Alterna-Thor

I'm certain everyone reading this blog knows there's a Thor movie coming.  Heck, the reason Upperdeck (the company I've done all those sketch cards for) is even doing a card set is merchandising for the film.  Thor will look like this in the movie:

Damn -- this boy's pretty!

I really doubt the Vikings saw Thor like that.  In the stories he was a furious brawler and drinker.  He championed the stuff that people in polite society would tut-tut over and decry as the habits of the lower classes.

I dunno that a real Viking would have been impressed if Thor showed up and looked like Chris Hemsworth.  In fact, I think he'd be downright disappointed.

To paraphrase Mickey from ROCKY, they'd want a guy who looks like he could eat lightning and crap thunder, drink a whole village under the table and lay the smack down on a swarm of frost giants.  All at the same time.

Badass.

A little more like the warm-up drawing I did earlier -- but taller and smells more like goats.

Drawing The 12-point Ellipse

Below is one of the sets of handouts I gave my games students yesterday as a supplement to the perspective they learned in another class last semester.  Like the line-weight documents I shared last week, I'm presenting these without the attendant lecture and white board demonstration so it's best for people who already know enough about 1,2 and 3-perspective to draw a square on any plane.

I know several people who can easily freehand ellipses while sketching and that's often good enough, but this method has served me well when the ellipses have to be accurate or freehand drawing isn't working well.

Warren Ellis is. . . .

. . .older today.

Celebratory speed painting to start my workday.
Photoshop/Painter around 1 hour.
~R

Simplified Line Weight for Drawing

I made the following handout for my 1st year students.  It supplements a lecture and white board demonstration of a few elements, but I thought there's enough info on its own to make it worth sharing as is.  In many ways it's LINE WEIGHT FOR DUMMIES as it doesn't come with the full theory and explanation behind it.  It's kind of a Mister Miyagi approach;  do this and eventually you'll know Karate.  Or something like that.

Cthulhu Commission

Private commission.

Cthulhu

ink on 11x14" 2-ply Bristol

Detail

Not Thor, but still a god.

I was going to render this in Copics, but decided pen and ink were more appropriate to the subject.

 "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"

Thor and Marvel Beginnings Artist Proofs

As with every other set, Upper Deck provides a number of limited Artist Proof sketch cards to those contributing to a new set.  I've got nine each from the Thor and Marvel Beginnings set; five portrait and four landscape format, each with a foil-stamped AP in the bottom right corner.

I'm offering these as commissions these full colour limited edition cards for 75.00 each with the Marvel Universe character of your choice.  These cards do have to be approved by Marvel; no smoking, drinking, gore, nudity, Nazis, zombie versions of the characters, or characters only licensed by Marvel.


~R

99 Thor Heads 02

I drew all of these with a .7 HB mechanical pencil, inked with a .7 V7 Pilot pen and the grey was a C5 Copic Ciao marker.  Occasionally a broader tip black marker or a C3 Ciao Copic would get picked up and used.
With so little time to get these done I ended up with a real pressure to get at least 6 of these done every time I had a spare hour, which meant things like erasing had to go unless really needed. Or kneaded -- I used a kneaded eraser to lighten the pencil lines a few times as well.

Bad pun, there -- sorry.

~Richard

Alan Moore is Smarter Than You Are

Another batch of useless whining has erupted over something Alan Moore said over here.  In the likely unintentionally funny title Jason Aaron states that 2010 was "THE YEAR I STOPPED CARING ABOUT ALAN MOORE" and demonstrated just how much he still cares about what Alan Moore thinks and says.

He still cares enough to the degree of dedicating a whole opinion piece about it three months after the interview with Moore that ended his caring was first published.  That's a serious demonstration of his lack of care.

To be fair, Aaron's piece is more likely wishful thinking.  He feels disparaged and dismissed by Moore by a few things he said here.  While Aaron's feelings are his own and he's free to express them in his forum, it's quite shocking that a professional writer would so poorly understand what Moore actually was saying on top of a self-described Alan Moore fan to wholly miss the inherent humour.  It's been said before that the internet is tone deaf, so perhaps that latter part isn't so shocking.

