Animal Week 2011 # 3: Seals

Arjan chose #5 in his comments. The fifth animal in the book is the seal and DANG that was hard. I won't claim complete failure, but it was nowhere near a success. Today's animal has two because I didn't like the first one and tried another.

It was a lot of time invested int these two little drawings. The initial drawing of the basic shapes went well and I was happy. I'll tell you, though, rendering a mottled, gradiated, subtly shaded and wet furred animal in murky water is difficult (for me at least). The white whiskers were also a pain. That's what I get for letting a Netherlander choose an animal for me ;)



Listening to while posting: "Never Gonna Happen" by Lily Allen

Animal Week 2011 # 2: The Zebra

So, today's drawing is brought to you by Sweet Enemy. She picked it and I'm not sure why. Perhaps because it was really hard. After completing this, I now know why there aren't a great deal of zebra, or zebra-based creatures in comic books. MAN, I'd hate to have to replicate a stripe pattern in panel after panel. So, if you are missing the zebra or zebra-based characters in my work, now you know why. The cool thing about the book I'm using is that when they put eighteen zebras next to each other, you can really see how individual and exquisite the stripe patterns are.

I'm re-learning how to place something in the page when drawing form life or a photo. Our old drawing teacher at MECA, Al Gardener, would joke about students starting on the left and then having to cram the rest of the figure into the right hand side of the page.

With very little more ado, here is a zebra:



Listening to while posting: "La Cosa Mas Chunga" by Modaji on Secret Agent Radio on Soma FM

Animal Week 2011 # 1: The Hippopotamus

I'm the kind of person that needs goals, tangible goals to learn. So, in an effort to improve my drawing skills, particularly in inking and shading, every day this week, I'm doing an animal from Akira Satoh and Kyoko Toda's fantastic book Animal Faces. It's out of print but, a great resource for drawing.

Each drawing will be approximately 3.5" x 3.5", drawn in red pencil and inked with a Pigma Micron. I'll post the image immediately after I finish it take any criticisms you'll dish out and any suggestions you might have; my only stipulation is that you point out one thing that does work.

There are twenty-four animals in the book (with eighteen different portraits) so, if anyone wants to throw out a number between 1 and 24 that isn't 13, that will be the animal for tomorrow.

Here's today's, the Hippopotamus:



listening to while posting: "Tokyo, I'm on My Way" by Puffy AmiYumi (I can't get enough of this song for some reason. It drives Sweet Enemy nuts and I think I'll go upstairs and sing the refrain to her right now!)

Never how it looks in my head

Why is that, anyway?

I did a thumbnail of a spaceport for the upcoming Obscure Tales story that's still in writing stage. The thumbnail led to a 9" x 4" drawing that looked... pretty good. Then, I scanned it and colored it and... I'm not happy with it. I think I need to buckle down, stop making excuses and do some life drawing. Look at how light and shade and reflection play off of different objects. Once the weather turns warmer, I'm hitting B-Ton at night and do some urban landscapes, too.



Listening to while posting: "Ghostwriter" by RJD2

The Big Picutre

So, in my last post I posted a pic of a spaceliner I created, inspired by Jake Parker's Missile Mouse. I mentioned Jake's fantastic cutaways and wasn't sure I could make one. However, last night I had a cup of coffee after dinner (rare occasion) and, since coffee is a creativity fuel, I made one (click to enlarge):



The image is pretty big, but so was the original drawing (almost 11 x 14). The hardest part was reconciling the interior with the pre-designed exterior (the Millennium Falcon Problem). It went pretty well, with only a slight reduction in passenger capacity. I did have to add transferrable water ballast tanks under the passenger compartment to allow for weight and balance. This wouldn't matter if it was a space-only craft, but I wanted it to be atmospheric as well.

So, my first cutaway is, I believe, a success. I'm pretty darn happy with it, actually. What do you think?

Listening to "Zina-Maria" by Gogol Bordello

production design

So, as I said last post, I've been inspired by Jake Parker and his fun Missile Mouse comic. For an upcoming project (guess what), I needed to make a spaceliner. Unlike the inestimable Mr. Parker, I haven't kept up with my spacecraft creation that filled my time in high school, so I had to start small. I started sketching based on a swan-styled spaceliner by the great sci-fi artist Angus McKie (dubbed the Interstellar Queen when it was featured in the great 70s sci-fi book Spacecraft 2000 to 2100AD).

The Interstellar Queen was a huge, long-range liner, but I needed a small medium-range passenger ship. So, rather than being swan-like, I went for a bit more duck-like. I also opted for a smoother, more aerodynamic profile as this would be an atmospheric as well as a spacecraft.



Mr. Parker also creates great cutaways of his great spacecraft. I thought about doing a full schematic, but after painting twenty little seats for a 1/72 plastic model of a Faiery Rotodyne VTOL passenger plane, I couldn't bring myself to draw dozens of identical seats just now. I'll absolutely have to figure out a floor plan later, but for now you will have to make due with a profile:



About the book I mentioned. If you like old-school sci-fi art, pick this book up. ABE Books has some and they start at US$10. WARNING: there is a newer version of the book published a few years ago. DO NOT BUY IT. Instead of the original artwork, the new book features CG rendering of the originals; a pointless and rather insulting thing to do. Compare their version of the Interstellar Queen with McKie's original

The other great one in the series is Spacewrech a great crammed full of really great art. These are also on ABE Books, but only a little more expensive

listening to while posting: "I'm Leaving" by Condo

Happy belated holidays!

To all who read this, whether a regular or not, I hope that your holiday season contained some joy, some mirth, a bit of good food and drink and a heaping helping of happiness.

Sweet Enemy and I got too frazzled to get a tree this year (I haven't found a design job and worked the holiday season at my local, independent toy store. Lots of fun!). So, our resident Yeti, Mr. Philbert Appleshrug generously allowed us to decorate him for the Yuletide. Here he is on Xmas morning:



The two gifts below at his feet were both for S.E. I'd had them kicking around my studio for a while (one since August!). The first she opened was Rocco Vargas: The Dark Forest" by Daneil Torres. I am blessed to have a wife who not only likes sequential art and sci-fi, but likes quirky, retro sequential art and sci-fi! If you also like those things, check Torres out. He's pretty awesome (and Spanish).

Her next gift was Terry Pratchett's latest (and possibly last) Tiffany Aching novel "I Shall Wear Midnight". Now, the thing about these gifts, is that they weren't something that only SE would like (I love Pratchett and I was the one who introduced her to Torres) and that made me feel a bit cheap. However, the true gift was that I did not even open them for a moment before she did; they were wrapped at the store immediately upon purchase. She graciously said that was good enough.

Our families were very generous to us and I, for one, always feel like I didn't deserve such generosity. Thanks guys.

One of the things I got was a gift certificate to my local, independent bookstore. Which I used yesterday to buy Jake Parker's newest Missile Mouse adventure. At times it feels aimed at an audience a bit younger than the first, at other times it doesn't. Throughout, however, Parker's art is solid and sweet. He also includes a "Universe of Missile Mouse" section that showcases his cool schematics and process work from the MM universe.

If you haven't read MM, do so. If you want to win copies of both books AND some ORIGINAL ART(!) hit jake's website for details on how to win.

In Obscure Tales news, AndreZero is working on fleshing out a new story I concepted while drinking an Americano at the bookstore while reading MM (inspiring is another adjective to give to Mr. Parker's work). No date set, but I've already started doing production design. I can't say what it's about, but it will push my abilities, that I'm sure of.

Well, I've got a date to go watch Dr. Who (10th doctor and Martha) with Sweet Enemy. Have I mentioned her awesomeness?