The Dynamite Art Of John Cassaday

well greetings welcome back to Acadian Comics I'm your host James Fondren and in this video we're going to look at the dynamite art of John cassaday so he had a very long career rip John cassaday um he passed away earlier this week and coincidentally enough I had actually done a new Wizard way back and here's the issue that I did and John CID drew the cover for the one year later Memorial uh 911 remembered wizard issue 133 so this was his cover that he drew and it's a beautiful cover it's it has the utmost power and respect of Captain America giving a solemn salute to the fallen on 911 so we salute John cassiday um I know you'll be missed and it just highlights he was 52 years old uh and it just highlights you know we don't have a lot of time on this Earth and what we do with it and the amount of time we uh put into creating art and telling stor and making something that's going to last John's art will last this this picture of Captain America here will be remembered we will remember him and we will remember his art so think about that it's a big motivator for me to get off off my rear end and continue to push and get better I spent a lot of my life not doing what I wanted to do when it came to creating art and drawing and and now I'm changing that and I'm got a lot of catchup to do and you you know I can't sell I'll ever be as good as John cassaday but I'll be as good as I can be and I am working on a story and I have my own ideas and that's another reason why I'm a member of the how to draw Comics Academy Clayton Barton's how to draw Comics Academy if you want to learn how to draw and get some Pro tips and accelerate your development and growth as an artist and as a Storyteller go check out um The Academy the how to draw Comics Academy that you go to how to draw Comics Academy all one word.net that's how to draw Comics academy.net so anyway let's get right into it okay so these are all Dynamite characters you're not going to be seeing any Marvel stuff that he did it's all going to be Dynamite but these are classic characters um that they licensed out you know the Lone Ranger the shadow all that so the here we go so The Lone Ranger Buck Rogers Sherlock Holmes green horn the shadow Doc Savage James Bond so we're just going to flip through this here we go I mean look at this this is this is actually really something you know look at that art I've seen this come up a lot in the on Twitter on X uh you know celebrating uh his art and his life and people paying their respects on social media John Cass today over the last two decades I've had the pleasure to work with a company that understood the love and fandom that comes with the respect and understanding if of not only creators and artists but of Ages old Legends and legendary Creations Dynamite's toy box is full of some of my favorite characters some well recognizable and some who needed a little dusting off thrilled to be part of it and excited for fans to get a collection of just what that toy box has meant to me so this will be interesting here's this Lone Ranger look at that and I'm going have to go back and read all this but here you go the Lone Ranger and when I was it's just strange like I went down to Midtown Comics and I I did my haul picked up my stuff and I was just looking I'm like you know maybe there's like uh some art books I can look at cuz I'm I'm trying to get get some motivation and all that but look at his look at his roughs look how he worked you know I love his signature I love that I might I'm thinking about I'm developing my own so look he knows this is going to be black black black and look at that look how he look his look at his thumbnails right for The Lone Ranger awesome huh you got to draw this you know it's just it's so cool [Music] mhm look at that okay there it is there's the final result final here's this here's this sort of his rough his thumbnail his pencil cover sketch for volume one issue number two too and then there it is you see you start there and then you move forward like so cool you know and if you'll notice it doesn't matter who the comic artist is you'll look and see the roughs are their roughs and you start there you don't start here this is color this is his inking um I I guess he Inked himself he must have Inked himself but yeah wonderful yeah yeah they had a they had a hard bound and then they had the like kind of the the paperback uh addition to this I I I went at the paperback it was about $10 cheaper but yeah man I could you could just see the energy in this look at his roughs you know you see the shadow here and conceptually you have to build the stuff out you have to work with it it makes it so much easier down the road like look at that that's awesome this awesome there it is just wow wow look at that that's pretty cool oh I really like this one the fire look at the fire yeah mhm mhm wow I love seeing the ink the Black and Whites and then the colors you know I just love seeing that this is a long book I mean this has got a lot of pages in it you know look at this sketch there he is L Ranger and Tonto again oh that's cool the bullets being fired out of the gun oh this is incredible look at this look at this absolutely incredible wow mhm [Music] mhm well now the colorist did a wonderful job on that yeah yeah I