Frogs, kaiju

Hmm, I wonder what this stuff is for?

Kaiju was my lifeblood as a kid. I'm glad Netflix Instant has a few streaming. Helps fill the gaps between NBA playoff games. Ghidorah: Three Headed Monster is my favorite one they've got up. Wish they had Godzilla vs. Megalon or Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla.

Dungeons and Dragons and Drawings

This is weird. These are sketches of the five characters in the D&D campaign I've been playing in for the past couple of months. I can't say enough in favor of Dungeons and Dragons, despite the (well-deserved) stigma of being really, really nerdy. It's a great exercise in world and character building, and gives you a chance to think creatively and solve problems in a group dynamic.

Unlike videogames, which I still love, the quality of the experience and the end result is directly related to what you bring to the table. The more you invest in character creation and creative thinking (two of my favorite things, obviously), the more fun you have.

My character is the guy with the spear and the mace and the black, dead hands. All of these (especially pages 3 and 4) need some more work before I can do a final character drawing. If you can guess everyone's race and class, I'd be really impressed.

As stated in yesterday's post, I opened up an online shop to buy prints. It is here. They are super good quality and super affordable.

EDIT: Since folks are still guessing the character races/classes, they are as follows: halfling ranger, goliath fighter, dwarf bard, eladrin ranger, human cleric, and the eladrin ranger again.

Turtle Soup process

Hey folks!

There's a short slideshow of some Turtle Soup process work on the Anthology Project's tumblr here.

And remember, you can always preorder the book by checking out the link in yesterday's post.

More undertakers

Slowly working on some more undertakers, and getting a little more ghoulish as I go. It's nice to step back into horror for a bit.

Undertakers

I'm working on some developmental sketches for a new piece for a potential alphabet book, headed up by a good friend of mine. My letter is U, which in this case stands for Undertakers. I don't have much to say on them as of now, since I'm still in the very early stages of exploration on this one. So far though, it's a little like going back to Innsmouth.

If you follow the Picturebook Report blog, you probably know by now that the project has come to an end. It was a group decision that the concept and our volition to complete our respective endeavors had sort of run its course. Once I fell behind with The Hobbit and worked on other things in between pieces, my interest in the series waned. The next two scenes are a couple of my very favorites in the book, but my heart's not in it right now, and I would much rather work on some things which aren't bound to that narrative. I'm proud of the work that I completed and may return to the project, but there will be no formal posting schedule. Thanks for understanding.

Beorn 5

Alright, I think I'm about done with the design stage of Beorn, which is great, because I'm also finished with this sketchbook. In the end, going back to the absolute basics of character design really helped figure out his body shape. Square = solidity. Duh.

The final design will probably incorporate elements from a lot of the drawings, which is what usually happens when I go through all this. I think these drawings are more a way of weeding out bad decisions rather than arriving at a final, concrete design.

Beorn 4

I sort of went off a little on these and just started doing strongman body structure. There are some fun ones in there. I think the last page, where the bodies themselves are bigger and thicker are the best of the lot. I used to love watching World's Strongest Man competitions on ESPN2 at like one in the afternoon. That sort of body type has always been interesting to me, where it's not the defined musculature that conveyed the enormous strength of those men, but their sheer size. I'm hoping to get to something like that with Beorn, but on a larger scale. He's what, fifteen feet tall? Twenty? Something ridiculous.

As some of you in the comments have hit on, Beorn IS a really simple character. He's big and he's strong and he's old and he lives alone. The origins of the character are obvious and singular -- Tolkien just wrote a berserker into the story. A giant man with a huge beard who builds long wooden houses and turns into a bear? And his name is Beorn? Alright.

Despite that, I really like the character. The giant bees that he keeps and his weird bipedal dogs that he talks to really seal the deal.

Beorn 3

So, Beorn's coming along. I'm on a better thought-train with these, though I'm still shaking a lot of the dust of a few weeks without much drawing. The checked images are what's workable here. I think there's one on each spread. I struggled through these drawings to make something better than the second drawing in the previous post, and I don't really think I succeeded. I think I'm onto something a little better for his face and something a little better for his attire, but I think these body structures are a step backwards, or at least a step sideways.

A part of me is just sort of burned out on drawing big burly guys with giant beards. I'm desperately trying to find some new ground there to tread.

I'll talk about Beorn's character a little more in the upcoming posts.

I just finished rescanning most of the work from my 2009-2010 sketchbooks in the hopes of compiling some drawings into something you can buy. I have about 150 or so spreads to cull images from, so the book that I put together will have a lot of content. I'm shooting for around 80 to 100 pages and I'm hoping to have it done and for sale in the next few months.

Beorn 2

The good news is that these aren't terrible. I think I'm coming closer to the right body shape; the more realized drawing on the second page is pretty good. I draw a lot of big burly guys, and varying their body shapes is becoming more and more important. I can't have Beorn just being a big dwarf, and I have to differentiate his body shape from the trolls as well.

