Lois Lane: Truth

In June, DC Comics announced their first ever DC FanDome, self-described as “a mega, 24-hour, global, immersive virtual fan event.” The August event is very much a response to the cancellation of all of the big comic book/ pop culture conventions for 2020. With little or nothing with which to compare it, what the fan event is or will be and how or whether it works is for now all speculation.

https://www.dccomics.com/dcfandome

Still, a key component of the event is a wide call for fan art and sharing cosplay. 

I’m a fan of super-hero comics and the DC characters. I am also currently in the unusual situation of having time to work on some unplanned fan art. I ruminated on three ideas. The first was “something with the Superman Family of characters.” A second was “something of a travel poster featuring a famous DC locale, possibly Themyscira.” A third idea was “something third tier, maybe Booster Gold and Blue Beetle or maybe Ch’p the Green Lantern?” In the end, I didn’t make any of these things.

Following an intense 14 days of sketches celebrating Disneyland’s 65th birthday anniversary, I turned my attentions back to DC FanDome with only 14 days before deadline.

Investigative Reporter

My reference gathering for the “Superman Family” notion included some Lois Lane images, leading to focusing on the most significant person in Superman’s history as a character. 

As a list of mental descriptions guided the development of the piece: Lois, night, personality, vector art and wide screen. 

Character Building

“Personality” means something that’s a little more than a year book photo but not an action illustration- something entirely about the character and not about props and locations. 

Midway through the “build” for Lois, I altered the pose both hiding her far arm and lowering the closer arm to hang down rather than being akimbo. It’s subjective of course, but I thought her expression conveyed enough confidence, that she did not also need to have a confrontational posture.

“Night” was a decision of the potential for dramatic lighting as well as offering a plain dark background to surround the figure.

Position, Angle, Speed

“Vector art” is a way to encode a file with geometry instructions for a computer to rebuild an image. The most popular method/ app is Adobe Illustrator, which as an interface has made the “encoding” part not about typing in numbers. It still isn’t intuitive for an artist that may be comfortable with traditional media like drawing with a pencil or painting in oils or watercolors. With all the downsides vector art has as a creative tool, it has tremendous production value, not the least of which is that it’s imagery is nearly infinitely re-scalable.

I wanted to lean into the technical/geometry nature of the application, without depending on a lot of straight lines and circles. The resulting style features things with added or enhanced corners and shapes having clear edges.

“Widescreen” is a format choice of the day. It does allow for space on the the sides to stick the Daily Planet. I wasn’t until I finally uploaded the image to the DC FanDome site hosted by Talent House, that I found wording advising art ate a 4:3 aspect “look best” which is nearly the dimensions of old fashioned television screens. I suspect that it is more an accepted dimension that”s wider than a square for social media like Instagram. I uploaded it as I designed it and didn’t crop the image. 

About Faces

Upon posting detail shots of the final piece on Instagram, a few folks commented finding a resemblance of my Lois to Marvel’s Agent Carter. I’ll say that I did choose to design her likeness after 1940-50s Hollywood actresses. For this, I gathered a lot of images of Joan Leslie, who starred along side James Cagney in “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

In the Details

Often when I draw a Disney sketch, there are opportunities to hide Mickey Mouse iconography: hidden Mickey’s. Having chosen to use 6-sided hexagons for the booked effect for the background lights, I thought that I could manipulate the geometry to from a small pentagon alluding to Superman’s “S” emblem. 

Lois Lane

My plan for success involved the intersection of two strategies: 1) keep it simple; and 2) stay away from the Trinity (Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman) and the Justice League thinking that there would be LOTS of those submitted.

If I had to choose, Erica Durance has played my favorite interpretation of Lois Lane.