Poll Greg Land or Rob Liefield (35 votes)
Which artist is better? (Or worse?)
Team » X-Men appears in 13410 issues.
Which artist is better? (Or worse?)
Comics are supposed to be ridiculous, so, I can excuse Rob Liefeld's characters looking ridiculous.
Greg Land draws photo realistic looking characters in ridiculous super hero outfits, and it just looks awkward most of the time.
You can tell when land is tracing and when he's actually drawing. His actual drawings are pretty decent.
Leifeld's "drawings" look like a 13 year old with ADD was trying to draw a comic by copying Todd MacFarlane and Art Adams all at once, using both hands.
I would rather have 'bad' looking original art than art that traces or copies other artists without their permission, consent and is justified poorly. I am okay with bad anatomy and some of my favorite artists trace or copy, to a lesser extent I am okay with.. unusual sources for art that makes characters look oddly aroused when injured and like cheap adult cosplayers… but stealing from other artists especially ones that aren't as prolific, essentially taking a high spot at Marvel (taking work away from other creators because Marvel values Land for how prolific, fast he is) seems really unethical to me. Land should just do what some other artists do and just hire models to photograph and then trace. Would make his work that requires action and momentum work much better. It would just take longer and require him to use some of his cheque to hire models. Maybe he can't afford to and is also another reason Marvel loves using him. Who knows. Both seem like really nice and kind individuals, well Liefield supposedly vlogs drawing and driving now and then, probably not the best kind of road safety. He also has some odd ideas about Greek warriors too.
I find Liefield more consistent but there are some Land works I really really like (especially his art which features very static posing and stances, like some of his Phoenix Endsong work, which basically amounts to Jean Grey pouting and looking sexy/angry possessed by giant cosmic fiery raptors)
On X books they were equally unreadable at their worst. But Liefeld during his New Mutants run was more tolerable than anything Land did on his X-Men books.
In general I might still prefer Liefeld, though. I read Nightwing from mid 90s with Land as the artist a few years ago, and while his art there didn’t seem traced, it still felt distracting to me.
Liefield's art hurts my eyes, and has always done. Some may like it to an extent, but for me it's too messy and too strangely proportioned.
Land, tracing (and subsequent occasionally odd posing) aside is at least usually fairly clean, clear and aesthetically pleasing. His art doesn't trigger my anxiety basically lol. And there are some pieces (as mentioned above by others) that are simply gorgeous images.
I love this thread. I can hate on these two for eternity, but anyhow, I want to point out that one thing that doesn't get enough hate about Land is his crappy composition, lighting, and generally other aspects of his work that suck. Everyone knows about porn traces at this point, but there's still many more flaws there. Take the picture posted by OP for instance (re-posted below for convenience).
I know this is a combination of a lot of individual character drawings put together, but they don't fit together or in the overall picture at all. Take Pixie and Cannonball for instance. Their heads and hands (and the parts of their body that are located to the front) are much larger than the rest of their bodies, which implies that they're very near to the viewer, because such a high degree of perspective distortion happens when an object is so close to the camera, viewer, etc. that proportions go wacky. Wolverine's body is a similar case, the right part of his torso (left from our perspective) seem much bigger than the left part, which would imply that he's very close to the viewer (typical of a cover or splash page), and yet, we can see by Beast's distance to them that they're not really that close enough to the viewer to warrant such a level of perspective distortion. These stuff throw spatial relations off balance. If you compare Pixie, Logan and Emma for instance, Logan and Pixie's pose implies that they are much closer to the viewer than Emma, but Emma's overall size in the frame contradicts that (compare the length of her outstretched hand to that of pixie for instance). The relationship between Angel's left wing (again right from our perspective) and Storm's lighting is unclear. Judging from the placement of Storm's hand, the fact that angel's left wing is not lit by Storm's lighting implies that Storm should be very far away from Angel, in which case she should be much smaller than she is in the frame. Why is is the red light on Wolverine's back (presumably from Kurt's teleportation?) red rather than pink? Why is Ice-Man's ice-sled not acting as a giant reflector on any other character? In terms of depth and lighting, the whole piece is all over the place.
And that's ignoring all the logical problems we overlook for dramatic looks. For example, is Rockslide (or the other non-flying characters for that matter) falling into the pacific ocean a few seconds after the moment depicted in this pic?
