As a follow-up to our earlier interview, we are pleased to give you a look into Joe Eisma’s personal art studio in his home. With plenty of looks at his digital equipment, inspiration, and a souvenir from his brief foray into network television, it is certainly an intriguing look into the room that your favorite comic Morning Glories comes from.
Check after the cut for a look into Joe Eisma’s personal art space.
1: My Wacom Cintiq 12wx. I bought this years ago when I was finishing up my first series, A Dummy’s Guide to Danger: Lost at Sea, and it’s been the best investment I’ve made for my career. It allows me to do all digital work, and it’s compact, so I can travel with it if needed.
2: Dell laptop. this was my workstation for about three years. I ran the thing ragged with all the Photoshop and 3ds Max use. I still use it for game development work, but its days as a comic producing machine are over.
3: Monitor to my old, OLD workstation. haha. Currently not in use.
4: My Artograph lightbox. Will have a closeup pic later.
5: My chair. I love chairs. And, if I’m going to sit in one most of the day to draw comics, I damn well better be comfortable!
Closeup of my main work area. As you can see, I like lots of monitors.
1: My widescreen display for my PC. Unlike most artists, I don’t use a Mac (sacrilege!). It all started with my game development work–which was PC-based, so I just used PCs after that. I’m not anti-mac, though. Currently I use an Alienware Aurora PC with 12 gigs of RAM.
2: Another view of my Cintiq. I use Photoshop for my art, mostly, but I’ve also integrated Manga Studio as well, as it mimics traditional inks better. All my work starts digitally, with the initial roughs done in Photoshop. Those get refined, and if I’m inking the page traditionally, the page is printed up as a blue lined page, and then inked. If I’m pressed for time (as happens too often), the page will be finished digitally in Manga Studio.
Gotta show my wall art!
1: Poster of the Godfather, one of my favorite films, that I got while I was on vacation in Itally in 2002.
2: Poster of Ronnie James Dio. One of my most-listened to musicians and a major influence. (RIP, Ronnie).
3: Ultimate Spider-man poster, signed by Bendis. Got this at E3 2005. My first trip to the show, and coincidentally enough, Bendis and Stan Lee were going to be signing posters for the as-yet-unreleased Ultimate Spidey game. I was a bigger fan of Bendis than Stan (sorry!), so I made sure to get this one signed by him. I told him I was a member of his message board, and he probably thought I was out of my mind.
Tools of the trade! L-R: Micron 005, Copic Multiliner .03, Jelly Roll, Kuretake fine brush pen, Zebra brush pen, Multiliner .2, Zebra fine brush pen, another Multiliner, another Micron and my dual sided Kuretake brush pen. I have LOTS more art pens, but these are the ones I use the most. The Microns and Multiliners allow me to get real thin and squiggly lines, and the brush pens help get nice curved lines, as well as blackening in spots here and there. A lot of the times, if I’m blacking out a major section of a page, I’ll just leave it and drop the black in Photoshop, so I can save ink. (hey, I’m thrifty!)
Continued below
One of the props I kept from the time I had art featured in the CBS show, NUMB3RS. They had an episode that took place at a comic convention, and I was able to submit a bunch of my art for use in the background. I was stoked when I saw how much of it they actually used in the show, and blown away that they sent me the props when they were done. This is Mr. Bloomberg, one of the main characters of my first series, A Dummy’s Guide to Danger: Lost at Sea.
This was my dry erase board that I used to keep track of the progress on the commissions I was working on. I say ‘was’ because my two-year old son locked on to this board and decided it needed to be his new canvas. Meanwhile, the kid-sized art table I bought for him for Christmas sits in the living room, unused.
Inspiration! My workspace/office also doubles as my library, where I keep all my trades, GNs and back issues. I always try to keep some right next to my tablet for inspiration (and no, Rich Johnston, not for swiping). Always at the top is Adrian Alphona’s work on Runaways–he’s my biggest artistic inspiration on Morning Glories. I’ve also been digging the work Mark Brooks has been doing lately, especially on Uncanny X-force. I love Grant Morrison’s work, and he and Leinil Yu rocked it on the New X-men annual. Captain Britain & MI-13 was my favorite superhero series of recent memory, and I love looking back over Leonard Kirk’s amazing work. And finally, my current fave, Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys. This one gives Runaways a run for its money as my biggest influence.
