Tuesday, January 6, 2009

"Of wolf and man..."

This cover is spanking hot fresh! JUST finished it. The idea in my head for this cover was based off of the old tv serials, like “The 3 Stooges”, “Laurel and Hardy”, etc... They would always feel behind themselves before they turned around to see either Frankenstein, the big scary guy, or whoever else that was “threatening”. So since the movie this comic is based on takes a pg from The 3 Stooges, it seemed a no-brainer! Here now is the evolution of said cover!

First I laid out 2 quick sketches...



Next, I searched for reference on Google for a snarling wolf.
I came across an awesome photo by Tanja Askani, the photographer who took photos of the deer and rabbit that made their way all over the internet. I reversed the photo so it was facing the direction I needed, and then werewolfed it out!


Then I decided, since the characters are so big on the pg, it would be best to draw them smaller first, then pop it in to my artograph. An artograph is a projector that faces down on the tabletop surface. Once you put your smaller sketch inside of it, you can make the sketch much bigger, and to the size you need, and then trace off...

Before I popped the sketch into the artograph though, I scanned it in, and laid out the black placement in photoshop. I actually really like how this turned out, and if it wasn't SO scratchy, maybe I'd have used it! My roommate really liked it too..

The cover is all pencil, and digital inks. No REAL ink was used in the production of this cover!


I debated back and forth between red eyes and the yellow, but the yellow pops more, and they’ll also match the logo color close enough. So it’s not completely out of left field. The logo also has red, so it all worked out. Add to that, I was dead set on yellow eyes to begin with. Ever since I saw “An American Werewolf in London”, I thought they looked downright creepy. See “Salem’s Lot” too if you don’t believe me!

Monday, January 5, 2009

Mirror mirror, on the wall, who's the most cleanly shaven of them all?

This job for Gillette was an awesome job to work on. It was part illustration, part flash animation for an online game they were using to promote a deal they had with GM to give away one of their cars. The Charger I believe it was. I had already had some experience drawing the car the previous yr for GM/ DC Comics, when I drew turnarounds of the car in a garage that also spun around. But I’ll get to that when I get to that! I got these 2 jobs because of a comic called Killer Stunts, where I had to draw all kinds of vehicles. You’re always hoping that each job you do will lead to another one. Well, there’s 2 right there!

Here are a few of the illustrations I did. The animation is all in pieces, and frankly, this work is way better anyway! Some of these pieces were end pieces to each section of the game. The ultimate goal was to pick the woman up and bring her back to his or her place. Depending on whether you got the questions right or wrong, you’d get a different illustration letting you know you passed or failed.







What's in a name?

If you’re new to this blog, chances are I’m probably new to you! So over the next bunch of posts, I’ll be going over various comics/ illustration projects I’ve worked on. But comics is what probably brought you here, so I’ll start with one of them! Directly before AoD, I had done a few different titles for DC Comics, in the Cartoon Network line. The last of which was Samurai Jack, which I felt was NOT a good fit for me.

I’ve been able to stay afloat over the yrs by having the ability to draw in different styles, but Sam Jack wasn’t really one of them. I can admit it! the style (for me) was just the complete antithesis of how I wanted to draw. Add to that, I like to “move the camera” around a lot in my shots, and felt that with the style being so limiting, or rather I was limited by lack of knowledge of it, I couldn’t produce the kind of work I was happy with. Before that though, was Ben 10, and I thought that went a lot better.







Thursday, January 1, 2009

20 years, or 20 minutes?

I'm currently drawing #17 of Army of Darkness, part 4 of the "Hellbillies and Deadnecks" storyline. I mention this because, well, I WANT YOU TO PICK IT UP! However, i wanted to describe something new to my process. I’m building things in Illustrator to place into the art. For one, siding on a cabin I’ve been drawing. The cabin is actually my grandfather’s, and my cousin David uses it to hunt. He sent me photo ref of it, both inside and out, and it’s some great stuff! But to draw the siding would just take forever, and drawing this as cleanly as possible, it would just be mess of blue and hb pencil getting it all measured out and drawn. So I just made the same shape in Illustrator, put it all together, then pasted it in Photoshop from Illustrator, and used the transform option under “edit” called “distort” to place the siding in at the perspectives I needed.




I used this process again for #17. I needed to have the character standing on the scaffolding, but to do so when the art would just be in pencil seems like another messy nightmare I’d like to avoid. Also, I think this aids the colorist, because now he doesn’t have to try and figure out what lines were drawn in for what in the background. And I left it on a separate layer to make the process easier for him.

before:


after:


The same can be said not only for using Illustrator, but for laying out the black placement on each pg. Once I’ve fully drawn a pg, I’ll scan it in, and add a layer in Photoshop so that I can just quickly lay out the black. If something in the design isn’t working, I can quickly erase it. No harm done to the actual work. Here’s how this pg looked in the process:




After I’ve done that, I’ll then sit in front of my screen with a board leaning on my cintiq tablet, and draw in all the shapes where the black goes. And yes, suicide does enter my mind at those times!


New Years Resolutions

Happy New Yrs! So, like most people, we come up with resolutions for the new yr that we won’t follow. Which ones won’t YOU be following? I’ve come up with mine, and I really hope I can stick to it. after being there for everyone for so many yrs, I've decided that I'd still like to do that, but in a way that benefits me more by doing less! I'm going to start asking people if they need help with things (dishes, the trash, shoveling snow, you name it) when they are ALMOST done doing said tasks. that usually elicits a "no thanks." win-win!

"First you wanna kill me, now you wanna kiss me. Blow. "

Well, it’s almost ironic that my first official blog here anyway (not counting myspace) would be on the first of the yr. I suppose not writing one is so 2007. And I don’t want to be left out of all the action! Anyhoo, I currently draw the title Army of Darkness, based off the movie starring Bruce Campbell for Dynamite. They also publish titles like Terminator, Lone Ranger, The Boys, etc.

Here’s a pg I finished last month for #16. The book is shot from my pencils, so I can’t slop the pg up like I usually would if it was being sent to an inker. It was difficult to adjust to in the beginning, because that meant really changing a lot of aspects of how I work, like drawing mostly on the back of the pg now, then tracing through on a lightbox.



It’s then sent off for production, which involves cleaning up the dirt off the page from some of my underlying drawing with a col-erase blue pencil, and then filling in the blacks wherever the X’s are placed. After that, they send it off to the colorist on the book, Ivan Nunes, who I think is doing a fantastic job.


Here are 2 more examples from #16 as well.