It's clear Aaron is essentially having "daddy-issues" and is upset over his primary influence not noticing or offering approval of his efforts in comics to date (for those not in the know I'm referring to the excellent THE OTHER SIDE and  SCALPED at Vertigo as well as some uneven comics at Marvel).  Aaron's comics haven't (apparently) risen to the level of being noticeable by the circle of friends Moore gets his current comics recommendations from. Nor has the current output of Marvel and DC.  I'm not sure there's a argument to made where a 58-year old Brit should be expected to find the current slate of books Marvel and DC super-hero writers interesting let alone spend his time pouring over the huge pile of self-involved nonsense for hidden gems.

On top of that, the vast majority of the comics DC and Marvel publish are utter garbage. How can you say a comic is a good read if you have to aware of what happened in the last few line-wide crossovers to follow the story?

On top of that, Alan Moore is widely regarded as one of most influential writers today and likely the best writer the comics industry has yet seen.  Do we really think he'd spend his time reading  THE RISE OF ARSENAL in pursuit of a good story?  He's clearly operating on a different critical level and probably looks for things quite different than the typical fan, or even writer of comics when he sits down to read.

And he does read comics still. Despite other writers claiming he's out of touch, Moore has recommended other recent works as well as written forwards to various collections and graphic novels.  Dismissing what Alan says because you want to believe he doesn't read modern comics is just admitting that you haven't written anything that could interest him.  Most writers could say that, especially if you're typing for Marvel or DC, so there's no inherent shame there.  You're a part of the herd and some people like being in the herd.  Sadly, herd animals don't have a reputation for being particularly bright.

However, Alan Moore does a number of things we don't read in comics very often and I'm increasingly certain it's because most writers aren't smart enough to see the value of it or perhaps even see it at all.

Most comics writers understand the idea of words and picture combining on a most base level and take what can be described as a TV writing approach to comics.  they generally know enough to show and not tell and generally get plot, character and pacing.  That's usually it.  The vast majority of comics are sequential action leading to events and (maybe) character moments and little more.  The writing generally ends where the artwork takes over and not just in the visual narrative or storytelling, but the writing usually serves as set-up for the artwork.  The better writers bring other stuff you were taught in high school English (but have since forgotten), but they're usually for the UK and we expect that of them.

One of the things that made it clear Moore wasn't a part of the herd was his ability to spin the wondrous or terrifying interpretations out of some of the most banal properties.  A number of writers and fans complain that many of Moore's biggest successes were derivative of what came before when they feel the need to bring themselves up by trying to drag him down, but fail to see the heightened creativity in transforming a Captain Marvel knock-off into a multi-dimensional demi-god or a lifeless Randian vigilante into a real sociopath with enough depth that we could understand him if not care.  These weren't obvious steps waiting to be taken -- unlike the path many current writers are wearing in Moore's footsteps.  Alan Moore writes an eight-page story and, decades later,  another writer spends years pilfering bits of it is as much an example of how little there was to work with before Moore as how little innovation and real creation went of after he left.

Beyond that, Moore does something more and it's something I haven't seen anyone pull off as consistently as he does;  he writes with the whole page.  That may not sound like much to some of you, but trust me, it's huge.  From understanding that storytelling can be equated with musical notes while using the structure of the 9-panel grid with THE WATCHMEN to using the actual nature of how a comic is read to deepen the horror in NEONOMICON.  His grammar includes the panel border, the gutter, the placement of the word balloons and captions.  Moore continues to craft the story well beyond the point most writers can conceive.

Alan Moore is smarter than you and he's not impressed with what you've done so far.  You can choose to whine or ignore him or you can do better.

I'm hoping for better.

~R

(This went on far longer than I intended and is likely rife with errors, I apologize for both, but wanted to type while the thoughts were there instead of waiting three months.)

New Year Zombie 2011

Here's hoping 2011 brings a smile to your face too!

~Richard

Rough and Unready

Jeez -- feels like I blinked and a month passed! I got knocked on my ass by a heavy-duty cold earlier and have been playing catch up since.

