R.I.P VIKING ARM

A sad day. Viking Arm is no more. There's only so much you can do against a bad @$$ with metal balls. Cannon Father took out Viking Arm and went on to win the entire Western Division. Kudos to Cannon Father, I'm hoping he goes ALL THE WAY. Great character!

Above is the original character and below you will found some of the smack talk from the various rounds. It wasn't enough. I had a blast though and look forward to entering another character in a future match. Kudos go out to Sam Hiti for the BRILLIANT idea that is FIST-A-CUFFS!

I wish I had spent more time on my smack talk drawings but, time didn't really permit. This is a different style of inking for me, I don't really have it figured out yet. I think the second drawing is slightly more successful.





VOTE now. The next bracket is about to start.

Other assignments have taken me away from barbarian girls but, I'll post a barbarian in a few days and something else after that... hopefully something else after that as well.

Barb Barian

Can't stop drawing the barbarian women...

Don't forget to vote in FIST-A-CUFFS!

Red Sonja

Been drawing lots of hairy barbarians and vikings for some reason lately. Thought I should switch it up with a barbarian lady. I would go insane if I had to draw an entire comic with this character, her skimpy outfit takes forever. Lucky for me, no one is knocking down my door to draw a Red Sonja comic.

Maybe I should have posted the pencils with this one, I did a lot of reworking/fixing (?) in the ink stage...

P.S DON'T FORGET TO VOTE IN FIST-A-CUFFS!!! SEE POST BELOW FOR DETAILS.

Fist-a-Cuffs

FIST-A-CUFFS has begun. GO VOTE NOW!

I'm in the battle, but as the new rules state, I can't reveal which character is mine.

NOW GO VOTE!!!

FIST-A-CUFFS

TITANIC

What really happened?

Sketchcrawl 14

Well, this past weekend was Sketchcrawl 14 and the Sketchcrawl Auction benefiting EMERGENCY. It was a great weekend and I got to meet some really cool people. I think I heard that Saturday and Sunday raised somewhere around $10,350.00!!! Good job to everyone who donated, sketched, and purchased art.

Here's my offering of sketches from Saturday...






This was easily my most productive Sketchcrawl. I think part of it had to do with the fact that I switched to sketching with a brush pen. Forced me to look more at gesture and shapes, instead of detail. I need to do more of this...

Lady Coddingham and her Kimono of Souls

So, I somehow managed to get to be involved in a GREAT art auction that's happening Sunday, May 20th at Maverix Studios in San Francisco. The Auction is benefiting a humanitarian organization called EMERGENCY -life support for civilian war victims.

You can learn more about it by going to...

http://www.sketchcrawl.com/blog

There are some really AMAZING artists that have contributed art for the cause, artists FAR better than me. In fact, not really sure what I'm doing there.

The day before is SKETCHCRAWL 14 which is also benefiting EMERGENCY. You can find a sponsor form on the Sketchcrawl site but instead of having to run an abnormally long distance, or sell a lot of candy bars, it's all about the drawing count... eek, Fox Animation flashback there for a second. Any ways, get out there and DRAW!!! Help some people out. Sharpen those pencils, pick up those watercolours and get out and draw on Saturday for a good cause.

A couple notes about this painting. This was actually started from one of the sketches from my DRESS OF SOULS post, I think it was near the bottom. Any ways, in the refining the drawing process, it became a kimono. This is all watercolour. Haven't used those for a character painting in a long time.

Also, props should go out to my beautiful wife who suggested the tree branch to help balance out the composition. I knew it needed something and as usual, my solution was overly complicated. She said, "What about a tree branch?" and the light went on. Nice work to her!

Captain ****

Done a bunch of stuff that I can't quite show yet, so until then here's a phone doodle of one of the characters from NEXTWAVE. Oh how I miss Nextwave. One of the greatest comics EVER!!!

More soon.

Caricatures

Caricatures, I've said it before and I'll say it again, not my strength, but people keep asking me to do them. This top one was for a friend's anniversary, his wife asked me to do something they could put up in their house. As you can see, I ripped off Phillipe Burke's technique, except not drawn as well. This was pretty fun. His stuff is great to study just for his use of colour theory.





