Thanksgiving!

Momma wishes Odric luck on his quest.

For the Thanksgiving holiday... Even Little Knights love their Mommas!

The Beastless Cart

Alistair is the wizard who goes with Little Knight on his quest. He is also an inventor, and invents magic powered devices. His home is filled with them, and one of his contributions to the quest is the Beastless Cart. It pulls its self along with spider legs, and can carry quite a lot of weight and not get tired like a horse or an ox.

Once again having to design everything in a world I learned some neat stuff about how things work! I added shock absorbers from a horse carriage, which look cool and I didn't even know they had!

Thanks to Paige Pumphrey for the textured paper, she gave me a bunch of cool stuff like that recently. Check out her blog The Art of Paigey!

New Comic Panel Day

Smitty get attacked by sounds! TO DEATH!

That's actually not at all what is happening in this panel, but I really liked doing a panel of onomatopoeia. I don't use lots of sound effects but sometimes showing certain things can be hard in comics, and that's where sound effects come in handy. Also they can be fun to draw and read and is something unique to comics.

New Comic Panel Day Returns

Don't worry. Just because I stopped blogging doesn't meant that I stopped working on Little Knight. It's still coming, and I've done lots of pages since the last post. The pages I was doing had some spoilers in it so I didn't want to show too much of them. Now I am on the second act and the pacing has slowed again so it can build again to the 2nd act climax.

I wanted to include these two panels because it had 4 figures I was pretty excited about. Odric leaving the house in the first panel is one of my favorite running poses I have ever drawn. All the rest of the characters are left in completely different states from his brief visit home and it was a blast to draw. I really love drawing the character interactions. It's as exciting as planning an action scene but instead of punches and fighting, its acting and talking(and sometimes fighting).

I can't wait for people to be able to read this. I am glad to be able to share more of it and what gets me excited about my project on a day to day. More soon!

No New Comic Panel Day This Week!

This is the Monday Night Minotaur. He has a labyrinth in the Dwarven Kingdom. Every Monday night prisoners must face him and try to defeat him and his labyrinth, and it's magically broadcast to all of the enchanted looking glass in the land. 

Well, at least he used to until one prisoner...

Now he's just a rug in the house I've been designing all week. For some reason, even tho he never shows up in the book, I designed the MNM first, and then killed him and skinned him, just in case I ever want to go back and tell the story of how this rug happened, which I hopefully will someday.

But the best part is when I told my girlfriend about my plan to design the Minotaur alive and then kill him and make him a rug, she let out an audible concerned noise. It's hard to describe, but it had surprise, disgust, and sadness in it. Like I was some monster and she felt sorry for my creation, that he'd get to taste life for the few hours before I turn him into a rug. Her reaction amused me to no end.

Painting of Odric and his family.

I was designing Odric's house for the next scene in the comic and I decided he would have a painting in his house of his family as it is now, since he couldn't have photo's or anything. I figured I would actually paint it and then I will post it into each frame. That way it will look consistent, and have a different feel than the other art, so you know it's a painting and not a photo, which don't exist in this world.

New Comic Panel Day

New Comic Panel Day

Sorry, a little late!

Testing Colors, Designing Characters

Just colored a character design  and I am feeling out how I think about the coloring style of the whole graphic novel. I think if I do it this way it will be a lot more fun and fit the style of the book. Also I just designed this character. He's a Janitor, and he once wanted to be a knight. But he's too small, and his hand is deformed, and he's got a bad back. But he still gets to wear a swell knight uniform.

I knew I had a scene with this character in it for several pages in the script, but I had not designed him. But tomorrow I start laying out those pages and that sequence, so I need to know what all the characters look like. So in the laundromat I sat with my sketchbook and started from the basic idea I had and built.

