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My brother Roby just recently finished his special tribute poster for the Edward Zwick film GLORY. Took him about five months to finish the piece, what with juggling between his day job and roles as a father and husband. I’m not going to blab on about this because I’m pretty sure the art speaks for itself, but if you’re interested in reading about his process, follow this link. Comments are much appreciated.
Out this week from Image Comics is the 25th issue of Alex Grecian and Riley Rossmo’s cryptozoological indie book PROOF. There’s a pinup gallery in the second half of the book that includes such talents as Tim Seeley and Andy Kuhn. I somehow weaseled my way in with a shot of the Dover Demon. The guys had mentioned that they found my Horror Classics portrait-style illustrations interesting and asked if I was up for doing a page for their silver anniversary issue. Me being me, I jumped at the chance to just draw another cool monster. Up there beside the cover is a little peek.
Here’s a page from JUDAH. Immortal undead. Fallen angels. Shady dealings. And of course, boobies.
This is actually a few months old, but I didn’t realize till now that I never posted it on the journal. It’s a rough concept of the Wayne Family seal or emblem… It was totally just one of those ideas that came to me when I had a little too much time on my hands. Hope you guys dig it anyway.
On a slow night, me and my buddy Sean will get on Skype and just shoot the shit as we work. This personal piece, tentatively titled ‘Glutton God’, was a weekend painting I did for myself in-between pending projects, just to loosen up and let the air in a bit. The absence of any need whatsoever for intellectual conversation redefines catharsis. Here’s a glimpse into this foolishness. I’m sorry.
Zuda’s October competition ends in a coupla days. Things have been crazy exciting so far, so I figured I’d do a bit more blabbing about what qualified as work behind our entry… just to take my mind off things for a bit.
I was honestly thinking about showing a bit more of action in this page, like an actual sequence of moves, but space constraints would have forced me to make them too small and possibly a bit muddled. Instead, I settled for showing key snippets of how violent the battle was, because that’s all we needed to know anyway.
This page required a different approach than the first five because it’s the first daytime sequence in the comic thus far. Not being too comfortable with it all being too bright, I made sure to play with line weights to at least hint at a sense of depth. There’s an occasional big black shape to add character to each panel, but having to limit my use of them took a bit of doing.
I walk away from this page fairly pleased with myself and my use of the hand as a gestural tool. To be totally honest, as I was just learning to draw, I was one of those guys who would use any and every excuse to obscure a character’s hand because I dreaded having to draw them in. Not saying that I draw hands perfectly now, but I’ve surrendered to them often being a indispensable tool for expression sans dialogue.
Let’s just ignore my failed attempt at a Bryan Hitch-style camera lens flare and move on to panels 4 and 5, shall we? The thumbnail will tell you that i planned for the characters to appear a lot bigger in the middle panel, but it killed too much of the castle’s… regalness (yes, that’s a word now)… if you can call it that. Not too happy about how those small figures ended up looking, but I guess it carries the action across.
The last panel was actually a bit of an issue because Gabe and I needed it to act as a strong enough hook to make people want to read more… but without over-dramatizing the scene. The script actually had the king saying something to Pluck, and we also thought of Pluck sheepishly introducing himself. Ultimately, we decided that a relatively subtle one-point perspective shot would emphasize that all eyes were on Pluck, and his looking up would show that not only is he being looked at… but actually looked down upon. Fidgety hands and a sheepish grin helped bring the panel home.
Anyway yeah, that’s what went into the PLUCK Zuda entry and my layout process in general. Was it good for you too? *huff
You can read the first part of this commentary here.
If you haven’t yet read the comic, I’d really appreciate it if you checked us out and dropped us a vote. Enjoy the comic here.
As most of you guys have probably already gotten sick of used to by now, I like to post sketches and such just to share a bit of the process behind certain projects. Here are the rough thumbnails for PLUCK, along with the finished fully inked renderings.
Though the roughs for page one were pretty much what I wanted to go with fairly early on, this still took a bit longer than I wanted because I was actually designing the characters right on the page. I had done a handful of prelim sketches to get some looks down, but I wasn’t really happy with any of them. I’m a big fan of HBO’s Entourage though, and it may not be apparent to anyone other than myself, but I imagine Pluck’s mannerisms and speech to resemble that of a young Kevin Connoly.
The black outlines for clouds in panels 2 and 3 were afterthoughts, but I hope they helped to add a bit of weight as well as frame those beats in the story.
I imagined Dreda to have black hair initially, but I found it fit the character better to have her be a dirty blonde. The negative silhouette of the knight on the horse was a late addition to this page, as I felt the thumbnail needed a bit of clarity.
This was easily one of my favorite pages to do, since it’s the first time it becomes apparent that we’re dealing with a fantasy story. And I gotta say… nothing pisses me off more than pretty boy knights, so I was just snickering as I was putting this together.
The last panel of this page came out a little less dynamic than I would have liked, but I think it’s somewhat clear anyway.
A coupla big influences on how the art for PLUCK came together was Mignola’s Baltimore and Tony Moore’s run on Walking Dead. I don’t have any grays in it at all, but I thought this a threshold version of a grayscale image. Granted that most black and white stories are either horror or crime, a comedic fantasy needed a bit more hatching for some midtones, so I looked at some old copies Xenozoic Tales I still have. It’d be great to come back to this and slap down some gray tones myself though, so I guess we’ll see…
I hope you guys found this interesting. I’ll post the second half of the commentary in a coupla days.
You can read the actual comic here. We’d really appreciate your votes!
It’s been a bit of a headnoisey day, comic work-wise, so I’ll just drop some notes about a side project and may seem a bit more schizo than usual. Starting to type this just as I hear Brubaker say to Siuntres that he loves the fact that whoever follows him on DD is fucked. I’m loving the Thunderbolts, but good luck, Diggle. Just saw the season finale of Entourage and still can’t buy that Sloan’s marrying E. No. Planetary #27 just came out and I want to re-read the whole thing all over again. Yes.
As I’ve probably spilled once before, I’ve been slowly piecing together this flash-animated online RPG with Tres Komikeros accomplice Alex Cipriano; and it’s taken months to get to the place we’re at now, but I can honestly say that it’s been a fun and interesting experience. It’s a breath of fresh air, literally just being given lists and write-ups of creatures and environments to design, with free reign to just go nuts with every detail. Hell of a fun gig. I’ve never been much of a gamer though, so Alex has been indispensable in helping me understand just what the client’s been asking for. We’ve worked out a sophisticated system of chirps and grunts to suit my specific comprehension skills… or lack thereof.
Half way through the creature design phase though, it dawned on us that we simply couldn’t still have lives and do this well… so about two months ago, our buddy Leandro Panganiban came on board as a colorist, with Michael Dizon following shortly after. So what started out as two guys pooling Mignola and Madureira influences spread out into this Falcoon and Phil Noto mishmash. Between the four of us, we’ve magically got everyone believing that we know what we’re doing. Go us!
Naturally, it’s a bit of a pain playing the wrangler in any bunch, and this herd can wander like nobody’s business, but seeing the work just come together is just a thing of beauty — certainly not bad for my first experience in game design. I hope to be allowed to share actual designs from the game soon, but until then it’ll have to be vagaries and hush-hushitudes.
Comic talk in a coupla days.
Bed now.
Below are a whole buncha pages from SOVENA RED, a lighthearted superhero fairytale by Rod Hannah. An entire first issue (with interior colors by Paul Little) is in the can and being showed off at cons. I had a lot of fun working on this, so hopefully these are characters I can play with again in the future.
Previous posts showed other pages, but the gallery has it all in order.
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