Writer's Block...

Sooooo... at first I was going to make a blog post about my interview with Eblisun Grun over at Outside the Cube (that you can find here), but I felt that was too self congratulatory. Then I considered talking about the Man of Steel movie, but everyone seems to be doing that and there are still those who have not seen it. Friday, I got my new fancy schmancy business cards in the mail (that you can see the artwork for above) and I thoughts to myself “that would be a good topic”, but it would be rather dull and short, so that wasn’t an option.

Really it’s strange for me to not have anything to talk about because I’m usually so chatty. I talked to someone for two whole hours on Sunday about the innovative way I am going to show what Carla is thinking in my comic that I came up with this weekend and yet I am drawing a blank for my blog! Now I am starting to worry if this is what writer’s block feels like?! Maybe I have that now!! I hope it doesn’t carry over to artist’s block, that would be horrible as I have so many drawings and pages I want to finish. I was hoping to start inking my pages in the next couple of weeks, so I really can’t afford that!

All right, I’m going to go try and cure my writer’s block and hopefully I will be back on later with something cool and/or profound to say. Until that time I just want to welcome any new readers to my blog and let them know that this usually never happens and I will try and come up with something for later in the week. Until then here is the art from my business cards :)

Derby de los Muertos!

Welcome to my newest blog post! I am probably going to get yelled at for this drawing by my friend Jill, who was on my ass to draw up a roller derby poster for her league a couple of years ago and I never really did. I had an idea for a zombie marathon issue of Carla Calaveras, where Carla has to basically run an entire marathon while killing all the zombies participating but then those jerkwads killed and injured all those people in the Boston Marathon and then my idea wasn’t as funny. One of the appeals of horror is that we can laugh at our own mortality and it helps us cope with tragedy and death in the real world but unfortunately, the line between reality and horror blurs.

Enough with the soapbox! I really like how this piece turned out, I have an opportunity to display some art at a coffee shop and I think this will be one of them. I put it in Spanish because I thought it looked cooler but I did make a mistake on it, “1ra” (primera) should be “1ro” (primero). I plan on coloring and relettering it, so I will fix it then. I think I will sell the colored version as prints for $10 or $15. The original will be for sale at the coffee shop for $100 (sorry but the typo is pretty much on there for good).

Here are some more character designs from my comic book. Clockwise from left is Carla's Aunt Ana Maria, then her Uncle Miguel (Tio Feo), Tia Sofia (Tio Frio's wife) and finally Carla's Grandfather (Abuelo).

The design for Aunt Ana Maria is a bit of a funny one. I was having a bit of a block on her design and put her on a back burner. The other day I went to lunch, opened my sketchbook to draw and found a post-it note with a drawing of her on it. I suddenly remembered that I had a dream about a girl wearing a hat with big curly hair underneath it. I woke up and drew it onto a post-it, put it into my sketchbook, then put the sketchbook into my bag and went to sleep. Love it when that happens!

Anyways, enjoy!

A Perfect Storm

Here is a post about acting! Portraying drama in art, comics, film etc... I am not posting a drawing of mine this time but a screen cap that was released for the new Superman movie coming out soon. I really got all giddy when I saw this photo and I will tell you why: look at Michael Shannon’s hand that I have circled, do you see it? Michael Shannon can say more with one hand than some people can say using their entire bodies their whole careers (I’m looking at you January Jones)!

The positioning of this hand conveys strength and rage, what sort of hell is General Zod preparing to unleash?! The back of the hand lined up with the wrist and forearm gives us a stoic strength. The splayed, clenched fingers give us the rage and a sense of danger. The fingers are like a wolf’s teeth being bared in the shape they form. This is a classic villain pose that is often attempted but most often never achieved to this level. I really think that because it is the trailing hand doing this pose that makes it even more effective, it’s not in front of his face grabbing some imaginary squishy stress relief ball like most people draw or perform with. I mean really, the main focus is on Michael Shannon’s face in this picture, but that hand is what really caught my attention, subtle yet effective.

