Sunday Guest Post - Roberto Zaghi!

From time to time here at Scotch Corner we like to ask an artist whose work is something to behold to drop by and show us how its done, this week we have the pleasure of the prolific Italian artist Roberto Zaghi to admire. An absolute treat!


I am glad of being invited on Scotch Corner! Lots of fine artworks here...

I'm a comic book artist/illustrator from Italy, I've been working in the italian comics industry for about 15 years at Sergio Bonelli Editore on series Nathan Never, Zona X, Legs Weaver and (current and main collaboration) Julia - the adventures of a young criminologist. I'm working also for the bd market for the series Thomas Silane (Bamboo éditions), with Cyril Saint-Blancat as color artist.

My insiprations are the classic american and italian school, from Milton Caniff to Attilio Micheluzzi. Hitchcock and Kubrik dvds are always at hand!

Too bad I've never been to Scotland, my experience is limited to several Flickr trips searching for wonderful hills and castles... Here are some sample of my work, hope you enjoy!

Best wishes - Roberto



Fantastic work I'm sure you'll agree and we'd like to thank Roberto for sharing his work with us. Be sure to visit Roberto's Blog Site to see more examples of brilliant illustrations.



The Guest Post on Sunday is open to all who wish to take part, so click here and join in!

Hungry

This one was done as an experiment with Poser textures (its an old version i've got as i don't really use it much these days - i should really upgrade at some point, sure it's moved on leaps and bounds). I made the blue blood spattered skin textures in photoshop, including transparencies to show ripped and missing flesh with some bones showing through. All rendering and lighting was then done in poser - could tweak all day in photoshop, but decided to leave it as the raw poser image.

Punk too.

Another in the series of Riot Grrrls. I used a model for the pose and then overworked the photograph (using the colour as a base) Quick and easy process to garner an acceptable end image. The eyes were my favourite part of this digital colour sketch. Kinda Ladytron. The flock is another regular feature background. Years ago this character would have been in Warheads, all tooled and suited up for some cyberpunk hardware skirmish. sigh.

Maybe sooner than you think?

Saucy Jack

He's a naughty one. Card art Image for Vampire, The Eternal Struggle (White Wolf) done over the summer, but with the impending release of the new card set next week, I'm now able to show some of the work. Having done plenty of monochrome art for the World of Darkness game line, it was a great opportunity to move into some colour work with similar themes. And it must be something of a coup to get to do Jack the Ripper, transported to a modern setting by sorcery.

I was in a 3D phase at the time I did this, where I was relying quite heavily on digital tools for composition and lighting. This wasn't done with those crutches, and I think hasn't suffered in the slightest. Go figure... ;)

(C) White WOlf 2009

'Stone of R'lyeh - Starblazer No.282

Here's the finished painting that I showed you the pencils for last week. As the title of the post might give away this was done as a homage to the old British sci-fi digest comic 'Starblazer' published by DC Thomson for 281 issues. This painting was done for a 'mock' cover to issue 282 and you can read all about that and see the cover with all its logos and text on my blog here.

This was a lot of fun to paint and the old acrylics did me well but I did have to do a slight alteration in Photoshop when I was finished. I knew after I had painted the background and was working on the figures that it was the wrong colour and not nearly dark enough so to spare me painting it again I adjusted it in Photoshop once I'd scanned in the painting. I also added the stars too. Overall though I was pretty happy with my efforts with the brush and even the slight break I've had since the last go with traditional paints didn't seem to get in the way. I hope I can do some more soon.

Jonday - dragon

So I sell second rights to a fair amount of my work, and I've noticed a couple of pieces in particular sell well. So rather than keep selling them I'm planning on making some similarly themed pieces which will hopefully fill the same niche. Here's the sketch for one:

Repeat Offender Post - Alex Ronald!

It seems Alex is on a one man mission to corner the guest post but when he submits work this good whose going to complain?

Alex recently started his own blog and he's been diligently posting up a range of older work and new paintings. He's also dug out his very first comics work, a small press comic called 'Red Sands' which he used to tempt editors into giving him work, and is planning to unleash it as a free download on his site. He's been busy hasn't he!

Alex used to be a regular on Judge 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.

The Guest Post on Sunday is open to all who wish to take part, so click here and join in!

Dinnae fancy yours much

Some more photoshop jiggery pokery experiments. Basically just flipping one side of a photo to make symmetrical (that actually looked quite alien without any further work) and then playing with the features to make a humanoid alien chick.

Elektra - Evolution of a character panel.

This week I have decided to show the introductory character panel of Elektra from the short story I did for Panini recently. Having thrown a bad guy through a restuarant's glass window, our heroine steps after her prey clamly with sai in hand. I liked the balletic elegance of her stepping gracefully through the sharp cutting hole. The intent of her actions is there.