Of course, the same could be done for Liefeld too, but that guy doesn't have any regard for proportions, style, lighting, or basically any sense of aesthetics, so it's pointless to apply any of this stuff to his work. The reason this is a problem with Land is that he takes photo-realistic characters and puts them in impossible geometrical relations which contradict the photorealism.
@theinsufferable: No mention of Wolverine's bicep somehow extending from his chest to his wrist?? He's not even good at tracing.
@theinsufferable: No mention of Wolverine's bicep somehow extending from his chest to his wrist?? He's not even good at tracing.
He probably traced that one from Liefeld. He also had a weird looking Angel pic which I'm too lazy to find. The one with the usual outstretched arms pose.
I love this thread. I can hate on these two for eternity, but anyhow, I want to point out that one thing that doesn't get enough hate about Land is his crappy composition, lighting, and generally other aspects of his work that suck. Everyone knows about porn traces at this point, but there's still many more flaws there. Take the picture posted by OP for instance (re-posted below for convenience).
I know this is a combination of a lot of individual character drawings put together, but they don't fit together or in the overall picture at all. Take Pixie and Cannonball for instance. Their heads and hands (and the parts of their body that are located to the front) are much larger than the rest of their bodies, which implies that they're very near to the viewer, because such a high degree of perspective distortionhappens when an object is so close to the camera, viewer, etc. that proportions go wacky. Wolverine's body is a similar case, the right part of his torso (left from our perspective) seem much bigger than the left part, which would imply that he's very close to the viewer (typical of a cover or splash page), and yet, we can see by Beast's distance to them that they're not really that close enough to the viewer to warrant such a level of perspective distortion. These stuff throw spatial relations off balance. If you compare Pixie, Logan and Emma for instance, Logan and Pixie's pose implies that they are much closer to the viewer than Emma, but Emma's overall size in the frame contradicts that (compare the length of her outstretched hand to that of pixie for instance). The relationship between Angel's left wing (again right from our perspective) and Storm's lighting is unclear. Judging from the placement of Storm's hand, the fact that angel's left wing is not lit by Storm's lighting implies that Storm should be very far away from Angel, in which case she should be much smaller than she is in the frame. Why is is the red light on Wolverine's back (presumably from Kurt's teleportation?) red rather than pink? Why is Ice-Man's ice-sled not acting as a giant reflector on any other character? In terms of depth and lighting, the whole piece is all over the place.
And that's ignoring all the logical problems we overlook for dramatic looks. For example, is Rockslide (or the other non-flying characters for that matter) falling into the pacific ocean a few seconds after the moment depicted in this pic?
Of course, the same could be done for Liefeld too, but that guy doesn't have any regard for proportions, style, lighting, or basically any sense of aesthetics, so it's pointless to apply any of this stuff to his work. The reason this is a problem with Land is that he takes photo-realistic characters and puts them in impossible geometrical relations which contradict the photorealism.
In others words he didn't learned foreshotening in art school before
@vishop_: Well, foreshortening is usually used for actual drawings. Not quite sure if Land passes that criterion.
@vishop_: Well, foreshortening is usually used for actual drawings. Not quite sure if Land passes that criterion.
Well, well, well. Look who couldnt stay away LOL
welcome back, hugs.
I keep an eye on the x-forums, ha ha
@hopesummersforthefuture: I see Land and Liefeld, I talk shit. I don't know what this "X-Men" thing is about.
@hopesummersforthefuture: I see Land and Liefeld, I talk shit. I don't know what this "X-Men" thing is about.
Yes you do, you have a "beautiful mind" that you can "total recall" any x-men comicbook number. :)
.........or maybe u are an A.I. bot LOL <<<<<<<(just joking, or am i? haha )
Yes you do, you have a "beautiful mind"
I don't have schizophrenia as far as I know ... unless the faces and voices calling me from inside the walls are not real, but that's unlikely.
Not a bad movie, but I think I prefer the original short story. It's called we can remember it for you wholesale.
.........or maybe u are an A.I. bot LOL <<<<<<<(just joking, or am i? haha )
Or maybe an A.I. that thinks it's a human that thinks it doesn't know about X-Men, despite having an X-Men database, because its creator is pulling its leg.
@theinsufferable: I found what i was looking for its was UXM 224
heres the pic
@hopesummersforthefuture: I have no idea what that is, but okay.
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