For those of you who've missed my previous super-hero themed seasonal e-cards, here they are:
2011 Spidey's miscommunication
2010 Superman's snowman
2009 Batman's little friend
Anyone who hasn't received an e-card from me this year and normally does, or if you would like to receive one next year, please let me know!
So, for those that missed it there, here it is, sans logos and stuff for now!
I did a couple of roughs, based on two well known images (the other needs to remain secret for now, in case we use it at a later date). This one though, I think, wears it's inspiration very obviously...
...for those that spotted straight off that this was a blatant compositional swipe (from the Star Wars poster below), take ten house points!
This has to be my favourite Episode IV poster, the original UK one sheet, with the other, 'opening crawl' style logo.
I was away for a week in sunny north Norfolk last week. I had hoped that the problem would clear up with the rest. Nope!
Now, I've been prescribed some special gel to rub into my thumb and I've been given this splint to wear.
I feel decidedly Darth Vader-ish or Luke Skywalker-y! I've been told it should sort itself out in a couple of weeks. Interestingly, the most effective thing has been alternating the hand between bowls of warm and cold water. A minute in each and swap five or seven times, starting and finishing on warm!
The tendon in the thumb is inflamed and any strain will exacerbate the problem...
...I can type and drive a mouse, but pen-work has been nigh-on impossible. It's a worry, but hopefully, it should clear up in time for me to start the next episode of Banned Across the Universe!
Some of these inks may be a little scrappy, but I've had a touch of RSI in my thumb over the last couple of weeks and that considered, I'm not that unhappy with the finished art.
This page, and I don't think it gives too much away, shows the main characters, in situ at the Hollywood Bowl. Now, really, to the unbiased eye, was this worth the effort involved?
The Bowl does appear another couple of times to similar effect in the strip, but still, I don't think you'd know what I went through!
A much needed rest from the computer it was too!
Not exactly relaxation from the recent workload as I do need some space backgrounds for Banned Across the Universe (the strip I'm doing with John Freeman). Which, if you missed the official announcement, is being released as part of ROK comics expanded audio comics range.
No toothbrush, no photoshop (other than scanning and levels), all hand-painted. Actual dimensions 650mm x 500mm.
It didn't need to be in colour, as the strip itself will be coloured by my old pal Matt Soffe. BUT, as with most everything else to do with Banned Across the Universe, I got carried away, as will be seen in the coming months!
Finally, I'm also delighted that another old pal of mine, Jim Campbell will be rounding out the team on lettering duties!
Did I mention that I am excited about this project?
In order to replicate some photographs, I needed to be fairly accurate. So first I did a search for the overall dimensions, which are, according to the article I found, 60' x 130' for the largest truss.
During the search, luckily I found this satellite view of the Hollywood Bowl, courtesy of the USGS (United States Geological Survey).
I imported the satellite image into sketchup, and from the very blurry image made some guesses as to the sizes of things, based mainly on that one dimension I had, and some other images from wikipedia to get a sense of the proportion of things.
Once I'd laid out the rough geometry of it, I was clear to start building the main elements. Initially I tried a couple of inner 'fin' versions but none were quite right.
Even though I was working at full size, I couldn't fit enough of them in, so my Hollywood Bowl (one of the future by the way!) has fewer fins than the real one.
For me, one of the most useful tools in sketchup for creating interesting and difficult shapes is the "follow me" tool. Define a flat shape, create a path and drag the flat shape along it to create your complex 3D object.
The seating in the amphitheatre would be impossible to create simply in sketchup without the "follow me" tool.
I added some simple 'tower' elements I'd already designed quickly. These were never intended to be particularly inventive or stylish, they were simply supposed to vary the look a little from the current Hollywood Bowl. Finally, I added the screens and some rough blocks to represent the surrounding buildings.
...only, I'd forgotten the darn lighting rig! Again, "follow me" was my friend in creating this element too.
Hooray! I have my own 3D posable Hollywood Bowl - I'll probably never need it again and in my opinion, you'd never know the trouble I went to from the artwork I've produced...
...having said that, the power of a having 3D environments that I can move, alter aspects of and change camera angles within makes my life a lot easier if I'm using something for multiple panels in a strip.
I think that I probably spend a little too much time in sketchup, creating objects and environments, but I'm never sorry when I can drop a complex object into my page layout and know I've got all the perspective correct... well, until I spoil it all by drawing the figures all wrong.
It's probably not quite possible for me to express how excited I am about this project within the confines of a blog posting. It's also not really possible for me to go into too much detail about it just yet either.
I will however post more about it just as soon as I can!
In the meantime, here is a sneaky, sneaky, leaky, peeky at one of the ships I've designed.
This ship is called "The Flea" and will be a regular hang out of the characters in the strip. I've spent a bit of time in sketchup working on this for the basis of the repeated scenery/background I'll need for a lot of the panels.
This is a work in progress cross-section of the Flea and although it's looking quite spacious here, one of the characters is pretty large and I expect things to be extremely cramped in there... especially when there is cargo in the way too!
