Dave Gibbons
Dave Gibbons
David Chester "Dave" Gibbons is an English comic book artist, writer and sometimes letterer. He is best known for his collaborations with writer Alan Moore, which include the miniseries Watchmen and the Superman story "For the Man Who Has Everything". He was an artist for the UK anthology 2000 AD, for which he contributed a large body of work from its first issue in 1977...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionComic Book Artist
Date of Birth14 April 1949
jobs character drawing
I always start drawing any job by planning out to some degree the locales and trying to nail the characters. If they're existing characters, I'll draw them several times on rough paper just to get a feeling for them. The ideal when you're drawing a comic is to have everything in your head, not to have to refer to notes.
best comic consistent drawings jack steve successful terms translate work
To my mind, the most successful and the best comic book illustrators are those who translate the real world into a consistent code. If you look at Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko, their drawings look nothing like the real world, but they are internally consistent. In terms of a comic book it can work just fine.
appears car certain close corner distance drawing grab might point run stare unfolding
When you're drawing something, you kind of run a movie in your head. You might close your eyes or stare into the distance and kind of see a movie unfolding and, you know, grab a certain moment or think, 'Oh, yeah, that's when we need just the point that he appears around the corner but just as she's getting into the car,' you know?
career comic drawing five four gone previous spending takes thrown work worse writer
One of the things when you're drawing a comic book is that you're spending four or five times as long to draw it as the writer takes to write it. In my career I've had to spend a week drawing something that a writer has thrown out in an hour. And there's nothing worse than having to work on something that no previous thought has gone into.
winning awards rope
Every bit as visceral and hypnotic as its award-winning predecessor, On the Ropes is a tour-de-force of fluid, yet detailed storytelling.
hands games looks
With the new game I'm going to be involved from the ground up. I have had story input and the whole thing will have my imprint on it. Even if I don't hands-on do every bit of artwork, I certainly will direct the look of the whole thing.
artist appreciate desire
The original series of Watchmen is the complete story that Alan Moore and I wanted to tell. However, I appreciate DC's reasons for this initiative and the wish of the artists and writers involved to pay tribute to our work. May these new additions have the success they desire.
drs film resonance
I generally like very visually striking films. I love a lot of Stanley Kubrick's films. I would have to say 'Dr. Strangelove', which of course has got resonance in 'Watchmen'. It's a favorite movie of mine.
thinking weight stories
I think with something like 'Watchmen' you can genuinely call that a graphic novel because it has the weight and the intent of a proper novel and it also is the complete story.
technology way process
I'm known for being very enthusiastic about using technology. A lot of the attraction is the way that it streamlines the process and takes a lot of the drudgery out of it.
esoteric fields learning-from-others
Comics are a particularly esoteric field where you really learn how to do it, by doing it or by learning from other practitioners.
book thinking italian
I came to think that nobody from England could draw American comic books, because they were clearly all done by this sort of Mafia, all these guys with Italian and Irish names who had the whole thing sewn up. It was actually seeing a comic book drawn by Barry Smith, who was about my age, and English.
moving vision fringe
In God’s economy, vision should move from the fringes to the middle.
steps surprise reader
I really like it when you can step outside of what's come before and find a surprise for the reader and find a surprise for yourself.