Cartoon Capers week 3: Captain Caveman

Thanos.

Another quick sketch from Aviles. Thanos is a character I have been asked to draw before. Always tricky when you have never worked on the book or series. Thankfully most of the fans now bring comics or phones with reference along to the event. Makes life a lot easier that way!

Even More Nightfall

American country-lovin-monster-huntin laydee from AEG's upcoming Blood Country release for nightfall card game.

© Alderac Entertainment Group 2011

W is for Wolverine… or Déjà vu?

Here's a commission sketch I completed that nicely fits into the Marvel A-Z theme which I will occasionally drop in and out of. I'll not explain who the character Wolverine is as he's been in plenty of X-Men films and if you don't know him you can easily Google the hairy little fellow. This is the second time of drawing this sketch though as after completing it the first time I entrusted the Royal Mail to deliver the sketch and it promptly disappeared.

So for comparison you'll see the latest version on the left and the first sketch on the right. I shortened the neck on the second version as I felt it was too long but apart from using the first sketch as a pencil base I inked and coloured the second version without referring to the first to see what differences I would make. So you can go play spot the difference. Once again this was Pentel Brush Pen for inks and Copics for the tone, I used my Promarker for the block of yellow so that it was reasonably solid.

Jonday -

Hey. Been making some ipad backgrounds for The One Ring rpg.  Check it out.

Vixens looking a bit rough!

A bit late with this today. I had a weekend away from the screen and everything goes to pot. Art duties on Vampire Vixens 3 begins early in the new year but during short breaks on Outpost, I've managed to get some roughs down in B/W. this is just a taster of some of the high altitude action.

Goddesses

It will take a long time to explain what this is. It WASN'T supposed to be a porn comic, but there was going to be a lot of nudity in it. It's like 10 years ago now, so I forget the details. The script was by my buddy Ed Hillyer.

Cartoon Capers week 2: Hong Kong Phooey

The Bride of Frankenstein - Aviles, Spain.

Recently returned from the Aviles Comic Festival in Spain. A lovely event and this was our third year attending. Most of the day is spent drawing for the fans outside at the local bar. The rest of the time is filled with long lunches and late dinners with the rest of the guests. There is a very relaxed atmosphere and this year I got the opportunity to catch up with the Starman himself, Tony Harris. We haven't met before after near constant phone calls over fifteen years ago during the Starman era. Really good to see him.

Other guests include the ever delightful Renee Witterstaetter, Brandon Peterson, Ric Meyers, Jason Aaron and partner Kelly, Steve Englehart and wife Terry and RM Guerra and family. Many thanks to Jorge, German, Rocio and the rest of the Aviles crew who helped make for a wonderful event. See you next year!

Here is my favourite skech of the event. The Bride of Frankenstein. Thanks to Emilio Lobato for the scan.

Nightfall undead

More work from Nightfall, the deck-building card game from AEG. A zombie (man, zombies are everywhere right now, I can't go out of my door for the proliferation of zombies...) roams the roads of backwoods USA in next month's release of the Blood Country expansion for Nightfall. The only question is, can he shuffle fast enough to outpace the forest fire raging behind him...?

With kind permission to post and use on my web portfolio and ©AEG 2011

Slay it with Flowers!

Out this month is my latest comic strip for the Judge Dredd Megazine, a nine page Tale from the Black Museum called 'Slay it with Flowers' written by the talented hand of Alec Worley. The Black Museum stories are 'Dreddworld' stories which basically means they take part in the world of Judge Dredd and in this case in Mega-City One. Digging into a story called Father Earth from 1979, Alec has brought back an old villain, well, only a small but deadly part of him. 'Lovelorn botanist Crayton Stump discovers the key to winning the girl of his dreams when he stumbles upon a flower growing from the remains of the mutant cult leader Father Earth.' I drew this back in Spring of this year so its good to see it in print and it was a bit of a thrill to delve into a classic Dredd strip and add our own after story.

