Nosferatu page 27

And we're done.

Kinda fun and occasionally embarrassing sharing these nearly 20-year old pages.

Opening the envelope holding all these pages after so much time passed hit me with a rush of emotions as I realised I'm nearly twice the age of the person who drew them and that person had very different expectations for what his life was going to be like.

~Richard

Nosferatu page 26

Second last page -- who knew all that fighting and falling was just a few yards from a busy street that looks a little like the Danforth area of Toronto.

Nosferatu double-spread pp24-25

The first double-spread splash I did is a borderline swipe of Frank Miller's RONIN and predicts the advent of Pornface!

Well, not really, but it was fun typing that!

The problem with being allowed to finish off the series was figuring out how to finish off the series when the original writer told me he really hadn't thought it through when he handed it over. After the series established they couldn't kill each other, I went for the obvious answer and decided that they could only die at the same time. I know I could come up with a number of better and more interesting solutions today.

I do like some of the brushwork I got into on this spread.

Two more pages before this is all done!

Nosferatu page 23

Who saw the statue of the Angel with the sword on the first page and not see this coming?

Nosferatu page 22

Always with the choking and the rolling in the burning rubble. . . .

Nosferatu pages 20& 21

Got swamped making up for last week's dental pain issues and managed to forget to post yesterday's page, so here's two of them!

I think i hit a serious groove here on in -- my drawing limitations were just that, but I think I was learning and producing while producing on these pages.

Gotta love that injury-to-the-eye motif! That's, like, three in this issue alone!

***

Ghost Rider hasn't been forgotten, but the second installment has turned into something quite large and has grown into something about choosing shapes and physical types. I think I might end up letting it run in that direction and use my Ghost Rider redevelopment be the example rather than the whole point.

Nosferatu page 19

Decided I really liked drawing thick gloves by this point since they were so much easier to get "right" than bare hands for me at the time. This is another page where my execution was well below my layout abilities -- not that my layout ability was that great, it was just better developed at the time.

Nosferatu page 18

Nosferatu page 17

Minions are flammable -- they should come with those stickers.

I feel like popping in a word balloon for the rat in the bottom right corner saying "Well, that's something you don't see every day."

Nosferatu page 16

Boy, today flew by.

Almost forgot to post another page from this old. . . gem?

I actually had a strong memory of laying down the frisket and cutting out the letters to splatter ink with a toothbrush for the "AAAAH!" there.

Anyway -- only 11 more days of this.

Nosferatu page 15

At some point dream logic took over this story; she climbs up the wall and enters through a hole in a wall (what happened to the stairs?) and enters through the door of the room she fell through the floor of a few pages earlier with no new minions popping out.

Few things I'm actually liking here, though; the lighting as she climbs through the hole, how much action is revealed in the area of the dead minion in panel 3, and the perspective on the spear through Longsword's back.

Nosferatu page 14

The bad guy knows he's in trouble when the rats get pissy and start biting him.

Just over half-way though this issue. I think I was only asked to do 22-24 pages, but got approval to go to 27. Can't recall if I was paid for the extra pages or if I was stupid enough to do them gratis because the story needed ' em.

Nosferatu page 13

Buffy never called a minion " asshole".

At least not on camera.

Nosferatu page 12

This page should serve as a lesson to homeless people who become evil minions of an ancient vampire; if a girl falls hard enough to smash through two 18"-thick beams and survives enough to catch onto a third and it looks like she's still ready to go for more you should leave her for the boss to deal with.

Nosferatu page 11

I laughed out loud when I flipped to this page. I've no idea why I thought decorative pillars would be doing that high up in a Tim Burton-style church or why they'd have so many small and ineffectual nails on their bases.

I now know how beams and supports for something like this would look like -- and it's nothing like this. This was in the days before the internet and image searches and you had to have access to a good library or have a very well developed morgue. Today I have a few books on hand with architectural reference, the internet and years of experience drawing crumbling buildings.

I do kinda like how the woman manages to smash through two 18"thick beams and land on another and have any bones in her upper body intact. Maybe she's related to Luke Cage?

Nosferatu page 10

I kinda like this one.

Apart from the really bad drawing happening in the second panel I think I was hitting over my level at the time. It was probably luck more than planning, but with a few small layout changes, it wouldn't be a page I'd be upset about producing nineteen years later.

I better scan and post something more recent just to get out of 1991's pool of work.

~Richard

Nosferatu page 9

This page is kinda full of stupid.

Panel one: His hair is stupid and her foot poking out from behind panel three is quite stupid, too.

Panel two: His shoulders got stupidly narrow, his club stupidly small and I stupidly cropped his stupid left hand.

Panel three: I was pretty stupid at drawing faces here.

Panel four: the bat shouldn't be touching the stupid panel border.

Panel five: The guy's thumb is stupidly small and flat.

Bonus stupidity: The bat from panel one is sticking out from behind panel five.

Hopefully there's something educational is this page; don't make the same stupid mistakes I made!

Nosferatu page 8

Another page I like the basic layout of in spite of how poorly executed everything other than the cross bursting out of the silhouetted building is.

Ghost Rider heads-up -- had a few approvals to go ahead on an assignment run late and I was completely wiped out yesterday by a migraine so I'm playing catch-up for the next two-three days. The GR redesign project will pick up Friday barring any other things popping up.

Nosferatu page 7

I kinda like Nosferatu's gestures in the first and third panel, but not much else.

Nosferatu page 6

I still like the idea behind the layout for this page even if the execution is hampered by my being so overwhelmingly inept in 1991. The deadline must have already been pressing on my thoughts at this point since I used such a weak dry-brush technique to handle the walls.

~R