Saturday, November 18, 2006

Illustration Friday : Thanksgiving




Nothing too complicated about this. It's just a turkey some fruit, bread and veggies waiting to be served up on Thursday.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Reading Lists

I read lots of stuff from time to time and the other day, I went through all the books that we placed in the closet (away from the Trio of Destruction). I've pulled out some books to read so there they are on the side bar, my current reading list. Check them out. Right now I'm little more than 1/2 way through with Sphereland and part way through Akira Volume 1.

Deanne reads much more than I do. You'll very rarely see her without a book. Her list of books right now includes 3 from Sue Grafton, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach.

What's Going On

For the last couple days, I've been lettering almost non-stop. I finished the last of the 48 pagers today, so all that is left is whatever corrections that need to be made. I now have time to sit down and flip through the comic books I just received. From Ultimate Comics, I picked up the latest 2 issues of DC's 52 and issue #3 of Frank Cho's Red Sonja comic. In the mail, I received Issue #2 of the Savage Sword of Conan (from 1974) and Essential Conan (Marvel's black and white reprint of the first 25 issues of the Conan the Barbarian comic).

I've been a big fan of the Conan, Red Sonja and Masters of the Universe comics and I've been trying to get as many of the comics as possible. Right now, I have issues 60-200 of the Marvel series (which ran to 275) and about 30 of the various issues of Savage Sword and Conan Saga. The newest stuff (from Dark Horse), I get mainly in collected hardcover form. I'm not a big fan of the mini series although P. Craig Russell's was good. I look forward to reading Tim Truman's mini series as well, I simply waiting for all the issues to come out so I can read it all in one sitting.

I think my run of Red Sonja is mostly complete. I'm not big fan of Dynamite's Red Sonja and their collections of the old material was poor, so I got all the back issues. I think I'm missing the newest Marvel series, but that I can live without. I'm enjoying the Frank Cho written Red Sonja mini series, but the art could be better. The funny thing about the Cho story is it features Sonja versus a cannibal queen and in a bit of creator synergy Tiegre's latest adventure in Warmageddon Quarterly #3 has her taking on a cannibal queen from the Tribe of Drakul.

Speaking of Tiegre, I just sat down to pen her latest adventure for Warmageddon Quarterly Volume 2 Number 1. In this we venture off the coast of the Warmageddon mainland and unto the isle of J'Mekya where we meet Marlee, the Oracle of Pars (along with the other Priestesses of Pars). I finished the overall plot and have written the script for the first 2 pages. I hope to have a working draft of this story before the end of the month, so that the artist can begin work on it. But I also have 36 pages left to ink for WQ#4 and comics to read.

Friday, November 10, 2006

Illustration Friday : Clear



Clear as a crystal .. this one is Deanne's idea. I was thinking about a magnifying glass burning and ant, but she suggested the crystal and the rest is me being a geek.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Zombie King Page #3 : Step 4

And... with the last panel done... This page is set to the side for grayscales. The grays will be added after I've finish inking all the pages, so it will be a while (7 more pages) before you see that. Stay tuned for Step 5.

Friday, November 03, 2006

Zombie King Page #3 : Step 3

Two more panels down and now on to the last panel which just happens to be the first panel.

Illustration Friday : Smoke


This week's Illustration Friday topic is smoke...

Growing up, I think my mother was the only one around that didn't smoke. Now every one in my family that I have contact with has given up smoking (except one uncle). Strange how the time change.

I'll be posting an update to the Zombie King Page later before I finish up the inks.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Zombie King Page #3 : Step 2


For these panels I just grabbed the pen tool and started clicking away. I started with these 2 panels because they were the most simple and the kids are running about. This allowed to get some panels out of the way and still keep an eye on the kids.


For the most part these panels used one pen size for the foreground. The background in the 3 panel is just rectangles set to an angle with 3 different line weights. Now on to the other panels.

Zombie King Page #3 : Step 1

Over the next few weeks, I will be working almost exclusively on Warmageddon stories. With those stories I will be inking, lettering and adding gray tones (grayscaling). The 2 stories are drawn in 2 radically different styles so I thought I would chronicle my work on one page from each story from beginning to end. First up is the Zombie King.

The art for Zombie King is drawn by Grant Perkins (Paradox). Below are the pencils from page 3 of the story. Zombie King was written by Richard Nelson.


Grant has a geometrical drawing style that uses consistent line weights. I've decided to do all my work on this story in Adobe Illustrator. The usual work flow on a page is writing, pencilling, inking, grayscales and lettering. Since I'm working solely in Illustrator and doing all the latter work myself, I've decide to change the work flow to lettering, inking, and then grayscales. Why? Mainly because I can. It really doesn't save any time, but it allow me to get all the lettering out of the way first. So below you can see, the page above with just the lettering and panel borders.

In lettering the page above I used Comicraft fonts. Those font were Astronauts in Trouble (for the captions) and Fighting Words (the zombie balloons). I opted to use a manga-style balloon similar to that used by Nate Piekos on Atland.

That's where I am now with the page. Look for more updates as I reach the next steps.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006