Another Story [that I should finish]

I've taken this post and expanded on the idea. I like that this guy gets covered in whatever the stuff is. He'll never been seen again. Each page is a 2" x 3" thumbnail. The last panel on page three will be a wider shot, so that's why it breaks the border of the thumbnail. I feel like I should write a little more because there's all this empty space... there... that's enough. Oh, and I like this stretchy template because our images can be bigger and the layout looks nicer.

CM

3 stages of a page

Here is a crappy scan of one of my newest pages. Sorry, I tried to make it look better but the unsightly joins of the two scans I put together messed up the whole thing. Anyway, I basically have a better method now. I draw the whole page really messy like on a throw away sheet and then lightbox it in tighter pencils onto good paper. Then I ink it and put the ruler lines.

I still need to fix up the scan on photoshop. Oh well.

A

Sketching in the Park

Here are a couple of sketches from some time in 2004 that were done in two different parks in Tokyo. I think the first one was in the downtown area because I do remember getting off the Metro and crossing the street. Was it called Hibiya Park? Is there such a thing?
The second one was one on the Tozai Line during cherry blossom season. This was drawn at a cafe that served good matcha (thick Japanese green tea made from powder).
I didn't do enough drawing in Japan, and I lost a bunch of photos on a hard drive that crashed last year. I'll take more photos and do a lot more sketching the next time I'm there.

Tablet Practice 1

This is a sketch I did from some clothes catalogue. I plan on coloring it in photoshop. I think I may add a background, but maybe not. Anyway, this is just the preliminary drawing. I just bought a drawing tablet and want to become proficient at it so I'm starting with coloring my drawings and will eventually work my way up to actually drawing from scratch straight on the tablet. Right now my drawings look pitiful, but it is me not the tablet. The tablet has to be a major milestone in computer creations. One of the greatest things I ever bought, but I'm awful at it right now. It is a whole new part of my brain it takes up. And at the same time I'm learning Final Cut so I can edit my movie. Two weeks ago I had to do a crash course in Illustrator. My brain is overloading.

A

My First Comic Story

of 2007. Here are the thumbnails done in blank pages of an old sketchbook. Sorry I didn't post anything sooner, Adrian.

The Scourge Of Crime

This was once supposed to be my magnum opus into alternative Marvel comics. It was called The Scourge Of Crime. It was about a bunch of disparate people who were linked by death. All in the superhero universe of Marvel. It started with the character called Scourge killing yet more villians. Then it chonicled the sad life of a hobbit looking fellow named Lance Modok. The first page here shows him waking up in a dingy apartment, getting divorce papers, and prepariing for work at Big Lots. The second page shows his teenage manager, his archenemy another guy named Lance who gets all the new girls. It says in the last panel "At lunch he takes the new girl to the parking lot to ball. His windows are tinted but who does he think he's fooling." Later parts include the return of Basilisk as his brother takes on the mantle to hunt down Scourge(who killed the original Basilisk, and Basilisk in turn killed Modok, who didn't really die and is walking around as an amnesiac who only knows they call him Modok. But he likes to call himself Lance).

I made this up when Marvel had a line called Epic which was for newbies like me. This was in the summer of '03. They dumped it before I could make a proposal. Oh well. I wanted to do a Dan Clowes take on Marvel. These were the rough layouts for the pages. I found them in an old sketchbookm and started laughing. I thought it was an actual book and then I opened it to find these which I had completely forgot about.

Sketches from SF

I went to San Francisco today and brought along a small Moleskin that I got during a gift exchange. Here are some drawings from today done in pen.

Unfinished Pages

These are parts of two of the current pages I'm working on. The first pic shows what a page in progress looks likes. The right half is fully inked in my new style. The left half is half inked with tape to protect the gutters from my brushwork.

The second page is my example of an homage to an artist I love. I drew it in the style of Charles Burns. This made me realize that I had only reverted to my old style of inking which was itself a rip off of Charles Burns(as opposed to my current style which is trying to do Mark Schutze, Joseph Clement Coll, and Paul Calle[although that's a stretch]). I'm putting up these pages on Artdump pretty soon.

A

The Shadow Sketches

Here is something from my sketchbook; Adrian got me to draw him for something that he'll probably write about in his next post or sometime soon. We were talking about working with interesting shapes, negative space, and silohuettes which I completely forgot about when making this image. Next time... always next time...
I should've posted on the 1st to start us off right. I'll make it up somehow.

I Hate Blogs 2

I drew this in about 2 hours at work one night. My last post of the year.

Adrian

This is not it

Buried

I drew this in like thirty minutes. I made up the first line and watched where it went. Didn't really have a plan. Just felt like drawing. It luckily worked out to one page instead of less than a page or more than.

Adrian

last minute

Nottingham Lace B&W's

These are the scans of my uncolored storyboards. I made these to show my cinematographer what I intend in terms of lighting and camera placement. They will be painted eventually. I actually made three others but those haven't been inked yet because I made these at work and the other were too disturbing. This movie is sick. I may have gotten a producer for it today. We'll see.