The tone and content of the strip is a lot of fun to be working on and I'm delighted to have been asked to develop this strip with John!
I have a strip in there written by Lee Robson. It's a great little old-school Dredd strip, peppered with just the right amount of humour in my opinion.
Here's a teaser panel from it I trailed on twitter and facebook a while ago, when the Dredd 3D trailer hit.
Here is a sneak peak at ALL of my pages (just the pencils and inks though) - but with one key element removed, yes, I've blanked out Dredd, so you'll need to go buy the issue if you want to see how they turned out rendered up and with the all important lawman in them.
Hopefully they don't give too much away already...
This is an inked version of something I sketched at CamCon, and it fits with today's experiences.
'Technology' really is enough to to make me go all "Hulk Smash!" when things stop working.
This colour version, has a revised arm, the problem was spotted by the eagle editorial eyes of Bolt-01.
I fixed it in photoshop, after I'd had one of those disasterous "flatten and save" incidents in (bloody) photoshop - so it's a little more detectable than it would normally be.
Really, adobe, how difficult would it have been to save the sanity of millions of application users and build in a simple back-up... anyone who mentions dropbox, timemachines or any other second party fail-safe back-ups will be ignored - I FECKIN' KNOW, it's my own stupid fault!
See, it's there in the inks, Dredd has a disturbing case of "the long arm of the law"!
but weirdly, it's not so noticeable in the roughs, well, to my eyes at least.
Inks are for sale, and they come with a nice A3 print of the (revised) colour version all for the bargain price of £95 inc. P&P (to any UK address).
It's definitely a bit weird seeing myself like this, and I now recall my mind going blank under fire, but it was very nice to be asked things about what I do all the same.
There is a quick pan across some art I have no other record of for the eagle eyed!
Thanks to Nick Starwind and his cameraman and again, all the organisers and those that attended CamCon... I'm hoping there is another one next year!
Thanks go to Ziggy Newman and Ian Rudd who were organising the event. If there is another one next year, I would definitely be interested in attending.
I owe a massive thanks to Leigh Gallagher for letting me sit near him, for not minding the car-boot sale of books I also had stashed away for sale and also for feeding me chewits!
It was good to see the always cheerful and chatty Terry and Liz Martin who were sat behind us, giving Murky depths and Dead Girls the hard sell!
Opposite our Table were the lovely Luba and Hong who were selling beautiful Kimonos at what I thought were incredibly low prices.
It was great to catch up with Sean Phillips and Emma Vieceli. I also bumped into El Chivo who showed me the gob-smacking amount of worked he'd got through for Davey Candlish's Jikan Chronicles.
Finally thanks to all those who stopped, chatted or bought graphic novels or sketches from me!
I did have a number of sketches I did speculatively, and here are two examples of the sorts of things I was drawing. The Batman above is looking for a home and I'd happily part with him for £7.50 inc. P&P (UK).
Hulk here already has a new home to go to, and I also have another Iron-Man to do too!
First person to drop by and say "DOGTAROO!" to me will earn themselves this picture of the current Doctor Who for free.
Admittedly, it's not the best portrait of him, and the anatomy is a little off in the arms, but it was one of those 15 minute sketch things with limited reference, so I'm not too unhappy with it.
I'll be sharing a table with the lovely Leigh Gallagher... and these here pictures are a taster for the kind of things I'll be drawing...
... I see that these here Avengers types are quite popular at the moment, and that movie is playing just across the way from the Junction at the local Cineworld Cinema. You call it shameless shirt-tail riding, I call it entrepreneurial...
...not in the same league as Tony Stark I grant you, but nevertheless I'll be drawing for me supper and hoping to take a few commissions too.
Here's my sculpt, for that pen. This is one of a small number of casts that I still own out of numerous characters I sculpted during my 12 odd years.
Here's the pen, as was available with Smarties as I recall.
The sketch work, which I will admit got jiggered about with in photoshop once I scanned it. In fact I totally reworked the likeness. Also adding a sketch-up model of a suitable door that I bunged together very quickly... I still like the flexibility that a sketch-up model gives, should I need to reposition the camera for a different view, I don't have to work out the perspective again... some might think it overkill or even cheating, but, I'll never have to draw a door again and worry that the perspective is wrong.
As an aside, I find that when I do build the environment (such as it is in this case) I'm far more confident when it comes time to putting the characters 'in situ' because I can move things around. If it doesn't look right, I can just move the camera angle or pan or whatever in sketch-up and export the image again.
On this commission, the trickiest part was Sidrah's likeness. So I wanted to ink it first to check that everyone was happy. I wouldn't usually do it in this way, but inking the tough bit first meant that I wasn't risking so much if I got it wrong... I was fairly confident that the Sulley would look good because I've drawn him so much before. All the same, I'm pretty pleased with my inking on this piece as it happens...
...and here are the final inks as they looked when scanned and then with all the blue-line removed ready for colouring. Sometimes I think that the blue pencils add a bit of depth to the inks and when I take that away the inks just look too clean to me until I get some colour and texture worked into the image.