Actors, directors, comic artists, and anyone else who is trying to communicate emotion and drama need to study things like this. Not just rage, but the full gamut of emotion and the other parts and shapes of the body other than the face. Just the other day I was working on a panel where one of the character was afraid and I thought that it was a bit over-the-top, but then I realized that I was using not only the character’s facial expression, but his posture and body language as well as the camera angle, it was like a “perfect storm” of emotion and it made the panel a lot more powerful than the rest of the page (even though the character was just standing there). I decided to rework some of the rest of the page to make the other panels more dramatic so that the panel in question won’t look so over-dramatic.

Well, got to say that the picture below has already made Man of Steel earn my ten bucks, so I will definitely go see it. Michael Shannon has become a draw actor for me (as in “his presence draws me to watch what ever he is in”), same with Dinklage.

I will post soon with some more art and another rant about stuff in a couple of days! See ya all soon!

Feets!

Here are some pages out of my sketchbook. The first one is a study for Carla’s feet, with and without shoes. Feet are weird and fun to draw, they have to ground the character and can be expressive as well. I love drawing shoes as well, the variations and character are very fun and can add quite a lot to the drawing. As with all my characters I am making a style guide that will determine the range of wardrobe the characters wear.

The other page is a variation of lighting styles for Carla. I plan on using a variety of dramatic lighting and colors for my comic to help better tell the story. I want a cinematic feel to my stories, like the reader is watching a scary movie. I have noticed that the new Scooby Doo cartoon does this and it is quite effective (even though the whole color palette is a bit over-saturated for my tastes).

A rose by any other name...

I am still rather giggly on the inside over the BigWow comic convention. There were some huge names there (Adam Hughes, Frank Cho, Humberto Ramos, Terry and Rachel Dodson) and I got some very positive feedback on my art and more importantly my comic idea and business model on how I am going to pitch it to the publishers.

I sat in on a panel for Latinos in comics and while the panel focused on artists talking about what it was like to work in comics as Latinos, it was taken over midway by the question of a lack of representation that Latino comic fans feel in superhero comics. Sergio Aragones (Creator of Groo the Wanderer and Mad Magazine cartoonist) said that the wide diversity of Latinos all over the world makes this difficult, Latinos in Los Angeles have different problems than Latinos in Mexico City and Latinos in Mexico City have different problems in Bolivia, etc... He went on to talk about the importance of good writing versus just pandering to Latino comic fans. The audience seemed a little disheartened at his answer but I thought it was right on the money.

I want my comic to have a broad appeal not because she happens to be Latino or a girl, but because she is an awesome character with compelling and fun stories that people want to read. More importantly, stories that I want to read and make. The idea that there is a huge desire for superheroes that the Latino population can call their own was exciting for me. I would be an idiot to not bring this up when I pitch my comic but marketing towards a demographic is for the ad-wizards, I want to make awesome comics.

Francisco Herrera and Humberto Ramos (the artist for Spider-Man) both seemed to really like my designs and the overall concept of my comic, but I was also encouraged by the number of others that showed great interest from the audience of the panel. One guy said to me “this is exactly what I am looking for”. He had this look of gratitude and excitement on his face and that inspired me more so than anything else I think. This comic has developed a life of it’s own and it feels now that  the story is telling itself.

Anyhow, below is a drawing out of my sketchbook of Carla that I will probably use in some form or another for a cover. I will eventually play around with angles and poses to come up with the most exciting version.

Laziness Pays Off Sometimes...

I went to the BigWow Comic convention this weekend (more on that later) and was basically in need of some business cards, my old cards have outdated info on them so I ended up giving out the small drawing sheets I printed up for Free Comic Book Day and ended up running out! So I decided it’s time for a new business card, I need to get them soon because I will need them for the Latino Comic Expo in June.

While at BigWow, I sat in on Frank Cho’s figure drawing demo as I love his work and it’s always quite amusing. Ivy Doomkitty was the model and was having wardrobe difficulties so she ended up being about a half an hour late. Normally people would complain in that situation, but Frank decided to work on one of his pages for X-men while we waited and we got to watch him draw and ink his pages. His pencils were really rough with not a lot of detail. He explained that it saves a lot of time doing this and that his pencils are just loose guides, so I decided to try it.

