comics

Sketchbook 12/14

What an interesting path I’ve been on. I started these panels as a way of experimenting with composition and comic book mashup sketches. Each page, though, has been getting more and more detailed, and closer to actual comics. While I completely love the way these pages came out, if I were to plan out a comic project these would be too much work and I’d never get a book done! Going to work on balancing this issue out, and it’s probably time to start drawing on comic book paper, and, you know, figure out words and story and for all these bubbles 🙃

Nom Neow

Here’s something you might not know about me: I always want to draw comics, but I don’t because it is SO HARD!!!! I really tried to get this done as-fast-as possible…and it still took a month of drawing at breakneck speed! On a Cintiq too! Granted, that’s in my free time, which is usually a little at lunch and maybe an hour in the evening. I don’t know how web comic artists can hold down a full-time job and make a few pages a week, hats off to them.

That being said, I did manage to make a colored* comic that’s about 10 pages long, plus a cover, and that’s much more than my previous record of 5 pages, black and white. I’d love to make more of these in the future.

*Limited palette, but I think it counts!

Snow Ninja 2: The Comeback




Continuation of my Popsicle Horror theme I suppose. The finish is very different from the color rough, but luckily it looks better (to me). Sometimes it goes the other way. I’m seeing my work moving fast away from reality. I think it started with tattoo’s, and now that’s transforming into a tattoo/comics/animation hybrid. I’m going to be playing with that. I really envy people who can draw characters well, and I want to improve on that part of my game. A lot of painters tend to depict the same character over and over again. Here’s some links to people I’ve been admiring lately.

Cheeks
Kizer

Found this article about making caricatures from Mad Magazine. Interesting stuff, I’d like to tone it down a little because sometimes those types of caricatures look too distorted and freak me out.

I’ve always been a huge animation fan, and I guess that’s starting to come through. Definitely worth checking out is John K’s blog (creator of Ren and Stimpy). Ren and Stimpy is one of the best shows ever made.

Also Jamie Hewlett (Tank Girl, Gorillaz) who is apparently too big to even need a website.

There’s a lot of good English and European comics guys, I think, that I just don’t know about, so I’m looking into that. Check out Mick McMahon (the site’s being weird, sorry if it doesn’t come up). Cool Stuff!

POE comic book cover






This is a comic book cover for Boom! Studios I did in March after Wondercon. I finally got the green light to show it! It’s scheduled to be released as cover B for issue number 2. I designed the logo too, which was rad. I made a similar logo to what you see here in my sketches just for placement, (edit:added sketches)and they liked it so we tweaked it a little and there you go. I’m glad to have finally done a comic book cover, it was on my list for a very long time.

Comics samples for Wondercon













These are some penciling and inking samples I’ve been working on for Wondercon (comic book convention). The first eight are from a sample script off the Dark Horse website. They provide it for would be comics pencil artists to complete as a demonstration of skills. The 5 pages after that are inking examples that I didn’t draw, also provided by Dark Horse. The pencils aren’t really pencils, you might have noticed, this is because I don’t care for drawing with pencils. I rough my drawings out in pencil, but they’re pretty messy and don’t come together until I ink them. I completed these all very quickly. I was more concerned about keeping up the fast pace needed to be a monthly artist, and telling the story, than making the best pencils ever created. I’m hoping to find gainful employment in the comic book world this weekend, but if I don’t I’ll be back in the studio working on a series to pitch to publishers. Wish me luck!

Old comics

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

Comics and I have a checkered history. I’m tried to make a comic book more times than I can remember and failed. If you’ve never tried, there’s something you should know: It’s way harder than it looks! Anyways, I’m thinking that since I can’t seem to get myself off the ground as a penciler, maybe I’ll try doing inks first, getting into it, then try to more to pencils when I’m ready. I was looking through my comic related stuff for some pencil photocopies I got from Dark Horse, and I found these old comics. They are really bad, holy crap. I don’t mind seeing my old work and shivering at how bad it is, because it makes me realize that I have progressed. The ninja comic I hardly remember doing, but I think I had just gotten one of my wisdom teeth removed, and I’m sure that this ridiculous story was something I just daydreamed afterward. These comics are sooo bad, but I’m ashamed to admit, that I have story ideas, like this ALL the time. I might look like I’m having some deep contemplative moment, but this is probably what’s going through my mind. The odd thing to me, is that when I’m tried to draw serious stories, I don’t get past the first or second page. I lose steam really fast. I think when it’s funny (subjectively) like this, I have a lot of fun making them, and I make it through.