My Comic Book: Page 11 Final colors

Finally finished up this page.

Aaaand, onto the double page spread (gulp)!

My Comic Book: Page 11 WIP Colors part 2

Did I even do any work??

Slowly, but surely! The battle continues to never end...

My Comic Book: Page 11 WIP colors

Just clocking in a Work In Progress colors page for page 11 of the book.

Fairly straightforward coloring this time around... keeping the colors relatively simple compared to the past two pages. Okay I gotta sleep now...

My Comic Book: Page 9 final colors

When I laid down these colors, I thought it was too nutty. Usually when that's the case I walk away and then when I come back to a page, I realize it's not THAT crazy. That didn't quite happen for this page! It still makes my eyes bug out when I look at it.

But I think that's a good thing. This page is meant to be a big punch in the face when the reader gets to it. I'm not quite sure how the final print color will look like, but one thing at a time right?

Onwards to page 10! And the neverending battle continues! God Bless and Good Morning (and what a really nice morning it is from South San Francisco!).

My Comic Book: Page 8 final colors

There's been quite a lot of things that have been going on since my last few posts. I bought a house, work has kicked up into overdrive (I was the only animator in Cityville for awhile!), and oh did I mention I bought a house? Anyway...

It took me awhile to get this page done. My wrist isn't as tired anymore, and I think I'm slowly getting back into the groove. I caught myself nit-picking my color choices again, so I just had to force myself to move on.

Anyway. Onwards to page 9!

Yet another weigh in, my thoughts on the New 52...

Honestly? I'm enjoying it.

I didn't buy everything from the first 3 weeks, just what seemed to appeal to me as I was browsing. Sidenote: Looking around on comixology just pales in comparison to going into the comic book store.

I've bought 13 titles so far and borrowed 3 from a friend to read. There are 7 that I'll be back for the second issue  for sure, 4 that I seem to be on the fence about, 3 that I'll flip through at the comic book store and 2 that I'm fairly sure I won't be buying. Not bad numbers for DC, right? Note: I'm missing one book in this shot, Demon Knights, and I'd probably lump that with the second on-the-fence row. I've categorized the books in this photo:

Top row (I'll buy the second issue): Justice League, Action Comics, O.M.A.C., Swamp Thing, Animal Man, and Resurrection man. Action comics was the strongest for me, putting a spin to Superman that's polarizing fans, but to me, seems pretty true to his spirit. I'm not a fan of Grant Morrisons writing as he dissappointed me with Seven Soldiers and Final Crisis by any stretch, but I've enjoyed his All-Star Superman run. He seems to keep in good form with Action Comics.

Action Comics #1

O.M.A.C. was a fun throwback book for me. A lot of awesome kirby-esque action with Kieth Giffen supplying some great storytelling. I was a little nervous with Dan Didio being co-writer on the book as I wasn't fond of his Wednesday Comics Metal Men run. But it turns out, O.M.A.C is one of my top pics for the 52. I'm not sure how new readers will respond to it, but I'm definitely eating it up. 

O.M.A.C. #1

Justice League was a good intro book. Plenty of great action, and some good art from Jim Lee. The story is easy enough to follow, and it takes it's time introducing new readers to a few characters. People complain that the whole League isn't there, but I think Geoff Johns is going the right way with this. A few team books in the 52 line up threw every character at the reader and it makes for a confusing read. Demon Knights, Legion Lost and the Authority are examples of this. Where the team intros are done pretty well, I think are in Jeff Lemier's Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. Anyhow, I enjoyed the Justice League, and I remember reading and re-reading it multiple times. It was fun.

Swamp Thing, Animal Man and Ressurection man I'll lump up together. I enjoyed them because they were in this interesting horror/superhero category. I've read a few vertigo books that do this, but to have these type of books exist in the the DC universe is pretty refreshing.

