Ligne Claire | Hacker News Reader

Ligne Claire

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222 pointssrvmshr63 comments

My grandfather was a Painter and as a kid he would hand me a panel of Calvin and Hobbes or Tintin to copy while he was working. It really gave me an appreciation for what simplicity could do. What Bill Waterson or Herge did with a simple line here or an addition of two dots there to change a facial expression or add movement to scene was like magic to me as a kid. And my grandfather used to say the longer you look at something the easier it gets to compress all the information of a complex world into a few dots. Basically these artists brains were running highly optimized compression algos.

There's some poetry in there

> And my grandfather used to say the longer you look at something the easier it gets to compress all the information of a complex world into a few dots.

You will probably enjoy "Understanding Comics", by Scott McCloud.

> And my grandfather used to say the longer you look at something the easier it gets to compress all the information of a complex world into a few dots. Basically these artists brains were running highly optimized compression algos.

Christoph Niemann[¹] has an interesting series on Instagram he dubbed Abstract Sunday[²] where he posts Sunday sketches, and it amazes me how much detail he compresses in so few brush strokes. I definitely recommend a click.

[1] https://www.christophniemann.com/

[2] https://www.christophniemann.com/detail/sunday-sketches-2/

Waterson is not really considered ligne claire though. The line is more sketchy and backgrounds are often simplified or eliminated.

This is probably stupid, but this style of drawing is why I could never read Tintin. I didn't know it had a name until now. I can't really explain why, but it kind of makes me uncomfortable or something. So weird. Especially because most people seem to really enjoy it. Is anyone else sharing this feeling or is it just me?

You may be on to something: I seem to have experienced the opposite, as having grown up reading Ligne Claire-comics initially made it really difficult for me to follow what was happening in comics drawn in other styles.

Same here. After, like every little French boy, having been fed with Tintin and Asterix in my baby bottle, much of the more modern work made me feel like the author was not straight to the point enough, wasting my attention with his uncertain and meandering process of drawing. It took a lot of time to appreciate anything else and stop feeling like it's all amateurish sketching.

When I was a kid I hated geographical maps that did not have a ligne claire drawn between the land and the ocean.

> After, like every little French boy, having been fed with Tintin and Asterix in my baby bottle

Not French but I've felt this too -- purely on an aesthetic level I enjoy the artwork of Tintins, Asterixes, and even older American superhero comics, because of the simpler, more traditionally comic-like artwork.

Modern comics have more realistic colors but appear "over-pencilled"[1,2] somehow.

[1] https://imgur.com/a/GOCCMZv [2] https://imgur.com/a/Rysp9do

I'm French, and I've also grown up with a lot of bandes dessinées around me. I love Astérix, Lucky Luke, Gaston, … But I've had a hard time with Tintin since forever.

Lines in these other series are not as straight as in Tintin. They feel more hand drawn or something. I'm not really able to explain.

Same for me. I just can’t stand how the style looks like, it instinctively makes it look numb and uninteresting.

Interesting! Is this because ligne claire does not "guide the eye" as much? Comics often eliminate all inessential backgrounds to let you focus on the action, but ligne claire style never does that.

This is an interesting example of the subjectivity in art -- I love Tintin for this very reason. The "flatness" and the beautiful coloration the artistic style creates is so beautiful to me, it's a treat to my eyes. Similarly with older superhero comics as well.

Same here. The semi-realistic backdrops is what's most off-putting to me. Part cartoon / part realistic messes with my suspension of disbelief or something

I always found the level of detail in the clear flat drawings of Tintin comics impressive. It is good to know the name of the style after all these years.

I was a big Tintin fan as a kid, too, so this is super nostalgic. Looking back on it as an adult, I wonder if this style was a product of the time— for example, Disney's Snow White (1937) has a very similar approach, with flat cel-based animation on top of lush, realistic, painted backgrounds.

The classic Disney style is due to technical constraints. Animation was inked and painted on transparent sheets overlayed on static backgrounds. The animated figures have to be simple and well-defined shapes because otherwise it is just too much work to ink and paint consistently over thousands of sheets (12 sheets per second of film!). The backgrounds are static though, so they can be arbitrarily subtle and detailed. Movements over backgrounds is done by moving the camera over a larger painting.

The stylistic difference between background and animation can be quite jarring though, and ligne claire actually attempt the opposite effect, that figures and backgrounds have exactly the same style and level of detail.

>I always found the level of detail impressive

If you're into level of detail, you should take a gander at Hard-Boiled [1][2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Boiled_(comics) [2] https://www.cuartomundo.cl/2018/03/26/hard-boiled-1990-de-fr...

That is very impressive level of detail though it pushes the boundary of "clean" and gets too "real" (and depending on what you are looking for, that may be a good thing). Thanks for sharing.