For my business card design I did an homage (Artist speak for ripping off) of a classic Tales from the Crypt comic cover by Jack Davis. I drew one of these a while back but I have changed my character designs and coloring technique since then so I started fresh. Below is the pencils which I transferred to Bristol board as well as the inks so you all can see what I started with and what I ended up with. Frank was right that it does save a lot of time.

I will talk more about BigWow in my next entry, check back in a couple of days.

More Colors!

Hey all, it’s me again with another color test for Carla. This time I played around a little with lighting effects, warm background with a cool foreground. I also added Chopper to this drawing (Carla’s favorite machete...hey, a girl has to accessorize...). I gave Chopper a course metal texture as well as some blood splatter in photoshop which I think adds a lot of character to the machete.

Carla Color Test

Here is what Carla looks like when she is powered up. Most hunters are going to be unique patterns, Carla has a rose and thorns theme. I may add some vines with thorns wrapping around her arms but haven't decided yet. All in all I am really happy with the colors. Carla's hair is going to be a neutral black but will be colored as a dark grey (as will blood related Calaveras', it will be a dominant trait). Same with her shirt, it's black but colored as a dark grey, never go full black as it will appear as just a blob in your drawing.

Carla Calaveras

Here is my character design for Carla, the title character and protagonist from my comic that I am making. Carla is a 16 year old monster hunter, she is brave, smart, cool under pressure and sarcastic (all qualities I admire). I want my characters to be well rounded and realistic so I try to avoid pitfalls and stereotypes. Carla is tall and skinny, but I made sure to not just give her twig legs. The legs are in fact long and skinny, but I pay attention to add shape as well.

I love the picture in the corner of Carla crying, I think it adds a lot to her. Something I want to explore is the depiction of crying in my comic and all the range of crying that exists. Crying for loss, crying because you fail, crying because you are happy or relieved, crying because you just can't fucking take it any more, crying because you were rejected and many many more reasons... all of these should look different from each other. So the question you should ask is not "how does my character look like when he/she is crying?" but "what is my character crying ABOUT? and what does that look like?" because it does matter.

P.S. - I would tell you what she is crying about in this particular picture but...spoilers, so no.

Tio Diablo (Regular Version)

Here are my character designs for Carla’s Uncle Eddie or “Tio Diablo” as he is affectionately called by Carla. The character went through a few different design stages before I was finally happy with this version. He’s a bit of a rock star so I wanted to give him sort of a Dave Navarro/ Dweezil Zappa look (but a little more subdued). I am spending a lot of time developing the characters and I think that it’s going to pay off in the long run. The same goes for clothing, each character is going to basically have a style guide and have different clothes and outfits but they will keep within a certain range.

Tio Diablo is physically built like Carla’s dad, but will have a different silhouette with his hair, clothing, posture etc.. I plan to have family resemblances through out all the characters without falling into the trap of making them all look alike. I plan to give Diablo some tattoos, but have yet to come up with anything concrete. I like the idea of all three uncles and Carla’s aunt having some tattoo that they all got when their brother (Carla’s dad) died as a tribute.

All in all when it comes to character design, I must stress patience. Don’t force a character to happen or settle on a design that is “good enough”. I drew several face shapes for diablo before I found the right one, some were round, some were long. Experiment with it until the character fits, you will be glad in the long run.

Tio Frio!

Here is my character reference I drew for my comic I am working on. His name is Alfredo Calaveras but Carla calls him "Tio Frio" because of his ice powers. The character is a cool vato into hot rods so I went with a cholo/rockabilly theme with him. This is the version of him when he is not powered up (I'm going to do some more action poses later on so I will post those in full color).

No More Backgrounds!!!

Here are some environmental sketches that I did last weekend. I am no longer referring to the sets as “Backgrounds” because it gives the wrong connotation. If I want my comics to be more realistic then my characters need to be within a living and breathing world, interacting with that environment. “Background” is a secondary thought to the environment, my sets should have more importance than that if I want to grow as a storyteller.

I found a blog called urbansketchers.org and it inspired me to improve this shortfall of mine. Expect a lot more of these in the future.

Iron Man!

Here is an Iron Man drawing I did for my buddy Tom. I wanted to draw the old school 70's armor (which was quite fun). Mostly warm and cool grey copics and some pen work afterwards.

Schedule has been crazy as of late, but I am trying to force myself to draw more :)