storyboarding 2

my cubicle neighbor vince white is a graphic designer who has worked in the comic book industry and is always thinking of a project or two that could be his triumphant return. one character he created that i responded to was will power, a high school football player who is transported to the future, where he realizes his body is ultra dense and indestructible compared to other matter.

a comic fan myself, i often serve as a sounding board for vince's endless ideas and revisions. in this case, i took it upon myself to draw a storyboard of how i saw will power's origin being presented.

storyboarding 1

at times during my IT career, desperate measures must be taken to fill the gaps in workflow. one way to kill a good chunk of hours is to write something, and i couple of times i've tried my hand at a long form comic book script. this page is a practice run of how the storytelling would move forward, if not the exact layout or style.

this was an idea my work friend vince white and i used to chat about. it takes place in a world where countries are represented by single warriors rather than whole military forces, and special ops teams would hunt down the runner in a high-stakes game of capture the flag that would determine the outcome of each war.

family matters

i was confused about the chronology of this one but i think i have it figured out now. you can see the date has been changed - i think because i had dated it retroactively in january 2008, forgetting that the previous month had occured in 2007. it makes sense because that's the year that steve, carly and the twins (pictured) were in town for xmas.

while they were here, we saw steve play in a soccer game with his old teammates, hence the outfit and juggling. what we did not see was laura doing a skateboard trick. artistic license, i guess. maybe that was around the time i first got my hands on "skate" for xbox 360.

mom and dad make a rare appearance here as well. what's more predictable is that something normal (like baby nephews) made me think of something nerdy to draw (like robot suits inspired by a half-remembered arcade game from the pizza hut by my house as a kid).

thanks a lot, brain.

grabby

i don't now why i wrote "cripple" on this. maybe my hand hurt that day. maybe trying to draw without thinking caused a side effect of writing without thinking.

what i like about these contour drawings is that the proportions come out exaggerated. look how the thumb sticks way out and the wrist is so thin by comparison. if i'd tried to do that on purpose, it would have come out looking forced.

a bird in the hand

it's so annoying when you're trying to draw someone but they keep moving.

self-portrait

i'd say somewhere around 75% of everything i draw is of myself. that either makes me self-centered or introspective, depending on how big a jerk you are.

i like to experiment with this style every once in a while. i consider it contour drawing even though i use a little shading. the idea is to just put pen to paper and draw continuously without planning. you end up with something more abstract, less conscious and often pretty interesting, like a kid's drawing.

it's also a great excuse for when you've screwed up the proportions.

the lettering works the same way: just keep scribbling the next letter without giving yourself a chance to make it neat or uniform. it can be helpful to learn how to just follow your instincts.

transform and chill out

more transformers, this time drawn from memory of the old cartoon series. you can see i was not confident in drawing of megatron's helmet. i probably had to google some images after i'd done a couple of these.

to do: ignore to do list

one thing i really envy is the ability to draw technology well. some people can just make up realistic (or futuristic) creases and joints and tubes for tech drawings all day long. my robots always turn out looking very clunky and simple. in fact, the "transformers" doodle in the center looks like it was probably photo referenced (movie version), cause i never would have thought of anything as cool as car door shoulder-blades.

the close-up is clearly freehand, though. not only could i not figure out how to make a face look robotic, but i struggled with shading it up the middle, too.

predator is looking fine, though. the hardest part of drawing him is conveying the netting in his costume without letting those lines dominate or read too heavy. medium success here.

from the looks of this comic, i'd given up a few months later.

see reverse

i broke one of my cardinal rules with this one by using the back of another doodle page (you can see the doodles from last post coming through) - further evidence that as time moves on, i grow more and more willing to waste space (read: trees). sorry, earth - i'll try to get more on a page from now on.

i've deviated from my usual comic strip style here, which is also rare. a good rule of thumb: if i've used much hatching, it's more of a "sketch" than a "doodle." doodles account for a far greater percentage of my drawing. i don't know where these bears came from either, they don't look much like anything i've drawn in a while.

also, if you look even a little bit close, you will probably find some careless errors in my math. i'm certainly not going to check, though.

inauguration

ah, the inaugural doodle post. here are a few really old notepad pages i found in my desk. i guess back then, i was just doodling right on my work-related "to do" lists. it seems i've grown more wasteful, as my more recent doodles tend to be found on otherwise clean pages.

and what do we have? looks like hurley from "LOST" makes an appearance, most likely following the claudio sanchez (from the band "coheed and cambria") in the bottom left, their common haircut serving as an obvious segway.

there's a cylon from "battlestar galactica" up there, or part of one anyway. i guess that means i first gave the miniseries a chance 2 years ago. it took another viewing many months later to get me interested in moving on to the series.

i see that i briefly revisited former territory with that graffiti squiggle. very reminiscent of some of the things i used to do in my VCU sketchbook - and one of the few strokes of color viewers are likely to ever see on this blog.

and lastly, it took me several minutes to figure it out, but at the bottom center - a shoelace tied in a knot.