John Hench Quotes

My drawing skills probably froze around when I was 18... Now I'm more interested in the story, how the drawings, the layout can help express the stories and communicate them.

My role as an artist helps me tremendously in breaking down each story. Pacing, layout, movement - having drawn a few thousand pages, I understand the language of comic books very well.

Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.

Images have a unique power to impart that which is beyond words.

An illustration is a visual editorial - it's just as nuanced. Everything that goes into it is a call you make: every color, every line weight, every angle.

I try to be as clear and simple as I can be in my illustrations so that the child can tell what is going on and what the emotions are.

My drawing, like that of most cartoonists, is intended first of all to be functional: to create believable space and communicate information. My strongest point in drawing has always been my ability to show characters' nonverbal communication through facial expression and posture.

So much of it is the design of the shot or the motion of the character; it's the work you do so that it has the same things that are in the movie. In just a few frames it's got to communicate something clearly and dramatically.

I look at graphic design as communication, meaning that the work has to have a vibe to connect to the viewer or perceiver. I make a black and white drawing and then add color digitally, bringing in a contemporary pattern to the composition to create a vibrance.

Wherever there are words, let there be pictures.

The sizes and shapes of the panels have never been important to my stories. It has always been the words and images that drew me in, kind of like watching a movie.

I never think about my style but just try and make the pictures look believable.

A picture is a poem without words.

But with comics you're reading and assimilating an image simultaneously, instead of just reading or watching the tube.

If it's just brushstrokes wrestling around, it isn't much of a picture book, is it? There still has to be a picture. And maybe it needs to be a picture of a dog named Daisy or a little girl riding a bike. So I have to be careful before I get too carried away in the manner itself.

Illustrating is more about communicating specific ideas to a reader. Painting is more like pure science, more about the act of painting.

What is it about animation, graphics, illustrations, that create meaning? And this is an important question to ask and answer because the more we understand how the brain creates meaning, the better we can communicate, and, I also think, the better we can think and collaborate together.

That night image had replaced the written word as the natural language of politics.

Comics are a wonderful form. You can do so much with it.

Everything I try to do wants to be able to push communication through the notion of the visual image.

If I really believe that visual representation and narrative are ways to convey important, complex ideas, and if the world is gravitating toward this form, then geez, I better do it myself. I want to do it myself.

The great thing about working in comics is that visually, you're the sole voice. You have to figure out the staging, the lighting, the composition, the character emotions, the action. You get a script, but you're trying to work it out in individual panels. It's a terrific exercise in creative thinking and creative problem-solving.

Bringing words to life, storyboards show you things that words can't.

Cinema is a visual medium one has to communicate through visuals, and therefore, dialogues should be less.

Coming from the world of animation, every single line counts; every single gesture counts. You put thought into every single one of those things and the way a frame is composed.