Thor!

Medieval Grunt

Starting the process of creating new art for my concept portfolio. I’m breaking the new content up by fantasy, modern, and Scifi themes. So starting in fantasy and working my way forward in the time line.

I will go ahead and state that the designs are focused for low end platformed games: handhelds, social media sites, etc. So I’m being conscience of the limitations. This means the designs are going to be stylized and angular. Rounded surfaces are used sparingly so they don’t hog the polygon count for the 3d model.

Alatriste

Inspired to create this after watching the movie Alatriste

SWOTR!

Updated the COMICS page with a new mini-comic. Enjoy!

Warm-up

Ink Study

Loose Ends

BPRD Abe Sapien

Snow White on CBR

Wow! I can't believe I forgot to post this. SNOW WHITE is one of the comics featured in CBR's interview with head of SLG Dan Vado who is talking about their switch to digital comics. Snow White will be digitally release for the single issues and hopefully be printed once it is done.

Check it Out      http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=34575

Ink Study

Where the Wild Things Are

Devilman Pin-up!

Devilman pin-up for a inking class. We could only use markers (microns, pitt pens, brush pens if they have a felt tip) to ink with and can only render the contour lines. What have I learned from this:

 1) I HATE MARKERS! Takes to f 'ing long to ink with them. Could have done it in half the time with the brush!

 2) Getting better with the contour line was nice. I can't hide behind any slick rendering tricks. That was helpful and is directly affecting my Snow White pages.

Dragon*Con 2011

Dragon*con is over and I had a blast! This being my first Dragon*con to table at, Van Jensen and myself were surprised by the amount of foot traffic and how it did not let up for all four days of the con. I met a lot of talented artist and wish them all the best, and hope to see them at next year's Dragon*con!

Back to finishing up the pencils for SNOW WHITE issue 2, but first I would like to share some photos from the con!

Dragon*Con 2011 Begins

Dragon*Con in Atlanta started yesterday and will keep going up to Monday! Come visit Van Jensen, Andy Runton, and yours truly to look at some awesome comics and get a sketch if you would like!

BPRD's Liz

MegaMan!

I had a lot of fun making this piece. MegaMan was one of the first games I had on the original Gameboy (you know - the grey brick) along with Tetris. So there was a period when I was super obsessed with the man in blue to say the least. I never played the older versions, since I didn't have the game systems, unless I went to a friends.

I decided not to do an underdrawing and go straight from thumbnails to inks. This is something my teacher Shawn Crystal tries to get everyone to become comfortable with. It saves time and forces the artist to treat the inks as a drawing material.

Remember that I take commissions.

Enjoy!

Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones, Eddard Stark.

I always enjoy giving any insights or discovers I happen to come across when creating art. In this case I learned what type of ink I enjoy using. When I first started inking I used Higgin's Black Magic ink and was fine using that and created some nice comic pages. Since then I have used Doc Martins, Bombay, and Holbein. Holbein inks are nice and dark and work well with brush and nib. But, fast forward to today using Higgins Black Magic after two years and I feel like I found a lost friend. It's watery and I actually like that. I can make long brush marks that will be smooth, it's absorbed by the paper really fast, I get the intended marks and look from it, and it doesn't clog up the brush as fast. It works well when paired with my Winsor Newton series 7 brush. The only complaint is that it is not as dark as Holbein.

SDCC 2011

Van, the writer I am collaborating with for Snow White: Through a Glass Darkly, sent me these awesome photos of the SLG booth. I did not get to go this year, but I will be there for 2012 to prom0te Snow White.

From the Sketchbook

I was in DC for a day this week and I figured sketching Captain America was appropriate. That was my first time in DC and it was nice to be the tourist and see a few important landmarks before jetting home. Which I almost didn't make it because DC has a 10pm curfew at their airport. First (and probably only) airport I have been to with a curfew.

Snow White on Robot 6!

Need to thank JK Parkin for writing up this great promo piece on Robot 6 for Snow White!

Further news on Snow White. Finishing up the inks for Issue one and will start on Issue two in a week or two. After reading the second script I can't wait to start drawing out the pages. It's going to sweet!

VTRB Post

Val the Red Beard #007 is now posted!

HeroesCon 2011

Well, a wonderful year of HeroesCon has come and gone. This was my first year tabling in the Artist Alley and met a fair amount of people who were interested in the Snow White comic that myself and Van Jensen are working on for SLG Publishng. Several of those people kept me busy with sketches and commissions which you can check out below. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of all of the sketches due forgetfulness, sorry.

I need to thank all the great people who helped put together a wonderful show and looking forward to next years! And, to all of the artist that attended and I had the pleasure of meeting I wish you good luck and I can't wait to see what you have for next year!

HeroesCon

Hey folks! This is a reminder that HeroesCon is this weekend! My booth number is AA-324. If you're at the show stop on by to say hello!
EDIT Booth is now AA-428!

Hawkgirl COMMISSION

EDIT: Forgot to mention that this was for the HeroesCon Auction.

Ready for Heroes

HeroesCon is almost upon us, and like any responsible artist I made sure to make a mock up of my table to make sure everything will fit and looks presentable. I will be passing out samples of Snow White with Van Jensen so come on down and pick up your copy!

*It's not weird that I set up mock Con tables in my living room right?*

Snow White Issue 1 Cover

Hey Folks! So it's coming down to the wire getting ready for HeroesCon next weekend. This is the cover for the first issue of Snow White: Through A Glass, Darkly, and Van and myself will be passing out five page samplers of the comic. If your going to be at Heroes stop by our table to pick up your copy and chat!

I should also mention that Val the Red Beard page 6 is up along with a functioning website.

HeroesCon Leavebehind

Snow White Inks

If you want to see the pencils for this page just roll back a couple of posts to find it. Getting slammed to get ready for Heroes so I will save the talk about my process for the inks to a later post.

Snow White Inks

Inks are underway!

VTRB #003

Sorry for the delay yesterday, but your going to have to click the image to see why.

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.

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!

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!

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!

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.

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!

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.

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!