Simple Character

A simple bit of character design today for a company logo (text required). The client wanted simple bold flat colours and clean line work. For someone who enjoys the intricacies of details it was a lot of fun to do something at the other end of the spectrum. For and (C) Reality Deviant Publications, now Gunmetal Games.

Get ready for action, set thrills to Maximan!

From a very American superhero last week to more my cup of tea and a very British take on a superhero. Back in 1987 the weekly UK science fiction comic, 2000AD, was producing a wide range of different stories and encouraging a lot of new talent. One of the stand out strips from that time was Zenith, written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by new comer Steve Yeowell. I remember being very taken by Steve's artwork, so much so that I sat and copied the second page from the story line for line (I found it the other day and its pretty close to the original).

The start of Zenith shows the very end of a battle between two super soldiers, Maximan from the UK and Masterman (boo hiss) from Germany. In the first page of the story you see a newsreel picture of Maximan lifting a Tiger tank and that image has always stuck with me.

Zenith ran occasionally in 2000AD over the years and has built up something of a cult following especially as legal wrangling has held off any further reprints of the series. It's a shame really, more for Steve than I'd have thought for Grant but I could be wrong about that? The only reprints outside of 2000ADs own 'Best Of' comic are those by Titan books (some are finishing on Ebay this very day) but even they didn't reprint the final story. I hope sometime in the near future that there will be a resolution to the problems as I know that my bookshelves could happily include a new edition of this great story.

Jonday Smush

Quickie sketch what I just drawn!

Sunday Guest Post - Gibson Quarter!

Loads of goodies to see in this super-sized guest post from Toronto's finest, Gibson Quarter!

Hi Gang!

I'm Gibson Quarter and I'm a comic penciller. I'm currently published in 'Wasted' with Alan Grant - we do the 'War on Drugs' strips. I'm also a semi-regular for the Futurequake boys. I've been in past (and upcoming!) issues of Zarjaz and Futurequake . Details of this work and lots of other goodies can be found on my blog at: http://gibsonquarter27art.blogspot.com/

While I'm not OFFICIALLY Scottish, I'm happy to report that I'm the next best thing...Canadian! ;-)

I do have a great number of Scottish friends and hope to make more at next years Bristol Con, which I'm booked in to attend. Please came by and say hi! I'll be the one talking to Gary Erskine with a funny accent!

All the best, Gibson Quarter

And for extra goodies Gary has supplied us with two pages of Gibson's work which Gary inked for "War on Drugs' in Wasted.

December Competition - ENTER NOW!

Beware of Wet Paint

Ok, this one is a fine art piece full of deep philosophical hidden meanings. Prints are available for a mere £3000.

On the other hand - no real reason for it other than experimenting and mucking about while creating some new photoshop splatter and paint brushes.

Death.

Another sketch from Lille. Death is becoming my second faourite sketch after Oola, the Twi' lek. More cheesecake but prettier than Dredd. I added a flock wallpaper background to the sketch for texture (and in keeping with the character) Finishes off the picture nicely. Chris Bachalo was the artist who most inspired this piece. He really captured that young Gothic emo-chic look beautifully in the Gaiman series. Fragile and delicate. Like a young Siouxsie Sioux?

Would probably continue to work on some more images of Death. Maybe for a future post?

October and November Competition Winners!

Two winners to announce. First up is the November winner for Gary's superb signed and sketched hardback book of the 'Lords of Misrule'. And the prize goes to Josie P. Jacobi (posting as Herne) for her amazingly long comment. Gary had this to say of the winner:

My choice for the winner is Josie P. Jacobi. Granted there are two parts to the entry but I don’t register it as a double vote. Twitter frustrates me so much with the 140 character limit so I understand where Josie is coming from with an enforced mark. A hugely mammoth entry. Glad she spent the time writing in for the competition.

And we also had our first 'no show' for our October competition and sticking to our own rules a new winner has been selected, and the prints go to Atom for his Goblin Market Report comment.

Both winners will be contacted shortly.

Comic week

Another page gets squeezed out in my spare time, in what seems to be comic week on Scotch Corner, which I suppose should be no surprise considering our line-up. Page six of a wee short about faerie abductions which is beginning to near completion. Must find more time in the day - Gary, how can I do that?

Does everything a spider can...

I only like some superhero characters and I realised recently that the ones I like are mostly based on which ones had TV shows or films in the 1970/80s. So things like Spider-man, The Hulk, Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman all get a look in but other than that I'm not one for superhero comics in particular, unless of course the art or story is of a high standard.

So, because I like Spider-man (who doesn't like Ditko, Romita, Kane etc.) and to lend support to Tom's great Make 'Yours' Marvel competition I thought I'd draw everyone's favourite neighbourhood spider person.

December Competition - Make 'Yours' Marvel!

We'd love to show you the prize for this month but it doesn't exist... well not yet anyway. Tom will be giving one lucky winner the chance to receive an original pencilled illustration of a Marvel character and they get to choose which character they'd like! That's right Tom will actually draw the winners requested choice of Marvel character and send it off to them.