Now as you see I did a few heads I didn't like, and then I started in on the final. I sketch in red pencil and then tighten with blue, ust so I can see the drawing better when it's done. The third head I liked, and I started to try to think of what clothes he wore. What does a medieval janitor look like. What if he's a knight? An old knight? Or a wannabe?
So I made him a wannabe knight, because he can't be a knight. I threw every ailment I could at him. Hunch back, cross eyed, tiny week man, with a deformed hand.  But he still loves his life, cleaning for the knights.

Now he has so much character the short scene with him in it will be more fun and almost distract you from the information that you're getting in the scene, and will add to the overall world of Little Knight.

New Comic Panel for the day. Short post, but I will have a little insight to my character design for a minor character, and scripting coming soon.

New Comic Panel Day

IN COLOR! If you came to my USTREAM channel on Sunday you saw me start this, but I didn't finish it until the next morning. Here's the final image.

New Comic Panel Day 5 pack!

The new comic panel is a DOOZY today. Now keep in mind in the comic its gonna be full colored to break it up a little more. This feels like a Where's Waldo page, which I used to draw cheap licensed versions of. But it's fun and hard to do a page like this. Most people won't notice a lot of the details you put in, but it won't take away from it at all. And if people look close they might see some fun things.

This is the Layout for this panel. Now keep in mind, this was a drawing 1 inch wide and drawing it only for myself. This is my blueprint. I just use it to visualize the shot. I am sure it looks like a child's scribbles, but I know what every scribble represents, and I don't wanna waste time drawing stuff this small.

This scene takes place at The Mace and Fl'ale, the bar Knights hang out in. This might help you see what the scribbles were in my head. I made the set in SketchUp and I use it to help set up shots. I lined up the camera to the angle I drew in the layout, and added some stand-in figures so I could see the a standard size at different locations.

Next step, I penciled in the figures. I used the red pencil to figure out the characters, but then the blue pencil to tighten it up a little without loosing the tighter lines in the underdrawing. I also penciled in the monster trophy-heads on the walls.  It's still loose tho, I do the tight drawing in the inks.

Then I combine the whole thing into Photoshop and I inked it, and it took me forever. I don't follow the background exactly, tweaking things to make the illustration better, taking out some things, and moving some lines or objects over so it doesn't cause tangents or close up too much.

It's fun to draw in the little things. The guys in the chugging contest, and guy's playing cards. The drunk singing guys, and the guy carrying beer for all his friends. The fat guy who's chair is buckling. Cheesy pointing guy, solemn talking guys, and guys pigging out. It's a lot of fun to draw, and it's fun because it helps show the world I have created in my head.

New Comic Panel Day

Delayed to Thursday, just like comics this week.

This is Alistair's Lab. He may be a Mage, but he also is an inventor. He uses magical crystals to power a lot of it. You can see some inventions littered around the room, like his Lumberjack Belt, Washing Machine, and his Superjump Boots (well, most of them anyways, due to unsuccesful testing.) Also you can see Fluffy BaaBaa, who i just named, just now.

This was actually hard to ink, because I had to remind myself its a pulled out panel, and keep myself from zooming in too close and get all detail oriented, and I still was trying to figure out the best ways to do backgrounds on my cintiq. I actually used a plastic ruler a few times as a straight edge, but it didn't work well. I free handed a lot on this one, but I usually don't like to do that, but i figured it wood or stone so a lot of it is more organic. Now i just lower the pen pressure and use the shift button to draw straight lines. It works really good and is way faster than pathing everything out like I did for the first 30 pages.

Anniversary Card

I made this card for my girlfriend for our 2 year anniversary yesterday. It turned out good. I actually made it really fast. 4 hours from idea to completion basically, including travel time to store to get supplies.

It actually folds up and fit into a card envelope. Pretty fun. Maybe not the sweetest card, kinda weird actually, but I am proud of it.

New Comic Panel Day

Just finished this panel. Got a few more and then done with this page! WOO! Back to work.

Stained Glass

On the pages I am working on this week, you finally see the Castle Mortigern, where the villains live. I had to design a giant stained glass window that sits behind the throne. Of course Valdis, the villainous sorcerer, had a giant stained glass version of himself made. The ego on this guy!

