Byrne Robotics: Cap sketch

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Topic: Cap sketch

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Ed Fahey
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Joined: 07 March 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 289

Posted: 08 October 2026 at 6:28pm \| IP Logged \| 1	post reply

Found this nice Cap sketch online - I was in High School in '82 this brings back fond memories....

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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 08 October 2026 at 6:58pm \| IP Logged \| 2	post reply

That shield is impressive. I wonder how I drew it? It wasn’t my habit to tote my elliptical templates around to cons with me!

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Vinny Valenti
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Joined: 17 April 2004
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Posted: 09 October 2026 at 1:51am \| IP Logged \| 3	post reply

Your mastery of curves really makes you the perfect artist to render the shield. It has just the right amount of convexity - many artists draw it either too curved or too flat (even Kirby did that a lot):

Mainly posting this becuse it came up on a Google image search, and I've never seen this before! And for what it's worth, one of your own images of Cap and his shield came up 4th on the search results.

Edited by Vinny Valenti on 09 October 2026 at 1:10pm

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John Byrne
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Posted: 09 October 2026 at 11:43am \| IP Logged \| 4	post reply

I didn’t take a whole lot with me from the Alberta College of Art (now the Alberta University of the Arts—with “Art” upside down!) but it was practically an epiphany that day in drawing class when the instructor showed us how to draw circles in perspective.

The “trick”, if I may call it such, is that no matter the viewing angle, the widest part of the ellipse is always at 90 degrees to the axis.

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Vinny Valenti
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Posted: 09 October 2026 at 1:16pm \| IP Logged \| 5	post reply

Another trick I just noticed is that you have the stripes disappear behind the middle, really giving the illusion of depth, whereas in the image above (possibly the first ever rendering of the shield?), they don't - curious that the white stripes seem to taper off, but the red stripes don't - even though they are equal width!

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John Byrne
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Posted: 09 October 2026 at 1:21pm \| IP Logged \| 6	post reply

I think of the shield as roughly the same shape as a contact lens.

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Ed Fahey
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Joined: 07 March 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 289

Posted: 09 October 2026 at 2:03pm \| IP Logged \| 7	post reply

Sketches have such an energy I'd like to see a comic done this way not just pencils without inks but loose sketches perhaps water colored subtly for printing purposes. And I recall the issue of Cap our host did similarly without inking but I am not sure the technology was quite there yet and it seemed a bit muddy to me printed on that paper. JB what was the story behind that attempt do you recall?

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John Byrne
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Posted: 09 October 2026 at 2:19pm \| IP Logged \| 8	post reply

Marvel wouldn’t pay for gray tones, so I had to make the pencils as dark as if inked.

Kinda defeated the whole point!

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