And we all know how much Tom likes to draw Marvel superheroes, remember this piece from a couple of weeks back!

All you need to do to enter this competition is tell us which Marvel character you'd like drawn and why you should win, how easy is that! So leave your comments and as always any kind of comment counts but you have to make sure you think about it as you can only enter once, so make it funny, make it complimentary, make it a song, make it weird, make it anything you want but make your comment count. Please make sure that if you do not have a Blogger profile email address that you leave a contact email after your comment.

Terms of entry: 1. Only one entry per person. 2. Comments must be left by the end of 31st December 2009 to be entered into the competition. 3. The contributors to Scotch Corner will judge the comments left and decide a winner with the contributor supplying the prize having the casting vote. 4. The winner will be announced on the website as soon as a decision has been reached. 5. If the winner does not have a contact email address available on their comment profile then it is the winners responsibility to contact Scotch Corner at scotchcorner@me.com and supply mailing address details. 6. If the winner does not contact us after one full month a new winner will be chosen. 7. All decisions are final. 8. If you are unhappy with any of these conditions please do not enter.

Jonday - The Beasts of old London Town

So I was hoping to get clearance to show something hot of the presses, but it hasn't come down the pipe. Instead let's take a trip back, waaaaay back more than 12 years ago to when I had high hopes of working in comics. I was regularly producing my own stuff, and selling it through various branches of Travelling Man, where I later worked.

Here is one complete mini comic from an anthology title I put together called Kingdom of The Beasts. Still want to use that title for something else at some point, so don't nick it if you like it. No letters on this, not sure where they went! I think you can probably guess much of the story of the adventures of Mr Thorndyke and Mr Codd.





Enjoy!

November Competition - ENTER NOW!

Surfing the archives again

I think this was my first fully digital attempt at a comic illustration from a few years ago - not a pen or pencil or even layout doodle in site. The Silver Surfer figure was created in Poser (ver 4 or 5 i think) and dropped into photoshop to be painted up along with a spacey background. Would probably change most of this now, at the time i was busy just concentrating on experimenting with different digital techniques rather than the composition and overall image, but it served it's purpose at the time and i learnt what i needed to from it.

Oola, a sexy Twi' lek - Sketch.

A proper sketch this week. This was a spare piece from my trip to Lille Comic Festival. As much as I would hope to be constantly busy from ten till seven at these events, there is always a little down time between fans and I keep myself amused by continuing to sketch. Usually Dare, Batman or Terminator portraits but occasionally I try my hand to some cheesecake. Always a bit partial with my sweet tooth and the practice is good.

This character piece is of a sexy Oola (the dancing Twi' lek from Return of the Jedi) A few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting the actress Femi Taylor who played the part of Oola at a Sci-Fi convention in Loughborough University. Myself, Colin MacNeil and Wil Simpson were asked to sketch Femi over the course of an afternoon. Too say I was star struck would be an understatement. She was positively delightful (mischieviously a little flirty too) My sketch then really didn't do her justice and I spent the rest of the convention working a better piece before she left. The Fallen Angel post (previously shown here) helps give you an idea of the pose I eventually used for her in her character Oola.

Anyways. About time I actually included a proper sketch here for the blog. Next week... Death.

October Competition - Winner reminder!

With only five days left in November we still haven't heard from the October Competition winner, Heyoka James. If no contact is made by the end of this month a new winner will be selected.

And obviously everyone else has only five days left to enter this months competition!

Recent!

Some recent work today, the cover to Cubicle Seven's RPG book, 100 Horror Adventure Seeds. I enjoyed doing this one, and a bunch of the composition was done with a simple 3d program in an attempt to nail my perspectives. Initially the roughs were in more of a psychological horror mode, but the company was looking for something a bit more mainstream (I'm loathe to say 'teen horror' but, well, I think that nails it), which turned out to be a lot of fun for me.

Happy Who Day! (yesterday)

Yup, even more Doctor Who from me this week. Finishing up a big job this week so it's a dip into my archive and a one page Doctor Who strip done in 2001. 'Very Short Trips' was done with the idea that I'd do a page strip of all the previous Doctors but that never ended up happening. Those who follow Doctor Who closely will know that there was a book called 'Short Trips' (a collection of short stories about the Doctor) released around the time that I'd done this by Big Finish, so with the strip being a page long it made sense to call it 'Very Short Trips', well it did to me.

Also, yesterday, was the birthday of the TV show, having first aired back on the 23rd of November 1963. Happy Birthday Doctor Who.

Jonday - The Quest for Adventure

So hey, here's one fresh off the...er... monitor. I was asked by a zine if there was any possibility of reworking a piece from last year to closer fit a particular game world. It's a long story to explain fully, but I just finished the rework:





And for the far too interested, here's the original prior to rework:

Repeat Offender Post - Alex Ronald!

Well, we said he'd be welcome back any time and he took us on our word, Alex is back and with another cracking painting!

"Yo! Adrian! Adrian!"

Jon asked in the comments last time Alex dropped by if he had a website where he showed off his work, it appears that Alex is neglecting his duties of sharing his wonderful work with the world wide web so please leave comments insisting that he fixes that problem or at the very least continues to supply Scotch Corner with these great examples of his work!