I'd like to show him with that type of strength that comes from manual labor rather than weight-lifting, with a solid core and sinewy, corded muscles in the limbs. The first drawing on the left is too ape-like, too stupid. I like the one on the right. Let's see where it goes.

Beorn's long, low house is surrounded by hives filled with bees bigger than your thumb, which of course beings to mind one of the ultimate horrors of this world, the Japanese Hornet. Learn more about these living nightmares here. I don't know if the final piece will include them in any, but now's as good a time as ever to get good at drawing hornets.

Beorn 1

These are awful, but it's good to be back.

Beorn is a really simple design that is going to be really difficult to figure out. Big black hair and beard, wool tunic to the knees, bare arms and legs.

The next two pieces (this included) are two of my absolute favorite scenes in the book.

Turtle Soup

This is the first half of Turtle Soup, my comic for the upcoming second volume of The Anthology Project. The book will be out in the spring, so if you want to finish the story (which take a SHOCKING TWIST on page 7), you'll have to pick it up. I'll remind you when the release date is closer.

Here are some layouts and things:

Kali did my title text and spent a solid chunk of time helping me nail down the color, which is always difficult and frustrating for me and less so for her.

I was working for awhile on a story called Good Work, which didn't pan out and simply ate up a lot of my time for this comic. As a result, this thing is a little more rushed than I would've liked -- I was redrawing bad panels into the eleventh hour, when the whole thing could've used another pass at the layout stage. I will say that the second half is much better, both in drawing and storytelling, so pick up the book next year. I think it'll be at all the main conventions, so that'll be super easy for you. There is some amazing work in that book, so far as I've seen.

Turtle Soup 4

I'm starting to re-thumbnail my story in an effort to pair it down a pag or two, and I figured it was about time to nail down my background characters. I needed about twenty, a mix of humans and monsters, basically just a scrum of tough guys. I wanted to have them all down before I did my second round of thumbnails so I could keep them all consistent shot to shot.

Page four has the basic layout of the armory and the seating chart (far right). In placing them at tables, some small narratives cropped up even among these nonsense characters who have no lines and no real action in the story. It was a funny little organic thing. Three and nine found love after their warring armies destroyed each other. Seven is making peace with her long-vanquished foes, eleven and twelve. Just stuff like that.

Page three has the mostly final designs for the smith and the boy, who are the two main characters.

Again, The Anthology Project Kickstarter page is here, if you are so inclined. A pledge of $30 gets the book when it comes out and if you want to give more than that, there several tiers of prizes beyond that.

Turtle Soup 3

Getting into the two main characters, the blacksmith and the squire, from Turtle Soup. I don't really like to leave design choices up to the last minute on a project, but I sort of have to on this since the deadline is creeping up on me. As soon as I got my head around a design even loosely, I had to move on to the next thing. I probably won't have finalized designs for either of these characters until I'm drawing in panels. It's a little scary, but it also insures I don't overthink things.

Turtle Soup 2

Some more background character work for Turtle Soup.

Since none of the background characters have any importance to the plot (not really, at least) and they exist purely for flavor, doing these sketches is basically just pouring my brain onto the paper. I'm not really thinking about much or looking at much reference (sometimes for uniforms and clothing), but it's more or less stream of conscious.

I am beginning to think that I am the true weirdo here.

Turtle Soup 1

I am working on a short comic for the second volume of The Anthology Project, along with a lot of really talented people. My story is called Turtle Soup and is about eating too much soup (sort of).

Here are some drawings of some guys that may or may not be in the story. I don't want to give away too much.


The story has two main characters and a lot of people in the periphery. The four-armed bigface you see on pages three, four, and five is one of the main characters, though those are all pretty wrong. I was working on a different story for awhile and that ate up a lot of my time and I drew a few designs (corpses and princes) for that story which were a shame to scrap. I'm trying to incorporate a few of my favorites into the background of this one. This thing will be done by the middle of November, so hold onto your butts because I'm going to try to keep you all updated on it as it goes. It's going to be a lot of fun to draw since I populated it entirely with weirdos and monsters and maniacs.

Here are some panel layouts. There are a few more pages to get tagged onto the end, and then I'm hoping to cull the story down to maybe 10-12 pages total. I have a couple more passes of thumbnails before I get into the real drawings.

I don't draw a lot of comics, but they're pretty fun.

Misc

A few miscellaneous pages from the sketchbook that I thought were kind of fun. The top are some sketches from the Naga Fireball assignment and the bottom are some severed heads surrounded by a few regular heads.

Eagles 2

Eagles are super hard to draw. I really like stretching them out and making them almost serpentine. Still have a lot of structural stuff to learn and there are a lot of crazy shapes under all those feathers.