Second Row (I'll peek at these at the store, and lean towards buying #2 if budget allows): Green Lantern and Batwoman were pretty solid and fairly new reader friendly. but I think because I know the type of books these are, and I know fans will eat it up, I might pass them up just to help support the other genres coming out this month. Men of War didn't kick my butt but shows some pretty good potential. I haven't read a war book in a long time, so this title while not having an amazing first issue, might get me to buy #2 if it starts picking up. Demon Knights is also a cool book, but I feel there were so many characters being introduced, it never totally grabbed me. Again, the Swords and Sorcery genre being tackled here is intriguing so I might be back.

Third Row (titles I probably won't pick up again): Mister Terrific was actually entertaining, but I don't think the character grabbed me enough to make me come back for it. It wasn't anything bad, but compared to the others, it's not as strong. Deathstroke was actually kinda fun, like a super-villain crime book. Pretty solid story, but it's rare for me to go for books with the bad guy as the main character. Still, I'd say it's a pretty solid entry into this 'genre'. Legion Lost I felt threw new readers under the bus. There were too many characters, it was hard to relate to any of them. I liked the art, but there was too much story crammed into it, it just got to be too much.

Fourth Row (I definitely won't be reading these): I always felt like the Authority and Stormwatch were these cheap knock-offs of the Justice League (well, Midnighter and Apollo especially). I feel like those books capitalize on what a nerd like me loves about Batman and Superman and puts a gritty spin to it. And now with the DC reboots it becomes more apparent to me how much of a copy they are. The first issue didn't really do much to bring me on board. Batgirl everybody seems to be loving, but I felt like it was a very standard super-hero story. And this is probably fine to some, and a good starter for those not used to the genre, but I felt like this book could easily be part of the old DC line-up. I didn't feel like Batgirl's voice was quite as strong as what I've enjoyed from the past Oracle stories or from the awesome Batgirl: Year one series. This new Batgirl isn't for me.

I've noticed that a majority of the people reviewing these books are mostly fanboys (makes sense). I've read and listened to a few reviews that have absolutely infuriated me because their basis for why they didn't like it was so... unsubstantiated. One didn't like superboy, because they couldn't get around buying a book that had "superboy" in the title. One just felt like the definition for the 'reboot' meant bringing in new readers but not really rebooting the character (yeah that one was odd). One just HATES anything Grant Morrison writes (and I'm not a fan either, but Action Comics has so far been the strongest and gutsiest of the bunch). Anyhow everybody's entitled to their opinion, and I'm entitled to not read or listen to them. And for my blog, here's my opinion:

I like that DC's trying out some different approaches to revitalize their sales. I like that the effect of their hype machine has been positive and drawing more customers back into the stores. I like the marketing hype their doing to get the word out, I believe the comic book industry really needs to reach out to a broader audience to survive. Some books will succeed, and quite a few will fail, but at least they're trying something different. I'm hoping that there will be alot of books in the 52 that I'm turned off by but completely appeals to the younger audience. In my twisted logic, it would mean that DC is succeeding.

Why? Because I don't think the target market for comic books should JUST be me anymore. I should be a small part of the target market. When Morrison is throwing in some modern age slang into the books, it totally flew over my head. I actually had to look it up. I thought that was good! Why should I know the nerdy in-joke? These books shouldn't be aimed at me! This industry I love is dying because it's growing up with me... and more to the point, it's not reaching to anybody else. Kids nowadays would rather plunk down 99 cents for angry birds than a 2.99 digital copy of a comic book. It's sad, but I can't really blame 'em.

The title that the Nu52 is missing? An all ages book.

Anyhow. Better stop the rant. I wonder how the masses who don't blog or write reviews feel about the 52?

The Store is open!

I got around to finally setting up a store page on this blog.

Up top next to the "home" tab you can see there's a new "Store" tab that leads you to the ONE thing I'm selling (for now!). Bomb Squad #1 is available on indyplanet. Click on the "buy it" button to send you over to the page, it also has the first 6 pages up available for preview. Of course, you can just go through the older posts under "my comic" on this blog and check out a ton more preview pages!

