shiny

i doodled iron man this morning so i could test out a coloring idea i had, a way to solve the problem of a character holding or charging a fireball of some kind. i was trying to decide whether i should show the lines behind the hands that are creating the power, whether to color the outlines, whether to shade the surfaces and so on.


my coworker vince also gave me a little tutorial on using inner glows and gradient layers to emphasize the shine of the armor.


after all was said and done, i decided that the motion lines didn't really match then tone, and really they were redundant.

just noticed: this pose could be either flying or crouching.

thin lines

last night, i met my friend todd webb (a prolific local comic book creator & musician) at a coffee shop by my house for a doodlers' support group. i got to see and hear a lot of great stuff related to freelance comics.

we also doodled. i'd left my usual doodling implements at work, so on the way out the door i grabbed a micron pen left over from my days of obsession with drawing in ever-thinner lines, and soon it all came rolling back. it is hard to resist hatching everything to death when provided with the opportunity to draw impossibly small.

along with appearances from notepad staples like iron man and undiscernable ninja turtle #1, i also produced some todd webb fanart in the form of a space captain from the forthcoming "kites" graphic novel. i got to hold the original pages in my hands last night, and i couldn't be more excited for the final product.

doodles assemble!

i've been reading a lot of avengers comics recently, so today i felt like drawing iron man. i've tackled him before, but i feel like i've come a long way since then, so i referenced this on frank cho's work on "mighty avengers." and of course, nobody can stop drawing their favorite characters with skrull chins ever since "secret invasion" starting coming out. i also threw in a dash of wonder man, to taste.


i hadn't realized just how little yellow iron man has in his costume these days.

i wanted to pit iron man against a hulked-out skrull in iron man guise, but i went with purple (classic skrull) so it wouldn't be so boring to color.

bits of 'bots

clearly i went to the movies this weekend:

this is the best i could do to simply the terminator design into doodle form. i felt like if i shed any more detail, it would start be really unrecognizable.


i really wanted to see more of the rubber-skinned T-600s in the new terminator installment, but they only really showed up with their faces already blown out. after hunting shadowy screencaps online, i remembered that i have a mini-figure from 7-11 right on my desk, 16 inches from my face.

fixed.

here, finally, is an updated and accurate costume study of eric bana's "nero" from the new star trek. if i ever draw nero again, it will be based on this design, but why would i?

drab clothing attack

so yesterday i realized that the reason i hadn't found any really good photo references for eric bana's character in the new star trek movie is that i remembered his name wrong. so this time around i had a better idea of what my subjects look like. nemo is the bulky one on the left:

"what they look like" is drab. the romulan costumes are long black jackets and black clothes. i adjusted the colors to suit my own purposes, so it wouldn't just look like a big black blob:

the brown beard layer was conflicting with the shading a bit, so i just made it a black beard at 40% opacity. still reads well enough as stubble, i think.

i wanted to include the other crew members, but a kirk/spock battle with romulans makes the most sense (and is in continuity). so, there might be yet another color doodle of the star trek crew forthcoming.

killing klingons

as promised, a star trek action shot:

i had been planning to have them fight nero or just some generic romulans, but then i realized they'd look too similar to spock. i changed it to a klingon at the last minute, and quickly realized i didn't have the first idea how a klingon dresses. the main reference i used ended up not being very good, so a had to change it some in photoshop, and it's probably still not that accurate.

i also realize that young kirk and spock probably never battled klingons that looked like this, but i wasn't about to bother drawing a klingon that just looked human. it's also possible that they never impaled anyone with spears, either.


again, a lot of black areas that hide all the work i put in to shade them. when i started drawing this klingon uniform, i thought the arms and boots were going to be metallic blue, then i realized that the image i found on google was an obscure take.

i actually kinda like how the costume turned out, even if it isn't accurate. it's always hard to refine a detailed outfit into my simple cartoon style, hard to know what aspects best convey the theme and what can be edited out.

it's also hard to decide how to draw a character whose costume has changed time and time again over the last several decades. not only do you have to decide which one is associated with the character, but the photo references you use won't necessarily match. i need to learn to exercise more artistic license.

is it silly that the whole reason i bothered to color this is that i wanted to see my kirk and spock in plain yellow and blue shirts?

nero

yesterday i was working on a caricature of nero from the new star trek , and i came to the conclusion that i need to exclude a few key identifiers for black and white ink drawings:
1) facial tattoos. eh, they were stupid in the first place.
2) facial scars. as black marks, you can't tell what they are.
3) beard stubble. tough call, cause without it he looks like any other romulan.


a couple of these can be solved in the coloring phase (when applicable). i like the bottom right version best, where i changed the color of the scar lines and filled in a beard shape with a multiply layer.

now i just need to draw him beating the snot out of spock.

UPDATE 05.21.09:
so, there was a good reason why i had so much trouble finding photo references for eric bana's "nemo"; that wasn't his character's name. it's friggin' NERO. i have shamed myself.

BOLDLY go.

working out some star trek character models here. for some reason scotty was hard to nail down (i've de-emphasized the worst ones); i guess i felt compelled to distinguish him in particular with something more than just his haircut. ahh, drawing.

in hindsight, darkening the black clothes in ink was clearly a mistake. i need to get over that habit.

getting pumped to draw these guys in full-color action.

P.S. great movie.

momday 2009

so i drew a comic last friday as a mother's day gift. it's weird to design a character with whom you're already so familiar.


i actually based the final design more on a doodle i remembered posting on the blog than the preparation i did that day. and since the comic involved my mom's second life alter-ego, "thunder," i thought i could use some practice doodling generic females (not my strong suit, as i've mentioned).


and finally i got to work on the comic, starting in pencil and inking panels as i went along.


final product:
inks
colors

weapon x

i've already invested a lot of time discussing it, but i thought the wolverine movie was a lot of fun. the best part: getting to see the different weapon x characters. i drew some.

tried a different scanner today but it didn't help with the smudging, so i adjusted the contrast in photoshop.

process

a little bit more of my process:

the scanner i've been using is always a little smudgy.


so my friend vince, a graphic designer at work, showed me a trick to solidify the black. it changes the effect of the line art, but i went ahead with it as an experiment.


flat colors.


one layer of shading.


and finally with a second layer of shading.

note: this is actually a marvel universe wolverine costume vs. an ultimate universe cyclops costume.