CREW: 21

Consolidation, baby.

Cleaned up the CREW comic page. Check it out!

CREW: page 18

Yikes. I originally cross-hatched a bunch of this, only to learn that it does not fit the style of the comic. At all. What a mess...thanks photoshop! That's about the fourth time I've tried to incorporate cross-hatch work into a major part of the strip, and I fail each time. I'm thinking the explosions needs to be rendered in black, and with a brush as opposed to a pen... seeing how I've written about 17 explosions into the comic so far, I'd better figure it out, and quick.

sketch of the day 2/27

More or less finishing a previous sketch.

CREW: page...20.

The inking is frustrating the ever-living &^%* out of me today. I really would rather go play outside.

Oh and I skipped over pages 18 and 19 because they're both fiery explosion pictures, and I can't even draw fire much less ink it.

sketch of the day 2/26

Another warm-up sketch that ran away with me. I may finish this at some point.

CREW: page 17

Dusted off the pens this evening. It's still weird putting CREW into stark black and white. I prefer seeing things in shades of grey. So to speak.

CREW: inks

Taking the inks this time and putting them into publishing-friendly format. I'm putting together a submissions package for the comic, and from what I understand, creator-owned works kinda need to be fully inked in order to get a sense of what it'll look like when published. Makes sense, of course, but that's a heck of a lot of work I don't want to do.

Insert crying baby sound clip [here].

CREW: super page

This is the fifth page I've put together like this, so that's a good 20 pages worth of material condensed into 1/4th the size of a real comic book. I'm really happy with how it looks though, and I've now got enough material to rework my portfolio, as well as prepare a pitch package for potential publishers' perusal...who will probably pass on my proposal, despite my alliterative prowess.

CREW: 40 + 41

CREW: page 40 pencils

Thank goodness for random branches jutting out of sheer cliff faces. Cartoon casualties would be significantly higher without them.

CREW: page 39 pencils

Experimenting with pencil shading. God help me when I have to ink this.

CREW: page 38 pencils

sketch of the day 2/23

warm up sketch. i need more coffee.

sketch o' the day 2/22

The latest in my "rats with sharp sticks" series. No ferret head this time, though.

evolution

I was working on fitting some new CREW pages into my portfolio, and as an idea I put them into a traditional comic book format, as opposed to the landscape I've been drawing them in. It's cool to see the story unfold in a much more fluid way like this, as opposed to turning each individual page. Also, since I've actually started storyboarding beforehand, this latest part of the story feels a lot more cohesive than my previous work. Part of the learning process I suppose, as I'm learning how to carry a story through several pages as opposed to a couple of panels at a time.

The bad thing about putting 2 original panels to a page? My comic book just went from 40 pages to 20.  Get back to work!  

CREW: page 16

More zombie cuteness.

CREW: page 37 pencils

The rock textures on the cliff were really neat to draw, despite the fact that no such cliffs exist here in Texas. I'm also going to paint the entire background black, to really bring out the individual panels. I'm so daring.

sketch o' the day 2/21

This is how I feel most mornings.

sketch o' the day 2/20

More Redwall sketching. I played around w/ color levels and got a neat ink/parchment effect.

CREW: page 15

more silliness

viva el chulo libre!

el chulo libre!

This is silly...but it made me laugh.

sketch o' the day 2/20

 

Warm up sketch. I'm reading Redwall by Brian Jacques, and this dapper fellow is Cluny the Scourge. There's a color picture of him in the book itself but I didn't like it so I made my own.  The ferret head on a pike is the author's touch, not mine, and yes, it's a kid's book!

CREW: page 36 pencils

I may have been too ambitious with this page. I think I tried to cram too much into it, what with the dialogue, floating panels, and what not. I'm sick, to boot, so today was pure drudgery. Fortunately, I didn't have to worry too much about all the little details, I can just leave those for the inker to do.

Wait a minute. I do all the inking. Crap.

CREW: page 35 pencils

This page was a *@&% nightmare to draw.

CREW: page 14

CREW: page 13

That's right kids, it's inking day. I'll get at least one more page up today.

