A ninja-shirt-birthday for my wife

Taking a break from coloring, I created a little design that I got printed onto a shirt using cafe press. I knew I wanted to draw her ninja persona from my wedding proposal comic around a year ago, but I honestly didn't know what kind of composition to go for. Here are some of my thumbnails trying to figure it out.

Preliminary sketches: I went with 3 one on the top row.

Still not really knowing a design, I went ahead and inked the character and tightened it up. I started trying to draw some tree by her feet in this weird 'fish eye like' perspective, but it wasn't working. It was too busy and called a lot of unnecessary attention to itself, and when you did look at it, you had no idea what it was supposed to be!

So then I started coloring in the figure and started putting a flatter background design. Just simple colors so the heaviest blacks (the character) would stand out. Also I opted not to tilt her in this composition. The tilt was just me trying to make a confused layout more interesting.

I was getting somewhere at this point but it just wasn't enough. The cherry blossoms and stars just just seemed so... loose. The pieces just weren't fitting together. After a lot of messing around, I found the best answer, was of course, the simplest one. I added the branches of the cherry blossom tree to ground the composition.

It's not perfect, but definitely better than what I was initially going for. It took a lot of me really messing around, but I got it done to a state I'd be satisfied with to present to my wife. I sent it off to cafe press and ordered it onto a tank top.

The color came out a lot more faded and a lot more CMYK-y than I'd like. Still the print version has a certain charm to it. The design's a lot lower on the shirt than I wanted too. Anyway, the wife loved it when I gave it to her! And that's all that counts right?

The Bomb Squad update: I've finished coloring page 14 of the book, and I'm onto page 15. I'll try to do another update soon. Good night and God Bless.

My Comic Book: page 12 and 13 final colors

That Flu really kicked my butt. Been out of commision for so long, but now I've decided to just push myself to just get this spread done. I'm still not 100% but I'm good enough to finish up these pages. There are still a few things I'd like to mess with on the colors for this spread, but I really need to move on.

I had a more monochromatic scheme for the panels on the bottom, but adding a few splashes of color helps it along a bit without taking away from the main image.

My plan is to finish coloring the remaining pages by the end of the year. I'm not sure if I'll make it, but I certainly won't do it by nit picking everything to death! Onto page 14! Good night and God Bless!

My Comic Book: Page 12 and 13 colors WIP (round 2 and 3)

 Still plugging away on these pages. Caught a pretty bad bug (and still recovering), so I was out of commision for 6 days.

Going for simpler color scheme initially...

...but I seem to be headed for something more colorful...

I had wanted to keep the colors simple, but the more I kept working on it, the more I felt the building also needed color. It needed presence, to make it have more importance. I mean it is the thing the Bomb Squad's trying to save for an issue and a half now, right? Not quite done with the faces on the bottom, and not really sure about their color scheme either yet. I'll figure that out next time... the Neverending Battle continues! Good night and God Bless!

My Comic Book: Page 12 and 13 colors WIP

Not much color going on in this spread, but believe it or not I've spend a lot of time trying to figure out how this page will work!

It's still not quite how I'd like this color scheme to turn out, but I think I like how the bright yellow "EEEEE"  lettering is working with the red and blue.