Ink tests and sketches. My training continues...

Hello, how are you? Here are inking tests from my moleskin. Figuring out my line and how shadows work. These are for the cave sequence, the first was a failed early attempt, the second is pretty much what I'm actually going for:

This second image is a shot of the bad guy. Honestly these attempts showed me that for this particular shot, shadows were not necessary. They don't convey anything vital and only serve to cover things up, furthermore, they give off a too-heavy deer in headlights look so I'm going to simply draw him on a black background.

Here are some Sam sketches testing out various types of lighting.


Testing out how the environment is going to come off in my inking. Needs a bit of work, but it's a good approximation.



And here are several tests for the fireside scene. This is proving to be, along with the cave sequence, one of the trickier lighting challenges of the issue. See for yourself and judge my attempts so far. Any comments are absolutely welcomed and encouraged.


Of the close up shots of Audrey, I feel the one that works best is the fourth one. Tell me what you think.

-Alex

Why I need a WACOM tablet

I finished penciling Monsterboy a few weeks ago and have been furiously practicing my lettering and my inking.

I have lots of cool stuff to put up in the coming week but for now I'll put up an illustration I recently did for La Relève, a paper for french university students.

While I like the drawing, applying color to this really made me realize I need a WACOM tablet. Not only is it easier, but I'll be able to do so much more with my coloring.

Inking at the speed of sound

Sam all looking rock and roll. Did this a week ago.

Crouched style. Not completely happy with this one, but it is okay. My inking is for sure loosening up. My brain and hand muscles are becoming one. Training is almost complete.
















Thighs of steel. Maybe she played soccer as a kid.

-Alex

Drawing out the bad.

So I've been doing some quick inked drawings in my sketchbook in order to warm myself up and get back into the habit of inking with a brush. I recently found that I was no longer satisfied with my current skill level and am churning out drawings in order to get back on track. I really want to nail Monsterboy's look. It needs to be tight as a drum and tough as leather.

I heard somewhere that your hands are full of bad drawings and the only way to get them out is to draw them out in order to get to the good drawings lying in way way in the back.

I think that's a good analogy. So here are some drawings my hands barfed out yesterday night.
Moderately happy with the lighting on this one,
though the actual character looks rather boring.



This is Audrey chilling at a bus station. Two things I'm finding very challenging with this character is rendering her hair and the dot on her forehead. Hair has always been hard to render for me, not necessarily because of difficulty but because there are too many ways to do it! I once read Joshua Middleton say that hair is very fun but that one can easily get carried away and ruing an otherwise okay composition. I'm discovering that now. I'm still exploring different ways to render her hair in ink. I'll find one eventually!

As for her dot, I'm discovering that when filled in with a mat application of ink, (as opposed to merely filling it in with the blue pencil in the rough stage) the dot becomes a heavy, clumsy distraction to her face and features rather than adding to her design. Obviously the dot is incredibly important to the story/character so ommiting it is out of the question and I'd rather not shrink it lest it be mistaken for the hindu tilaka or bindi. The answer is going to lie in how I render it in ink, I think. As you can see from the above I've used hatches which is a step in the right direction but still a bit clumsy. I may just fill it in with grey tone, but we'll see.

I'm using Pelikan ink and a Windsor Series 7 brush. The paper is Robert Bateman sketchbook paper which is good sketch paper though not ideal for brush inking I think. Still, good for warming up and getting the bad stuff out of my system.

Stay tuned for more.

-Alex

A parade of (sometimes) shirtless supporting charcters

Audrey is not happy with my lack of updates!


Well I'm here now with more sketches.














Here are the first sketches I developed of the antagonist in issue one. He has no name. Call him Shirtless Asshole or something. I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted from him in my head, so he basically just fell onto the page out of my ear (old artist's trick) in one fell swoop. Not to go into tooo much detail (I still want people to buy the thing) but the story essentially starts off with him, shirtless, tugging someone down a rocky hill. You can see a perliminary, inferior, clothed version of the character at the bottom. Pay no mind to this version. Rest assured his is shirtless for a large portion of this issue.


