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Comic convention this weekend (more on that later) and was basically in need of some business cards, my old cards have outdated info on them so I ended up giving out the small drawing sheets I printed up for Free Comic Book Day and ended up running out!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.