Adrian

House - colored version

Well, I just skimmed this tutorial about coloring in half-tones, and I tried it out on a drawing that I posted on my site's blog. I'll try this again with a better scan and a more careful approach. It kind of has the look of an old comic, but not quite. Some of the line work may have been affected by careless resizing.

Sports Sketch

A couple months ago I drew this out of some Tennis magazine(! worked part time in a country club). Then I colored it some random colors. A fun little experiment in dynamics and color.

Adrian

No title today

Looked at some photo reference and did some marker drawings.
I have to find ways to improve on this crude computer coloring.

-Chris

Sketchbook prelims for comic

This is some stuff I am working on for someone elses comic. The characters are all copyright them. I posted some sketches of some of these guys below. These are the changes I have done. I really work fast and loose so I had to reign it in and spend some time getting the proper look down. I feel bad posting this right after the seven heads in seven minutes because I took a long time on these. I actually considered doing the seven heads in seven minutes and found it too hard. I'm serious. I tried and had no inspiration. It's harder than it looks to time yourself and really do it in time. I tried it with the 24 hour comic day thing, and even though I did it, it was very challenging and physically and mentally exhausting.

Adrian

Only a few minutes left in the day

Almost forgot to do something. Just like it says, 7 heads in 7 minutes. Ugh. They really were supposed to look better than this. I think we've done 10 days in a row!
-Chris

Silver Spaceman 2

These are the pages in color. I'll post the black and whites later. The B and W's are much better. I colored them in twenty minutes each. I was under a tight deadline(I was only given the assignment like 24 hours earlier[including the cover]). Chris pencilled the first page. I added shadows and rendering in the ink stage. I also changed the brow on the bad guy to make him look meaner. But basically it's Chris's structure with my finish. Except the last panel, which is obviously rushed because I decided to redraw it. Sometimes you just shouldn't redraw.

Adrian

No title today

Just thought it would be good to practice different body types. I figure the mom and kid had to be standing around for a reason, so I drew a background.

Here's another one since I'm posting it before midnight.

-Chris

Silver Spaceman

Here is a cover I did on Friday night for my friend Paul's movie. I also had to do two more pages(Chris did pencils on the first page, and his are so much softer and delicate than my caveman scratch. The inking was fun to do on someone elses pencil's). I finished it all within 24 hours. Then I had to color them. It was a marathon. Anyway, not my best work but pretty good for the time I had to spend on it. The coloring is shit, there's no way around it, but I had only 20 minutes so thats what you get. Paul gave it the title and writing stuff.
I'll post the pages that Chris helped me pencil on the next post. They were also colored and lettered.
Adrian

Not as bad

A couple of people who are having a much more painful Saturday than most of us. I was going to complain about how little I've drawn lately, but I won't. Meeting up with Riv helped get me motivated because he showed me the cool character designs below and the pages he's been working on. He also penciled a page in about an hour while I could barely keep up. I've got to learn how to do away with sleep...

-Chris

Movie Comic

I'm drawing a fake cover and two pages for my friend Paul's movie. It's about a superhero. His favorite comic is Silver Spaceman. The arch enemy is the Blackhole Bountyhunter. I didn't have time to draw the cover and scan it tonight so I'm putting up the sketches for what they will look like. These are rough. The anatomy is off and proportions need to be fixed but this was just to get their look. Obviously inspired by a certain Jack Kirby character and design sense.

Brock Sketch

Since Adrian drew characters from his favorite show, I thought I'd do a super quick sketch of agent Samson from The Venture Bros (created by Jackson Publick--real name?) before the day was over.

-Chris

The Wire Sketches 1

My favorite drama, even more than Sopranos and at least tying if not beating Lost is the Wire. It is perfect. The most ornate plot and character heavy show ever. Written by a former police officer, a reporter, and several novel writers(one is the guy who wrote Mystic River). It has a huge cast. Most of them are black and totally underutilized in Hollywood, but they can hold ground with anyone. My favorite characters is the failed detective McNulty, Omar the gay gangster who steals from other gangsters in a Robin Hood like fashion, Stringer Bell the gang leader who wants to go straight, Bubbles the really cool and nice homeless guy who can't kick drugs, and Prezbuluski(sp?) the failed cop who becomes an inner city school teacher. This first batch of sketches are the ones that worked. I would have put more but the second batch so far is kind of weird third string characters. I did sketches of Marlo, McNulty, and D'Angelo but they sucked so bad I need to redo them. Strangely enough my version of Proposition Joe may be the best one I've done so far(because he is one of the smallest characters[but not in girth]).

-Adrian

Don't Ask...

?????
-Chris

Sketchbook Stuff

The girl sketch I did at a coffee shop with Chris. I was copying a pose from Vanity Fair or something. It looks nothing like the girl(not going to say who it is because she's so famous it makes my version look really bad, but I wasn't going for likeness).

The other ones are from a comic I am working on. The characters are copyright their creators.

These are all from my sketch book.

This is just ridiculous

Here's one of the worst drawings in the history of Wacom tablets + Photoshop. I haven't drawn much recently. This is like some 10 year old's first day in front of a computer.
-chris