Rocket Raccoon and Groot

Here's is Rocket Racoon, a sentient raccoon who likes to use "unfeasibly big guns".  He stands atop Groot, a sentient tree who can only say "I AM GROOT!" Plus it all takes place in SPACE! 

I've been wanting to draw Rocket Raccoon since I started reading "Guardians of the Galaxy," a great book from Marvel Comics. Recently there's been a series of backups called "Rocket Raccoon & Groot" which is a great idea and inspired me to finally draw Rocket. 

Since I was a kid I've wanted to draw a Rocket Raccoon comic, and while drawing it was fun to day dream what comic this was a cover to.

"Rocket Raccoon has a full life as one of the most decorated veterans of the Guardians of the Galaxy, so the last thing he needs is to be saddled with a rookie partner, Groot, a sentient tree recently freed from the evil Thanos. Training someone will be hard through the rumbles of an impending war, but Rocket is up to the task in this buddy-cop style adventure from Marvel's all ages line."

That book would write itself! Marvel does a good job with it's all-ages books, and their all ages Thor book was on of my favorite comics of last year.

Here is all the process of the drawing that started out as a sketch just for fun. 

And a version  that I almost like better with Rocket's original color scheme from the 80's. I feel like it pops him out a little more.

Process for Junkies

Page 93 Panel 2

First step would be the script, but I don't script it shot by shot. I wrote a script that had everything there but it wasn't blocked out. The fun thing about this process for me is I get to flesh it out more in the visual stage instead of try and make those decisions before I know what the staging and setting looks like.

But to sum up this shot in words, our hero Odric leaves his squire Kolby, now safe in the woods, to attend to Alistair and get him to cover while the dragon is still choking.

Rough

This was drawn really small as a thumbnail (between the black lines there is an inch on the original). I liked this as soon as I thought of it, because of the scale. I am really enjoying using scale to my advantage on these dragon attack pages. 

Next I enlarged it for my pencils.

Pencils

I liked the idea for this panel in the roughs, but when I finished the pencils I liked it even more. Odric doesn't have superhuman speed, but he is quick. I really like drawing people running and having the dirt or sand kick up like manga and anime. It also makes him look like he's booking it so it helps in that way too.

I also decided to add the Sound Effect coming out of the dragons mouth to show he's still coughing. I like that it looks molten like the dragons actually coughing it up, so it was fun to keep drawing that stuff.

COMING UP! THE INKS!

Feel free to ask questions in my comments and I will address them.

To Be Continued...

Here's what PROGRESS looks like (on my graphic novel)

COLOR CORRECTED