Bare Knuckle

I'm a Sega guy.

While everybody was growing up going nutty over Super Mario, Mario Kart, Metroid and Zelda: Ocarina of Time on their Super Famicoms (I guess I should say SNES since I'm in the US now!), I was spending all my hard earned allowance/chore money on my Sega Mega Drive (Genesis, I mean!) and absolutely loving Golden Axe, Eswat, Sonic and of course, Bare Knuckle (cough, Streets of Rage, cough).




I love beat 'em ups and Bare Knuckle and all it's three iterations will always hold a special place in my childhood.

I mean how could you go wrong? No boring exploration, collecting coins or talking to villagers. Just me fighting crime with my two fists and eating random pieces of meat hidden in barrels!

Everytime I hear Axel's grainy "Gran Uppa!" battle cry going over Yuzo Koshiro's thumping music, it brings a geeky tear to my eye. What can I say, I really love these games!

Drawing these guys was so much fun! As I was working on these, I would remember playing the games over and over during those summers in Hong Kong; beating up on Mr. X and his army of punks.

Adam (the dude above) never really made it back as a playable character after the first game, so it was cool to give him a slight update but still stay true to what he looked like.

Can't really go wrong with jeans and a shirt, so I didn't mess with Axel's get up too much. Gran Uppa!!

I remember having a crush on Blaze, back then. But man, put some clothes on girl! Kikousho!

And of course, I gotta draw one of the punks they beat up on, right? Complete with 'droppable' pipe and knife that you can use to beat up his other homies with! I hated those knife guys!

These were such a joy to draw, they totally transported me back to those worry-free days. Well! Enough nostalgia for now, the neverending battle continues! Gran Uppa!

Masters of the Universe: Jitsu final

Jitsu is all done! I handed in the two pieces I made for the art show yesterday over at Double Punch. Pretty cool little space they have over on Powell street, I think it should be a cool show!

Anyway, I'm pretty beat! My apartment is still a mess from all the drawing I was doing; there's reference material, Caran d'ache, masonite and fixative all over the place! It was good to bust out the ol' Caran d'ache though, it's been awhile since I actually worked this process. It's a breath of fresh air to do art that's not digital for once.

I'll post up some pictures of the show when it opens on the 20th next month. That's it for this post, good night and God bless.

Masters of the Universe: Jitsu WIP

I feel all artsy-fartsy.

I'm working on another piece for this Masters of Universe show coming up. But that's not what makes me feel all artsy fartsy. Trouble is, I only work on the piece at night. The other trouble is, I seem to be having a hard time seeing my colors if it's not under natural lighting. So I'm waking up early and rushing home from work trying to catch those few hours of precious sunlight, to work on my piece. Yeah, what a prima donna huh?

Moving on... here're a few preliminary sketches for the Jitsu piece:

The idea was that it would be as a matching piece to Fisto. But I felt like I was forcing it to be an accompanyment. So the first few sketches I had, weren't really working.

So after alot of futsing around, I started doing a wider composition.

Here's a few shots of the piece as I'm working on it with Caran D'ache crayons:

The piece is starting to come together, but there are some key issues I'm running into, mainly with his face and hands (which are uh, probably the most important parts of the piece!)

Alright, that's it for now, I'll be up early tommorrow, hopefully I'll have an idea how to tackle Jitsu-face by then...

Thanks Zander!

Wow.

I recieved my very first piece of fan art for the Bomb Squad! How awesome is that?!

A friend of mine, Kevin James, picked up a copy of my book, but decided to also pick up the Bomb Squad sketchbook for his son, Zander James, to take a look at. Apparently, Zander enjoyed the book and really liked seeing the process that it took to get to the final product. In fact, he was so jazzed that he drew a little scenario for the ol' Bomb Squad (totally unsolicited, I swear!).


Okay, now that's just cool. Zander even caught the little radio-signal word bubble effect I did for the Kid when he talked!

Way cool.

When Kevin handed it to me, it was such a great feeling! There's really nothing more satisfiying than seeing someone draw my character, because of the simple fact that they wanted to!

Okay, now let me tangent rant a little here.

The Bomb Squad is my way of trying to bring comics back to kids. A majority of today's comics, in my opinion, are targeted to kids that grew up with comics 20 years ago. In other words, big dorks in their 30's like me.

Today's kids are lost with the 20 years worth of comics continuity nowadays. Comic book subject matter seem to be written for such a mature audience, and even 'child friendly' characters from back in the day get kinda get 'muddied up' (I liked 'Identity Crisis' like everyone else, but holy smokes is that some mature subject matter for the super friends or what?). And while I enjoy these books, I feel kids nowadays are losing that connection to the medium because their catered to such a specific audience.

Comics are rapidly being over taken by movies, video games and pretty much everything else as a story telling medium. I mean, kids know spider man and the x-men because of the movies! That just seems so backwards to me. Where are the next generation of comic book creators going to come from? Will comics even be around for the next generation? Actually, Robert Kirkman has an eloquent mission statement that sums up what I've been thinking for awhile now.

ANYWAY. Rambling.

So, I can be all rah rah rah, let's make new comics, let's bring in the next generation, I'll draw Bomb Squad for this purpose, yadda yadda yadda. But... would it work?

Well, I'm not so sure if I can affect ALL of the next generation, but I do know I affected at least one of them, even for just a small moment! And I have proof! So thank you very much Zander! Thank you very, very much for the cool drawing! And the Squad thanks you too!

Now if only Bomb Girl could figure out a way to diffuse the bomb she's standing on!

And the Neverending battle continues! Good night and God Bless.

Masters of the Universe: Fisto

I'll admit it. After the high of comic con I've been at a pretty serious slump in trying to get my comic book done. Granted, there are many other factors that have kinda put a mental block on me getting back on the saddle and drawing issue two of The Bomb Squad, but I really can't blame anybody else.

Anyhow, while trying to get over my artist block, I drew Fisto for this upcoming art show. I went back to using my old school Caran Dache technique I learned in college from my old teacher, Tony Gianello (I think that's how you spell his name). It's a process where you layer 'scribbles' of crayon lines on top of each other, focusing on mass and blending color with each layer that's put down. If memory serves me right, it's a process that similar to egg tempra, but a whole lot more forgiving.

I'm pretty rusty at it, but it sure was fun to bust out the caran dache again. I'm starting to get nostalgic about the ol' college days, but I'll just skip to Fisto and spare you.

I began with a few sketches of Fisto's face, really quick ugly little sketches, but they help get the ball rolling.



Afterwards, I draw him in an action pose. I wasn't really thinking about composition at this point, but luckily the piece was simple enough so that it wouldn't be such a big issue later.


I picked up a nice 16 x 24 piece of masonite from home depot and scribbled a rough first pass of the composition.


You can see I was trying out a circle shape as his 'background' but it really wasn't working for me. I took a picture of the sketch in progress and put a simple graphic shape and messed around with the background colors in photoshop. I think I like the sharp angles better than the lame circle I had initially planned to be behind him.


I went with the blue color and started trying to match the color with the caran dache crayons. Something funky was going on with his foot in the foreground so I scrapped that and drew a new one.

With this caran dache crayon medium, I spray a clear matte fix over the piece every now and then. The coating acts as a fresh new layer for me to draw on, preserving the colors underneath and helping me not mush the colors around when I work on top of them.


The foreground foot was starting to feel a little better, but now there was something weird with his knee.

So after another coat of spray fix, I changed his knee. I also shrank down the size of my signature, I always feel like my signature gets so intrusive sometimes. Anyway, here's the final piece: Fisto in yo' face!

Well, I gotta go! Good night and God Bless.