Jonday - Loading

A little atmospheric illustration from Tales from Wilderland, for The One Ring.  Rafts, ponies, elves in the moonlight.  It's all here!  Enjoyed this one.

Cityscape

This is another old drawing from the archives. It's a copy of an old photograph of NY from the 1930's.
I'm not too mad about this picture now that I look at it again. It has lots of persective flaws and some untidy inking.
These days it would be easier to do by building the scene using simple blocks and textures in 3D, then lighting and painting in all the detailing. Theoretically the perspective should be perfect.

Saviour 20APE!

I might have posted this elsewhere. It was a guest pin-up for the collected trade of SAVIOR 28 by J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Cavallaro. Which is a great book if you can find a copy.
My idea was to do a fake cover like one of the 80s Marvel UK reprints, complete with UK spelling and crummy off-register printing...oh and to make the Savior a gorilla,

Avengers Redesigns

Another doodle done for superheroofthemonth For the month of May they are doing an Avengers theme - the only rule is that the characters need to have been active Avengers at some point in time - and you need to choose five. I could only narrow my options down to 23 so had to randomly chose 5 from that batch ending up with The Vision, Wasp (Yellowjacket), Captain America, She-Hulk and Valkyrie. Again, these are just costume redesigns rather than character redesigns

Roller Grrrls. Promotional trailer. Evolution.

The Roller Grrrls promotion trailers went live on Tuesday and feature vignettes of our characters leading up to the leads Mouse, Snow and Anna. The second teaser features Bridget, our comprehensive teacher.The following images show the four stages of how each of these episodes are created. It is also the same process I use for most artwork.

Layout. Biro. The most important part of the whole creative process. It defines the composition. Everything that follows is polishing that original idea.

Next step is pencils. I use a brushpen on 90gm tracing paper and treat this a first draft ink pass. It takes a lot of confidence but after twenty plus years it works for me (mostly) Some minor additions (her waiscoat) are made and corrections too.

Inks next. The waistcoat didn't work so I dropped it. The pencils are flipped and I ink in reverse as it allows me to correct a skew (eyelines and perspectives especially) Details are tightened up too. The reference below is shown correctly for the purpose of continuity. The third panel was drawn earlier.

This is a raw scan only and still requires processing in Photoshop. Contrast and levels passes make for a sharper and blacker line. Some additional corrections and cropping are made and the image is finally flipped one last time back to it's correct orientation. Lettering and logo are added and then the post is uploaded. Repeat this every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday! ;)

For more Roller Grrrls images and further trailers you can visit our hub at www.rollergrrrls.com

Preview Card

Just noticed that one of my cards was featured on the preview page of L5R's Embers of War. © AEG 2012

Coming ashore…

Here's a piece I've had special permission to show from The Legends of Anglerre Companion by Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd. I very much enjoyed working on this in my pencils, markers and ink style, it made a nice change of pace and it turned out something I was very pleased with (I'm very picky about my own work you see as I guess most creators are).

©Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd

Jonday - Moar LOTR

A pencil piece from Tales from Wilderland.

Toilet roll and plastic guns.

An old one from 2000ad. I got my wife to pose for this one, rose tattoo and all.

She looked a bit silly with (clean) toilet roll wrapped round her eyes and holding a toy gun though.

Halo Jones Commission

I missed my day again. BAD BLOGGER! Thi is a commission I did of Halo Jones, her pal Rodice and Toby the robot dog. Some of Ian Gibson's style inevitably crept in.

Batman head sketch

A Batman doodle dug out of the archives - not really anything else to say about this one.

Hybrids. Haden Blackman. City scene. Evolution of a panel.

Hybrids. Haden Blackman. City scene. Evolution of a panel.

Here are the basic four steps necessary for creating a complex scene. The layout (although rough) is the single most important stage of this process as it defines the composition. Everything that follows is refining that original idea. Details are added where appropriate and some minor changes are made but essentially it remains close to the layout. The next major creative leap comes with the colouring stage. Yel Zamor's colour adds a further more important level of depth to the final image as it creates mood and atmosphere which is not easily seen in the lineart.

Layout sketch.

Pencils.

Inks.

Colour by Yel Zamor.

Werewolves

A pack of werewolves from last year's Nightfall Deck-building card game. ©AEG 2012

It's brandy. Good for the heart.

Sometimes you get lucky and someone commissions you to draw something you really like. My recent sketch of Bub the zombie from the film Day of the Dead was snapped up by a fan who then decided he'd like another sketch of two more characters from the film. So we have John (Terry Alexander) and Bill McDermott (Jarlath Conroy) in typical relaxed mode for the zombie apocalypse :)

Jonday - pencilz

Another one from Tales from Wilderland.

