smokin porch

wow, its so nice to have a break from drawing the inside of that bar, i was starting to think id never finish. this Loose Ends page was a hell of a breather, about 2 days of fun, easy work, coulda been done in a day but for easter. i toyed with putting the sketch-up (a 3d program) model into the pencils and inking over it, but it just looked like dook. was good for reference though, a solid foundation to wonk out.
as for the other stuff long overdue: marvel sketch cards wont be up for a little bit longer, cause the blanks haven't arrived in the mail yet. kobe stuff is long finished, just havent got around to the post yet cause im living in this loose ends comic. theres a bill murray illo percolating too. have a good one.

loopy b

doodle-type growths form on most of my sketches, especially if theyve been sitting out for awhile. for whatever reason, theyre making it to the final page lately....which i was kinda uneasy about. this sketch below, the top right panel has some dagger eyes , those fell off, but the other doodles mutated.



ERRRRGGGGH!! keeping that top row of figures to scale and consistent did not come easy. i was trying in the first panel to make sonny older and more haggard, the third panel more sunny an fresh faced (and within that, right side innocent, left side an asshole-ish smirk). drawing the skull and eye sockets helped a lot in panel two, i was strugglin there. the sketches, especially with faces, always loose something in ink.

the colors here are place holders, or have a story type purpose. have been planning on red, not this red, just a red and in these spots. in previous pages/posts, i drew and arranged objects that have established colors. the b*dweiser lamp is red, the pool table is green, all recognizable stuff on the wall is red/white/blue. here, there needed to be a thread to connect the "haw!" in panel 3 to the "crash" in panel 4 to the opening of the door in panel 8 (the sliver of door opening makes an exclaimation point). so, theyre all green now, they dont need to be green, just the same. surprises? sonny was just going to turn around drunk and dizzy like in panel 5, but it turned into him drawin imaginary guns wif his fingers. i dunno, i thought it was funny.



sometimes i miss embarassingly obvious stuff. i figured out what lychees and pomegranates were pretty late. theres a police album cover in here, probably one of my all time favorite images, that ive been staring at since i was three. its red digital type on a black background, and in the pencil stage it was inverted and placed on sonnys tee, so the red was ink and that was it. it turns out to be a picture of the bands 3 faces, drawn kinda like "lite brite". maybe cause id seen it so young, it looked before like an alien digital clock, just neat lookin gibberish.
as much as these pages are attempts at cartoony stuff, i might have missed the boat on the jukebox here too. think it wouldve worked if it was jumpin around and animated? size looks like it would be an issue, earlier it (hopefully)worked with this ringing telephone, and drinks hopping around on a tray too. i dunno.
check out this rad Steven Grant column: http://comicbookresources.com/columns/index.cgi?column=pd&article=3019
about (among other things) using tools unique to comics.

Dave Stevens 1955-2008

thanks Dave

go baby

the whole Loose Ends stew has been cooking for awhile. Jason did a first draft of the script....2004 (?), when it was just something him, Rico, and I were batting around, a "someday" project. now that we're actually working from the 2007 draft, one the fun parts for me is going back to pull old doodles off the margins of the original first draft. this page is one of the first scenes that jumped off that draft and has been percolating in my head forever. not much happens, just set-up, but its fun to stretch a moment out on the page. badness is coming, the story is about to go south, so im trying to have a dash of goof-iness in that. theres a scene in "Boogie Nights" that does this great, where Dirk is going to burn a dealer. the fact that this is so stupid, and so dangerous has the tension up at this high level, all the while the dealer is goofy as shit. in his bath-robe and speedos singing along to his "awesome mix tape #8". anyways, that scene is always in the back of my head, this page isnt much like it, but its something to do with giving a character the hiccups. some of the other cartoony elements, like the whirl above sonnys head, is half just to see what happens when Rico gets a hold of them.
Kobe illo's next, but anyways, onto the next page. oh yeah, there'll be a trickle of blood coming out of sonnys nose in panel one, he gets roughed up a page before.

ROBOTS4CHANGE

from last year about this time. i did a warm up drawing of the dalai lama one day at work, then tossed it in a pile of scrap where it sat until David Lomeli, Ace Designer at Upper Deck, decided to salvage it. a few weeks later he'd combined it with his ROBOTS4CHANGE logo and a tag thrown by Scot Reyes, another Upper Deck Legend. its amazing to me they did something so cool with trash, and none of us had to sweat too much. the ROBOTS4CHANGE branding has been fun to mess with, David did all kinds of sweet stickers and colorways, and there's always an excuse to use it- these 3 are from my july 2007 sketchbook. (the kids are working on a joint one for this year)thanks Scot and David!
...congrats and a standing ovation to Rico on that Art Adams piece...kobe bryant and marvel masterpieces still on the way....finishing inks on a loose ends page tonight....

It's Chupa-Clobberin' Time!

Sorry I've been M.I.A. How many blog posts (not just ours) start like that?! Anyway, since I last posted, I got sick, went to Hawaii, and spent many hours coloring this...