The first panel shows my biro sketch. I normally thumbnail panel layouts in the margin of the script and work out the page quickly on A4 with a pen. This looks as near to the finished page as possible and most of the good ideas come out of this process. Fast and spontaneous, it is very exciting to see the page form so quickly, even in this raw state.

Panel two shows my layouts draft. I work in some shadows here and there and balance out the composition and correct any dodgy anatomy. To save time this is also done at A4.

Panel three shows the pencils (generally done with my inking pens as a kinda practice run of the finished page) This is the stage where I work in all the feathering and textures and some corrections are made here too. Pages are scanned again and turned into bluelines for final stage.

The fourth panel is the inked page. Sometimes I can be confident enough with a story to miss out the third stage pencils and go straight to inks (as on Dare) but Elektra was special and I wanted to make sure I got the details and storytelling spot on. The writer James Peaty had fashioned a tight lean script of only six pages but with near seven or eight panels per page, space was at a premium and getting a nice introductory shot of Elektra was tough.

The final stage is the addition of colour by James Offredi (who did the lovely job on my Knights of the Pendragon collection cover shown here recently) Ed Hammond edited the story at all stages and offered some good advice on creating a PG friendly Elektra for the Panini line, hence the cycling shorts. These concessions are part of the process of working for specific audiences and I feel the end product works very well. The final version appears complete in Marvel Heroes issue 19 on sale now.

Next blog will feature a whole Elektra page breakdown and will show more clearly the different choices and approaches made to create this action story.

Full page Black and white

Working on some fun full page illos right now, and the first one is off the production line, showing one of the main characters in a street scuffle with some thugs. Enjoying this one, and doing some detailed greyscale pieces after a long run on colour work.

Trying to watch my tonal range in this, and if I'm being critical, I might say I need a little more contrast, with too many middle tone greys at work? Anyhow, enjoy!

The need for space...

The urge to paint has hit me again and this was spurred on by my decision to create a 'mock' cover to the classic UK sci-fi comic 'Starblazer', a comic I read happily as a child. So as I'm a busy chap and time is short you get to see the pencils created for the cover and fingers crossed the finished painted cover next week. Time to look out my brushes again!

Jonday - Alchemy

So the new version of Alchemy is out (http://al.chemy.org/download/) and I've been messing about with it. Just super speedy nonsense - none of these is more than 5 minutes, but it's an exciting design tool.

Twit

A cartoony one this week, the regular paying gig needed a background illustration to us on twitter, so i took the character i created for them a few months back and gave him a twitter bird supehero costume.

I think it's the helmet, but now that i've posted it here it reminds me slightly of the wee guy from G-Force / Battle of the Planets cartoon.

Punk.

Another colour sketch. A spunky Riot Grrl. Who'd have guessed?

Had a lot of fun with her working the texture of the hat and designs of badges (which were all rotated and sized individually) I drew up some rough designs and ideas, pencilled, inked then coloured digitally. Probably going to be part of a larger series.

Fantasy Art Now 2

Today I got a nice surprise through the post, my comp copy of Fantasy Art Now 2, a collection of art rounded up by Jonny Duddle and Aly Fell from over 50 fantasy artists and illustrators working today. I'm gobsmacked to be in the company of such folk as Brom, Mike Correiro, Don Seegmiller and Jason Chan to name but a few.

I had a couple of images included - One broad panorama from a White Wolf Exalted cover, and this one printed below from Alderac Entertainment's Legend of the Five Rings CCG (click for larger view)

Here's the Amazon UK link for Jonny and Aly's tome;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fantasy-Art-Now-Aly-Fell/dp/1905814526

Bubba Ho-tep

You might have noticed last week that it was the 'Kings' birthday, Elvis Presley was born on the 8th January 1935 and so many fans around the world celebrated what would have been his 75th birthday. In a weird nod of the head to the great man I drew this sketch from the film 'Bubba Ho-tep'.

When a 3,000 year old mummy dressed in a cowboy outfit starts to terrorise a retirement home in Texas its down to Elvis played by Bruce Campbell and John F Kennedy played by Ossie Davis to save the day. I highly recommend this film and the performances of both stars are excellent.

Thank you very much. Elvis has left the blog...

Jonday - Messing about with Foatyshop.

It's been too long.

Repeat Offender Post - Alex Ronald!

Holy Lord he's here again but we ain't complaining! Alex sent along these images with this message:

"I'm no longer involved with this particular project but I got the OK to show these just before Christmas but not to talk about who or what it was for."

Well we're sure glad he shared them with us and I'm sure we can all come to our own conclusions what these lovely images could be from or about.

Alex used to be a regular on Judge 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.

Many thanks again to Alex for sharing his work and we'll hopefully roll out the welcome mat again soon.

EDIT: Alex has started his own blog, woohoo!!!

The Guest Post on Sunday is open to all who wish to take part, so click here and join in!