Soon... I'll have 2 issues to sell at the store... not yet but soon! The neverending battle continues!

My Comic Book: Page 7 final colors

Ugh.

My wrist is still not back to 100%. I really need to rest it for a bit, so I'm not sure when my next progress post will be... sigh...

Here're the final colors for page 7:

It can get pretty frustrating when I go online or to the comic book store and see so many great artists doing their thing, and I can't finish my pages. I feel like such a slacker. Anyway, I'll be back in action soon enough.. until then, keep on battlin'!

The budding potential of webcomics

When I started doing work for videogames, I've always been so involved in keeping tabs with that industry through a number of websites. I've been doing this for a few years now and I've built up some go to sites.

What's funny is that I never did that for comic books before. It's only lately that I've been catching up on finding all sorts of websites out there, a lot are a little too fanboy-ish for me and a handful that are just fanboy enough.

Anyways!

Through those sites I've stumbled upon some interesting 'mutation' that comics have gone into: digital comics! I'm not as well read on this stuff as some people are out there, but it's very interesting seeing this new medium start growing and evolving. Most bother me because of the format, and honestly I am more fond of flipping through printed pages myself, but there are some that are exploring the digital medium is interesting ways.

I'm pretty much last on the scene but I wanted to share a few links on some of these that I stumbled on:

This first one's a korean horror webcomic that really utilizes the act of scrolling to immerse the viewer. Pretty cool little gimmick. There's no need to understand it, it's still pretty readable. Unfortunately I didn't catch the name of the person or the studio that did this one, sorry!

Scroll down, down down!

This next one's by Vincent Giard. I like his art style, and storytelling but he also adds to his sequence with some cool motion to enhance it.

Vincent Giard

Turbo defiant Kimecan by Feran Daniel makes the viewer click to get panels to show up in the order they should be viewed. I'm not too big of a fan of all the clicking to read a sequence, and I kinda like being able to see the whole sequence altogether, but it does present certain interesting things, that are almost manually controlled storyboards.

Feran Daniel

This last one's pretty neat. I think I liken it to being the pop-up book equivalent of web comics. It's called "never mind the bullets" by a studio called Steaw Web Design. Cool use of parallax scrolling (brings out the inner video game nerd in me), to reveal some things or even play motion forwards and backwards.

Microsoft and Steaw Web Design

I'm really quite a traditionalist when it comes to making comics, but seeing these webcomics definitely opens my mind up to it's untapped possibilites. It's all very exciting to me! I can't wait to see what new stories and storytelling techniques pop up.

Until the next post, the neverending battle continues!

My Comic Book: Page 6 final colors and Page 7 WIP

Posting up some pages real quick! I kind of messed up my right wrist when we had a company outing to a trampoline park (no lie). And I kinda didn't take care of it when we had a team outing and went bowling last week! Plus work's been kinda nutty, as I'm the only animator (for now) on the crew! So I haven't really been working too much on the book.

I just started coloring the pages in again, and I'm hoping to crank up the speed a little more...

Page 6

Page 7 (Work In Progress)

That's it for today! Good Morning and God Bless you as much as He has me! The Neverending battle continues!

Sleepy Genius' 1942: Joint Strike step by step design

I'm taking a quick break this post. And just wanted to focus this on a friend of mine's blog.

Before I started worked at Zynga, I was working for a console development company called Backbone Entertainment. I was there for around 10 years, and a I worked on quite a few games there. A few didn't turn out so hot I have to admit, and even though I never got to make the perfect game, I do have a handful of favorites from that list! One of them is 1942: Joint Strike for XBLA and PSN.

I was the art lead on that project and the lead designer on that project was Marcus Montgomery. He's set up a post recently that details a very cool step-by-step of the work that went through some of the decisions he made for that game. It's a great post and really opens up the nooks and crannies (trials and errors!) of the intricacies of designing a game.

