My Comic Book: Goodbye Page 15... see you soon Page 15?

Sigh.

My computer froze up last night from it's sleep mode. I've had it on sleep mode for a few days so maybe that's why.

Sigh.

More importantly, I've been chipping away at page 15 of my book for around 3-4 days. Waking up early in the morning before work to do some inking, or inking for a few hours after work. I've been struggling and fighting with this page for awhile now, and I was doing some good progress too. I fixed up a bunch of compositional and perspective errors, inking sound effect font, drawing the boring crowd in the background, and I had a few more items to ink, I was ready to finish it off this morning and move on.

Sigh.

Unfortunately, when my computer crashed it corrupted the file. So now I can't open page 15 at all. All I have left is a thumbnail that photoshop will taunt me with when I get ready to open it:

And an error window:

Sigh.

I suppose phrases like "suck it up", "don't cry over spilled milk" and "It'll go faster the second time around" come to mind. But right now, I'm just down.

Sigh.

I'm gonna go play some video games and punch some bad guys. Maybe I'll try to piece the page back together later this evening.

The neverending battle never ends!

My Comic Book: Page 15, 16, 18 and 19 thumbs

Got a quick update here, and mainly it's me scribbling, trying to figure out panel flow on the next few pages. Since I only have a few pages left, so I had to be careful that I showed everything I needed to show in the next few sequences.

Page 15 was difficult for me for some reason as there were a lot of thing I wanted to show in 1 page.

But I boiled it down to what I had to show. And while a part of me wants to show more and pace it out more in this one page, storytelling rules all, so I simply had to drop some things I had planned and show what was the most important.

Page 16 was a lot less painless. It was more work on me scripting and again, editing myself so it's not too wordy, but still get what dialogue I need to progress the story and introduce a character. And hopefully not lose new readers with another new face they've never seen.

With page 18, I had a tiny tiny thumb of what I wanted the layout to be for this splash page, but the real trouble I had was drawing my character in perspective for this action shot. Because she's made up of triagles and in so flat it started out difficult, but I think I got a handle on her.

Page 19 is sequence that's just in my head, and I don't have any layouts for it at all, but I went ahead and drew up the first panel kinda tight anyway.

Also you may have noticed me messing around with SFX and font in these pages. When my brain goes dead trying to do layouts, I switch over to do some type to let it rest and stew on ideas. Then I switch back to thumbnailing again.

That's it for today! Good day and God Bless!

Superman saves the day... for reals!

A friend of mine sent me this link to a couple being threatened by foreclosure on their home, but stumble upon a box of comics in their house. Inside the box? Action Comics number 1! This looks like a job for Superman!

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/superman-comic-saves-familys-home/story?id=11306997&page=1

My Comic Book: Quick Comp

When I had finished twelve pages into my book, I felt like I got stuck trying to finish the next half. I generally know what I want to do and how I want to end an issue, but I leave the details open so I have fun while drawing.

But it was tough with this second issue. My progress has been crawling since then and even though I have 15 pages, I feel like I'm still stuck. So I've been doing other things to jog my brain. I've been doing color studies for the pages, trying to work out the cover, doing thumbnails and yesterday, i decided to plop out some placeholder lettering.

From that I decided to do what I did in the first book when I got stuck halfway: I printed out the pages and put them in one of those art sleeve/folder things.

And just like that, the act of physically flipping through the pages, my brain started filling in the gaps. And I realized this: I have exactly the right amount of pages to end the book where i want it to! And now I know exactly what to draw on those pages! Yay!

Artist's block is the worst. So I'm glad I got un-blocked! Now time to get it done! That's it for today, Good Morning and God Bless!

Wedding Present

I drew up an old high school buddy of mine a wedding present recently. He had specifically requested that I depict them as super heroes, and hey I can't really argue with that art direction can I?

It's been pretty busy at work, so it was tough for me to find the time to get this done, but I got it done anyways! I just started with dynamic poses, and I kinda re-organized the figures on a page afterwards. I didn't really have a composition in mind, I just liked the figures I initially drew.

Judging from all the drawings I've drawn with hands in perspective, I must love Jack Kirby a lot or have some kinda hand fetish...

Then I inked it digitally..

...and then added color. It's been awhile since I put my color theory to good use, so the first pass was kinda lacking:

It wasn't until I used my best friend adjust hue/saturation in photoshop, that I finally got colors I liked better!

So this post is for my buddy Ryu! Congratulations to you and Delphine! Sorry i couldn't be there! Here's a link to his site. He's a very talented photographer when he's not busy getting married!

Iron Man

Drew up an Iron Man. His hand was too big initially so I used photoshop to scale it down a little... it's still too big...

