I had no idea what kind of show "The Get Down" was supposed to be when I started watching it on Netflix. I kinda put it off since it just seemed like some kind of disco period piece. Turns out it was that and much, much more! It's a combo of period piece, social commentary, love story and fantasy. Oh and it's a musical too!
I hadn't realized Baz Luhrmann was attached to this project, but I do like his movies. This show was such a home run to me, that I was actually surprised it didn't blow up on my social feeds in the same vein that everybody went gaga over "Stranger Things". Man, all the fan art that flooded my social media feeds for that show was ridiculous. And while I liked "Stranger Things" as well, I think "The Get Down" was just spectacular and in a class of it's own.
Hence the fan art! Inktober Day 2 is done, and now onto day 3. I'll be posting better scans here on my blog as well as giving a little more background to them. It seems more appropriate for me to get gabby on my blog than a twitter post. But anyhow... go watch the show if you haven't yet!
Let's see how many of these I can do this year! I still watch Batman v Superman and Man of Steel on blu ray every so often! What better way to lead off this year's inktober than with a Superman drawing, right? He's a longer faced and pointier nosed man of steel than I would usually draw, but for some reason that's okay with me. I'm looking forward to how he's depicted in the second season of Supergirl. The short trailers they've shown so far look great!
I drew up a scene from one of my favorite shows right now: DC's Legends of Tomorrow. A great fun show with a lot of great characters. I've really enjoyed the chemistry of all the actors and how they've played off of each other even from the very first episode. It's got a great premise for a show that the writers can use to literally take the heroes any place and to any time. Sure, it's got it's flaws like many shows out there, but the pros far, FAR outweigh the cons.
Quick sketch up of the two figures I wanted to draw. I would constantly adjust and re-adjust the proportions of the canvas constantly until I can figure out what the composition would be like. It actually just started out as the two figures, but I thought up of a way to actually add in storytelling to it by using text and not have to rely on actually drawing a third figure.
Inking stage is where I did most of the work. I had photo reference for the characters, so that wasn't a big deal to draw their poses. Figuring out their faces was harder, since I'm pretty bad with resemblances. While these guys don't look like them, I do like how their faces turned out.
I spotted in the blacks and added some feathering and thickened up some lines to emphasize focus.
There's a lot of character oozing from the... characters... of the show. It was fun to see Captain Cold and Heatwave (the two crooks of the team) hang back, have a beer and watch as White Canary gets into a bar room brawl! In the 70's! While a song from the Captain and Tennille is playing!
Good show all around and one that really runs straight into it's crazy comic book concepts and presents a very different super-hero show from what's out there currently. Go try an episode out!
I'm just brushing away some cobwebs from my stylus and started sketching again.
Since I have Batman v Superman on the brain, I drew up one of my favorite action scenes from the movie. I have never seen Superman's heat vision depicted in all it's glory like they did in the last act of BVS and it was pretty spectacular!
I've also been listening to a lot of the BVS soundtrack as I drive to work and aside from the main character tracks (Beautiful Lie, Is She With You or This Is My World), there are some that I have really come to appreciate more like the great Do You Bleed? track. And it's quite awesome to listen to it while I drive too! My commute to and from work has gotten much more epic!
Very rough sketch. I put this on it's own layer, then work on another layer to tighten it up.
Another rough sketch. The right hand didn't exist in the original sketch. But when
I took it to the inking stage, it just looked odd that he was missing one arm in the
drawing. Glad digital is so forgiving. And layers. Layers are great.
Shrank his head down after the initial inking pass. Aside from the
muddy silhouette of his cape to the background in the top left. I kinda
like the starkness of the Black and White version.
Final colors. I messed around with using more traditional Superman blues with his uniform and
changing the background from blue to yellow to orange, but I liked how intense the heat vision
was in the movie, so a semi-monochromatic look was the way to go.
There's still an incredible amount of hate floating around for this movie. I suppose it might never really go away, just as the hate for Man of Steel still hangs over it's head. But re-watching MOS after BVS, just made MOS that much better and it actually gave it a much more tender, sweeter quality to it too. It's interesting, I've read a couple reviewers (pretty big names too, Kevin Smith and Harry Knowles) do a follow up review when they watched it a second time and they leaned a little more favorable.
Sadly, the hate train has already left the station. Choo choo. And their initial dislike for the movie is already etched in all the internet bile that's been thrown at this movie. So while I appreciate their second review... well... the damage really cannot be undone. Though to his credit, Harry Knowles' second review sounded very honest. I liked that he acknowledged that he carried so much baggage in with him on that first viewing, he really didn't enjoy what the film was and hated it for what it wasn't.
In any case, nothing like a big blast of Supes' heat vision to blast the hate away! Take that haters!
