Scatterbrain Pin-Up - Step by Step Part Seven

All done! There are certain bits of the final piece that ended up looking better than others, and even though I was really hesitant to apply the colors, I think it turned out to be okay!

I hit a few delays on the way to the finish line though. First I got caught up in collecting all the photo reference materials, then I got stuck when I fiddled around with colors too long (I have no idea why!) and it was also tough for me to find the Painter settings and tools that I wanted. In the end I used something in Painter that was close to being a default setting anyways! Sigh.

It's funny, in hindsight while this was the style that I chose to render this pin-up out in (those last four words make no sense when you read them out loud together!), I realize it's a style that I don't do much of anymore, it's hard for me to bust it out! Lately, I've been drawing more out of memory, simpler, more cartoony and switching to this style really showed me how badly I am in need of figure drawing! What a kick in the pants! To add irony to it all, even the cartoony style I draw in now is something I'm still trying to figure out!

Well, anyways, I'm done with ol' Scatterhead! Maybe when I finish up the comic book I'm working on right now I'll post up some pages of that to share for next time. Tune in! God Bless and Goooodnight!

Scatterbrain Pin-Up - Step by Step Part Six

I would like to think that it's taken me this long to put this project to finish because I was really having a hard time deciding what colors to use, or that it was difficult to try not to over-burden the drawing with colors and yada yada yada. Maybe it's just me, but I'll make this sweeping statement: I think artists have this mutant ability to procrastinate and get sidetracked... And I totally used my mutant ability to the fullest in this case!

Hmmm, I just thought of a few artist friends of mine that totally break that theory... Actually, more than a few! Okay, okay, I'll admit it! I'm lazy! But I am side-tracked and lazy no more! I had a hard time pinning down what colors I wanted to use so I made a few test pieces just to get a general sense of what I wanted:


I ended up leaning towards the red background more, just because it made the it made the image lean more towards the horror. I swear I must've gone over these color comps a million times and was running myself around in circles, luckily I had a friend online that I could send these color thumbnails to, to get a fresh perspective and that really broke the stalemate and got me going onto my next step for final colors. Thanks Doreen!

Scatterbrain Pin-up - Step by Step Part Five

I went to the ever trusty Kinko's (As long as you don't print anything in color! Oooh jab to the solar plexus!) and made copies of the drawing to make the blue line drop out and to make the contrast stronger. I take that photocopy, scan it into Photoshop and fiddle with the brightness/contrast even more and ol' Bucket Phil spots in my blacks.

Funny thing is, once all the blacks were spotted in, I noticed this large black spot right in the middle, where the bottom of Scatterbrain's cloak is. It was a huge gaping, boring nothing. Right in the middle! In the thumbnail it seemed it would be okay left that way, but my layout changed inadvertently due to me moving the thug on the upper right's arm. So digitally I went back in and made these creases on his cloak. And strangely enough that little change helped it a bit! Whew! Thank goodness for computers!

I noticed something else too, maybe because I'm doing this project right after the previous one, but... is that Galactic man working for the side of evil?!?!

Scatterbrain Pin-up - Step by Step Part Four

I went over the non-photo blue pencils I did with a regular pencil and fleshed out the drawing, adding line weight, shadows and correcting things here and there. At this stage, I usually like to fill in all the blacks so I can 'see' what the shadows do, but this time I planned on my trusty Photoshop assistant, Bucket Phil to do that for me (aaaand cue crickets)!

Scatterbrain Pin-up - Step by Step Part Three

Armed with references I finally took to drawing out the Pin-up. I got rid of certain things in the original thumbnail and I had to move things around slightly but generally the composition's the same. It was tough to scan the original non-photo blue cleanly so I had to take a picture of it instead, convert it to grayscale, and adjust it's contrast and values. Whew, I can't believe this pin-up is taking me this long! Anyways that's it for today, I gotta crash! God Bless!

Scatterbrain Pin-Up - Step by Step Part Two

This next step in the process actually took me longer to do than I planned for. I wanted to approach this in a different style from Galactic man and am planning for more darks, shadows and realism. I haven't worked in a 'realistic' style in awhile, so it took me some time to figure out how to draw things!

Since I was having such a hard time getting a good start on the pencils, I took some photo references to get me all prepped up. I have a hard time making stuff up like shadows and folds as is, so a little reference material goes a long way! Like so:


I have a slew of other pictures , but since I make a bunch of really silly faces in them, I opted not to share that with the rest of the world! Anyway, you probably get the gist! Since this step was so big for me to get my brain moving, I decided to make this a separate post. Next up the non-photo blue pencils! Oh and my having a random plastic skull model (whom I've cheesely dubbed 'Scully') hanging out in my apartment came in pretty handy!

Scatterbrain Pin-Up - Step by Step Part One

Looks like I got a new assignment.

My friend Shanth Enjeti (Ol' Rocket Pistol himself and creator of Springball), hooked me up with a project to do a pin-up for a new comic book called "Scatterbrain", published by Markosia Enterprises Limited. I jumped right on it of course, I mean who could resist doing a pin up?!

I didn't really know much about the character so I did a little research and went out to my local comic book store and picked up issue 1. I read through it and tried to think up what would be a cool pin up. From what I gather, Scatterbrain's almost like this Spawn-ish, Batman-y type character with the power to magnify people's fear by a thousandfold. Most of the first book though, centers around the cop that's out to get Scatterbrain, so seeing the character in action was pretty sparse.

I was pretty much drawing a blank on how to approach this , so while on my way to work I drew up these thumbnails to get my brain a-workin'.

Looking back at these, it seemed I was going for a lot of perspective and dynamic compositions in my first few thumbnails. With him staking out badguys and hiding in rafters and such. Instead, I ended up going with a much flatter composition. I pretty much stumbled into it by accident, because as I was doing more thumbs, I found I started filing in this one in particular a lot more.

So I stopped myself! I have a hard time transferring my thumbnails to a larger size when I've already figured everything in the early stage. I have a hard time replicating the spontaneity of it all. It's a bad habit to jump in there without a plan... but hey! So I guess I subconsciously picked a composition! Now I'm ready to take on laying it out onto an 11 x 17 page. That'll be next time! So, adios, paalam and God Bless!

P.S. Whoops! I had no idea I had some kinda comment lock on my blog! Sorry for you guys trying to post! Thanks to the Rocket Pistol for informing me!