Alex used to be a regular on Dredd in the 90's but just now he's painting magazine covers and promotional art for Ruffian games in Dundee as well as concept art for indy film studios Black Camel pictures and Mothcatcher films.

Sole survivor

Well at one point in continuity - think he's lost that status in the comics these days and is one of thousands of kryptonians. Haven't read a Superman comic in ages as everytime i picked one up his continuity and origin, parents (alive or dead?) status etc had changed dependant on the creative team and i gave up. Just picked up Secret Origin by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank though and it's shaping up well so i might try the main titles again at some point.

This was illustrated in flash pre my recent Hulk and Wonder Woman posts done in a similar fashion. Unfortunately it's a sign i wont be posting new stuff for a while as my daughter is spending more and more time in hospital so my free time is at a minimum. So, apologies in advance for anybody who has already seen the work i'll be digging out of the archives for the forseeable future.

Silencers.

Here is a piece from the vaults.

City of Silence was originally created for Epic Comics back in 1992. Written by Warren Ellis the cyberpunk story was a near showcase for me (thank you, Warren) and still remains my personal favourite work. Unfortunately Marvel decided not to release the book and the rights reverted back to Warren and myself. The series eventually saw print at Image in 1998 and I decided to re-ink and re-size the artwork for the new edition. D'Israeli coloured the series.

This week I have decided to showcase the cover. My first 3D created image. This was done on computer as it was the only way I could 'paint' in colour at the time. I still use 3D models in my work but more for reference now and perspectives for cityscapes than for finished work. It can be a great time-saving option choosing a digital path.

Perspective. Before all the computer nerds start ripping the pages apart please bear in mind that the artwork was created on a P200 processor (work that out yourself!) with 128MB RAM and a 2GB hard drive nearly ten years ago. You can barely send an email with that limited spec nowadays. I was self taught on 3D Studio Max for a few weeks and all facial details were painted in by hand in Photoshop (as I hadn't learnt texture mapping at that point) With that caveat I think this cover has some value. There are a couple of places where my lack of knowledge and ability let me down but Gitane's face (with the scar) still pleases me. The intense expression on her face is a favourite.

HELMET

Been running around like a mentalist today, getting alternate directions to diferent departments and... Hey, you don't want to hear about my day, you want artwork. And so, satisfying what is surely an odd helmet fetish I give you... helmets.

Is there a Doctor in the house?

Myself and fellow Scotch Cornerist, Gary Erskine, will be guests this Saturday at the one day comic convention 'Thought Bubble' in Leeds. This is the third year the show has been running but it'll be my first time at the event and I'm looking forward to catching up with some old friends, buying some comics and chatting to the public (they like to chat).

In preparation for the show I spent some time producing quick inked sketches and as I'm a huge Doctor Who fan I mostly drew Doctor Who :) Here for your viewing is all of the TV incarnations of the good Doctor. These where all about twenty minutes or half an hours work using my favourite brush pen for looseness and ease.

If you are in Leeds or indeed plan to go the Thought Bubble please track down myself and Gary and say hello.

Jonday - Buy our iguanas!

Here's one of my personal faves from my book on how to create fantasy art for beginners, which is out in the shops now.




You can read more about the book in my blog

Sunday Guest Post - Matt Soffe!

Hi, my name is Matt Soffe, and I'd be honoured if you'd consider this effort for your Sunday guest post. I'm currently trying to hone my skills with contributions to a few small press publications, as well as regular entries in the 2000AD forum art competitions. This year I have been fortunate enough to have work published in Dogbreath and The End is Nigh, plus I contributed art & letters to a strip that appears in 'Back From The Depths' #1 - a tribute to the short-lived but essential 80's horror comic 'Scream'.

This image started out as a simple doodle in my sketchbook - I literally began drawing without any planning or forethought. I soon found this rather Stalinesque character staring anxiously out at me, then the robot guards appeared and ideas for a possible story began to form. Sketched in pencil, then inked and scanned with colours added in photoshop.

Upcoming projects include further Strontium Dog adventures, a strip for the next issue of Zarjaz (which I'm very excited about), plus I'm about to embark on a collaborative project with a number of up and coming comic artists called 'Fractal Friction'.

As for my Scottish heritage - well, my mum's maiden name was Ferguson, plus I inherited her prominent grey streak at the age of 18 (probably more of an Irish attribute, but is that close enough?!)

Best wishes

Matt
http://mygrimmbrother.blogspot.com/

Excuse me, coming thru

Quite a bit of detail on this one so click on the image above to view a larger version. This is from a sample pencil image (attached below) which i created earlier in the year. I find it quite useful to revisit 'older' work to ink or colour up after a period of time to see what problems i may inadvertently give to an inker or colourist. It seemed a good idea at the time to colour up in photoshop straight over the pencils but it took forever just to lay down the flat colours as the grainy pencils didn't give me any blocked out areas to quickly fill. Anybody have any good solution to colouring this way directly over pencils?