process

the endless saga of the first issue of deth bunny

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it really has been a learning process so far.

I made a mock-up of a twenty (thats 16 guts and a cover)  page comic today to see what more I need to do and to see who it looks reduce and imposed and all.

for the most part, it looks pretty good. especially for a first comic.. I am redrawing the first three panel strip in to a full page and splitting the first two bob and jeff landscape pages into four portrait ones. Thats gonna bring it up to five new pages to draw and ink. Theyre redraws and I ddi the thumbs tonight so I dont think it will take that long. A lot of stuff needs to be relettered. It should be pretty cool. It will be for sale on this site and at a couple of local comic stores. I’m gonna go to bed now before I fall asleep on my face.

Deth Bunny Update

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Hiya, Long time.
How are you?
Really?
wow.
and your Mom?
man thats great.
Me, well I’ve been buried under seven feet of snow for months now! I took a couple of classes. one went well and the other, not so much, but I still managed to get something out of it. There was a death in the family after a prolonged illness. I grew a beard. Production got all fershnagled on Deth Bunny but I have a new page, another one for next week and enough to finish the first issue!

so things have been good and things have been bad. so it goes. with any luck we are done with the season of death and move into the season of life and rebirth. Lots of folks gettin hitched this year. And babies!

Anyway, here’s some shizz I’ve been working on.

Maths

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New page of The Hunter tomorrow. Did some math in my head today. if it take me about two days to do a kind of sloppy page that equals about 150 pages a year or five issues at the comic length that I like for floppys. And that is an ideal number that doesn’t figure in other projects or well life. and certainly not my life.

Continuing the math: The Hunter has already started to grow in my head, Witch House is three separate books, Amnesiac is easily that long, and I can count five other stories that i have extensive notes and drawings on. If i did this full time, for the rest of my life, i’m not sure i could get this all down on paper. Just remembered another i have. shit.

This doesnt take into account new ideas which I am beset with daily. And I don’t want to let them go, these are people, some of them are in trouble, and they want their stories told or at least resolved in my head. Who am I to say no. It feels a lot like when I was 19 and I fell in love with any pretty girl who smiled at me. She’s pretty! She likes me! I have to love her!

…that got me in alot of trouble.

Stupid Ducks

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I’ve been doing a lot of drawing lately. Which is awesome. I can do it guilt free for the next week as well having finished my class with an A until next Tuesday when I start the next class. On top of that I have a fair amount of pro bono design work to complete by the end of the month. Busy busy, but better than not busy and you cant wait to do things or you will never do them. A friend told me “You will never have your ducks in a row” which got me thinking about the actual logistical nightmare of trying to get live ducks to line up in a row.

Continue reading →

Tentacles and Turtles

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Some things I have been monkey-ing with over the past week.

A quick sketch then quickly colored in photoshop. I’m gonna be drawing eggs and tentacles for a while.

This is the second drawing. more refined. I think this style of drawing will work nice for comic book stuff.

Lastly, I’ve been drawing a bunch of robot turtles. I don’t remember if there are more or not posted here, but I will make some sort of post with a bunch of them, sometime soonish.

Oni: all together

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LINE ART:

This is the first scan of the oni painting. Prior to this I sketched the original image and cleaned it up by tracing it on a light box, fixing messy lines and altering proportions where necessary.

SHADING:

I start laying done initial tone and shade with a water proof black ink. I also fill in any flat black areas using the same ink.

COLOR:

I add color using water colors, building tone and depth gradually.

Here is where I add the finished painting. Color, more gray wash, and a coffee wash in the back ground. The photo is a little distorted due to curling, and the lighting is terrible despite photoshop corrections, but the result is decent enough.

spider lady

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These are sketches I’m doing for  some knucklehead’s a friend’s tattoo. For the one on the right I referenced a drawing by Chris Conn for the pose, but I honestly looked at about a hundred girl head tattoos. This is a few drawings removed as well. The next step will be to trace it to line art and scan it into photoshop. There I’m going to make the spider lady symmetrical and comp some colors. Although I have to say i really like the way colored pencil looks on dark paper.

oni2_blueshade_web

oni mask

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Here is the initial color. Originally I was planing this to be a wind or air elemental type guy, but he’s looking more aquatic now. I think I’m going to do a couple of color studies and decide which way to go from here. Ideally I could do that on the computer, that is if my computer wasn’t run by arthritic squirrels running on a rusty wheel.

Oni Mask

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I put the shading into the oni face. I figured out a better method of getting the gradients in black ink, so I can lay the color over them like a tattoo. It also means  I’ll have a cool intermediate phase of a black and white toned drawing.

I did a bunch of small character sketches for  one of the comics yesterday and came up with a really cool idea for the layout of the time problem comic. It would have less of a traditional panel based layout and more of mish mash that you can read in any order. each spread page would be one large drawing instead of 18 smaller ones. It would subvert the sequential, mimicking a lack of time. Or make it totally unreadable. either way it will be interesting. I also plan on making a vaudevillian poster for the “Chicken” in a traditional tattoo style. Lots of ideas these days, I wish I could get my output on par with my brainstorming. I would probably have to stop sleeping and maybe grow some arms. Ooh! I think I’ll draw that!

its like learning a language or building up muscle

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no drawing today. I’ve just been reading comics blogs and thinking about process and inspiration. I’m gonna try to put together a inspiration post over the course of this weekend with pictures and links to things i’ve been into this lately. Things like Brandon Graham and his awesome work and equally entertaining and informative blog, that particular gang of comics guys, some shit i was into when I was kid, maybe some exerpts from old sketch books, and link to a slew of top notch web comics and maybe a close friend or two.

I’m really excited a bout doing and drawing at the moment, probably more than I’ve ever been. It’s carried over to a lot of different things one of them being my mind numbing soul sucking job. If I have to be here I am going to use it as an opportunity to become a better designer, which will hopefully make me a better artist and writer as a result.

Last night prior to having a significant amount of my hearing taken away from me forever, I was talking to my friend mark, and we were say how you dont really need to know how to do something in order to do it. You say “yes, I can do that” and then you figure it the fuck out! Naturally this doesnt apply to things like flying a jet or surgery, but thats how people figured how to do things in the first place. There is a saying that goes “you get good at kung fu by doing kung fu” which i will attribute to my sifu Stanly Ju, which is infinitely applicable. I feel like some blinders have been taken off, like i’ve rounded some corner. A lot of things that seemed like they would take forever are just coming naturally. Most things just take doing, and then keep doing it.

this is heresy

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Christian DeathI’m going to attempt to post something everyday for at least the rest of the month. It might be a drawing or a painting or just a sketch or a process piece, but something everyday until October. By then, I hope to have the hang of larger more formatted posts, which I will do every two weeks/ to a month. Those will include drawings, pin ups, illustrations and design work I’m doing, tattoo flash, plus more detailed explanations of process and reference.

This piece is part of my first flash sheet, which I will post at some point. It was an exercise in making pieces that are constructed like tattoos and gave me the idea of doing themed flash sheets. I want to do one or two sheets based around the names of goth songs and death rock bands. This one is a take on the Christian Death logo.