Lazy Week, Lazy Doodling

Sorry I didn't make the post yesterday, I was doing something. I'm back again for whoever finds this interesting, the scant one or two people out there, assuming there are even that many. No, I'm not bitter or anything, this stuff takes time to build up and I'm not surprised or angry no one is noticing me or anything. This is more of a personal exercise for me anyway, see how long I can sustain this kind of a project. Doing okay so far. I want to sustain this.

Oh yes, my secret Public Domain novel adaptation project is going well too. I had just recently finished writing it in its rough "script" form, if you can call it a script, and the thumbnails are not too far off themselves, those too are rough. I can start refining them further, soon enough. It's standing at twenty-eight pages so far. I wonder how long I need to finish drawing all of it.

Anyway, have some drawings.

There was another but it was stubborn and wouldn't upload for some weird reason. I wanted to talk about that one a lot too. Sad.

More lettering practice. I think I"m getting better at this.

Reaching into my Inner Mignola-clone and Other Things

I got my order for an Ames Lettering Guide, it's from Alvin (the brand and not some person named Alvin). I've been wanting this for awhile now, now that I do have it I absolutely love it.

I dove in and set it to the often quoted 3 1/2 setting from Todd Klein's blog, letterer extraordinaire, and I got somewhat confused.... Do you see what I see?

The paper, as you can see, is standard US Letter size. The setting Todd Klein uses is quite small, very much proportional to the general measurement of the very same lettering on reproduced art, that is the final product that you see in floppies, in trade paperbacks, in omnibuses, and other sorts of comics. Thus, the setting that Todd Klein says that you should use matches the size for the art once scaled down since the reproduced art is half the size or less of that which you see in what is offered to the usual comic book reading public, those who buy original art aside. Once scaled up to the usual size that the original art has, that is around 10X15", 11X17, or A3, to be proportional the lettering setting should also be scaled up to at least the 7 setting. Reproduced art is just half of that or less than that. Anyway, with this realization which might not even be true at all and I'm just going off on some weird logic, I set my own Lettering Guide to 8 and played around with 6 and went off with that. here's how it went. (I remember seeing some letterers working on reproduced art and Klein working on overlays over the original art, so I don't really know. It might just be something particular to the letterer and there isn't a set standard.)

Most of these are with the 3 1/2 setting.

Also, here's some doodles.

These were in the last couple days.

Some sketches.

Me calling on my inner Mike Mignola.

Realizations and Reflections Thanks to Figure-Drawing

A lot of studies lately, mainly in improving my realism, my gestures, my drapery, and experiments in my inking. I've learned a lot in this time, I hope you would see what I've learned too.

 

Nothing really interesting here but it's something I've drawn and from what you can see here, I've still got a long way to go with making my drapery buttery, smooth, and technically correct. I just slapped them on without thinking too much about forming it around the figure. I should fix that.

 These ones were semiserious studies where I tried to study gesture in particular. 

My inking here is quite poor. Sadly I didn't get a picture of the pencils but they were so much better. I need to reform my inking, I was too quick and not careful here, the careful linework I've worked into with the pencils was lost in the spirit of the moment. I've even fucked up the anatomical details for crying out loud. Oh well, it's a learning moment. 

 

Some gesture and drapery studies where I did a lot better. I played with markers and brush liking here, it was really fun.

Preparing to Finish "Dart with Destiny"

Dart with Destiny is a comic I'm doing with a friend. I'm playing around with it now, final edits and fixes.

Greater contrast or the lack thereof, etc.

300dpi, no contrast

300dpi with contrast

600dpi, no contrast

600dpi, with contrast

Dart with Destiny Tenth (and Last) Page

Dart with Destiny with Deftbeck (writer) and myself (the artist)

After much time, I've finally done it. I finally finished this comic that I've been working on for awhile now with Deftbeck. I forgot when I started but it's been at least one academic year and a couple months at the very least but damn it, it's finally done. I can move on to other projects now, which I've actually kinda started. In all honesty, I'm not done with Deft's thing. I still have to redo a few panels that are too off or update the style deviation to the later pages or even out the style of the comic with the first few pages. Yet, that is all secondary for the illustration proper is done. That's the important bit.

The tenth and final page. Note the heavy usage of opaque white ink. My backgrounds have also degraded. Where I once had a decent grasp of single-point perspective and two-point perspective, I'm barely even managing to do flat, 2D backgrounds. Mignola was, of course, my muse and my rescue.

Inktober Day Twelve

Inktober Day Two

Here I decided to go with a more DC theme drawing. Since the theme, as Jay Parker suggested in his prompts, was divided, one of the first things that came to my mind when it said "divided" what's Two-Face of Batman rogues gallery fame. One may attribute the utilization of DC properties to our YouTube video I just watched a while ago that dealt with DC comics thus the usage of Two-Face. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xRDiUD1a8c, the video in question)

Inktober Day One (posted a biiiiit late, sorry)

This is the set of prompts I'm using for this years Inktober. You can kinda see the source on the bottom, it's from Jake Parker's website. Go look at it and crap. The first word was "swift". As such, I've drawn a man swiftly get away from the little rat.

Hath not a Sketchbook drawings? II

I haven't been able to draw much. University and all. Still, I made a few pieces of art and drew some stuff.

I was helping a friend out with her comic. It was standard and worked well enough but I just had to rip into the lettering. One of the characters were two people in one, or something to that effect, and when they talk they kinda speak at the same time and overlap over one another. How she pulled it off was.... less than optimal. So I quickly crapped these out to help her out and give her some direction. Hopefully they went to some use.

Not long after drawing this, after some time being dormant from drawing, I started craving it again.

A friend sent me this to try and draw, so I did. Bellow you'll see a tiny doodle in ink. It's from a Platinum CF-2000 (or something) Brush pen which I filled with Rotring Technical pen ink. The feed mechanism was almost marker like and I just had to test it out if it'll work. It's been a week, maybe less, and it seems to work well enough. Seems... Will update as time goes on.

The original picture. I didn't feel like trying to capture the thing 100%. Instead I focused on trying to be as clean with my lines as possible. As clean and mechanical. I THINK I did a good job.

That's all for now. Quick, little update.

Maletilla (comics)

You don't know how long it took me to make that establishing shot. Three or four hours maybe? It's not even a three-point perspective and the measurements were off so not everything lines up well.

Mooostly happy with this panel, the third to the last panel is a wonky.

Mostly happy with this page too.

I'm not happy with the transition between four to five. Panel six has  wonky perspective too.

I tried but I'm just not a corss hatching guy.

Unhappy. Eugh.

The hands aside, this isn't too bad.

Falling apart.

The bandana is supposed to be colored. I'll rectify that in the published issue.