I mean, how crazy of a responsibility is it to be a game designer, right? Design makes it all work. For design to function correctly, it pulls all the disciplines together and makes 'em sing. While I love making the art and all, what really sticks to me as a player is how fun the game is, how balanced it is, how challenging it is, how unique it is; usually everything else once I get past the visuals! Basically, art gets me to look at a game, but it's the design that gets me to love it.

Anyhow, click the link and have a gander at the sleepy genius.

I also have a couple of old posts here and there on this blog for you to check out too. Good night and God Bless!

My Comic Book: Page 4 and 5: Final colors

I finally got page 4 and 5 in the can! Work's been a little crazy the past 3 weeks, but it's somewhat slowing down now. Somewhat since work at Zynga doesn't really slow down...

Anyway! I shifted the hues of the hook and the 'rope' attached to it from my last post because my focus seemed off. In the previous version, my eye was drawn to the rope more than the hook because of the color contrast. A blue hook against a green background versus an orange one on the same background? C'mon now. Color theory 101.

So I switched the warm color to the hook since I want the reader to follow that, while reading the sequence. Then I got into nitpicking colors again and contrast:

Version A

Version B

So it's probably not very recognizable, even with two versions right next to each other, but there is a slight nit-picky difference! 

In version A, the lower left corner has a higher contrast between aisle and the floor under the chairs. 

While contrast is nice since it brings out objects and focus, in my case I actually wanted the crowd to just be a monochromatic color so the background as a whole contrasted with Bombgirl. What the contrast in the floor did was bring unnecessary focus to that area and not to Bombgirl (more like her feet and the screaming dude's face on the corner). It also made a heavy line that cut that panel up that I didn't really need.

In version B, the colors are a little bit closer in contrast, so that area is a little more uniform, so my eye goes back to Bombgirl since she has the most contrast within that panel.

OR. I'm just crazy. The Neverending battle continues! Good morning and God Bless!

My Comic Book: Page 4 and 5 WIP

Just a quick progress post for the day:

Just laid down the base colors and started filling in some shadows. Colors are probably gonna be tweaked some more as I work through it...

My Comic Book: Page 3 colors

I'm going a bit slow on the coloring process, but I'll post up what I have so far.

I've been messing with ONE shadow on this page for a few hours already, and I caught myself futzing too much with it. Still not the best shadow, but the point of these colors was to move fast and to aid the story. A somewhat misplaced shadow wasn't going to destroy the flow. (the shadow in question are the ones on the upper right corner of the last panel of the page if you're curious.)

I'm starting to fall into the mode where I'm nitpicking things too much. I need to constantly remind myself, that while I want a certain quality, I need to lean more towards fun and flow. Otherwise, I get stuck way too long on the process, and I bog myself down. I started to draw The Bomb Squad to loosen up, so I didn't get too anal retentive on things. I hated that I would cripple myself artistically and mentally when I thought way so much about what I drew, that I ended up not drawing (Heh, though I'm sure some people would say my art would be much better if I did think about it more!).

As it is I'm already taking too long with issue two! Alright, that's enough for the battle today. Good night and God Bless!

My Comic Book: Coloring phase! Pages 1 and 2

I've finished lettering the book and am putting up what I have so far from page one and two of my book:

It's been awhile since I've colored my first book, so I've been struggling with the look of the first few pages. It's pretty simple coloring, I know, but for some reason I was stuck and kept noodling the Hue/Saturation sliders.

When I color, it's rare that I plop down the colors and immediately feel it's right. I usually color it in, then I need to step away for a few seconds, sometimes longer, then come back to it. If it doesn't bug me when I come back to it, I feel like I can move on.

The color treatment I did for Cityville, started off as how I applied colors for my first comic, but evolved into something that involved more gradients and line fills. I got so used to using those tricks to bring focus or clarity to those tiny icons and spam images, that coming back to something that has a very simple look threw me off. I had to really force myself to be okay with plopping down big flat colors on these pages!