©2012 Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd

The One Ring, Middle-earth, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the characters, items, events and places therein are trademarks or registered trademarks of The Saul Zaentz Company d/b/a Middle-earth Enterprises and are used under license by Sophisticated Games Ltd and their respective licensees.

A Night to Remember

I thought I'd do something quite topical today rather that dig into the archives.
Today of all days was the time to run with this image.

It's a very quick 3D model of the bow section with lighting and texture painted in Photoshop.
My daughter is a Titanic nut so I think modelling the whole ship might be on the cards as a 3D project over the coming year so she can explore it in realtime.

More sketches from that job

Same job as last week, even more rejected sketches. The good/bad thing about working in comics is that nobody has the time to do anything but the first version of anything.

Superman

A pencil sketch of the 'New 52' Superman this week. I'm not one of the fans up in uproar over all of the changes (although a lot aren't for the better) and certainly not with Superman losing his 'underpants' look. My only real issue with the new costumes is that, in general, they seem overly complicated for the sake of it (well that and the fact that Batman, Superman, Green Lantern and the Flash all seem to have gone to the same tailor regardless of 'costume origins') as a result no two artists seem to draw Superman exactly the same - so in that vein i've also tweaked the bits that i'm not that keen on to create my take on it too.

Band. Sketch. Work in progress.

Band. Sketch. Work in progress. Biro on 90gm xerox paper.

Cinderella

it isn't Cinderella, but another character illustration from Cubicle 7's The Smoke, for Victoriana. When will this goldmine of illustrations run out for me? Um, next week most likely. © C7 2012

Seig Heil Sweetie!

After the Doctor Who episode 'Let's Kill Hitler' I jokingly mentioned on Twitter that there would now be a slew of 'Nazi Outfit' River Song fan art on the web, I'm sure there has been but strangely I haven't seen any. This was done as a 'thank you' present for a friend who had also wondered at the lack of fan art and couldn't resist seeing what I'd do, well that and I figure he likes River Song.

Jonday - Tales from Wilderland

So last week a book we've been working on at Cubicle 7 for a long time finally saw release.  It's really exciting when a book comes out, and this goes double when it's one that's such a labour of love.  Tales From Wilderland, a collection of adventures for The One Ring is definitely one of those books.

I got the amazing chance to paint the cover over the pencil work of the inestimable John Howe. I hope I did his sketch justice.

Heading for the high plains

I've been planning ahead this week for some ideas that i'd like to explore after the Vampire Vixens comic.
It's a year away working at my pace but no harm in toying with the back burner stuff when the chance arises.

Exploitation cinema is a big inspiration for the stuff I do and you can't get more exploitation than the Spaghetti Western.
Keeping to the spirit of Vixens it will have a hot babe in the title role rather than an unshaven man with no name. And again like Vixens it's all in bad taste but with streak of black humour running through it.

Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers meets Fistfull of Dollars.

Life Drawing Hi-Ex style

Apologies first off - think that is the first time i have missed my scotch corner slot. On holidays with the kids and totally lost track of the days.

Anyway, i managed to get up to Hi-Ex in Inverness last weekend. In amongst the various activities they had on was a cosplay life drawing session - nipped in at the end of the session to draw some manga warriors sword fighting, some roller derby girls and this Tusken Raider. A bit of a challenge as they were just 5 minute poses, intricate costumes and nobody managed to stay still and in the original pose (as they were all cosplayers and not professional models) - good fun though.

Cityscape

A rejected layout for a project that will not be named.

Roller Grrrls. Inside Line magazine.

Jessica Ali from Inside Line magazine asked Roller Grrrls to contribute a couple of illustrations for an article regarding roller derby injuries to be included in their third edition. This is our second illustration for the magazine. Yel Zamor did the colour and Anna Malady worked on the lineart. We are very pleased with the end result and this is an alternate version to the one printed (red background instead of the original blue/gray)

For more information and ordering the magazine (with stickers) you can contact Inside Line magazine direct by email at info@insidelinemagazine.co.uk or visit their site here. They also have a Facebook site here. Go buy a copy now! ;)

For more Roller Grrrls action please visit our hub at www.rollergrrrls.com

Victorian lass

I'm really mining the C7 catalogue of characters this month, eh? I love layin' down some Victorian stylee with the tools. Yeah. or something. ©C7 2012

Zombie Han Solo

Does what it says on the tin.

Jonday quickie

Quick one made whilst on the phone to me mum..

Rainy days in Sinister Dexter

This is a page from the 2000ad strip Sinister Dexter. I was experimenting with rain in this pic as you can see. Normally you can only see falling rain against dark shadows or surfaces so with these pages I remember trying out the trusty Tip Ex pen to create the drops so that they were only visible against black.
Sorry it's a poor small scale scan but it's the only copy I have of this picture.