I was tidying the studio this past weekend and an envelope of old sketches turned up, so I thought I'd share them since everything else I'm working on is bound by NDAs at the moment.

I think I shared a scan of the Rune cover rough before, but not the rough adjacent to it. I drew 'em on tracing paper for some reason and the paper has been through a bit.

The rough and a photocopy of the finished (unused) solicitation art for my Pitt one-shot.

I did a cover for an Arthurian novel years back. Was pretty proud of it at the time, but it was based on a rough I was less than enthused about (top left guy with sword). I really wanted to do the portrait of the lady with the freaky hands holding the roses in front of a rose hedge.

I think I would have been happy painting the weird court tableau as well. I am rightly embarrassed over the horse in the other sketch..

Two roughs for another cover -- the one used wasn't included in the envelope. It was an in your face painting that was the last acrylic painting I ever completed. I preferred the two roughs here to the one used -- seems to be a common event in most freelancers' lives.

I really grew to hate acrylics over the years and it was having a negative effect on me and the work. I think i started another painting for the same company shortly after and ended up quitting in disgust and self-loathing over the progress.

Not sure what this was for - -perhaps an abandoned idea for an Unknown Armies RPG cover I like the basic idea here, but the drawing and gesture is atrocious.

The semester is winding down and I have a very light course load for the next, so I believe i can start producing more regular updates within a week or so -- perhaps a return to sketch-cards.

~R

Onnaboat

The Animation students at Durham College started a weekly drawing challenge via Facebook and it looks like the instructors are invited to participate. First up was a pirate pin-up.

I gave myself an hour to turn this around -- which is still more time that I could really afford. Started with a quick sketch:

Then I played with it in photoshop until time was up:

I prefer my Belit from a few years back for a sexy pirate, but I'm a little wary of putting any sort of pin-up style nudity over on facebook.

International Self Portrait Day, 2010 - Final

Seven hours from photo reference. Worked 12x12@300dpi.

I ended up fixing most of the problems I was having in Painter using the water rake blender before popping it back into Photoshop and continually tweaking the values (popping in and out of greyscale).

I'm so used to making tight greyscale images and digitally colorizing them into paintings I really don't know what I'd end up with it I tried acrylics or oils again.

International Self Portrait Day, 2010

I have too much other stuff to do, but I really hate myself when I miss this!

I was commanded to not do another moody/gloomy self-portrait this year, so I have to use photo-reference otherwise I really can't draw myself happy. Not sure why I can't. Perhaps it's some sort of emotional shortcoming or I just can't maintain the same happy look long enough to draw it.

So, me happy in my studio.

Started doing my tonal study and realised how late it was already getting. Last year I think I started much earlier and had time to do a tighter tonal rough to scan and paint over.

Decided I didn't have time and thought I could fix things while working in Photoshop and maybe Painter.

Scanned, colorized and the starting of painting. Decided it needed some other light shape compositionally. Colors need much, much more work. I might try to get that same washed-out look as the ref since I'm not too experienced painting skin with that much light in it.

Going to run some filters, adjustment layers and variations then port it over to Painter for a bit (primarily for the water rake and other blenders) and see what transpires.

Got four hours left. . . .

Dragon Mini-Con

This Saturday I'll be one of the guests at The Dragon in Guelph, Ontario ( link ) for their Dragon Mini-Con.

The fine folks of The Dream Detective Media Properties have provided me with a few copies of the limited remaining Pashanata/Dream Detective comics. Earlier entries in my blog show some of my work for that book. I think the plan is to use them to raise some funds for the Hero Initiative in some combo with a sketch.

If I can find the time between now and leaving Saturday morning I might be able to do something with this:

She's Jill, the main character from a long-in-development project I've been working on. Hopefully finished environment pencils, inks and colors aren't out of the question by Saturday morning.

One more Awake page

Thought I'd share another page from the NYCC exclusive promo comic for the ARE YOU AWAKE web TV project.

Thumbs.

Coming back to the page the first panel in the thumbs reminded me of the famous Raquel Welch cavewoman image, so I decided to actually draw her in the first panel.

