Evil Genius

The new DrawerGeeks topic is 'Evil Genius'. This was loads and loads of fun with stacks of possibilities. I thought about the classic Donald Pleasance Bond villian and Mike Myers' Dr.Evil that was spawned by him. I thought about Ming the merciless and other such Sci-Fi villains... I thought about Dick Dastardly, The Hooded Claw, Baron Greenback and Dr. Frankenstein... I was tempted to revisit some old ground too.



What have I come up with then? Only a rough sketch, but one that I'm pleased seems to capture the essence of a lot of those characters mentioned above, but it also owes something to Braniac from Superman and Dr. Emit Brown from Back to the Future for the hat thing.

I'd have loved to have a bit more time to work this up, design a proper lair and possibly a henchman or two in the background too, alas time she was a cruel mistress and for now this is where I must leave it.

Oh, and one last thing:
Mwhah-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaaa!

Joker - Teeth

The next topic for DrawerGeeks is teeth and I did my piece early this time. As this was intended as a companion piece to Harley Quinn anyway, I decided to submit it to Scotch Corner as well - those lovely guys were kind enough to feature it over the weekend!


I, as I'm sure many others have been, was incredibly impressed with how the Joker was portrayed in The Dark Knight. A lot of that was down to Heath Ledger, but I thought the Chelsea Grin was a great idea and I don't know how original it was but I thought about trying to take that one step further, whilst I was sketching I reasoned: "What if the Joker had cut off his lips in order to create a permanent smile?". It's a horrible thought and it surprised me - sometimes you have to go with those thoughts and not self edit...

Frankenstein's Monster

The current topic for DrawerGeeks is Frankenstein's Monster.


Having done a version of the monster once or twice before, I was reluctant to tread the same ground.
Unfortunately as my idea arrived a bit late in the day yesterday, I've only partially finished it. I think it illustrates the concept though and I'm fairly happy with it - hopefully I'll get the chance to finish it up properly, but it's joining a long 'to do' list!

Where The Wild Things Are

The next topic for DrawerGeeks is Where The Wild Things Are. Maurice Sendak's classic kids' book has already been made into a film by Spike Jonze and will be hitting the cinema soon.

There's a bit in the book where Max tames the Wild Things and I wanted to illustrate that as seen through their eyes.

Me old friend and colleague Matt Dawson did a Wild Things piece a while ago and submitted it to the fantastic tribute blog Terrible Yellow Eyes. Seeing an opportunity, I've submitted this to the curator Cory Godbey in the hope that he'll include it on his blog at some point in the future.

Poison Ivy

If all things have gone according to plan, then blogger will have automatically posted this in absentia.
You may remember a while ago, I posted about a cool blog called covered where the idea is that you rework a classic comic cover in your own style... again, if things have gone according to schedule, then my version of Batman 181 should be visible on Robert Goodin's covered blog right now! So, I'm now free to reveal to you good folk the full image...


Here again, for reference, is my copy of the original cover from June 1966 with art by Infantino and Anderson.


Remember to cross your fingers for me today, as I'm at the Birmingham International Comics' Convention and I'll be trying to meet up with editors and professionals who might be able to help me onto the all important first rung of the professional ladder!

The Punisher

DrawerGeeks next topic: The Punisher

Pretty happy with this, less than three hours including the the sketch.

Mr Incredible

The next topic for DrawerGeeks is The Incredibles. This is a quick sketch coloured in Photoshop as I'm busy on my samples for BICS!


The Pixar movies have been great for the most part and this is one of my faves, shame I didn't have a bit more time for the topic.

Spider-man 02 - Final?

As already indicated, DrawerGeeks topic is Spider-man.



I think it's fair to say that I jumped in the deep end... I had to rush the colours a bit to get it finished... They're ok for my submission deadline, but if I want to show these pages at the Birmingham convention they'll need a bit of work to bring them up to standard at actual size!

Spider-man 02 - Inks

I'm pretty happy with these pages. Gonna colour them now, hopefully have them done fairly swiftly...



There's just one thing that's bugging me, now I see it on screen - MJ on page two, panel three, looks like she doesn't have enough neck - which is really irritating... I hope I can correct this in photoshop by moving her head.

Here are the tightened pencils also...

   

Sun Wukong (Monkey)

Well, more Monkey. I really shouldn't have found this brilliant topic as torturous as it has been.
I think it's a fairly common phenomenon. Given a job/topic that you'd love to do and do well - there is a tendency for the creativity to freeze up on you. A psychological road-block that gets in the way of you and the destination you'd hoped to arrive at. I think you need to keep going though - being a professional dictates that you can't just give up entirely. By taking a couple of detours, you might not end up where you thought you'd like to go, but the journey will have been interesting and you might end up somewhere just as good.



