Fiona Staples

• Illustration — Staples at Another Dimension Comics in Calgary, Alberta, Canada At the beginning of her career, Staples would scan traditional drawings in and edit them in Adobe Photoshop later. Staples began creating her artwork entirely digitally several years before she began work on Saga, though her process for that series is different from previous ones, for which she characterizes it as "one intense, ongoing experiment." She begins with thumbnails, roughly drawn on printed paper templates. During this stage Staples gives copious thought to the layouts and staging, making it, in her words, the most important part of the process. After scanning the thumbnails, she enlarges them and uses them as rudimentary pencils, and "inks" over them in Manga Studio. She has said that her art distributor is "perpetually disappointed in her," as fans would pay high prices for inks and pencils. One of the advantages Staples sees in working digitally is the ability to dispense with tight pencils in favor of making corrections in an ad hoc manner, as she finds that penciling in great detail, and re-drawing such artwork a second time in ink, to be boring. In Saga, Staples inks only the figures in pen-and-ink, using a lot of self-shot photo references to finalize the poses, which she does not use in the thumbnail stage. She then imports the art into Photoshop, which she uses to paint the backgrounds entirely in colour, to achieve a look inspired by video games and Japanese animation. At the 2012 Image Expo, Staples described the process by which she produces the art as harkening back to animation cels, in which emphasis is placed on figures and backgrounds. The process, according to Staples, can be time-consuming, depending on the complexity of the environment. For outdoor environments, she begins by selecting a colour palette and initially blocking in the shapes roughly. She subsequently colours the figures, using flat colours both to make the process quicker and because she feels that painted figures in comics can often look "stiff" and difficult for the reader to "read" quickly. For pages that feature narration by the character Hazel, Staples writes the text using her own handwriting. Vaughan has stated that Staples's style has influenced the direction of the story. The organic forms of most of the series' technology, for example, such as the main characters' wooden rocket ship, is derived from Staples's dislike of drawing mechanical objects. To design the series' various planetary settings, Staples looks to the real world for inspiration and then exaggerates some elements of them. Some rooms on the planet Cleave, for example, were inspired by Cambodian architecture.

Staples's work on Saga received wide acclaim from numerous reviewers, with Ain't it Cool News characterizing it as "glorious", and P.S. Hayes of Geeks of Doom praising her art as "amazing", saying, "From the gorgeous painted cover all the way through the last page, she delivers in every way that's artistically possible. It's got to be tough to be handed a script like this one and try and figure out what to do, but she handles it beautifully. Everything looks like it belongs in the universe. Her backgrounds are elaborate, yet never distracting or too busy and they never take focus off the main characters." Alex Zalben of MTV Geek predicted readers would "fall head over heels in love" with it, and Greg McElhatton of Comic Book Resources positively compared it to that of Leinil Francis Yu, specifically her use of delicate lines to frame characters with large, bold figures, and her mixture of the familiar and the foreign together in her character designs to create a visually cohesive universe. AICN singled out Staples's handling of grand, sweeping space shots and other genre trappings, as well as her mastery of facial expressions, which AICN felt was perfectly suited to Vaughan's subtle dialogue. In 2015, Staples was voted the #1 female comic book artist of all time by readers of Comic Book Resources.

• Year — Award — Category — Work — Result — Ref. • 2010 — Eisner Awards — Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team — North 40 — Nominated • 2011 — Joe Shuster Award — Outstanding Comic Book Cover Artist — Mystery Society #1-5, DV8: Gods and Monsters #1-8, Superman/Batman #79, Acts of Violence: An Anthology of Crime Comics, Magus #1 — Won • Outstanding Comic Book Artist — Mystery Society #1-5, Northlanders #29, Fringe: Tales from the Fringe #4 — Nominated • 2013 — Hugo Award — Best Graphic Story — Saga, Vol. 1 (with Brian K. Vaughan) — Won • Eisner Awards — Best New Series — Saga (with Brian K. Vaughan) — Won • Best Continuing Series — Saga (with Brian K. Vaughan) — Won • Harvey Award — Best Artist — Saga — Won • Best Colourist — Saga — Won • Best New Series — Saga (with Brian K. Vaughan) — Won • Best Continuing/Limited Series — Saga (with Brian K. Vaughan) — Won • Best Issue/Story — Saga (with Brian K. Vaughan) — Won • Best Cover Artist — Saga — Nominated • British Fantasy Award — Best Comic/Graphic Novel — Saga (with Brian K. Vaughan) — Won • Joe Shuster Award — Cover Artist — Life with Archie #24B, Dark Horse Presents #10, Action Comics #15B, National Comics Madame X #1, Smoke and Mirrors #1B, Saga #1-8 — Nominated • Artist — Saga #1-8 — Nominated • 2014 — Hugo Award — Best Graphic Story — Saga, Vol. 2 (with Brian K. Vaughan) — Nominated • Best Professional Artist — Nominated • Eisner Awards — Best Continuing Series — Saga (with Brian K. Vaughan) — Won • Best Painter/Multimedia Artist (interior art) — Saga — Won • Best Cover Artist — Saga — Nominated • Harvey Award — Best Artist — Saga — Won • Best Cover Artist — Saga — Won • Best Continuing or Limited Series — Saga (with Brian K. Vaughan) — Won • Joe Shuster Award — Artist — Saga — Won • Inkwell Awards — All-in-One Award — Saga, Batman Beyond — Nominated • 2015 — Eisner Awards — Best Continuing Series — Saga (with Brian K. Vaughan) — Won • Best Penciller/Inker — Saga — Won • Harvey Award — Best Cover Artist — Saga — Won • Best Artist — Saga — Won • Best Continuing or Limited Series — Saga (with Brian K. Vaughan) — Won • Inkwell Awards — All-in-One Award — Saga — Won • 2016 — Harvey Awards — Best Cover Artist — Saga — Won • Best Artist — Saga — Won • Best Continuing or Limited Series — Saga (with Brian K. Vaughan) — Won • Best New Series — Archie (with Mark Waid) — Nominated • Inkwell Awards — All-in-One Award — Nominated • 2017 — Eisner Award — Best Continuing Series — Saga (with Brian K. Vaughan) — Won • Best Penciller/Inker — Saga — Won • Best Cover Artist — Saga — Won • Ringo Award — Best Artist or Penciller — Won • 2018 — Hugo Awards — Best Graphic Story — Saga, Volume 7 (with Brian K. Vaughan) — Nominated • 2019 — Ringo Awards — Best Inker — Won • Best Cover Artist — Won