love seeing it's the roughs because you know where it's going it's beautiful and it all comes together you know battlefields wow look at that I guess the benefit of this being in 4ks you can pause it you know if you want you can definitely pause it I tell you what I'm going to do um death defying devil that's awesome he looks like the Phantom he he looks like the Phantom yeah Buck Rogers that's cool look at that look at that Buck Rogers that's a great that is great that's fantastic that is so good yeah look at that I like that Sherlock Holmes so I don't want to ruin the whole book I mean I don't want to show everything this is this is sort of a tribute thing but let's see here um uh let's look at the shadow I want to see as work on the shadow go back to the beginning uh let's see we looked at Buck Rogers Dracula 180 the shadow is Page 222 see where's 180 that's Buck Rogers okay with a Green Hornet that's pretty cool look at Dracula it's pretty badass sh Holmes Dracula all right uh let's look at the shadow where's the shadow here's the shadow mhm let's see if they got any of his roughs in here where it's all the inks oh look here's some roughs right here wow that's cool yeah I like that hand some great for shortening there with the hand that cover sketch oh I like I like this he did the sash so it it does the s in the shadow that's cool pretty sweet Shadow with a Tommy Gun this is a great what a great composition this is with this inks oh this is what I love I love this here I love seeing the roughs sketches the pencil sketches look at that it's all there it's all there you just go over it and ink you ink it and it and it be it's it becomes comic book art you know it's really cool yeah shadow in the Green Hornet that's cool uhhuh the spider look at that that's pretty badass look at that look at that that's cool check that out look at that covers I want to see the full cover I love it I love it yep there it is there it is so that's it that's the book right um you know John cassad the the dynamite art of John cassid it was on the shelf and I thought you know what he just passed away uh I need to familiarize myself with his work more and plus it's always useful as an upcoming artist somebody who's learning and trying to develop and uh hone their skills to see the process behind it because you know you get into it and you think it's there's things you trying to do a layout you're trying to do just even a like a a pinup it's like this isn't working I don't like how this looks it just it's not how am I ever going to get there and then you you look at what other people do and it's like well you take it one step at a time you know and you you play with it you make it work you're patient with it you work out the problems the art problems that you're having and uh you get to a certain point and you have these really nice nice layout so um that's part of the process that I've really enjoyed is like solving the problem you know and working through the problem of my drawing and seeing how other artists work through those problems and you know I was watching I was watching this Mark sylvestri video on on it was on on sci-fi's YouTube uh channel sci-fi Channel's YouTube uh Channel and you know he was talking about his roughs and he's like I start he was dra drawing the darkness you can check it out it's on YouTube He said Mark sylvestri says I start you start out wide in kind of General forms and then you start to narrow down into shapes and fine finer shapes so it all sounds obvious but until you sit down and do it yourself it's all talk you can watch a million videos on it but if you don't do the work yourself you don't put in the time at the drawing board uh on your tablet but the drawing board if you're working conventionally your desk then it just doesn't happen so um you know again if you want to try to like speed up that process and you're starting from zero that's okay um I highly recommend how to draw Comics Academy a Clayton Barton's how to draw Comics Academy so uh I'll put a link to the how to draw Comics Academy in the description and there's some you can see some of the videos that I've done for some of my work I need to post more time-lapse videos um from procreate for some of the projects that I've done for um you know some some work at the how to draw com ICS Academy so uh and plus you get feedback and critique there so we have a nice little Community some really talented people uh uh just really and persistent and hardworking and it's just it's inspiring to see other people post their art and and share it and then get the necessary feedback and critique that they need so that's all I have this was the um the dynamite art of John cassaday and remembering John cassaday and um I thought this was a great pickup you know you could see his layouts you get see his roughs and then you see the inks and you see the color and uh you know this is this is an artist book right here this is a book for an artist um books like this are meant for people like me for sure so and people other people out there who are aspiring artists and love to draw and love comic book art and love to kind of see how that's all made in that process so hope you enjoyed this video please hit the like button subscribe to the channel and I'll catch you right here next time at aadi and Comics