Thumbnails and Plotting

Here are the thumbnails for the first four pages for my comic Carla Calaveras, the short story is called "The Preview of Doom!!" and is going to probably be somewhere between 8-12 pages. This is something I want to showoff the character as sort of a pitch piece to publishers and potential readers.

The thumbnails are pretty much my writing method, I draw the pictures then write notes on the side as to what is going on. I don't usually write scripts and have no dialogue written out yet (that's usually last) but I'm sure the dialogue will be quite clever what ever it turns out to be :)

I have more thumbs drawn up and will post them four at a time.

Carla Re-Design

Here is the redesign of an original character that I am working on again. I love the character and the world that I was creating for her, so I thought I would take another swing at it. The original pages were stolen a few months back as well as a bunch of the original source material that I had been working on.

(P)imp

I think that Peter Dinklage is awesome. He really makes Game of Thrones a truly fun show to watch. Here is a scan out of my sketchbook for an idea I have for a Tyrion Lannister pin-up that I think would be pretty cool. I may not get to it right away as I am anxious to get some sequential pages done, but this is definitley one I plan on doing.

Post Artum Depression...

Well, I finished my Si'nbad art last night (a bit earlier than expected). I really must say that it turned out way better than I was picturing it in my head. I posted the direct scan with no touch ups (warts and all) and am quite happy with it. The only real downside at this point is that I don't know what to draw next. I am thinking Red Sonja, Dejah Thoris or Shanna the She Devil (I really want to go with a scantily clad, sword wielding bad-ass women with possibly a dinosaur, alien or monster in the back ground).

Details about the artwork: 11"x 17" on Strathmore 500 using copic markers and black colored pencil.

Inappropriate Mother's Day Card...

Well Mother’s Day is approaching and here is my idea for the card I may make for my mom. I am on the fence about giving it to her as she doesn’t always appreciate my sense of humor (especially on holidays). The up side is that her reaction would be priceless...

Boring post #2: Line work

I went ahead and scanned in the line work for my drawing just to show you all the process that I have developed (and by that I mean “stolen from other artists”). When I transfer the art, the initial lines are very simple and minimal. I don’t want too much detail because I want some freedom to draw and shade in the marker phase of the illustration. I also am not worried about the quality of the lines at this point, they are boring and “flat” looking. I will add varied line thickness and depth once all the shading is done.

I will start shading the face first. This is the most important part of the drawing and if I mess it up or I don’t like it for what ever reason, I can start over without having invested a lot of time on other parts of the drawing.

Tight Pencils

Hey hey! So here are the tight pencils for my Si’nbad pin-up. I fixed a lot of the stuff that I was not happy with and added more details on the costume. I normally don’t take the pencils this finished but I wanted to have something a little more polished to give to my model for helping me out.

The next step is to light box the art on to bristol board using a fine point liner pen (I use the copic liners because they seem to hold up nicely to the copic markers and don’t smudge). The liner pen stage won’t be as detailed because I want to have some freedom with the markers when I get to that stage.