"What is style-guide art? "

A style-guide is a collection of images of a character in iconic (or stock) poses. It shows how the character is supposed to be portrayed stylistically. Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, for instance, has for years, even decades(?) now been the primary artist on DC's style guide for superhero merchandising.  You may have noticed his work on Superman and Batman T-shirts, lunchboxes, anything you can stick a picture on.

Much like a model sheet (showing a character in "turnaround" /from every angle ), these are important tools to ensure consistency in the portrayal of a character with many artists involved. (now if only someone could do the same for writers ...)

Style-guide art is simply art used in compiling the style guide.

Hi Wilson-

Most of the time, style guides are collections of character art that a company creates to liscense/sell to other companies that create specific products (Shirts, toilet seats, all the stuff you see at Target, etc...). They can be single characters( B&W & color), full scenes, or even finished graphics with logos/sayings/etc. This saves the product companies from having to create new art (which takes time and money). It's like "clip-art". Before the digital age, these were binders with print-outs that were sent out. Now, most companies have websites that contain digital files to download.

I work in this field of illustration, and it's crazy to see just how many style guides are created every season for different characters in many different art styles. I was able to look at the past 10 years of Superman art on Warner Bros website, and it was so cool to see all of Garcia Lopez's drawings.Disney's style guide collection is so freakin' huge that typing in "Pooh" gets you at least 30,000 images... and a headache...

There are also guides that are for in-house use that help with consistancy of characters, costumes, figure construction, etc... These are used alot for animators, and in my experience are still binders of print-outs. With a company like Nick, they tend to be collections of rough drawings that show mouth movements and body construction. I've never worked directly for any of the big comic companies, but I would hope that they have something like this for consistancy's sake. Sometimes it seems like they don't...

Hope that helps!

I am not trying to be rude at all, but I don't understand a non-professional clearly tracing a famous cover and trying to sell it as original art...

I know it is not illegal or anything, it just seems... chincy.... and I don't care what you say... there is no credit on that Avengers #57 cover trace....

The avengers #57 is not a reimagining or an homage... its a trace...

I like that Glenn Brown piece.  It looks like Paul Smith and John Cassaday had a baby.

P.S. That is not an insult.  That is simply a game I play with my wife when we talk about who people resemble.

My new Andy Smith Green Lantern

" i dont care what you say"

kind of says it all i think