#30DaysComics Challenge Day 10 - "Chop Shop"

Still not managing to make a comic a day, but I am trying! This I actually came up with yesterday, and penciled, inked, colored, and lettered in only a few hours. I’m sure you can see the rush on it. I hope the idea is humorous enough to hold up for the lack of craftsmanship. I also wanted to see what a sepia tone would look like on this piece.

iPad Sketcbook Pro tutorial coming soon!

So yesterday I broke down and bought a webcam off eBay. I've decided to make a tutorial of what I can do, maybe it will help others out. I'll be posting here and on twitter, so check for it in a week.

Okay, and as far as illustrations, I swear things just snowball with me. Ultron went from a simple sketch, and now I have redrawn it as a vector and now I'm coloring it... Crazy. Here's a side by side:


To the left is the original illustration, colored in Sketchbook Pro on iPad, and the right is the vector illustration thus far. Only flats here, but I'm already 30% done shading Ultron. I'll probably be done tonight and share once again.

Little Red, sleeping away

Here is where I was a few days ago with that tree problem:


and here it is today:


I just printed it(non photo blue) onto bristol board, and I'll be inking within the next couple days. Any thoughts before I hit it with the inks?

I LOVE Magnus Robot Fighter

So today I came across an obscure comic while browsing. Its called Magnus Robot Fighter 4000ad, printed by Gold Key Comics. First thing that drew me was the painted covers, very pulp magazine like on the cover. Second, its a Flash Gordon type guy beating up robots! I love it! I have an affinity for '50s era robots too, so this is my thing. Now I have a an urge to find as many of these as possible, Magnus is amazing! I'll definitely be looking out for other issues or collections at comic cons, etc.

If I had the opportunity to get the rights, I so totally would. I just get so giddy with golden age heroes, pulp heroes, and the like. There's a sort of awesome charm to them that is hard to find in today's comics. Is it the art style? The stories? The smell of the old comics? A time I long for yet never experienced? I don't know what draws me to this stuff so much, but it definitely gets me excited to draw something. It also gave me some ideas for a future Solar Flares comic. Perhaps Francisco needs to battle robots at some point!

Scott Pilgrim #5 - A Review

New book by Bryan Lee O'Malley, in the ongoing trials of Scott Pilgrim released last week

I think I could use my journal entries here to be of more use to people, so I think I'll start doing occasional reviews of the things in my life, namely art related goodies.

So on Friday I went to the Comic Shop to pick up my latest books, plus see if they had received shipment of the new Scott Pilgrim book. They had one copy, it was destiny for me to purchase it!

One of my favorite things about reading comics is finding a relatively new artist, and watch them grow. I believe that #5 is the strongest of Lee's visual storytelling. His line quality gets stronger and cleaner, his panel layouts more interesting, and his toning becomes more dynamic. One sequence in particular really impressed me. There's a moment where Scott and Ramona have a heart to heart, and she starts to disappear into a white flash. It looked really nice, I think it would be fun to play and try to replicate the effect.
One of the things that threw me off in previous books was the similarity in character's looks. One is supposed to happen, Young Neil is supposed to look a lot like Scott. Unfortunately, that can make it difficult for the reader. Second, Ramona changes her hair quite a bit, also making it difficult to follow. Sometimes I also think Ramona and Kim look quite alike as well. This is very difficult for a black and white comic, if it were color, we could notice the changes more dramatically with the different color hair and such. Again though, by volume 5, O'Malley has made these characters much more distinct and easier to differentiate.

As for the story, its kind of sad in this one. It was told well, I loved the art, and it was a fun easy read; but man was it a sad story. I guess I can't say sad = bad, but I guess I've liked the care free happy-go-lucky attitude the book carried previously. This change of pace is good though, I'm hooked, maybe more than ever now, to see what happens in the next volume.

If you have not read the series, please check it out:
http://www.radiomaru.com/ - Website for Artist and Creator Bryan Lee O'Malley
http://www.scottpilgrim.com/ - Official Scott Pilgrim website
http://www.onipress.com/ - Oni Press, Publisher of Scott Pilgrim, and many other great comics

Caperucita Roja

So, I think I have a final design for Caperucita Roja here. The coat has changed since last time because a standard serape covers a lot of details on the front of her body. I want to add some thinner lines in her hair, and maybe a pattern in her dress, but I haven't come up with one yet.


