The Curse of the Eel chapter 2 inks and cover

It has been a long LONG week. After having finished up my final quarter at SCAD, I had but a few weeks to prepare new works for Heroes Con. Sure I've drawn and printed a bunch of comics since last Heroes, but nothing super recent. Wings of Irene is from December 2013 and the Looming Deadline wasn't super substantial, so I really wanted to put out a nice fat book to celebrate my freedom from school. So I completed chapter 2 of my thesis comic, which took me about 5 days after classes were over to finish penciling (which is slow for me) and last week at this time, I was sitting down to ink it. I finished inking the 20th and final page early this morning. And I whipped up probably the best cover I've ever made in about an hour or two. I am running on pure comics enthusiasm. I missed having this kind of imposing deadline and the drive to put out a book for no other reason than I have something I want to tell.

This story, if you've read this far into this pretty nonsensical post, is the continuation of the story from the first chapter, about a goth girl named Connie who has summoned her own Eldritch style Eel god. But now what? I guess still go to school, because you have to. This chapter was a lot of fun and a great test for how I draw environments. The first chapter was mainly forest and a trashy old hillbilly house, not much to really do with perspective or drawing buildings and such. This chapter was fun in that it posed some interesting challenges like "now that I've established this way of inking, how do I ink a bus? Or a school? Or lockers, cuz there are a TON of lockers in this comic. Granted, I don't hit every note perfectly, but honestly that's not important anymore. Comics are about fun and expression again, so when you look at these, I hope you can feel the mood or the feeling I tried to convey and weren't just looking for tangents.

I think I did hit the right notes in my character acting in this chapter. I also found the opportunity to use body language and not just faces to really help sell my ideas and I think they came out great! I sure hope I can get this book by Heroes Con so I can share it with anyone who reads this post! The book will be 40 pages of story with the color cover above. i think it's gonna be a nice little book to own! This is also the comic where I made the switch over to Stillman and Birn Beta watercolor paper. Its surface is so much more fun to draw on and more resilient than the bristol boards I've used in the past. Even the cover was inked on Alpha, which is the thinner vellum paper and it looks gorgeous. Even on 400 series bristol, the page would have warped into annoyingly hard to scan shapes, not to mention it fights me with every stroke. It's important to find the tools that make you as creative as possible.

The Feat of Nobody, Inks

 

 

 

 

Update: I added the last two pages, I figure it should be fine since the lettered and colored files are what people would see if they got the anthology. So here are the completed inks.

The Feat of Nobody is completely inked, although I don't think I have permission to post up the lettered files, so unfortunately this will have to do until I know 100% what's okay. I will have this available as a printed book at the upcoming mini comics convention: Fluke.

For these pages I used my Raphael brush and my china marker for a lot of the rendering. Going forward I think I'm gonna go easier on the china marker. I just really wanted to push it on this comic, mainly spurred on by the rendering in Stuart Immonen's art in Superman: Secret Identity, which is probably one of my favorite comics ever. I thought approaching this comic with that tool would help bring some texture and grit to this western.

I don't think I'll ever be 100% satisfied with the work I do, but I feel like I've leveled up in some ways but I'm really lacking in inking in others. I can't wait to get to the next project though. With school starting tomorrow I hope to update more frequently with both comic pages and sketches. Thanks for reading!

Calla of the Sea Cover Colored

The cover has been colored. I have to state again, color is not my strong suit and I struggle against it constantly, but I did my best to convey the idea of the comic without over-rendering it or just losing any sense of subtlety.

Also, super thanks to my friend Melody Ledford who created the brush I used to get the lighting and shadow effects. She used it on her art better than I did, but it sure did make conveying different layers of depth a whole lot easier. Check out her art at: http://sheet-music-melodies.tumblr.com/

Now to head home and get this thing into a pdf!

UPDATE: Added the file with the title and my name.