So I've been roaming the internets lately and have been doing my civic duty liking BVS posts or tweets and at some points rebutting some haters on my FB page, chatrooms and newsites. BVS has got the fans divided! It's very much like the Man of Steel reaction, actually. Crazy sidenote, I had to comment on a site to help them clarify some things they misunderstood about BVS... here's the catch: it was on a site that prided itself to be a lover of all things Zack Snyder! How's that for divided!
Anyhow, I loved Batman v Superman. It wasn't what I was expecting, but it surely exceeded what expectations I had of it! I'm eagerly counting the days until the blu-ray comes out!
To be honest, I was quite bummed the rest of the world didn't quite feel as excited about it as I was, but after a few weeks of moping and checking the Box Office performance of BVS (which, I'm glad to say will at the very least break even for WB), I'm back on my feet not caring what other people think! Back to work in combating DC hate with fan art! And what better way to do that than making fan art for the DCEU's next film, Suicide Squad!
Quick sketch on the first layer. I knock down the transparency on this layer and keep it loose. It's quite a horrible drawing, but I just push foreward.
Inking phase next. The speedline background is on a separate layer as well as my shadow pass on her face and hands. Usually if I'm a little apprehensive about something I work on a different layer so that mentally, I'm not stressing out about running out of undos! It's quite freeing for myself and I just keep drawing more and worrying less.
Coloring phase. This was a little trickier than my usual drawings. Usually I have a color scheme in mind already when I start coloring, but I really had to find it while doing it on this one. I wussed out on the face shadows and actually made it a color instead of keeping it that stark black from the inks. I did more colored line effect this time around so the stark blacks on her face weren't quite working. I added one of my favorite lines from the trailer to finish off the drawing. The Ballroom Blitz!
So there you have it. I've noticed a lot of some artists I follow on tumblr or twitter post up a lot of Marvel themed sketches (and they're great!). Rarely do I see some DC love (unless it's Batman). So I'm back to try to tip the scales! DC fan powered sketch! Bring the hate, haters! DC Cinematic Universe is going full-steam ahead!
Twenty Fours hours from now, I get to watch the advanced IMAX 3D screening of Batman v Superman at the metreon! I'm so excited! I got the complimentary ticket because the first teaser trailer got leaked early online. The quality was pretty horrible and the internet hate poured onto the movie. From day one this movie has gotten so much hate it's a little insane. But BvS marketing has been pulling out the stops to make sure this movie at least gets a fair shake...
So then, Zack Snyder and the WB decided to give free advance screening passes to the people that went to the free teaser screening that night as a nice gesture to keep the fans happy. I got some flack from some people I work with about going to watch a teaser trailer on an IMAX screen, but I guess it was all worth it after all, eh? The teaser looked great on the IMAX screen even without the free passes by the way!
Sketch phase - I was going to add a silhouette of Lex at the top, but I couldn't really get it to work. I've gotten accustomed to just a quick sketch to start with. I do most of the thinking in the digital inking stage. How to render out Wonder Woman was a mystery to me at this point, but I was kinda crossing my fingers I'd figure it out later when I get the big two inked up...
Black and White digital inks stage - I just placed the official logo on top to complete the image. Wonder Woman helps me to be lazy with the two big figures because I didn't have to draw the rest of them from the waist down!
I kept messing around with the color saturation of the background because I wanted it to have the feel of the palette of the movie, but after way too many hours messing with it, I decided to keep it the same saturation I initially had planned for it. At the end of the day, it's just how I mix colors, and I was more satisfied with the final colors sticking to what I knew...
Final colors - this stage is always a love/hate relationship for me. I can never seem to preserve the stark contrast of the black and whites when I 'translate' it into color. Usually I find a palette that I can live with and move on. Otherwise, I end up messing with the Hue/Saturation sliders until the cows come home!
I think I like my initial drawing for BVS more because it was in such an odd size and the color application was simpler. And I think I was actually able to 'translate' the stark contrast of the black and white images for that one better. For this one though, I think it's dimensions make it easier to see it on a computer monitor and are set up more in a traditional movie poster design.
Anyway, as I type this up, I'm listening to the excellent Batman v Superman soundtrack that got officially released on youTube. My hype levels are astronomical! I'll be jut a few hours away from witnessing the greatest gladiator match the world has ever known! Batman v Superman is going to be awesome! Signing off for now and I hope I can sleep tonight!
I've found as I'm coloring in these pages that I've been slowly adding a lot of detail to my drawings with each successive issue. Some of it, I feel is a necessity and it's not necessarily a bad thing... but it sure takes me a lot more time to color these panels!
There's still a few fixes that need to be done, from editing down some of the dialogue, the lettering bubbles and the font sizes. But for the most part this page is as good as done!