These are some sketches for something I just finished. I'll post it later. It involved a number of celebrity caricatures so, I had to figure out how I was going to draw them before I did the final art. This was a little tricky because some of the characters in this were already drawn in my "cartoony" style so, I had to try and match the other caricatures to that style. I find this to be a struggle at times, finding a way not only a way to have a successful caricature of someone, let alone then come up with a simplified cartoon version of that caricature. I know people that can do it no problem, but for me it's as a lot of drawings and steps. Some of these turned out reasonably successful, others could still use work.

More b-days

Here's a couple of drawings that I did for some friends that had Birthdays recently. I'll post these for now. Just got back from the honeymoon and have some Maui sketches to post, but they haven't been scanned yet. These will have to do for now.

This second one is a drawing of my friend Robert. It's what he would look like if I gave him my dog's body proportions for his birthday. Not sure how I would do that, I guess extensive plastic surgery. Yes, I was dropped a lot as a child.

Testing testing...

Well, after years and years of using the scanner at whatever job I had, I finally went and purchased my own. Unemployment will do that to you I guess. Oh well, I was long over due. I was just doodling with a ballpoint pen the other day and this is what happened. Thought I'd use the page as a test for the new scanner. After some adjustments, I think it might work out okay. Next we'll see how it handles more than one colour!

PAge 10

And so it ends.

Here's where the story definitely needed some space. I wish I had a little bigger page count to come up with a more clever ending than an explosion. That said, I have no idea what that more "clever" ending would be. Sometimes, the kids just want an explosion.

I also am not sure that it's clear that Jump is using the explosion to close the portal, not necessarily destroy the giant beast on the other side.

Well that's it. Until the next Jump Cannon story... see ya later. I might post some of my ridiculously tight thumbnails for this story next week. Maybe I'll explain why they were so damn tight too.

PAGE 9

Smoldering Devo hats. Tomorrow, the finale.

Page 8

Here's where things start to fall apart for the story. I'm running out of pages, and still lots to do. I think I could have benefited from a few more panels in this section to help set the mood more, as well as build up to what Krueger is up to. I think I could have played up the VZA's surrounding Jump more, hopefully building some more tension into this section, but I was running out of space.

I do still like the idea of using a big pile of brains to open a portal though.

PAGE 7

Poor Fizz, it's rough being a sidekick. Again, this is a time when I wish I had a few more pages to work with. It's tough to feel the emotion of the loss of a character when you've only known him for six pages. I think the beats work reasonably well, but I could have used a little more time to really punch up the emotion.

That may not necessarily have made the moment better though because truthfully, I think my initial inspiration for this moment was laughs. For some reason, I found it amusing that Jump was a character that went through sidekicks like other people go through um... disposable socks. Do they make those? Any ways, maybe you understand what I'm getting at.

With more time, maybe the audience would have liked Fizz too much, making the moment too sad. Of course, most people don't think there is much humour in death, that's probably why I can never find funny sympathy cards in the card store.

Page 6

This is my favorite page of the whole story. I got this idea that it would be cool if I could make the Krueger backstory look like grainy black and white film footage. Thanks to the genius of photoshop, I was able to pull it off reasonably well. I found some brushes on the internet that helped me make the images look like scratched, beat up, dirty film. Anything to mask the HEAVY exposition I guess.

Page 5

Well, looks like things ar getting worse for ol' Fizz.

Lots of drawing problems on this page. I kind of like how you can see the remnants of teeth marks in Fizz's shoulder, but man, looking back, this pages has some real problems. Oh well. Live and learn right?

I probably won't post again until monday. Next week will be the conclusion, and Monday, will be my favorite page of the whole book (page 6.) So, until then, have a good weekend blogosphere.

Page 4

Poor Fizz. Now what?

Not much to say about this page. The VZA hanging off of Fizz's back/shoulder in the last panel makes me chuckle a little for some reason. I think it tickled me when I first drew it as well. No idea why.

Page 3

This page I'm fairly happy with. I still like the idea of using a talisman to communicate with the dead by sticking it in their left over brain. That talisman comes in handy later too. A character slapping a brain? What was I thinking?

The colour is working reasonably well here I think, could maybe be a little more moody. I'm not sure.

The first appearance of the VZA's. My initial idea for these had them wearing Devo hats, I think it was even in my pitch for the story. Not sure why they're wearing Devo hats, just thought it would be funny and it's an idea that survived through the design process.