New Comic Panel Day

The Doctor

I hope this turned out all right. I was pretty happy with it on my other monitor, but seeing it here I worry. Might tweak it a little. But have felt uninspired lately, so thought I would bolster it by drawing my favorite Doctor, the Tenth Doctor Who. I drew the damn thing 3 times. Long time since I drew something that wasn't Little Knight.

New Comic Panel Day

Model Monday!

New Comic Book Panel Day

Model Monday

Wednesdays are now New Comic Panel Day!

That's right kids. In addition to Model Mondays, Wednesday is New Comic Panel Day! It's like New Comic Book Day, but smaller, shorter, and doesn't make me worry about whether I can afford to pay rent. So without  further ado...

Work Blog 2: It's Alive!

I've been working on my graphic novel Little Knight for 7 months. You could say it's been longer because I did the first sketch of Little Knight himself about 2 years ago, but about 7 months ago is when I started fleshing out the idea after work, during lunch, whenever I could. 5 months ago I finished the script, and now I am drawing it.

For two years though, little Odric existed as only one sketch, it showed what I wanted and I liked it. Many nights scripting were spent looking at this picture and imagining him. They say sometimes your characters take over when you write and come to life, and I found that to be true.

That was a great feeling, but nothing compares to drawing it. Seeing my characters come alive on the page makes me feel kinda like a proud papa . I've drawn TONS of licensed characters, superheroes, characters from other peoples scripts, but none of that has felt as good as this. The character I created, and for the last 2 months I have spent drawing 10 hours a day, has come alive. Hopefully this isn't some weird thing about being alone with my drawing board all day, but I dunno if I care even. I am enjoying it, it's what I always wanted to be doing.

Model Monday BONUS: For Carlo

A wizards kitchen.

Model Monday 5/3/2010

Here's a shot of one of my SketchUp models. I have made a lot of models for my book, and I put a lot of work into them. It's important to me the locales feel very interesting, and the characters feel like they're somewhere. A real world that you'd want to visit. I feel like that can get a reader into a story better.

Stay tuned I have 2 other ideas for weekly theme days.

Work Blog 1

Today I am starting page 10 of my original graphic novel Little Knight. I get a giddy feeling every time I start sketching out a page. The possibility of the page is part of what makes me so excited, but also the fact that I am one step closer to having it done. I can't wait to read my comi, to hold a printed copy in my hands. Unfortunately that will be a long way off still.

I finished page 9 yesterday. I hit the point of worry that I often hit at the halfway point, and then when I was almost done with it I felt relief that it worked and was a successful and usable page. They all are usable and work and I am proud of all of them, but still I worry. I am glad I worry because that way I make sure I put the thought into it that is needed.

I did 6 thumbnails last night. My first steps to making a page. It took me about 8 hours to do them. I am not just laying out the pages, but deciding exactly how to tell it. The script I wrote is more like a screenplay. The beats are there but not the comic pages and panels. This way I do the pacing visually which works way better for me.

First step was to read my script and know what I needed to tell in the pages, and then I decided to walk around and listen to music, epic soundtrack stuff, and think. I did that for more than a hour and then come home and sketch some ideas. Nothing that was exactly what I needed but enough to get the old brain pumping. Then I would flip through some comics with great layouts, Darwynn Cooke, Copiel, Immomen, Risso, or talk to one of my artist friends. I talked to both Gabe and Cory last night, and almost called Wheat, just to have conversations about layout. It helped inspire. I am lucky to have good friends to talk to about things like that. After walking around for another hour or two, I came home, and laid out all six pages pretty easily. It may have looked like goofing off but the time was worth it. I bet the people on the streets of Brooklyn thought the almost 30 year old walking around occasionally posing as if he was casting magic or swinging a sword was crazy.

So now I have the pages I need to do for the next week all thumbnailed out and I am excited to work on them. Having a good layout only helps me get excited to work. I can't wait for the next week now.