Spiderman

Kinda big headed, but hey.

My Comic Book: Page 17

I still have to draw out pages 15 and 16, but here's a work in progress for page 17.

Torch and Thor

More doodling while verifying bugs on the game I'm working on...

Flame on!

Daredevil and Thing

Just messing around at work inbetween running builds and stressing. When I started drawing the Thing, it dawned on me (yet again) just how awesome Jack Kirby's stuff is and how he created som fun characters to draw.

And I know this is the neverending battle... but it's clobberin' time!

My Comic Book: Page 12 and 13

I've been working on my comic book whenever I get some free time, but I've noticed I'm kinda getting too detail heavy on the last couple of pages. I definitely have to over-ride (pun intended) my penchant to do detail, so I can concentrate on telling the story. However, I felt like these pages needed it.

I HATE backgrounds, but I really needed to have some kind of establishing shot: a shot of the building, the distance the plane was from it... and well, everything else. Since I've been rusty with drawing and my perspective is pretty horrid, I gave myself a little help, and modeled the scene in Maya.

I did a quick render of that and used it as reference. And while it did help me do the perspective and shot set-up really quickly, it was still a lot of work to get it all to a state I was satisfied with.

Anyway, that's it for tonight! 13 pages down and 11 more to go! Good night and God bless!

My Comic Book: Page 9 and 10 WIP

I'm just working through some of the pages. These pages are a little busier than the other so I wa a little unsure about the storytelling. Sometimes, I end up slapping some color onto the pages to to mess around with color to see if I can help the flow a little.

Okay, that it for today! The Neverending battle continues!

My Comic Book: Page 7 and 8 inks

Movin' right along.

I'm getting used to waking up early/sleeping late to get these pages going.

I'm hoping I can reach page ten by the end of the week! We'll see! Okay, gotta go, it's looking great outside today! God Bless!

My Comic Book: Page 4, 5 and 6, inks

I finished up the inks for pages 4 and 5. It was a lot tougher to get the background crowd all finished up than I had initially expected! I guess I'm a little bit more rusty than I thought. Anyway, slowly but surely, I felt like I was getting back into the groove of things after finishing these two pages.

Page 6 felt a little bit better as I drew it. Hopefully, it gets easier as I keep doing this on a regular basis. I guess the trick will be carving out the time to keep this going!

But I guess that's the whole thing right? I gotta keep pushing, and keep going to make this book happen. Anyhow, the neverending battle continues! God bless and good night!

My comic, Issue two, page 4 and 5, inks

I'm going slow this year, trying to finish the second issue. I'm definitely not going to make it for Wondercon, haha!

Here's a work-in-progress of the double page spread that occurs on page 4 and 5 of my book. I hope to finish this by the end of the week! All I have to do is the crowd in the background and the sound effects. So close...

The Neverending Battle in the Philippines

The Neverending battle never ends even in the Philippines...


Posts on some Bomb Squad #2 pages will be coming up soon!

My Comic, Issue two: page 4 and 5

I've been trying to get my second issue up and running, but I simply keep running into lazybonesitis. My schedule is supposed to be an issue a year and I am not looking too good this year. I've got around 11 pages roughed in so far, with the 12th page halfway there. But at this rate I'm not going to be able to make it in time to sell it at Wondercon (besides, I haven't even signed up for a booth in artists alley yet!).

Anyhow here's a few sketches of my process in trying to get pages 4 and 5 of the book to work.



This page took a lot of trial and error. I kept playing with the camera angle to make it as dynamic as possible when the reader lands on this two page spread. I didn't want it to look just like the final page of the first issue, with Bombgirl hanging onto dear life as the plane was crashing. So in this case, the composition, while in a similar perspective as the last issue, is now tilted up. I was trying to signal that Bomgirl has gotten more pro-active about her predicament. Here's a scan of the tighter sketch before I bring it to final.


That's it for today! Good night and God Bless.

Space Invaders Exteme

I worked on Taito's Space Invaders Extreme for the XBLA a few months back. I helped with upresing the graphics of the game and adding some extra spit and polish (it's out now, go buy it!). It was fun to go back into manipulating pixel art again. With all the new fangled 3D art I've been doing, it was good to do the 2D again, even if it was just processing the stuff.



But hey I couldn't have asked for a better game to process the art for! I was a big fan of the DS version of the game when it first came out, so it was a blast to be able to tag my name on the legendary franchise (even in a tiny, tiny way)!



These pictures are some wallpapers for the xbla downloadable content I got to create. That's it for tonight, I'll see if I can post up some work I've been doing for The Bomb Squad #2 next. Good night and God Bless!

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.