CREW: page 34 pencils

I scan all my images using a basic 8.5x11 office scanner, and since I draw on 14x17 paper I have to scan if in four separate segments, and then combine the images in Photoshop. I used a filter to darken the pencils a bit this time, and I think it looks pretty cool. These pencils were actually really sloppy, it's about 20 degrees warmer out today than it has been for the past month so I think it's affecting the way the paper takes the pencil. Felt really mushy.

And before you judge me, I actually did have to search online for the Rod Stewart lyrics. One video of his on youtube has 7.5 million views. It's frightening how popular this man is.

CREW: page 12

I am falling in love with black and white. If used properly it's downright gorgeous, and can potentially convey much more than color. Now, I haven't exactly figured out how to use it properly, but, well, I'm tryin'.

more crew pencils

Page 32

coming soon...





sketch o' the day 2/12

New sketch for a book I'm about to dive into, "The Day I Sold My Star Wars Collection." A love letter to the hobby mixed with a coming-of-age tale. Or something like that. Not a kid's book per se, more of an all ages deal that people in their 20s and 30s I think will really like. Will post more sketches as I continue work, I'm really just planning it out in broad strokes at the moment.

CREW: page 11

CREW: page 10

Two things. The first panel, the ladder on the right side, used to extend down the length of the page, overlapping most of the second panel and some of the third. I changed this, and as a result, half the page is kinda blank, and I really didn't want to redraw anything. Second, the third panel is a tricky perspective shot which kind of looked okay in rough pencil form but all the flaws really came out once I inked it. Again, I didn't quite care enough to redraw it, especially since I've got a good feeling that I'll be redrawing these entire pages at some point in the future with the goal of collecting them together to be published.

It's incredibly frustrating to go over these old pencils since the perspectives are all off and they're not very detailed. I wasn't lazy when I drew these (okay maybe I was) but I really just wasn't that good at it at the time, and was still getting a handle on the comic.

sketch o' the day 2/11

The latest and greatest, CREW page 32. At some point I'll get around to posting all the pencils on this site. For now you'll have to wait until I ink them. Which will probably be sometime next February.

sketch o' the day 2/8

This is only a slight exaggeration of my experience with a Jeep.I started out working on a book proper, but then put a black border around this one and I think instead I'll make it more like a comic book, putting everything into panels with text in overlapping boxes and such. I think it would be a lot more fun to read than a "normal" kids book, and certainly a lot more fun to work on. Which is of course the primary deciding factor here.



sketch o' the day 2/7

Jeep: Just Empty Every Pocket.

CREW: page 9

Bam. The last panel suffers from lack of detail in the pile o' guns, which makes inking pretty much random (and thus not very well done). Again these are older pencils I'm inking over, so I'd like to think that as I draw now (working on page 30 today) I'm taking these things into consideration.

CREW: page 8

I was on a roll with the inking today. Once I filter out distractions and I'm sufficiently dialed in, my output is a whole lot better. I think that means I'm actually doing *gasp* work.

CREW: page 7

Man, this inking stuff takes forever. No wonder there's always about 7 guys working on a single comic book issue.

sketch o' the day 2/4

This is actually CREW page 29. I'll be posting all of the pencils shortly, then updating each as I go through and ink them.

why so sad?



 We'll find out soon enough!

sketch o' the day 2/3

I'm planning on coloring this, but figured I'd post it anyhow. I've got an idea for a complete picture, so I'll piece it all together tomorrow.

Crew: page 6

Holy inkwell, Batman. The first panel is a mess, due to experimenting with ink technique, and the fact that I really didn't draw it that well in the first place. The thin line work in the background would be really cool for, say, an old-timey horror comic, but it's not really the vibe of this book. The characters would have to be drawn much more different for them to "fit" with this kind of setting.

snow in texas...

...means no internet. or electricity, for that matter. hello, 19th century.

Here's a cover I did for next month's "Adventurist Monthly". Okay, I made that up. But it looks like it could be real.

CREW: page 5