Alec has written up a great post on his own blog where he not only gives you a potted overview of the Tales of the Black Museum series but also a small Q&A section with myself, so go take a look.

Tales From The Black Museum: Slay It With Flowers appears in the Judge Dredd Megazine # 315 (out now) and is available from all comic shops and selected newsagents. See 2000 AD’s official website for subscription and digital download details.

© Rebellion

Lost in time

These two pictures were created in 3D about ten years ago when I was looking for a new job. Many of the 3d art submissions I'd seen doing the rounds at the time tended to be mostly sci fi in theme for some reason. To try and stand out from the crowd, I went for the completely opposite approach. Something old. A period piece based on the depression era photography of Berenice Abbott. In the end I went for the image at the bottom right. I had better contrast than the overall grey look of the car scene. Today I think the only diffirence I'd make is to add some smoke or steam coming from the roofs or street level. It needs something to say people are alive in there.

Unfortunately these are the only versions I have of these renders. The originals, the models and the scene itself died in a hard drive failure. Don't be a tube like me, always back up folks.

Pencil portrait

Sorry to be late with this. Saturdays can be difficult. I think this is self explanitory.

Cartoon Capers Week 1: Dastardly & Muttley

In order to make sure that i keep trying to post new sketches this year i've given myself another theme to work with. I was chatting with my wee boy about the cartoons he watches and what i watched when i was a nipper and he hadn't heard of most of my old favourites. So as most of the cartoons i watched don't seem to be on any of the 4 million channels on sky i've been trying to 'educate' him and show him some oldies on youtube etc. So basically i'll be working through old cartoon characters - feel free to give suggestions for upcoming weeks. I decided against copying the old flat animation style too much and have gone for a more grungy feel for this set.

As ever click on the image to see the larger version.

Vampyre.

This was a quick sketch for Claire, a friend from the third floor of Hope Street Studio who was leaving for Canada to further her work in animation. We decided to get a small book together and fill it with memories or sketches for her journey. Since I can't draw a moose the next best choice seemed to be a vanpyre. Logical, no?





My initial sketch was a thumbnail barely an inch square. The biro pen sketch was at actual page size (approximately 16x16cm) I inked with a brushpen on 60g tracing paper and mounted it into the book. Very pleased with this image. Quick turnaround too (roughly fifteen minutes) I should do more work like this. The spontaneity still lives in the sketch!

Bulloch House again

Bulloch house, a ground breaking building on Rhum (I think) which I have not posted before in error. Now you can have a proper look, instead of seeing it swiftly taken down because of my own over-eagerness to post ;)

©cubicle7 2011

The Mad Monks - Week 3

And here is the final two pieces for The Mad Monks board game, Brothers Friedrich and Dietrich. All the character art was fun to do and potentially in the future I could be doing a cover for the game featuring these Mad Monks in action.

The blarb for the game: Join the monks of Bierbrau Monastery as they race for the barrel of beer, using any tactics they can from chastising with the big stick to humbling with the holy book. On hand is the Abbot to make sure the nobody gets seriously hurt. A fun knockabout game for 2-6 players.

© 2011 Paul Scott - Rathbone Games

Jonday - What is best in life?

Drawinz of barbarianz innit?

For d101 Games mighty Crypts and Things.

Click for embination:

Sketch of Libena

This is was a B/W sketch done earlier in the year for a fan of the Vampire Vixens of the Wehrmacht strip.



The script for the 3rd adventure, (12 pages long this time) is almost complete, I'm adding two additional pages as a redux of the second story which was originally published in Wasted and with the intro episode it's all going to get packaged up into a full colour One shot for next year.

Here's a cool recent review from HorrorCultFilms.com
http://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/2011/09/vampire-vixens-of-the-wehrmacht/

Lady and Worm

Playing around with some coloured pencils in my small pocket sketchbook. I was going to draw a horse , but a horse was going to be too much work ,so hence the worm....which is kind of problematic in a strictly Freudian sense...nevermind. The problem with coloured pencils on such a small drawing is that is that the texture of the paper tends to dominate too much. I cheated this a bit my taking into Photoshop ( I am weak ). I should really try this kind of thing in watercolour, that will be my next set of sketchbook experiments.