The weird stuff at bottom left is an unused idea for the character. I wanted to initially have him morph and transform into a weird creature but abandoned the idea on the basis that it was kinda corny. I have weird stuff planned for this world but I want to ease you cats into it.







This is a finalized sketch of the kidnapped chick.



















Here is a page from my sketchbook. Random doodles.



Here is another character from issue one. She will have a name, though I haven't thought of one just yet. She is essentially the elder shaman lady of Audrey's clan of refugee/nomad-cum-settlers.




















That's it for today.

-Alex

Audrey

Here are some of the initial rough sketches of the female lead, Audrey. The circle on her forehead is a cursed seal that shoots stuff. You can see e tell-tale check mark of approval as that was the design I ended up choosing.










On the right is another version of the final design. It's so rough I didn't even bother with hands. Whenever I start a project I always tell myself: "This is the one where you're going to use model sheets." but I never seem to get around to it. Instead I just fill sketchbooks with endless half done doodles, designs and scrawled notes. It's not exactly scientific but it gets the job done, I think. Still, I should get around to doing model sheets. Issue #2 perhaps? perhaps.








Here's two pages from my moleskin depicting the two leads.


Some random sketches hobbled together...


A more or less finalized drawing of Audrey I no longer like very much.




















And here's a Sam thing from around the same time.

The Big Important Post-Monsterboy and the new blog schedule

This is it! I can finally start using this blog for what it was originally conceived for! go figure!

About a year ago I started solidifying the ideas for a long-simmering comic book series I wanted to self-publish. I decided I was satisfied enough with the premise that I could start on a script and see where it went. Old sketchbooks and old note pads were dug out of old boxes. Ideas were used, destroyed, changed and laughed at but I eventually culled enough material to hammer out a script I was satisfied with as well as a vague idea for a plot line (scripts are excruciating to get through for me but totally necessary.)

Once I started drawing the pencils I started this blog but really used it mainly for posting illustrations and other projects. Then nothing...for a few months....

Well I had a good excuse! I guess?

I decided that I would stop everything else and really get Monsterboy off the ground. I'm the kind of guy who can easily get overwhelmed if I have too much stuff going on at once and what with a move, job loss/search/finding other projects and all that, Monsterboy was kind of falling behind...and it was the thing I wanted to do the most arts project-wise! So I decided to stop everything; no blogs, no other drawings (aside from warm-up excercises etc...) until I had produced enough Monsterboy that I could ride on the generated momentum and get that sucker out there to you hungry readers!

And it worked! I'm counting about 30 pages fully pencilled out of 33 for issue number one! What's more I'm very satisfied with what I've produced. Tweaks will of course be needed but I'm seeing the horizon. So now I feel is the appropriate time to bring back the blog for its true purpose! MONSTERBOY!

Now for the new schedule/content! I will be posting characters scketches and outlines/story details at first to give you a feel of how this all started. The idea is to have a detailed online record of the creative process I went throught from the beginning.

After that, each subsequent post will be a full pencilled sequence and me blabbering on about what went into its prodction. Reference materials, supplies I used, how I approach the page and all that. I hope it'll be as fun to read as it will be to write!

I have a tremendous backlog of material so my posts will probably be daily at first showing character sketches and outlines. When it will come time to post sequences, which will take a bit more time to scan/arrange/talk about, the posts will probably lessen in frequency slightly, but expect two or three updates a week! that's a promise!

So I'll start by presenting the main character: Sam the Monsterboy!

He's essentially an ogre who is living in a bunker in the mountains of the post apocalyptic Canadian tundra. Yeah.


This was the sketch that pretty much solidified his final design. I sketched it on receipt paper when I was supposed to be working at Wallack's Art Shop!



Part of a larger illustration. The only part I'm still happy with, incidentally.

So yeah, the basic premise of Monsterboy is ordinary stories presented in weird settings. There are going to be overarching plot elements, but I really want this to be about the characters existing in this setting. The first issue is pretty action packed, but it's also going to have it's mellow periods. It's kind of the summation of parts I admired most of stuff like Cerebus, King City and THB. Fantastic settings with some fantastic ideas/sequences but mostly about the characters and their relationships.

That's all for now! Stay tuned.

-Alex