yep

stuff in progress. yeah, its supposed to be low enough light to hide the face. which has been adjusted since last time. zzzzzzzz

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more "loose ends", a b+w page and Rico's roughs. since hes already sketched out a bomb palette the tasks are clear, can avoid being redundant and let the b+w look a lil off with an eye towards a finished page that gels. like the heavy handed feathering on the tum from panel 2 will be knocked out to color, same with some backgrounds. shooting for dusk turning to night over the course of this scene, held off on heavy use of black, set up for Rico to carry the shadows, and then on the next page ill pick em out all inky. have had Bill Waterson on the brain.

what happened?

heres black and white pages from "loose ends", the first ive worked on in over a year- im happy just to get out alive. still dont know what going on with them, wont figure it out until Rico goes to town. he finishes the page in ways i wouldnt have imagined, better than i imagined, and different (distant) enough that i can see them a little more clearly. whatever accidents (happy or not) i run into on my own, the best ones come from having his sensibility and skill in the mix. its just hard to surprise yourself, you know? things happen out of the blue that seem pre-determined in the rear-view. anyways, blah blah blah, it was fun figuring these pages out, im starting to see where they came from. last month i was at SCAD's Comics Art Forum, the students in Atlanta and Savannah spun me-they were a whole full spectrum of styles. Schweizer, Olu, Cale, Cara, Doug, Hunter (Wook Jin), Justin (links to the right for those ive found) shook up the true north of my compass. they cartoon, their personality comes through. other influences that came out: the attack modes of Eduardo Risso, Alex Toth, and Brian Stelfreeze, who seem to kick ass without breaking a sweat . where i flounder they focus: find the contour line, spot blacks, move on. heh, does that seem super obvious? if so, its been lost on me. i may lose it again. Olivier Coipel, the way he flattens out perspective looks more real than 3 point madness, sometimes its barely there. The Gorillaz. Ed Tadem and Shawn Crystal, comrades who spill blood and still produce, much admiration.

ps ill prolly erase the clouds on page 1, and paste a map in the first panels of page 2.

hideaway

Emerald City Comicon part 2

I had to take a break from Loose Ends to finish up some stuff for the Emerald City Comicon, I think this image will be used for shirts!

6:42 am

from the book the kids are doing with Jason Latour for 12 Gauge Comics called "Loose Ends", page 1 "pencils" and what a relief. given that its been over a year since id done pages, and ive always been slow, it was a surprise to get this one done in a day with an hour to spare. and it was fun as hell. that said, theres a lot that goes into every page, so maybe i should back up and explain (and not expect it to be this easy with the next 96 pages). thumbnails come first, as doodles on the actual script, then tightened up and resolved at 2 3/4 in x 1 3/4. you can get a LOT in that lil bit of space, and fast. if i dont rush, the final page barely deviates from that first thumb. then i go do homework. let me stress that the reference comes second, otherwise the thumbs start bending towards ref, when it should be the other way around. god bless the internet for streamlining this process, and god bless car enthusiasts for being so....enthused. theres like 50 websites dedicated to this specific 1970 monte carlo, and a rash of videos of the car on youtube. home movies made in the 80's of kids doing peel outs in the parking lot. so that research was pretty thorough, but now its done, for the next 96 pages. other elements were drawn from life, in the way that something randomly clicks and you think "aw, i gotta use that". the shot of the dashboard and rearview mirror came from a photo i took of my woman during a cross country drive (arizona? nevada? dont remember). she has the most amazing eyes, caught them in the rearview along with the idea for panel 2. the soda "mirinda" i know from her too- as much as its a lil shout out to her in this page, its also for storytellin (riiiiight....). when we get to iraq scenes the soda will show up again, with its arabic logo, to show the transition. referencing stuff like that, or the mack truck, or the .45, doesnt take a minute with google. ditto for 3-d models, although you have to settle and fix those a bit. the correct perspective looks right maybe half the time and is worth ignoring. sunglasses? cd's? got that handy in the apt. couldnt have spent more than an hour setting up and drawing the last panel. there's a lot of strands in the old duders head, but the imac has reduced so much effort and desktop clutter. all this ref gets pulled up on screen, itunes gets turned up to 11, and i get to sit with just the paper page and sketch from the ref like life drawin. thumbs keep things on track and alive. oh yeah, no rulers, no templates, and eyeballed perspective (so far), for the love of wonk. hey Rico, you want to explain your colors to us?

Hulk like comics

Here's one of the images I worked on for the Emerald City Comicon with Tim Sale.

Shiny Happy Vengence

Chris should probably be telling you about this one since I didn't even work on it! Someone else colored this cover. So yeah, here's a few thumbs and my quick crack a direction I might have tried and finally what was published. Please chime in on your recollections of this Chris!...

chris here, Rico says i can change the color of the type, but i cant figure it out. yeah, this cover was so! much! fun! when i did batman (LOTDK #172-6) it satisfied the jones most people have for that character. unfortunately, the jones was satisfied by page 2, and then there were like 100 more pages to go. but i think i could draw wolverine (as logan, not as an x-man) forever- hes like a real person in my head, where most every other character kind of has to be figured out. (exception would be maybe spider man, but even then id have to figure out peter parker, can never decide on his level of nerdiness). mainstream companies have always resisted the kids as a combo, at the time this cover was done Marvel was all about the Studio Udon look, so i had to fly without Rico and its a damn shame. he came up with a great scheme (dag, the purple sky rules) and wouldve made it pop. Ed Tadem pointed out that the shoulder had some wonk, and not in a good way...... in hindsight he was right. punisher ended up lookin a bit like frankenstein. claws are a bit thin. still, im happy with logans level of RAH!!! allright, back to Rico's part of the post:


As for what I'm up to, I've started work on the Perhapanauts Annual (now published by Image), Emerald City Comicon promotional art with Tim Sale (I'll post that stuff soon), Loose Ends plotting and planning, and gearing up for Christmas (making Christmas cards for my family and a few custom presents). Yup, busy busy!