Instructions:
Draw 10″ x 15″ on 11″ x 17″ art paper , preferably a two-ply smooth bristol board, in pencil only. Think about, in general, where word balloons might go, but do not draw in any balloon shapes. Pencil tightly and completely. Do your best work. If you are skilled at lettering or design, then it’s acceptable to draw in your own sound effects.
Keep track of how many hours you spend on each page, and write that information on the back.
Make a full-sized photocopy of the artwork for yourself.
If submitting samples by mail, send the clean photocopies instead of the originals, with the time-it-took info on the back, your name and address and phone on each page, and a stamped, self-addressed envelope for a reply.
“BAD DC GIRLS” — SAMPLE PLOT SEQUENCE
(Unlike most instances where a plot or script is broken down page by page and panel by panel for the artist, some writers prefer to write their plots in chunks of pages; they’ll describe a whole sequence and leave it up to the artist to pace out the story. This test is an example of that.)
At a 10-level-tall ROUND shopping mall with a big roof skylight, HARLEY QUINN, POISON IVY, and CATWOMAN shop up, in costume, in broad daylight. Shoppers react as the girls goof off, deciding to do a girlie shopping spree — bad girl style. Each using her own skills, sometimes together, sometimes separately, they rob a series of stores — jewelry stores, clothing stores, and so on.
(Make it fun and playful, in the manner of the Harley Quinn stories drawn by Terry Dodson.) On the first floor is a big, modern, fancy center fountain.
Each character gets her “moments,” such as Catwoman holding an armload of jewels as she stops in front of a pet store, looking in. Dogs bark at her, crazily. She feels bad for the kittens locked up, sets them loose. And so on. The gals make short work of the guards, distracting them and putting them out of commission. Perhaps Harley slides down the arm rail of an escalator and lands right on a guard’s chest before knocking him out.
As they reach the top, we see they’ve had their escape planned — a helicopter decorated Harley Quinn-style shows up to whisk them away. But below, the FLASH has shown up, racing around an in and up and up each floor at super-speed, causing a sucking down-draft that pulls the helicopter down, out of control, crashing down through the partly-open skylight, glass and copter plunging downward. Flash races to save shoppers, vibrate glass shards to sand, and rescue the copter pilot even as the helicopter crashes to the ground floor, destroying they fountain. The now-captured three bad babes are soaking wet and looking great. Catwoman snarls about hating water. Harley Quinn thinks it’s all funny. Flash isn’t amused at how badly he did controlling his speed – -and the manager wants Flash to pay for damages! “Maybe you shoulda joined us,” says Poison Ivy. “The offer’s open, if ever you get the itch…”