Also, I have a dual monitor/Cintiq set up on my PC, and color on my Cintiq. I use some pretty funky colors sometimes, and it really wigs me out when I drag the art over to the other monitor and see how messed up my colors could look! I get so unsure about my colors when I do that, so I have to keep reminding myself that the first book turned out somewhat okay and trust the Cintiq! Still, it drive me nuts to see it on the funky monitor...

Funny that I chose the simple colors to make my life easier, but it's actually giving me a headache! Ah well, onwards!

My Comic Book: Pages 16, 17, 19 to do lists and lettering

I finished 'inking' my last page around 3 or 4 pages ago! So now I'm onto the fun parts like coloring and lettering, and I don't mean that in a sarcastic way!

For some reason there's always this great feeling when I'm attaching word bubbles to characters: it's like my story starts coming more to life, one bubble at a time. When I'm applying colors, I find it's a lot of fun trying to bring more focus (or less) to things that are needed to make the story coherent. Maybe, mentally I just feel like the hardest part (for me) is done, and I can see the end in sight.

Here are a few pages that I've finished up:

Page 16

Page 17

Page 19

Here's a screenshot of my lettering process. I use Blambots' "Crime Fighter" font for my books. They do some great fonts and offer certain ones free for independent creators. But even if you had to pay for them, they're pretty inexpensive.

Yes, I am using a dirt old version of Photoshop: 4.5!

As I'm starting to put the polish to the book, I'll go through the pages one by one, trouble shooting any mistakes I may have made and making a little checklist for myself. And for a pretty unorganized guy like me, to-do lists are great!

That's it for today! The neverending battle continues!  

Big Lens Fast Shutter Icon

A buddy of mine from High School was setting up a podcast and called me up asking for some help designing an icon for it. Thinking it couldn't be THAT hard to design an icon, I said "I'll do it"! Famous last words right?

The podcast was going to be called "Big Lens Fast Shutter" and focused on giving expert advice to normal joes on how to take great sports pictures. His main art direction for the icon was that they were going for a look that had a propaganda-ish look, and also had a 'viva la revolucion' kinda feel to it.

Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to work on the icons, since he needed a really quick turnaround for it. I was also working on some other things as well at the same time (I'll post that up at a later date!). I came up with two designs for him to pick and to speed up the process I worked completely digital.

This first design, was pretty straightforward, I took a reference picture and worked off of that. I'm not very good at vector art so I decided to draw the icon huge then shrink it down; sharpening up the line work.

The next one was a little more involved, and to get the right angle I took a photo of myself and just exaggerated the size of the lens.

 I also did a vertical composition of the icon just for kicks.

My friend  and his co-host picked the second one, because they liked the thought of this tiny guy impossibly holding up this ridiculously large lens. Check out the icon in action here and listen to their podcasts. They're pretty entertaining and chock-full of great information! Also, check out their website for a sampling of some of their great photography too!

That's it for tonight! Good night, God Bless and let the Neverending battle... er... never end!

My Cityville Work

I've been working at Zynga as a 2D/3D artist for almost 10 months now, and it's been pretty busy! Being part of the launch team for Cityville would do that! The thing I enjoy the most about being there, is the opportunity to be able to draw again for a living. When video games started shifting heavily to 3D artwork, I had to adapt and learn 3D programs and a majority of my work relied less on my drawing skills. But with social games, there's still a large need for art to actually be drawn! On Cityville, I get to utilize both my 3D skills with animation and from time to time, I pinch hit to help out the 2D staff.

If you're familiar with Facebook social games, you'll know the games rely on spamming your friends' walls to get them to keep playing, get rewards and advertise the game. Well, I get to make that spam! The character designs for the game aren't mine so it's a style that I had (and still continue to) wrestle with and try to get down. Also, a lot of these assets have to get pumped out quick, so you'll see me struggle through some of these; there's quite a few mistakes in there that make me cringe now that I see them again. 