That's another page (almost) in the can! 18 more pages to go!
Just a quick post for this super early morning. I need to get to sleep! Finished up the colors for the opening splash page of issue #3 of The Bomb Squad. The "color artist me" is so angry at the "penciler me" for drawing so many stupid trees and buildings on this page...
The first pass of colors was just me blocking in the basic colors. I didn't have the .PSDs of the previous issue, so I just eyeballed the colors.
A few more tweaks on colors and I started to add shadows. I matched the colors of the trees to what I had them colored in issue #2, but I wasn't too sure about it being such a blue hue...
...so I switched it to a yellower-green color to brighten it up a bit. I colored in the second panel a bit as well as the Megaphone shadows. Slow and steady!
Final colors! Whew. Added a bluer shadow for the trees to try to bring it back it it's original hue.
This thing took a looong time for me to do. Longer than what I wanted at least! Considering how fast I can usually color my comic book pages, this took forever. All the detail on this splash page really made it tedious applying the colors. But I like how it's ended up so far...
I've been writing up these blog posts of how tough it is to be a DC fan nowadays, especially with the popularity of Marvel Comics currently. However, I've just recently been able to "get past" that feeling. Mainly because of the great quality and quantity that WB entertainment and DC comics have been providing as of late.
4 times during the week, the wife and I have a jam packed TV schedule populated mostly by DC/Vertigo shows! Gotham, Supergirl, Flash, iZombie, Arrow and Legends of tomorrow are on our TV after we've put the kids to bed.
DC's SuperHero girls and Teen Titans Go are great shows for the kids (with a toy line coming for DC Superhero girls). DC Animated movies are still proving to keep their high bar of quality up, and there's a new Justice League coming on TV soon!
Comics wise, I am enjoying the risks DC is taking with the DCYou (though others aren't) and Movie-wise, Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman are in production and of course Batman v Superman's premier is coming really soon! Check out the final trailer for BvS:
Suffice to say, that's a lot of great DC related comic book content to be enjoyed!
So sure, I live in the Marvel age and everybody, in general, hates DC. But I don't really care now! I used to want to justify to everybody just how great DC is, and always felt I had to defend it. Now with all this stuff coming out and being produced, I'm just swept up in so much AWESOME.
Oh, I'll probably still rant about it from time to time, but it's such a great feeling to know that I really do get to experience some quality DC entertainment! As a DC fan, I am absolutely having a great time in my DC oasis and since there's a LOT of it for me to digest, I don't have time to get bogged down in the hate.
There's so much fantastic DC related media out there I don't need to have sour grapes about Marvel anymore!
Anyhow, I decided to join this contest for Batman v Superman fan art. The prize isn't really that great, but I just wanted to participate to be a part of it and support BVS. So I colored up my old black and white pieces:
Colored in manga studio.
Colored in manga studio
It was actually tricky trying to keep my colors simple, so that I didn't take away from the Batman and Superman originals. When I colored in the Superman piece and gave him pinkish flesh tone, it took away from the piece. There were too many colors going and and it was very representational instead of a simpler color scheme.
Anyhow, for the contest, I mashed the two together and made this bookmark looking thing:
The pieces weren't meant to be together like that, but it seems to have worked out. It's kinda growing on me the more I look at it. I'd doubt I'd win anything, but it was fun to create and take part of the buzz and the advertising campaign for the movie.
I think the excitement I have for this movie rivals the excitement I had as a kid for the first Michael Keaton Batman movie back in the 90's! So my hats' off to the marketing people handling BVS!
Anyhow, we may live in the Marvel age right now, but it's okay. The DC fan is definitely well fed and well rewarded in these times as well! So if anything? It's a great time to be a DC fan right now too!
...and the first page is colored! I colored page 4 and 5 of the book already, but having the first page colors finished feels more like a true start to me finally finishing this issue.
Here... we... go!
You can have a gander at the black and white inks here.
I see a lot of artwork from various artists through social media and they're all fantastic stuff. Sometimes so fantastic, I get a little depressed, thinking that I never will get up to snuff. I'm not fast enough, I'm not good enough, I don't know enough, I'l never learn enough... blah blah blah. But not to worry, that usually just lasts for a moment. I've actually learned a long time ago something really important:
I will never be up to snuff.
What I mean about that, is I can never possibly reach whatever lofty idea I have in my head what 'up to snuff" is. In simple terms: I could not possibly be as good as other people because I am NOT other people. I can only be as good as I can be. My growth as an artist can only be taken one footstep at a time.
And the Bomb Squad is my foot forward. Slow, true, but still going forward. Still fighting the neverending battle. That's it for now, God Bless you all and up, up and away!