Page 2

Oh the plot thickens with the ol' brain on the floor gag. Looking back on this, I wish that I had gone darker once they got inside the building. The green is okay, but I wish that this felt moodier. Part of that also would be helped if I could have let the page count grow a bit, adding a few insert shot panels to help establish mood. Some of the characters expressions are a bit generic and could have been pushed a lot more, especially Fizz's reaction to the brain in the bottom left panel.

Science fiction is tricky since there isn't really reference; designing chairs, interiors of bars etc. takes a long time. I wish I had focused on those design elements more. Hopefully the next Jump Cannon story will be better.

Page 3 tomorrow.

Page 1

Here's page one. Not much to say here since we're just starting out. How about a little about why the story was drawn?

This was the first comic I've ever followed through on. Back in college and a few times after that I have started them, but never finished them. I think a couple of years ago, I was finally in a place with my drawing skills that I could go through with a story and not be totally repulsed by the final result.

Overall, I was fairly happy with the final result. Some areas are definitely executed better than others. In general, being 2 years removed from the story now, I think it's okay, but not great. I think the biggest problem is page count. This was done for an anthology that never got off of the ground, and one of the rules was no more than 10 pages. I think this was more of a 12 page story. There's places where I would have liked to open up the story, give it a little more mood. I think the ending suffered as well, I think with a little more space, I could have built to something a little more clever. More on all that as we go through it.

Oh yeah, one last thing. Take the colouring with a grain of salt, this was the first thing I ever coloured digitally. That process took longer than drawing the damn thing.

Any ways, tomorrow, page 2!

Coming next week...

I did this ten page comic for an anthology that never got off of the ground a couple years ago, and I suppose it's time for somebody to see it. So, starting next week, I'll try and post a page a day until it's complete and maybe I'll include some sort of behind the scenes commentary about why I don't like it any more or, something like that. Until then, enjoy your weekend blogosphere!

Non-Sensical

Here's a page from my portfolio of a character I haven't drawn in a while. I'd like to draw a story with him, but I'm not sure what that story is yet...

Caricature

Caricature... I suck at it. I try it all the time and success is a RARITY. I struggle and struggle. Sometimes, there is a rare person (usually friends or co-workers) that I can get right away, but if that doesn't happen, it almost NEVER happens... ever.

I did this drawing for my Step-brother's Wedding invite. It took me probably close to 100 attempts before I got close to "getting" him and probably around 50 for his lovely bride to be, and that one still sucks. Of course, this means nothing to you dear internet reader, for you have no idea what these people look like. To you, this is just another drawing.

I learned a lot doing this drawing. It's always good to step outside your comfort zone every now and then if you want to grow, and get better. Hopefully that will be the end result of this latest endeavour.

What could have been

Too bad this guy is dead. What happened? Was it a lack of foresight? Lack of vision? Maybe he just wasn't given a chance. Sure, his world was doomed from the start, because as we all know, without the proper foundation, it will crumble. In fact, it's inevitable, but maybe he could have lead us to something interesting, maybe even entertaining. At the end of the day, that's all we really want to do is entertain. Now that world's on life support, and he probably couldn't save it, but at least there would have been a guy with a fish bowl for a head, wearing bunny slippers, running around providing something a little animated to an otherwise dreary existence. You'd think the talking monkey would be the entertaining one, but even he's having problems...

Airport Sketches

Drawing at the airport is always fun. Drew these on the way to Vegas.

Birthday viking

Okay, this guy isn't fat, but he's hairy and for my buddy Scott's b-day which is today. As you can see, I'm still going through my viking phase.

When I sketched this out, his arms were swoopy and cartoony, then when I inked it, for some reason I gave him weird anatomy instead. Not sure why, not sure if I like my choice. I'm not going to question it though, last time I questioned a viking it was well... let's just say vikings don't like being questioned. Best to do what they tell you to do, this one wanted muscles.

Fat guys and birthday cakes

I don't know what it is, but this seems to be a recurring theme in the cards I draw for my friend's birthdays. Guys jumping out of birthday cakes. Guys you definitely DON'T want to see doing any such thing. Most friends send you cards with pretty girls jumping out of cakes, I send fat hairy guys. Some pal I am. Maybe it's funny because we used to work with the guy in the cake. The things I'll do to elicit a giggle...