Z is for Zombies, Marvel Zombies

Finally the last part of my A- Z set (albeit a bit late in the day -aarrgh, nearly two hours to upload due to my connection constantly cutting off). Anyhoo, click on the pics for larger versions. The Marvel Zombies originally appeared a few years back in Ultimate fantastic Four and proved to be so popular (as with all things zombie just now) that they got a few mini-series of their own - including a crossover with Ash from Sam Raimi's Evil Dead movies. Haven't read all of them but throughout the various series they have jumped between various alternate Marvel earths causing zombie devastation on their way so i reckon that gave me free reign to choose whichever characters, costumes and mutilations i wanted to without having to reference any of the series - so these are the zombies from earth whatever. I also tried to avoid using any characters that i had already done in the rest of the A - Z set.

Blackheart - Marvel Figurines

This week's offering is my recent Blackheart cover for the Marvel Figurines series by Eaglemoss. My friend and writing colleague, John Tomlinson is editing the series and asked me to provide a cover featuring Blackheart. I must admit to not being overly familiar with the character but John supplied plenty of reference. Seeing the figurine realised in three dimensions was also helpful and we managed to find a sympathetic solution to the different styles and designs of the character. We mostly deferred to the actual model to be supplied to the public but added a few extra horns to the crown for a more interesting visual look.



My reference pencils are always done with a brushpen as it provides me the opportunity to do a first pass of the inks (sorting out textures and problems) I also work in reverse as it corrects a skew in my work. Hold any piece of artwork up to a mirror and you will see that it is a more common occurence for artists than you think. Always best to do this trick with your own work too!



After final approval from Marvel (a few subtle changes were requested regarding the 'mouth and nose' of Blackheart to be more clearly defined) the pencils were inked and then passed to Chris Blythe for his lovely colour work to finish off the image.

Very pleased with this first cover for Eaglemoss' Marvel Figurine range and I am pleased to reveal that I am currently working on a second cover featuring...

Well, that would be telling, wouldn't it? Maybe in a future post?

Blackheart is TM & © 2011 Marvel & Subs.

More Big Game Hunters

Following on from the Big Game Hunters a few weeks ago, here is the British officer character from the same job for Gorilla Board Games.

The Mad Monks - Week 2

More character art for The Mad Monks board game, these two charmers are Brothers Bernhardt and Ernst.

The blarb for the game: Join the monks of Bierbrau Monastery as they race for the barrel of beer, using any tactics they can from chastising with the big stick to humbling with the holy book. On hand is the Abbot to make sure the nobody gets seriously hurt. A fun knockabout game for 2-6 players.

© 2011 Paul Scott - Rathbone Games

Jonday - Is it... The One Ring?

So with so much work surfacing at once I hope you can forgive me for being a little repetitive here. This one has gone down well with the punters, so why no have a look yerself?

An Elf Settlement for The One Ring:

Fan Sketch

A recent Dredd sketch for 2000ad fan Ian Leonard.

Old guy

Just something I did to wind down in the evening.

Hobgoblin

Mega-busy week and paying work had to take priority so still no new Z entry this week (it's drawn and inked though - so just need to find the time to scan and colour it) so in it's place this week is another freebie sketch done for one of the attendees at our recent Kingdom of Adventure appearance in Kirkaldy. As with the last one i've added a quick dash of colour over the photo just for the sake of it.

Moon Landing.

This week's offering is an audition image done for a client and obviously concerning the moon landing. You will notice some subtle corrects from the lineart to the final colour image. These editorial decisons are fairly common and reference too is very important. The stars were removed per client's request. Loved working on this but found it very hard resisting the temptation to add the zombie from my previous moon landing image Earthfall.



The talented Yel Zamor did a lovely job rendering this classic scene without over-powering the final colour image.