And with that word "journey" in mind. Sun Wukong is the traditional name for the character "Monkey" from 'Journey to the West', an old Chinese legend. Popularized in the 70s by the classic TV show "Monkey Magic" and then again in recent years by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett's stage adaptation.

I'm fairly happy with the treatment and approach to this, albeit a reasonably straight copy of the TV show's. My inked sketch, quickly coloured in photoshop would serve as a character design for a more dynamic martial art style action pose, but time has run out on me, so this will be my submission for DrawerGeeks this time round.

Super-Monkey

DrawerGeeks' new topic is Monkey. I've had real problems with this - I was originally going to do a monkey killing two birds with one stone - but it didn't have the quirky quality I was looking for. Then I thought "Space Monkey" but something I've seen kept creeping into my mind...

I don't really like this Super-Monkey, conceptually I think it's a bit weak - no nice puns to be had with the name Clark Kent or Kal-El... I think at some low point in the Superman franchise there may have been a Super-Monkey. I thought about doing a strip where I just spoof Superman totally but I'm not that excited about it. If it's not working, move on. So here is the best of the aborted approaches.

Mean Machine Angel

The new topic for DrawerGeeks is Angel.


I sketched stereotypical Hell's Angels for a bit, even got some great reference together for a Harley Davidson... then I thought about an Angel/Demon thing... but both of those things weren't inspiring me to produce anything I wanted to submit or even show. I was doing a 2000 AD related sketch this morning and something clicked into place.

Mean Machine Angel is a classic Judge Dredd villain. Mean was built in the 'Six Million Dollar Man' sense of the word by a kidnapped Doctor in a shack in the Cursed Earth. To my mind he's going to be a bit rusty and thrown together, a bit like something from Scrapheap Challenge and not at all 'top of the range' cybernetics.

Mean was once a nice boy who liked flowers... so I gave him wings (mainly to make the 'Angel' thing obvious for the uninitiated and nothing at all to do with Red Bull).

Boldly Go...

The new Star Trek movie is out and DrawerGeeks is using the current topic to 'commemorate' the fact.


I'm trying out something a bit different style-wise on this quick sketch. I think Spock is pretty close but Kirk is way off.

Science Fiction Theatre

I'm truly finding it hard to be productive and efficient at the moment.


I've got plenty to do - mainly preparation for the upcoming Bristol Comic Convention so heaven knows why I've been fiddling around with this piece this afternoon!

Under the Bridge

Well, I'm nearly settled in the new abode but I'm struggling to find my stride with regard to getting back to work properly... I need to focus rapidly as deadlines are starting to loom like mountains on the horizon now!
What I could do with is a "no pressure, no ties" sort of thing, something small, where it doesn't matter what the final piece looks like, just a deadline of some sort...

...the new topic for DrawerGeeks is TROLL.



The thought process behind this one was simply: There is no way something as evil and conniving as a troll is going to be outwitted by something as bone-headed as a goat.
I vote for an alternative ending for 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff' when the third and oldest goat happens upon the bridge the Troll thinks that this goat, although bigger, looks a bit stringy. The Troll decides to saddle this goat up, ride into the field where the other littler goats went and have himself a nice feast. Then it's off to market to sell the big dumb animal he's riding.

DrawerGeeks - Dragon

The new topic on DrawerGeeks is Dragon.

I'm supposed to be packing the house up for our upcoming move...


...but I found 25 minutes to take part. I'd normally have loved to get all involved doing a lovely fantasy dragon. I nearly drew Bruce Lee, but in the end humour won out, and you have the submission above.

Magic Beans

The current DrawerGeeks topic is Jack and The Beanstalk:


Didn't have much time for this again...
I was going for a "not much more than a hill of beans" and a "credit crunch" - bad deal thing...
In the end I went for this cheap Deal or No Deal gag. You win some, you lose some... I think I lost this one!

Goth

The current DrawerGeeks topic is Goth:


This was a quick digital sketch to get the idea of the simple b&w graphic down - Although, I think there might be a better execution of this idea.

Drawer Geeks - Witch

I did this really quickly for DrawerGeeks.


I like some stuff about it, but the stiffness of that arm is really bugging me!

Miss Moneypenny's An Eejit

The current topic over at DrawerGeeks is James Bond 007, obviously in honour of The Quantum of Solace release last week...

I've seen it and it's a thumpin' good 'un - it's getting some duff reviews, but I think that's as a reaction to the fact that expectations after Casino Royale were extremely high - I think we need to remember how much better than some of the other Bond movies this new one is... go and see it, it's great!

The main thing I've missed in the Daniel Craig films is the delightful MI5 secretary and her flirty quips... even though she is daft enough to fantasize about James, I've always liked her character, especially Samantha Bond's more sassy incarnation.


This was a very quick pencil sketch that I threw some colour on in photoshop - it's a bit rough but I didn't want to get side tracked from the Dredd script too much more.

If you're wondering about this post's title, it's an Alan Partridge quote - Steve Coogan at his best...