There were a few overlays for this page, but the motion comic aspect was abandoned, so I'll not bother sharing those scribblely bits.

Of course, such borrowing should be acknowledged, so the not-so-subtle "Raquel" gets scribbled into the water by her right leg

And here's the final colors and letters.

This was a fun project with great people to work with despite some weird production stoppages that almost blew the NY release date and cut into the time I was actually able to work on this.

More Awake comics

A little more behind the curtain production stuff from the comic that was given away at NYCC and available free online here: http://www.areyouawake.tv/ .

I drew all the roughs for this in Photoshop. As much as I like pencil and paper, I find the features in Photoshop allow me to work faster and make radical changes with little effort. I used to draw these in marker or pencil, so another benefit is I can even think in colour at this stage. Since I wasn't coloring it, I limited the use of colour to indicate the various narrative states in the comic: essentially present, flashback and dream.

I wasn't originally supposed to ink this, but that didn't work out. The new need to work faster did allow me to try out some things that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise.

Since I was inking over the blue-line printouts I realised I could just as easily have some of the elements print out black as well and ink over that. So elements created in Photoshop or Sketchup could be dropped in next to things drawn in blue and modified on the board with various pens or brushes.

Oh yeah, this was originally supposed to be a motion comic, so parts of nearly every page had to be drawn and inked separately then assembled in layers. I'm not a big fan of motion comics, so I'm moderately happy that didn't end up happening, but I would have laid out a few pages differently had this been the plan all along.

I think I could have drawn in black and converted to non-photo blue, but I didn't. No idea why it didn't occur to me at the time.

Here're the inks -- well, most of them for this page.

And the rest of them

The page assembled.

And the page lettered and coloured.

It's a strange experience to see someone else's colours on my work since that never really happens to me anymore. It's difficult for me to judge these objectively since the colours are applied and used so very differently from how I approach them -- or how I saw them in my mind's eye while I drew them. The feedback has been generally positive, so that's cool!

I start playing with digital tones and textures almost immediately after this page, so I might show another page process in a few days.

Are you Awake?

So I drew over half of a flip-comic late this summer and it was given away recently at the New York Comic Con. It was a media promotion book in advance of a new web series -- you can see and read the whole thing here:

http://www.areyouawake.tv/

Typical of promotional comics there were a number of weird hurdles and stops and starts to deal with, but I'm generally pretty happy with the result even though much ended up being rushed and the basic fact that I'm usually only close to ever being satisfied when I'm doing everything.

I drew and colored the cover, designing the images to bleed into each other a bit but still maintain a certain strength and covers on their own.

The roughs were drawn in Photoshop -- something I'm doing more of lately.

I decided to try penciling the covers in Pshop as well. I printed the drawing onto 2-ply bristol after converting the image into a 25% cyan -- essentially non-photo blue.

Inks were just the same old application of pen and brush.

The work was scanned and colored in photoshop. I think i used more colour holds than I ever have before. I liked what I was able to play with here and plan to experiment further.

Here's the cover flipped so you can see it both ways.

I'll probably post more from the interiors over the next little while -- hope you guys find this interesting.

Diagonals!

Had a frustrating day introducing 2-point perspective, but I was actually quite surprised at what seemed to be tripping some of these students up. It's a pretty simple concept -- at least I think it is -- but I thought it might be a good idea to put the relevant info together either to make a handout (which I think promotes intellectual laziness) or a web resource of some sort (which may still inspire some students to be less mentally disciplined, but may save me from explaining the same concept weeks after it was initially introduced).

If this proves useful I might end up doing my whole curriculum in this manner and start a site or blog just to host it as a resource.

So, here's my primer on rectangles and diagonals in perspective.

Note:

The code for this entry got horribly messed up as I uploaded some corrections so I deleted the previous version and just put it up as a new entry -- sorry about the lost comments as a result.

Also, I seemed to have glossed over it in the original: this isn't a full perspective lesson by any means and much of the above info could be quite confusing to anyone not aware of the terminology and set up I'm using with my students.

~R