Calla of the City Cover Inked

I inked this yesterday and started working on the colors and forgot to post it. Here it is; I really think the china marker brings this image together. I inked it with my Raphael 8404 almost completely, mainly to give it a sense of the buildings covered with algae and other settling elements. This was also a chance to play with fun composition and more explicitly show the city wasteland that isn't really important to the main plot of Calla of the Sea but one that I feel gives the story an added element of dread.

I also like that this image could be either be the start of the story, or even the end, with Calla finding a new boat with potential love interests. Oh ambiguousness.

Calla of the Sea complete!

Here is the finished art for Calla of the Sea, inked and lettered.

These pages I inked with a Raphael 8404, which is a change from the usual Winsor Newton's I use. Honestly, it feels like a perfect brush, I had all the control over it I could ask for and it felt more sturdy in my hand. I still like and will use the Winsor Newtons but I was pleasantly surprised with how much I liked the Raphael.

My inking strategy this time around is trying to focus on bounding lines and keeping the art unified. I love the use of bounding lines in Wade Von Grawbadger's inks so I was trying to channel him while at the same time trying to keep things that I like in there. Overall I think its a success, concentrating on an area and the lines within it really helps me stay focused on line weight and how that influences the panel. I was still able to do wispy lines, but they feel more controlled now, so I'm happy with that. I also tried to break away from as much of the dark noir shadows that I've tended to use a lot. My inking professor Shawn Crystal recommended I try to find a balance of their use, so here is my first attempt at it.

I'm happy enough with these pages, which I'm sure will change in a few days. But I did my best on them, so it's time to move on to other things. Next time I want to try inking while channeling the inks of Chris Samnee who is an artist I very much so admire. I played a little bit with it in the bodies in the last page of Calla. I think that's a good natural step, as I've spend the last year getting better at drawing the figure, so now I can start focusing on good use of contrast on them.

Thanks for reading and I hope Calla was enjoyable! It's certainly a step up from the pages I was working on a year ago.

Flowers for Venus Inks Wave 1

Not every page from pencil wave 1 has been inked, but Dragon Con is this weekend and I needed some fresh inks for my portfolio. So here are the first three pages.

Page one was fun and interesting in that the most amount of work went into the environment. I would say that's the prevailing focus on all of these pages, is making the environment something foreign and creepy. Since this comic is meant to be read digitally (once I figure out the program to add in all the panel transitions; if anyone knows, please share the program please!) the comic will actually begin on a pure black screen with the first panel (with nnnCHK) simply outlined in white. There will be a transition to panel 2, where you see sparse lighting effects; I was trying for that funky flashlight effect, where it stutters before coming to life fully. The third panel was the most fun, which I mainly did with the G-pen nib, using the brush only for the figure and the black spotting in the crater.

Page 2 is mainly establishing the character of Noah and his struggle out of the crater. I've not drawn the final transition panel yet, which will cover panel 3. Here he's looking down, but in the transition which will fade from this panel, Noah will be looking up and seeing where he is before the reader will. There's less to say on this one since it's more obviously straightforward.

And page 3, we see the surface of Venus, which is really interesting. Venus has such thick greenhouse gasses in its atmosphere that very little light ever makes it down to the surface. As such, the planet would be insanely dark, so I was trying to illustrate it based on a NASA photo I was given on what a composite of Venus would look like based on radar data. Venus also has a HUGE amount of pressure on the surface equal to about a kilometer into an Earth ocean. So I was trying to simultaneously show the darkness of the planet and also the swirling wave like torrent of pressure that exists on this planet. Venus is very interesting, so I had fun trying to get all this across, which ends up having a Van Gogh Post-Impressionist painting feel to it. I don't mind it, but I hope at least that even if it doesn't look like Venus that it at least looks like this man is on an alien terrain. I can't wait to draw more scenes of the Venutian surface, although it did take me a while to ink the sky. I used brush exclusively on this page. I was also testing out some ideas I've taken from my professors at SCAD but also applying inking techniques I've seen used by Wade Von Grawbadger when he inks Stuart Immonen. It's less evident here as it will be in the next page. Which I'll try to post up as soon as I can.

Thanks for letting me share!