Saturday, April 30, 2011

Snow White Pin Up

Here is the inks only version of a Snow White pinup I will be selling at Heroes. Just like the VTRB pinup the Snow White version at Heroes will be colored.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Val the Red Beard Update

Just wanted to let you all know that VTRB has been updated! Also, I wanted to share a VTRB pin-up I will be selling at HeroesCon though the version I will be selling will be colored.

Enjoy!





Sunday, April 24, 2011

Creating a Work Flow

Having to work on a 24 page comic for the first time is a little daunting.

The goal is to figure out how to finish pages quickly without losing any quality. There are some tricks that I have picked up from other comic artists, either through discussion or reading about their process, and have tweaked for my own purposes.

First: Nail the THUMBS!!!!!!
I have mentioned in previous posts that this is a more recent discovery and you would think a no brainer. I have always made thumbnail sketches in the past but never to the extent of clarity that I do now. This is my least favorite part of the process because my brain usually hurts by the end of it. I try to exhaust every panel layout, black and white composition, camera angle, and character pose to make the page as interesting as possible. I am hoping through time that this part of the process will come with ease. It's a lot more work up front than I'm used to, but it gets rid of any guess work and makes the next steps of the process fun! ( Thank you Shawn Crystal for making me create better thumbs)

Second: Pencils
This part of the process I am still experimenting with. Instead of sticking to one page and rendering the entire thing I render the characters and the backgrounds separately through passes. It's very much a "strike while the iron is hot" method. If I get warmed up drawing a particular character why not go through the entire comic then and knock out their pencils and be done with it? I am mentally still trying to get used to it. Before, when I finished whole pages I felt like I had accomplished something, but with the penciling in passes method all 24 pages do not look "completed" until the last few days. I'll get used to it though.

(This method I swiped from Guy Davis, and he knows how to get comics done!)

Third: Inking
This is the longest part of the process for me, and usually takes me a day per page. I will experiment to see if the same method of working in passes will work just as well as it did for the pencils. I will discuss this step more at length in a future post.

Until then here is another penciled page from Snow White: Through a Glass, Darkly. Enjoy!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Val the Red Beard Launch!


My new webcomic, VAL THE RED BEARD launches today. The mechanics of the website are still under construction, but that won't hinder you from viewing it or stop me from posting every Wednesday!

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Snow White Pencils

Snow White issue one thumbs are done! Now it's time to move on to the fun part of penciling and inking! It wasn't until last quarter I realized how important making thumbnails as clear as possible is. If you nail the thumbs everything else is a breeze. The page below shows how I pencil my work. Since I ink my own work I can keep the pencils a little rough and tighten up the art during the inking stage.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

VTRB Cast Sketches

Greetings all. I wanted to share some artwork for my online comic Val The Red Beard (VTRB) that is germinating at the moment. The first post will be on April 20th and I can't express how excited I am for you all to see it.

Below are head sketches that I did to help me to get familiar with the characters. Enjoy!

Saturday, April 9, 2011

American Goblin

Marvel has decided to change their superhero Black Panther to "American Panther". So far I have been reading mixed reviews on the change, and supposedly the switch may not be permanent. Even though the change is weird, I think the art by Francesco Francavilla will look great.

A group of us in Atlanta decided to respond to this news by Americanizing comic characters that have a color in their name. I chose Green Goblin for my redesign. To see what the other artists created go to The Temple of Cartoon Mojo.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Announcement!

OK, I wanted to kick off this revamped blog with an announcement.

I have been teamed up with Pinocchio Vampire Slayer's Van Jensen to work on an SLG comic set in the Snow White world! The only thing I will tell you (for now) is that the comic will pick up after where the fairy tale ends.

Right now I am on the thumbnail stage for the first issue. I wanted to give a teaser of what it will look like with a few pages that are completed.

Sorry, the word balloons and dialog are not in place.


Well back to work!