This has been pretty difficult to work on lately with Winter Quarter going on, but I have really enjoyed my classes so far. I'm taking Intro To Film and Ethnic & Racial Sociology. In Film, we just finished watching Casablanca. I hadn't really watched the film since I was a kid, so I didn't really know how good of a movie it is. I'd definitely recommend it to everyone, there is a lot of great dialogue, comedic wit, interesting characters, and a fun setting (Casablanca, Morocco).

BTW, tomorrow (Sun Jan 18, 3PM) at Merlyns (19 W Main Ave, Spokane, WA 99201) will be another Comic Artist meetup. Its been really nice to get together with other like minded artists, if you're interested, I hope you can make it!

Caperucita Roja -I think this is it-

If you've been following my blog, I've been working on the character designs for a Little Red Riding Hood comic. FINALLY I think I have come up with the perfect Little Red. I just need to refine it a little bit, and play around with her cloak, and then I think I will have it.


One of my major issues was dealing with that hood... I finally decided to go with a more Link like Cap instead, mainly because the original is called: Le Petit Chaperon Rouge (o en Español, Caperucita Roja) meaning Little Red Cap... Previously with a hood design, it was difficult to attach the hood to the cloak, while still showing her hair and face.

So I'll do a model sheet, showing her at several angles, and moving in certain actions to get her design down. Then I think its time to move onto Abuelita, El Cazador, y El Lobo... ;) I'm very excited for this project!

More comic work, and more

So I'm still working on this Little Red Riding Hood design. I keep looking at other people's works for ideas for children, but I'm still not hitting it on the head the way I'd like to. I want to make a little 12 page comic with this, once I get the character designs down.

So here's another that I did a few days ago:


I like that its cleaner and much more streamlined, but I don't like the face at all, and the hair isn't what I envisioned at all... It seems the more manga direction I go, the more I lose what I was aiming for.

Now she has become too tall, I wanted her to be very young and short, kind of like Lilo from Lilo and Stitch. I want to give her an ethnic appearance, but with the pigtails, it looked more Native American:



Here's the newest attempt:


I shrunk her head down because it looked too big and manga like the previous time. But now it looks too big and her shoulders too wide. I'm also having such a hard time drawing girl hair. I guess I've just never had to pay much attention to pig tails and bows, and all that frilly stuff.

Besides Little Red, I was sick for a couple days. I had a stomach flu, and couldn't do much but watch tv. There was a House marathon, so I watched that. I really enjoy funny asshole characters like House. I don't generally watch the show, or many shows though, because I don't like to get caught up in it and have to watch it weekly. But since I was sick, I just kicked back. After 20 episodes, I noticed medical shows really bite for tv, and how can anyone watch them for very long? Every episode is the same situation: patient in extreme situation comes in, banters with doctors, doctors have inter-work relationships and fight with themselves, patient almost dies, they misdiagnose (generally Ive noticed on House, they think everyone has MS), then they try a surgery for the patient to almost die again, and then they solve it.

I also watched Magnificent Seven again. I think Magnificent Seven and Seven Samurai are the best movies to look at for dealing with a story with multiple main heroes. That movie is so perfect, you could take it to any setting and retell a great story. You could replace Yule Brynner with Aragorn, Steve McQueen with a fast arrow shooting elf, and other characters with various fantasy characters and it would be a great fantasy movie.

Anyway, its a brand new year which is very exciting. There's a lot of stuff happening this year, so I'm pretty happy for that. School starts on the 5th, so I'm going to have to learn how to balance school in the early morning and working in the afternoon and everything else in the evening. It will be a challenging quarter, but I'm glad to be getting more credits out of the way.. I feel like I'm digging myself out of a ditch, I should be able to go to Eastern by next Fall or Winter if I keep up the pace.

Anyway, everyone have a Happy New Year.

More Caperucitas Rojas

Still working on a look for the little hero:



I'm having trouble with the face and hair... Children are difficult to draw.


*update*
I drew a face, and I like it. But I still don't like the hair quite yet..

Caperucita Roja

I'm thinking of doing a short comic of Little Red Riding Hood... Here's some rough illustrations so far:







Its been a while since I've posted any new art, so this is a nice jumpstart.


A second design. I may have to find a happy middle between the two. My idea behind this is a more of a Legend of Zelda: Link To The Past sort of feel in the style of art. Link was sorta squat like Little Red here.