Marvel Partners With Art Platform Proko To Teach Drawing Comics Online

Back in the 1970s, Marvel released a book called How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way which instructed and inspired a generation of young artists. Fifty years later, the company is updating its approach by partnering with online art instruction platform Proko to offer a comprehensive online course specifically geared to the techniques and workflows of making comics.

Today Marvel and Proko announced “Marvel’s The Art of Storytelling,” a full curriculum of online videos, exercises and community content that covers a range of skills including visual storytelling, penciling, inking, coloring, character design, cover art, and more. The classes are taught by working comics professionals and use Marvel characters and stories as the basis for the lessons.

ADVERTISEMENT

Proko is an online art instruction community founded by atelier-trained fine artist Stan Prokopenko as an outgrowth of his wildly popular how-to videos that he began posting on YouTube in the early 2010s. Since then, his video channel has topped 3 million subscriptions. The Proko.com site, featuring a full curriculum of video lessons in traditional and digital art, has 180,000 accounts, including over 100,000 added since the site expanded in 2020.

“Our team is very into comics,” said Prokopenko. “The videos we’ve done on comics art by David Finch and Ryan Benjamin have all performed well, and we’re expanding as a company into things our audience is interested in.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Prokopenko says he was pursuing Marvel about co-launching a class for a while through mutual connections and was delighted when the leading comics publisher in the country agreed to partner on the course.

“Marvel is authorizing the use of characters for the class and assignments,” he said. “If you’re a Marvel fan, it’s more fun to watch the instructors draw characters you already know.” He added that Marvel worked with the team at Proko to create a curriculum that accurately reflects the real-life skills necessary to succeed in comics.

“It’s definitely an intermediate-level course rather than something for beginners,” said Prokopenko. “Getting so many professionals in the industry to the Proko Studio has meant we could cover more than what a single instructor could bring to the table. I think it’ll really help our students make better art and better comics that will give artists the chance to bring their own stories and comics to life.”

ADVERTISEMENT

According to the company, the following artists will be teaching sections of the class:

· Mark Morales – Inking

· Alitha Martinez – Poses, Acting, and Performance

· Mike Hawthorne – Basics of Cinematography and Perspective

· Matt Wilson – Coloring for Comics

· Daniel Warren Johnson – Environments

ADVERTISEMENT

· Jim Zub – Storytelling and Story Structure

· Erik Gist – Comic Covers

· Ryan Benjamin – Penciling

· Sanford Greene – Character design bonus, Team
TISI
design, and Action

· Aaron Conley – Page and Panel composition

ADVERTISEMENT

One thing the class will not and cannot offer is an inside track on portfolio reviews. Marvel, like every other comics company, never reviews unsolicited submissions to protect itself from accusations of stealing ideas from fans. Review and critique of student work will be done by Proko staff. Students are free to post their work online or submit portfolios through normal channels with the company or at conventions.

The class is priced at $249, with a special 20% off presale promotion lowering it temporarily to under $200. The first lesson will drop Wednesday, July 12.

ADVERTISEMENT