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.

Updates

from Turtle Soup, page 3

Only TWO days left to pledge to support The Anthology Project, volume 2! We're well past our goal, but you can still use the site to preorder the book, which will be out in the spring.

Pledge!

IN OTHER NEWS

Spectrum 17 is out, and I am in it, as well as a lot of other great people. So, if you're interested in great stuff, you may as well pick up a copy. And how about that sweet Manchess cover? Huh? Talk about great.

ALSO

These three pieces will be in Society of Illustrators 53 this year. The first in the Uncomissioned show and the second and third in the Editorial. This is my first time in the book, which is cool. I will be at the Editorial show for sure and the Uncomissioned show for maybe.

Turtle Soup page 8

Turtle Soup is my contribution to the second volume of The Anthology Project. It is a short comic about buying too much soup. It also has a bunch of monster and knights and stuff.

If I inked my comics, this is what I'd call the final pencils. My final lines will be IN pencil, of course, so that term is a little misleading here. Anyway, here is the final rough drawing before the final lines, and below that are two stages of the layout. Original thumbnail is at the very bottom and a more developed digital sketch is right above that. Some things still need to get moved around now that I look at them (drawing in panel 4 is gonna get shifted to the left a bit), and I'm adding the speech bubbles in separately in case they need to be resized or anything like that.

I have four more pages to draw and then it's on to the finals! Everything will be done by the end of the month, and I'll post some more previews when I get a chance. The book will be out in the Spring.

If you're interested in preordering, our Kickstarter page is still taking pledges until December 1. We're way past our goal, but you can still get the book and some prizes and stuff if you're interested.

The Trojan Prince

This piece accompanies a short story in this week's New Yorker by Tessa Hadley called The Trojan Prince. It's a bit of a Great Gatsby-ish fiction featuring a teenage love triangle and romantic misunderstandings and that sort of thing. It's strange for me to spend so much time drawing nice things happening to regular people.

Sketches:


AD Jordan Awan

Sub Rosa again

This piece was "completed" about a year ago for the Secret Service show held by Rotopol Press in Kassel, Germany. After posting it, it was quickly pointed out that there were no footprints in the snow, an element which I had in the sketch version and just plum forgot about. Cut to nearly one year later and I had both the small sliver of free time and the volition necessary to put the prints back in. There are a couple of other minor tweaks as well. Since updates around here are scarce while I have my nose so firmly pressed to the grindstone, I figured I would post this.

Old version is here.

The Hobbit, part six

Surprise! I've been a day late before, may as well be a day early this time.

Ah, finally done.

This post was supposed to go up last month, but I need a little bit of extra time and figured I would save it until now. Instead of finishing it way ahead of schedule like I might have, I put way more work and time in than I wanted to. Ah, so it goes.

I wrote up a nice little post about this scene over at Picturebook Report, so head on over there if you're interested in that sort of thing.

I'm proud of this piece, though I'm not sure that I had fun doing it. Birds are agonizingly hard to draw and it seemed like the drawing and then the coloring just went on and on and on, way past the point of interest. Anyway! Because I put way too much detail in, here are a bunch of detail shots.

I'm not sure yet if I will do a process post for this, since you folks already know how I do things. Maybe I'll do something smaller and show just the myriad of drawings that I did before things ended up as they are.

As always, comments are more than appreciated.

Also, count it! I am officially halfway done with this project.

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.