Sable made this their style mimicking Moebius:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/757310/Sable/

That looks really cool!

This is really beautiful

Oooh, didn't know about this.

Lovely artwork (I'm a fan of Moebius, so no wonder)>

A Japanese artist, 焦茶, who was famous for his Ligne claire style art, just passed away last year at 25 yo.

https://twitter.com/bard713

https://www.pixiv.net/users/12845810

Do you know why he passed away? His art is very well done.

His family said it was an accident with no foul play. No more details were given iirc.

By the way his death was only announced this year, 6 months later after his death (but it's not uncommon in Japan).

Logicomix is a comic book drawn in that style about the search for the foundations of mathematics. Recommended! I have the impression that lots of HN readers would like it.

https://www.logicomix.com/en/index.html

I am seconding the recommendation; I read it years ago and it still comes to mind often!

I was obsessed with the Ligne Claire years ago. There was this black and white drawing of a plane cruising above a tumultuous ocean, taken from the album L’Étoile Mystérieuse. It was purely done with black lines but the movement and the depth of the drawing was fantastic. I was never able to find that drawing again.

Anyone know of some curated list or catalogue of drawing styles like this. The Wikipedia article does not link to any meta category of drawing style, though it does link to another contemporary drawing style, "Marcinelle school".

Not exactly that, but the comic book Wikipedia page [1] has a short description of how different cultures approach comic books, along with most popular titles. It is a fun starting point for exploring differences in styles. There is also a list of comic books by country [2].

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_book

[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_comics_by_country

These were really surprising disappointments for Wikipedia, with large markets like Scandinavia missing (some titles have at times sold more in individual Scandinavian countries than in the US).

Went hunting for relevant pages, and it's surprising how weak Wikipedia is on this entire subject.

> Went hunting for relevant pages, and it's surprising how weak Wikipedia is on this entire subject.

That's how Wikipedia works: people like you and me search for a topic, and if something is missing then it's up to us to fill the blanks.

Contributing something to a wiki takes as much work as posting a message on HN.

to be fair though, it can be a hassle to get something on wikipedia - writing a well thought out addition to a page, only to have it immediately reversed out can be disheartening.

I remember making a small edit to the page of my kid's school, to correct an obvious factual error, providing a source with the correct information, and ended up in an edit war over it...

> to be fair though, it can be a hassle to get something on wikipedia - writing a well thought out addition to a page, only to have it immediately reversed out can be disheartening.

It indeed can take work, but that's also the reason why wikipedia's signal/noise ratio is high and often passed as the tertiary source.

Still, I feel that the bulk of the work lies in establishing notoriety. Sometimes people feel that very obscure topics that lack any acceptable source and fail to establish notoriety should be center stage. Sometimes the problem is half-assed nature of a contribution. Still, it's better to give it a try than to simply complain about no one having done any work.

I've noticed that I stopped being reverted as I made more edits. I have maybe 500 edits, total, so I doubt it's people actually remembering me. The two biggest contributors, as far as I can tell, is that your first <x> edits are scrutinized more extensively. That's either informal/by some of the spam rules/etc., or, on some wikipedias (dewiki, for example), a specific feature where your first <x> edits need to be signed off by more experienced users.

The second, and probably more important, mechanism is simply getting better. WP has a rather distinct style in that it allows absolutely zero jokes, for example, no matter how subtle. Compare with even the most respected publications... The Economist and it's silly captions come to mind.

It's not just humor, but any form of metaphor or irony will usually get reversed, as does any interpretation, even if obvious:

"As the judge became senile, his verdicts started to become erratic. Some defendants chose to gamble and not protest his assignment, and some of them probably got away with murder".

That needs references not just for senility and erraticisms. The causality will be challenged, as will the speculation on defendants motives, the imagery of gambling, and the conjecture about random verdicts potentially letting criminals get off.

Unfortunately deletionists have won, at least in my limited experience, and Wikipedia subjectively feels now to be largely a kingdom of those who find it more satisfying/easier to delete information than to create.

It's a quite disheartening state of affairs, and the saddest part is that it was potentially avoidable... but now that the culture has calcified, it seems very unlikely that it will change, since it's something that's been discussed for _years_ now [1][2]...

[1]: https://www-users.cse.umn.edu/~halfaker/publications/The_Ris...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2597881

> Unfortunately deletionists have won, at least in my limited experience, and Wikipedia subjectively feels now to be largely a kingdom of those who find it more satisfying/easier to delete information than to create.

One of wikipedia's tenets is that Wikipedia is not your personal blog. Thus I feel that any baseless accusation of "easier to delete than to create" is disingenuous and more often than not is just a kneejerk reaction motivated by a desire to hit back at Wikipedia for doing the right thing and keeping the signa/noise ratio high.