To be Frank

Congrats to John Owens again for winning the December competition. His Punisher illustration will be off to him soon but i thought i would also post a preview of it here. From my point of view it was a good chance to draw a character i've never actually drawn before and get dirtier and grungier than i normally would with the inking. As i had never drawn the character before i had to decide which take on the character i would use. I've gone for somewhere between the Frank Miller/Klaus Janson version from Miller's Daredevil run and the Mike Zeck mini-series as that's how i picture the character in my head.

I made a light photocopy of my pencils onto a second artboard and used that to create the finished inked version so that means John will also get the original pencils (below).

Futureworld illustration - 2009.

A sort of nod to the original Westworld movie although The Terminator might prove a more topical reference for the younger fans out there! My colleague Dominic's wife, Sharon posed for me during the Jack Cross sessions a few years ago now (playing both female parts) and this portrait was an outake. I re-worked it a bit with the face plate and added the circuitry and mechanics underneath. It has a kind of whimsy about it that reminds me of the early Metal Hurlant covers. Liked the focus on the eye in this one too. Nice and veined. The rabbit pattern on the shirt (Sharon's own! ;) really pops in the final image.

And no, Sharon can't remove her face plate in real life.

Backdrop

A street scene completed over the hols, intended for use as a zooming backdrop in some comic panels for some portfolio works. Needless to say, with all the Artrage talk going on in recent posts I immediately reverted to real media for a piece I wanted to get right. It will get computer greyscale tone and some characters on in future days to round off the work. Watch this space.

In weeks to come. (click for larger view)

December Competition Winner!

Start of the new year and we are running slightly behind on announcing the winner of the Make 'Yours' Marvel competition from December so with no further delay the prize goes to John Owens who requested an illustration of Frank Castle aka The Punisher. Congratulations to John and I'm sure that Tom will putting pencil to paper shortly so keep your eyes peeled for his future post of the illustration and your deserved prize.

Keeping some bad company...

Back in 1986, 2000AD (UK sci-fi comic) hit the 500 issue mark and in its pages was the first episode of a new strip called 'Bad Company'. The story featured a band of human soldiers fighting a war on a planet called 'Ararat' against an enemy called the 'Krool'. Leading a very dysfunctional but very lethal band of soldiers was 'Kano' who looked like Frankensteins monster.

Bad Company was written by Pete Milligan and featured the art of Brett Ewins (pencils and I believe some inks) and Jim McCarthy (inks and everything else). This story was pretty much a re-telling of a strip called 'Darkies Mob' which appeared in 'Battle', even using the diary of a soldier (Danny Franks) as the narration for the story.

The strip was pretty popular and ran for I think four or five series and several 'one-off' stories, none I think where as successful as the original storyline but then most sequels don't live up to the original.

Jonday - Gentleman Cannibal Ahoy

So over the breakus festivas I put together a little behind the scenes, work in progress, rough cut documentation vid for the Gentleman Cannibal prokect and uploaded it to the YouTube. You can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZHeW_EvyXY. But for this I needed a couple of new still images, with the character models properly lit and so on, so here are those, as today's SC offering!





The Gentleman Cannibal is a graphic novel I've been working on with model maker/sculptor/artist Richard Dawson for about 12 years. We're getting there slowly. www.gentlemancannibal.com

Full Moon

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Wahay - just got my computer back in the nick of time and it seems to be fixed - albeit i'm probably going to have to waste the next few days digging out serial numbers and reloading all my software.

Anyhoo, this doodle was primarily an excercise with inking techniques. I played about with toothbrush spatters for the werewolf and sky, splodging for the trees and grass and i reverse scraped out the highlights on the trees and bushes with a stanley blade. The final blood red was added by dropping red water colour onto the semi dry ink on the foreground and letting them bleed into each other.

January Competition - Three for One Printacular!

A new year and a new competition here on Scotch Corner take it away Jon!

Welcome to 2010! For my last competition offering way back in the olden days of 2009 I offered up a single gigantic print. Well, we all know that as time marches on things get smaller and smaller, and so for this contest I'm offering three 6x8 mini-prints. Whilst the gigantic sized prints are great for impressing your guests mounted in a huge gilt frame in your cavernous drawing room, these more compact and bijou prints are a great size for framing in your city flat or cosy country cottage. Or perhaps hanging in your downstairs cloakroom.

The images featured all come from the Dragon Warriors fantasy gaming manuals published by Magnum Opus Press. There's the core book cover featuring a doughty band of adventurers descending into the depths, the frozen centurion from "Prince of Darkness" and the townscape of the forthcoming "Friends or Foes". Good luck one and all and enjoy your jet pack in this bright new futuristic decade!

It couldn't be easier to enter, all you need to do is leave a comment about the prize and you'll be entered into the running. 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 January 2010 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.