Dumbest post EVER

It should have been this...



This entry is an impression of the last entry.


Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. BLAH BLAH. Blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Thumbnails

So I did this drawing last year I think... maybe it was before that. Doesn't matter...Or does it!? Maybe my memory is shot. Old age is setting in? Oh god, what if this is it? I thought I was still young, but really I'm on the downhill slide. It's over, I'm past my prime I'm... Well, I'm lucky I'm not some sort of hypochondriac otherwise, this lack of clear memory might bother me.

What were we talking about? Oh yeah... I did this drawing a while ago and people kept asking what the story behind the drawing was. I started thinking about it and this has been swimming around in my head for a while now. I think this is that story. The beginings of a 3 page story. Here are the thumbnails, more to come once the wedding stuff slows down.

Thumbnails, an interesting term. Artists know what it is, not exclusively of course, but it seems to throw a lot of people off. "What does planning have to do with your thumb nails?" I've been asked that before. I guess every industry or skill has it's own terminology, this is one of ours. I was going somewhere with this, but the train of thought has pulled out of the station. Does that make it more of a non sequitur now?

Any ways like I said, more to follow. I'm not sure what I want to do next. Larger, more detailed thumbnail/roughs or just go to the pencils on the final page. I think there are going to be a few panels that are going to cause some drawing issues for me and I would like to work them out before I erase a hole in the final page, but that brings with it the risk that the final drawings will be stiff from repetition and transferring the work. Don't want to lose that spontaneity. Oh well, I'm sure I'll figure it out before the next post.

Good luck figuring out what's going on in these, lots of replacement panels etc. Will give you a blurry question mark as to where I'm going, but maybe when it's done you'll go "Oh, I see what he did. I see what that was." Or, it might end up like LOST where you're all "Huh? That's it? What about the smoke creature, and that giant foot statue?"

Geez, does this guy ever shut up? He posts these tiny little drawings that don't even make sense, AND he wants me to read all of this rambling crap?

This is stupid...

Why did I draw the girl, the background characters AND the background in full detail, just to blur them out and stick a face in the foreground? What an unexpected direction this all digital image took. I don't know what I'm doing.

They Come In Thr33's

So I kind of lack creative discipline. The plan was to work on an idea I have for a short comic story this weekend. Well, instead, I had this image pop into my head and I had to paint it. Sometimes I totally lack focus. I guess I should just be happy that I did SOMETHING.

I have no idea why this painting is called THEY COME IN THREE'S, but that's what it's called. I guess there are three floating rocks, but the "three's" isn't in reference to the rocks in the painting. What's the deal with me and floating rocks by the way? This isn't the first image to have a floating rock in it, and I seem to draw them fairly often. What does it all mean? I have no idea... guess I just think they're cool.

This painting pulled together pretty quickly, I did a little thumbnail here...



Then, I did the final sketch, here...

Digital Paint

So, like I said in my previous post, I have been fighting a bit of a block. I took a different approach this time. It may turn out to be more of a distraction than a solution, only time will tell. I started doing quick digital "paintings." No roughs, no prelim drawings. Just blocking in shapes in photoshop and builing it until I get somewhere. This one is a little more drawn, but the lines were knocked in after the shapes and forms were set with blocks of colour. Get's me thinking a little differently which is good... I think.

This took about 1 1/2 hours. I think my next one I might try a bit more rendering, but try to keep it simple. Or maybe I'll just go nuts with the texture. I'm trying to approach these as more detailed colour keys, but not full blown rendered images.

Sketchcrawl 12.5

Last weekend was Sketchcrawl 12and a 1/2 sketch at home.

Our apartment isn't much fun to draw... but I probably wasn't looking very hard. Our dog Mongoose is fun to draw though, so here he is. I need to draw him more, I haven't accurately captured his cuteness.

I'm in a rut right now... these things happen from time to time. Usually it's a good sign because it means that I have a bunch of ideas in my thick Cro-magnon skull of where my drawing should be, and it's not there. Thus, the struggle begins. I think we all go through it. It's good because it usually leads to a "breakthrough" in drawing, draftsmanship, technique, whatever, but until you get to that point, it's painful. These two Mongoose drawings I did are okay, but everything else I've done this week is garbage. Hopefully I'll just keep slugging away and get back on track. Good times.