I've been at both ends of that deal. I've seen plenty of my articles being marked for deletion, and as an anti-vandalism editor I've also deleted an awful lot of articles. I recommend you also invest some of your time doing anti-vandalism work to get a glimpse of the torrent of crap that storms into Wikipedia each day, from puerile vandalism to shills forcing their products/services everywhere, and also of course people posting their own uncorroborated personal accounts citing themselves.

The process is flawed given that it's driven by volunteers and unfortunately there are indeed false positives and false negatives. Nevertheless, I'm sure the experience would be insightful and educational, specially with regards to learning how to write acceptable wiki articles, and enough to stop this blend of petty baseless attacks.

After all, it's easier to whine conspiratorial accusations on online forums than it is to actually learn how to contribute, and more importantly how to work to improve things.

Wow, I seem to have struck quite a nerve there.

I have no doubt that Wikipedia has to deal with a flood of trolls and vandals, that that is a tremendous amount of work, and that the editors are doing their utmost to follow the standards defined by the community.

I am merely pointing out that the culture and standards as they stand now lead to a situation where a newcomer (or even a long-time contributor) is likely to bounce off after being caught in an edit war once too many times. Saying "Oh, just contribute an article when you see a gap" is an invitation to sink a potentially unbounded amount of time and effort into something that has an unfortunately high chance of being eventually deleted.

Don't mistake me, I love the concept of Wikipedia, and I think it's a fantastic project – I just find it tragic. Maybe it's truly the tragedy of the commons and the situation is unavoidable because of the flood of spam/vandalism, but I wonder whether you see there a problem to be solved at all.

These comics are mostly still in copyright. And commons doesn't really delete anything as long it's legal and minimally useful.

Yes, I'm aware of that. My point was more that it's rare to find a subject like this with such huge gaping holes in English-language wikipedia.

Maybe open an empty mega page. That may entice others to fill the void.

That may entice some asshole to speedy delete it.

That's the state of current wikipedia - a clique of 1000 who delete anything added by anyone else.

Don't know if it helps, but the dutch [0] and french [1] versions of the page contain some more detail and sections on similar styles.

You could also try to inform yourself at the Belgian comic strip museum [2]

[0] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klare_lijn

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_claire

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Comic_Strip_Center

Wonderful post! I was recently looking to at some vintage Tintin posters for my apartment.

Anyone familiar with the works by Milo Manara, although quite erotic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_Manara

Spanish cartoonist Daniel Torres follows this style. He’s great.

https://www.alanlynchartists.com/daniel-torres

I am looking at some work of a dutch artist for my house. Beautiful drawings in this style, of iconic dutch architecture.

http://www.veerkamp.nl/paginas/gemeentemuseum.html

You could also look at Joost Swarte.

Have no artistic background but I sort of want to train to have artstyle like this. Any references I can look into?

Googling just resulted in some obscure French books that I definitely won’t have access to: L'atelier de la bande dessinée avec Hergé

What is your level? Do you already know how to draw in a realistic style?

Practically a beginner. I tried following some books a few years ago + the basic art classes in high school is my skill extent.

A really simple way is to draw an element (a face, hand, dog, whatever but please don't start with vehicles, those were drawn more mechanically) by hand on vellum or tracing paper, then overlay on the original to compare as if getting feedback from the artist.

You can make initial tracings to make sure the two align. And you should typically enlarge the original art by 2.5x at least in order to work near the original size.

Comic art schools have been doing this for a long time but in the reverse, with professional artists drawing on your art afterward, instead of overlaying on their art. Joe Kubert's correspondence course was set up this way for example.

For pens, start with a stiff small nib brush pen by Zebra or Pilot, or a dip pen with a comic nib. Alternately the small-point sharpie nibs can be bent out of shape and give a nib effect.

For ligne claire IMO it can help to go straight to pen and skip pencil, at least for stylistic practice, because what you're looking for is the final line expression and characteristics.

Be sure to look at the artist's very early work so you don't miss out on the fact that this is not easy to nail right out of the gate. :-)

Inkscape is a great digital tool for practicing this look as well.

Well that explains the name of the library specialized in comics in my Belgian city, neat.

And that city be Mons, right?

Spot on

Someone's a subscriber to breadsword's youtube channel.

I haven't heard of that channel. Is it good? Care to sell me on it? I'm always on the look out for more high quality YouTube channels...

If you're interested in this article watch his episode on TinTin.

Forgive the pun but the wikipedia definition is rather obscure…

>> All these elements together can result in giving comics drawn this way a flat aspect.

Citation needed. The ligne claire style also includes use of perspective. In combination with bright colours flattness is avoided.

I always saw this spelled Ligma Claire?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cel_shading

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