page 12 - gettin started again

Shook the rust off with some sketches yesterday so tonight I tried to do some work on page 12 - -still rusty. Trying to get the perspective of the city street and nate on his bike so I created a little scene in sketchup...here are two layouts I like.



Now i just read some battle angel so I am jazzed about the way Kishiro draws speed. Not sure If I am going to try this in here but I played with it a little bit on Nate's legs and the wheels as he pedals fast down the street...



looks a little hairy but could look cool.

sketch

Liquid Revolver

Liquid Revolver is a comic I worked on with a handfull of other folks is being published by Matt Dembibki at Three Crows Press. I only did a handful of pages but I am really excited! Go check it out and buy a copy!!!!

Life Drawing

Note to self:
Don't forget.

Bernier At Comic Tools

Matt Bernier over at comic tools hits the nail on the head:

I feel good about the work I'm doing, but I'm not working this hard because I want to, I'm doing it because I have to. The way I stay balanced is by making sure that nothing leaves my table that I'm ashamed of. But it's SO hard not to get lazy. It's so hard, when you're ready to move on to the next page, and you see that a panel could be re-shot from another angle to be a little better. It's so hard not to say "It's good enough, no one will care," and move on to an earlier bedtime.

But what I know is, when I buckle down and do it, I'm always proud and I sleep soundly, and when I don't do it I sleep with a thief's conscience. When I do it, people look at those panels and compliment me, and the memory of that praise obliterates the memory of the labor, but when I don't do it, I know what I did and the work feels wasted and pointless.

So true.

inking tools

Inking. I have no idea what tools to use so one month I am dedicated to pens and nibs, the next month I go nuts on markers and brush pens, then the brush. Over the past year or two, I have settled on using markers and brush pens for sketches and using nib-pens and brushes for more formal/finished work.

What I like so far is the nib pens and brushes mostly becuase the ink itself just looks so much better on the page then the ink in markers. However the markers and brush pens are easier to use and have a lot less mess. Also everything is scanned in and the quality of the black is lost in that process anyway for the most part so maybe that doesn't matter (?).

So over the last week I was looking at some comics and decided to try and figure out what tools the artists are using.

The two artists I started with are Yukito Kishiro and Sean Phillips.

Over at Sean Phillip's blog he posts some examples of his work

So his work is great of course and he has a real loose style which I love. from reading the comments people ask him what tools he uses and he mentioned Copic markers for "pencils"; Staedtler pigment liners and Pentel brush pens for inks.

Kishiro does my favorite manga - Battle Angel Alita. The story is ok but his designs and drawings are great. His website "yukitopia" has a section that shows his studio. In there he has a picture of some of his tools.

In his pens tray he has 6 nib-pens. 2 crowquills, an 801 Hiro Leonardt, and 3 tachikawa "G" pens.





More later...

Listen...not yet though

Free Preview of Andrew Bird's new album next week at NPR
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98649962

sketches 12 22 2008

The VET

Got an idea for a story and wrote the whole thing while I was watching my kids this morning. It's a short story about a vet. This is kind of notable for me since I've never had the experience of a complete story just coming to me out of thin air. I'm glad I had the chance to write down as it came to me so I don't forget it. Maybe I can turn it into something. Also notable since it's the first story that's ever come to me that I don't think is lame the split second after I think of it! Cheers.

Page 11 done

Page 11 is inked and sent off to LOSW HQ a couple days ago. It's an ok page. Panel 3 is a bit goofy - (I think Nate's head is a bit too wide) and there are some other issues but overall I am happy with it. I used a brush for the whole thing and got some of the best results I have ever got out of that tool. It takes a lot of concentration for me not to rush when brushing..to be deliberate. I need to imagine the line then try and make the line instead of just slapping it down and hoping a nice line happens. Anyway, I'll never be a great inker but I think I am improving so that's positive.

page 11 - more work

I blasted through this page in about an hour. It's a conversation page with nothing much really happening and I think the composition and poses I chose in the first pass were pretty boring. So tonight I changed a couple things. I think it's an improvement.

page 11

ink study

practiced using my brush over a Rip Kirby panel by Alex Raymond today.

page 10 done

This page went through a lot and I really like how it looks now. The inking is ok in parts. I used a brush (WN7 size 1) on the floor tiles and a lot of the detail behind the bar. WN7 size 2 on Nate in the foreground and a Hunt 102 on most of Casey and the bar itself.

I'm trying to work the brush in more and more since it is a lot more versatile but I still like the pen for it's consistency. My main problem is that with the brush my tendency is to rush the lines. It's a lot harder for me to get a consistent line weight with the brush. That said, I have been looking at my other work with the pen and lines are all too uniform. They are consistent but they don't have enough variation causing the elements of the composition to run together. I will be trying to use line weights to tie the elements of the picture together. heavier lines on focal areas and thinner lines on background elements.

Anyway, one more page of the coffee shop then the story begins to make the transition into the crazy! I can't wait!

page 10 improved

looks a lot better! Inks tomorrow.

page10...bah!

This happens sometimes. The drawing is ok but it misses the mark. Never feels quite right. The composition is just bad. It felt wrong from the start but I kept trying to make it work. I need to learn to trust my instincts a little sooner to avoid losing hours. Ah well. It looks ok but everything is clumped in the middle. jumbled. No flow across or through the page. I'll be redoing the whole thing closer up and from a slightly different angle....tomorrow.

skull and drumsticks

flower sketch with color

colored the sketch with photoshop

colored the other one too...

sketches 11 24

page 9 done

This one took me forever....mostly due to distractions outside of comics. feels crappy when something takes so long but it's nice to finally finish. I think panel 4 looks really nice. the rest is ok. Still a lot to learn when it comes to inks. On this page I used a Hunt 102 on most of the people and clothes, a tighter nib (Hunt 107) on the backgrounds, a brush on some of the clothes and a PITT brush pen on some of the touch ups.