My Comic Book: Page 16

Trucking right along. Finished up page 16, and now I have a total of 17 pages! This one went fast, and kind of brought me back to understanding my initial aesthetic for the Bomb Squad: Simplicity.

I chose a simple style when I started this comic so I could tell the story and draw the pages as quickly as possible. This second issue though, I've definitely been adding in a lot more detail, and kind of reverting back to how I usually draw.

So, while I do like how this issue is turning out, I have to keep that in mind as I go forward. On the positive side of things I'm also starting to loosen up as I draw this book, and not laboring and nit picking every line on the page. Could be good and bad. We'll see at the end of the book!

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

My Comic Book: Page 15 update

Yay! I'm almost back to the point before my file got corrupted. Also, alot of things that were really hard for me to figure out before are coming out a lot smoother. I'm getting that giddy-ness again when I feel I'm about to finish a page!

Good morning and God Bless!

My Comic Book: Stop whining! Back on Page 15!

Well, God certainly knows how to get me back on the saddle.

On my previous post I was pretty down that my Photoshop file for page 15 got corrupted. I was pretty miffed that I had lost all that work. Later on that day, my girlfriend and I were going to the farmer's market in San Francisco (by the Pier Building) with two of her friends from out of town.

I got there a little early, an lo and behold I got to see an inspirational sight to get my juices flowing again.

This Rocket ship was created by a group called the five ton crane. It's quite a cool site to see and just what I needed to pick myself back up since it looks so similar to the 'plane' I have in my book:

Ain't that a hoot.

I thanked God right there and then for letting me be inspired by others at work, and not to be discouraged. At just the right moment and at the right time He picks me back up and sends me on my way again.

So at the end of that day, I quickly set up page 15 again. Here's my progress from that couple hours of work. Admittedly, I seem to move a little faster and more confident than before. And a few things are turning out a little better already.

And I took this pic for my buddy Shanth, who'd definitely get a kick out of this:

Well that's it for today! Good Morning and God Bless!

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.