Here's a few examples of my process. Not very different for how I draw my comic book! The art on the far right is the final version seen in the game.

I usually work at around 4 times the size of the actual icon, and I use Photoshop, because I'm not that savvy with Flash (yet!). I shrank down some of the preliminary stages just to keep everything uniform. 

Above are some icons for materials that you'd collect in the game. I found these to be a lot of fun (in the problem solving kind of way) to do. You might notice, with these icons I start going nutty on making things shiny! It was kinda neat to play around with effects so forgive me if I went overboard!

Below, I tried to organize the icons in chronological order from my earliest work to the latest ones. It's really interesting to see my progress and what I have problems with or what colors I tend to go with. There's a LOT of iteration that goes into these icons, sometimes even a complete re-do after it's colored in and finalized. And with tight deadlines it can be very stressful and nerve-wracking!  But all in all it's done for the good of the game. 

I sneaked myself into the second icon. I just couldn't resist! Here's a hint: I'm not the lumberjack.

By pumping out so much of these and with so many iterations and corrections, I've been able to learn quite alot and I feel get better at drawing and drawing for a deadline. I have a lot of issues with perspective still, and have learned how to cut corners but still provide an interesting image. And, of course, composition plays such a giant factor. These icons are such a great exercise, requiring me to find new solutions for storytelling, color theory, clarity and hitting deadlines! Some of these lessons I can see are already seeping their way into my comic!

And that's it for tonight. Good night and God bless you as much as He has me! Heck, more!

Sad Days for Comic books... the battle continues!

So, I was looking around for a birthday card for my brother in-law this past weekend and I stumbled onto a card that was a sad indication of what my favorite medium's status is nowadays.

Here's a little lead-in to the card: It recounts the glory days, and waxes nostalgic, building up to the happy birthday and what a great life you've been living punchline... blah, blah, blah. Suffice to say, It's not the card I bought, but I took a pic of something in it that bugged me:

Apparently, reading a ton of comic books is now considered nostalgia... (okay, granted the context of the card is talking about childhood as well, but lumping it with penny candy and fountains in drugstores? Dem's foitin' woids!)

Meh. Rant over. Bomb squad #2 will soon be entering the battlefield!

Speaking of which, I have 19 pages done and wanted to post up a few pages, but I didn't want to ruin the 'ending' of book 2 either, so my posts on the final pages might be few and far in between. Not to worry, you may not see all of it, but I'm still working on it.

I'll try to post some more other art on this blog though. Here's a little hint at what it could be:

Anyways, good night and God Bless! The Neverending Battle continues!  

My talented family

Just thought to share a few cool things I've been seeing from my nephews and my wife this past month or so. Basically, my nephews are awesome. My sister's been sending me a few drawings they've been doing lately of superheroes and they're great! They've really been a great inspiration and a good way to keep progress on my own comic book in check! Though I have to admit I'm having a real hard time keeping up!

My nephew Joaquin, pumps out most of these images, but my other nephew, Ramon, also likes to keep up with big brother.

Painted Wolverine! (by Joaquin)

Hulk Smash!! (by Joaquin)

Mighty Thor! (by Joaquin)

And not to be outdone by his Brother, Ramon has his version too!

The world's finest! Definitely my favorite of the bunch! (by Joaquin)

And last but definitely not the least, since we came back from Wondercon, my wife has gotten into felting. We had passed by this "Wool Buddies" booth at the con and she bought a kit. And after that she can't stop making her own. And more recently: making 'our' own. She's currently making the giant octopus creature from our proposal comic:

How cool is that octopus head, huh? That white figure on the side is my first attempt at this felting thing. It's fun but very time consuming! I'll finish that little project, but I'm going to have to postpone felting so I can get back to finishing my comic! One project at a time, right? Okay, 'til next time!