ENJP 2011!

Woo hoo! Up pretty late (0115 EST). Feeling good, but shouldn't have had coffee after dinner. I make GOOD coffee, so I'm still feeling it.

Anyhoo. I was jazzed up, so I drew, inked and colored a new version of the Evil Nazi Jetpack Penguin! I've been thinking that the first two words are sort of redundant. But, it just rolls of the tongue better (looks like Mr. Eastman was on to something!)



It's almost an improvement meme if you look at the original version from Feb 2007. If I didn't already tell the story, it was done for a "Monster Of The Week" series I did for a co-worker at my last design job. :



Then came this guy from 2008. Now, I think "Ewwwww!":



I think I needed the improvement meme thing. I've been down in the dumps from the lack of design job callbacks. Oh, well, at least I've got some evil penguins

Listening to while posting: "Do What You Want" by OKGO. In my head actually. I watched the video twice today for some reason. OKGO is my guilty pleasure. I'll have to go see Devotchka next week to gain back my indie cred ;)

Righting a great wrong

So, I seem to have preempted Swinebread's comments about the guards in panel two (they are walking in different directions). Almost as soon as I'd finished this, I was unhappy with it. I rushed it at every point; pencil, ink, color. The only thing that worked well, was the layout (and this worked because I'd taking time to work the layout).

So, I've started again. Taking my time, shooting digital photo references and generally treating this whole page as a lesson. And, I stared with the escort:



They still look a bit like they're walking in different directions, but it still works better overall. I was trying to avoid them pointing in the exact same direction and becoming static.

As far as the style is concerned, I'm going to try the clearline style with color and local color shading e rather than the classic comic book ink shading. Let's see how it works. I'll probably hate it tomorrow and re-do it AGAIN. I'll post the entire page in a day or so, but I really needed to do this right away for my own peace of mind.

Storywise, I'm actually going to try to collaborate with a (nearly published) writer friend. This may not be up her alley, but she's willing to try. I need her because, while I've got the overall story and setup, I've gotten stuck in a character motivation towards the climax.

Listening to while posting: "Sunny" by Jason "Lefty" Williams (Lefty is a one-handed guitar player. He's only got one hand! He's also a really nice guy, too

mini-sketch dump

Almost done with this sketchbook; one page to go!

As I've mentioned, I do a 'monster a week' for a co-worker. The Friday before last,much to my dismay, I missed one. So, this week I did her a double and it turned out to be a pretty cliche monster, but with scary potential. It would either make a good old-school slasher flick or a good story in 'Creepy' or 'Tales from the Crypt' comics



Zeke and Obed: Conjoined Twin Hillbilly Cannibal Serial Killers! Scary, no?

Less scary is another sketch of Jean d'Arc as a lamb. I think it would make a pretty good comic in the visual vein of Blacksad (not the visual skill, though). Here is young Jean as she first receives her 'vision'.




Listening to while posting: "Big Beautiful Spoon" by Poi Dog Pondering from 'Thinking like a mountain and wishing like the sea"

ENJP!

So.

Comments are dwindling.

Maybe a giant-size pull-out from the Evil Nazi Jetpack Penguins cover will help.

And if not, it was a real learning experience to do it. Fully hand-inked it's about 8" tall in RL. Photoshop (over)colored.



pax.

Anybody gonna try a Bourble this weekend?

listening to while posting: "They Got Lost" by They Might Be Giants from the album They Got Lost

Weekly Challenge: Spooktacular

So, here's my entry for the Weekly Challenge at Ben Caldwell's site.

This is both a quickie and an expansion of an older work. It is expanded off of a tiny drawing I did for a workmate (I've been drawing her a 'weekly monster' for about 8 months). At the time, she'd said it was the very creepy. This may be the grossest thing I've drawn since this.

It felt a bit weird to do, but I think that unreal things (like abulatory, blade-weilding teddies) are scary in a different way than, say, characters from a Rob Zombie film . An unreal evil, you can imagine what it'd be like, but in your heart you know it isn't a real threat. The new 'gorenography' films portray ordinary-looking people doing nasty things. It's too easy to believe that such things can happen in real life.

That's why I'd do an abulatory, blade-weilding teddy leaving bloody footprints, but never, ever a regular guy in jeans and a t-shit. Call me a wimp, but it creeps me out to even imagine drawing that scene...

The work itself was a quickie because I did the final pencil in my sketchbook at lunch, inked it at home with an 01 Micron. Since my scanner is down (stupid ac adapter, breaks after 7 years of being dropped over and over!), I had to photograph it with a very old digital camera.

I'm still not great at coloring. I'm still concentrating on growing my linework skills right now, so this will have to do for the moment.

So... BOO!



Also, last weekend the art supply store (with no website) that my wife (STILL FEELS WEIRD!) assistant manages hosted 24 Hour Comics Day! I'd suggested it as a good thing for the store to do, especially as the nearest one was being hosted +60 miles away. We had 11 participants including three kids. It was... not easy. It was, however, fun. Fun in that, "this is my first mountain bike race in a decade" sort of fun. I managed 11 pages and that was average for the group. The only one to complete 24 was a retired art teacher/professional cartoonist.

So, want to see what I look like? The local weekly paper Seven Days (a cool, free paper that does real news and actually has well-written articles) has a video blog and the video-blogger-girl stopped by around midnight, I think? We were all pretty loopy by then. I'm the guy who uses the phrase "It sounds cheesy". Yup, that's me.

The work is... not bad. Not great, but not bad. Worth expanding into a real story (that someone else needs to script. Anybody?).

listening to while posting: "The World is a Very Scary Place" by The Gothic Archies from 'The Tragic Treasury'. Funny how apropos that is...