makes sure you’re going just where he wants you to. That’s not even talking about how well he uses the space and lets the white space have room to breath and be part of the actual design of the page rather than just being mere gutter space between the panels. I don’t remember him using creative layouts like this in Seven Soldiers: Shining Knight but I’m now curious to see if he had these kind of sophisticated layouts in the Wolverine story that he did.
At Wizard World Chicago, I was able to look at some of Bianchi’s original artwork and his linework is much more bold in the original inked stage before the coloring comes in and softens up his line a bit. I may end up spending the money and picking up his Astonishing X-Men sketchbook this week.
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.
Leave a Comment