My Comic Book: Issue 3 page 6 WIP part 5

That last panel got a little more detailed than usual, but I think I can still keep it focused with color later on.

Okay, onto lettering!

My Comic Book: Issue 3 Page 6 WIP part 4

I'm getting REEEAAAL close to finishing up this page. I just need to add people in the seats and some more tweaking with the line-weight and minor corrections and it's onto the letting part. The layout of the last panel might be an issue with the word balloons I have planned for it, but let's figure that out when we get there (totally not the thing to do but hey).

Did a few cheats and hid some things with the addition of the blacks into the page, but that right side of  panel 5 is feeling a little cramped when I add detail to it (like seats) so I left it a little bare but filled in with black. I might put a line in there on my next pass to break up how solid black it is.

I think I'm just rambling now, I'd better hit the hay. My daughter isn't sleeping too well (growth spurt, we think) so I'm pretty sure I'm going to pay for it staying up this late...

God Bless and good nigh... morning! Sigh.

My Comic Book: Issue 3, Page 6 WIP part 3

Did I say a panel a day on that last post? Maybe I meant a couple hours of distracted work a day...
This panel's angle was a little funky for me to try to figure out. The faked perspective wasn't quite working, so I spent some time drawing and re-drawing perspective lines.

Still needs some futzing to get it working...

After awhile of getting nowhere, I went to the trusty internets... my gigantic personal photo reference resource. I picked a shot where I had to fake the interior, since actual airline aisles are REALLY narrow. So I took out a couple rows of seats to make the cramped establishing shot in panel 5 kinda work.

Anyway, I am going to be late for work again if I keep this up! Maybe later tonight I'll have better luck finishing it off!

My Comic Book: Issue 3 Page 6 WIP part 2

So my motto for the moment is: "A panel a day, keeps the deadline away". Or something like that. So the idea is to try to finish a panel everyday. Honestly, just typing that out makes me feel like it's crazy, but we'll see if I can keep that up.

Trying to spot more blacks in this issue.

Maybe in my swingin', reclusive, bachelor days I could pop more than a panel in a day after work. But with my responsibilities at home with the wife and baby and house chores (which I am naturally horrible at already), I'm usually brain-dead by the end of the day. But I need to push!

I'm trying to spot more blacks into my pages for this issue compared to issue 2. The second issue I relied a lot on colors to bring out contrast in my pages. In the first issue, I think because I was still doing that traditionally, I worked on the black and white stages longer, so I was more concerned with how that looked first before I moved onto the coloring stage.

But with my switch to digital, I'm moving onto the coloring stage quickly (like the last two pages). Color is good however for my target market, bright and bold appeals more to kids. However, I do love high contrast black and white artwork. While I'm not planning to go all Hellboy on the art, maybe I can find a happy medium.

Wondercon this year is apparently not going to be in San Francisco, so there go my chances of trying to get a table there (since I hoped it's be in SF to keep it local). The A.P.E. expo, however, should still be around here towards the latter half of the year. So it still gives me sometime to finish up this issue and hopefully have 3 issues to sell there, as well as some art books. Well I gotta get a table at A.P.E. first, but that might be tough.

Time to hit the hay! Good night and God Bless!

2nd Wedding anniversary

I have been sick three times since Christmas. It's been really annoying since I'm the only one that seems to be getting sick in the family (which is a good thing, but the wife and have been kid playing keep away all this time!). I guess I'm still recovering up until now. The wife is taking every precaution so the Baby doesn't get sick from me since she had a milder form of pneumonia during the holidays.

Anyhow, how does me getting sick relate to anything in this post? Well, I drew up a card for my 2nd wedding anniversary without telling the missus. And I was still sick and going to work (shhh, don't tell the co-workers) while this was going on. So let's just say something this simple was pretty tough.

I drew up a rough sketch of it at work in between rendering frames and backing up some work files. Oh yeah on top of this too, the project I was on got cancelled, so everything was in transition for me.

What large heads you have!

I had the idea in my head already, and I kinda did a similar process for the gags in my proposal comic book. I planned to use the same pose and simply put new clothes on the characters. It's fast, cheap and works for the gag.

I broke up the actual final work into two parts. One session I think I had 2 hours to work on it, then the next was 4 hours. Only 6 hours of work, but I was pretty tired and mighty distracted. I actually think I should've been able to do it faster, but there was a lot of figuring out as I drew.

Happy ANNIVERSAY hey hey hey!

What you see here is the 'fixed' version. I guess I was so out of it, I initially spelled 'Anniversary' as 'Anniversay' on the final printed card! And my wife posted it up on Facebook too, so my spelling prowess is up for the world to see! Ah well, can't win 'em all.

There are a few things about the drawing the bug me, but it got the job done. The wife gave a good laugh and said I really got her look with the drawing. And that's really the kind of reaction I wanted when I set out to do this card. Anyhow, that's it for tonight, Good night and God Bless.

My Comic Book: Issue 3 Page 6 WIP

I cut up some of the panels I have all over my sketch book to get the layouts for page 6 down. So here's a sample page from my sketchbook. I write all sorts of scripting details whenever it hits me, and I'll sometimes try to figure out the composition for the page and layout in a disjointed order.

I tend not to scan the original that large, since it's just for a rough anyways, Sorry if it's blurry.

Then I arrange the panels I like onto a page that already has borders and margins. I then create the frames for the panels. For this page, I decide to add an extra panel (the fourth one) during this phase, but I never really planned it in the early stages.

The thing is, I work really loose, even to the layouts as I go to final. And frankly even as I'm 'inking' I tend to cut up stuff and re-paste all the time. Since everything is digital, there really should be no fear of experimentation or moving things around even at the 'final' stage. I've actually cut up things even when they were all colored up already...

I remember wanting to add another panel on the top tier, but figured three could get it done just fine, less cluttered.

I was just going to leave the layout stage as my work for the day, but again because it's all digital, it's really easy to dive into the final inks. Plus, the characters I designed are purposely simple. I tend to overwork things and over think things and it always leaves me stuck. So, with characters this simple, I can move faster on the drawing and I can concentrate more on the storytelling (and just having fun).

That's it for today! It's my Anniversary tomorrow, so I might have a slightly different art post tomorrow! The Neverending Battle continues!

My Comic Book: Page 5 Final-ish

I think this page is all done. I went back in and fixed up the first two panels. The character was still off model. For this pass I added in the word balloons. I've said it before, but once word balloons are added to a page, it just feels great (for me). Like my page and story start coming alive.

Maybe because I also tend to edit dialogue a bit from when I first jot them in my sketchbook, as I'm lettering. Anyway, that's it for this page. Good night!

My Comic Book: Page 5 Work In Progress

Okay! I got some random hours during this weekend (inbetween baby-naps, burps and diapers) and I got to work on my comic again. I've been sketching roughs of the pages of my book during lunch at work. Sometimes I skip around and draw pages, and even panels out of order. I scanned a few pages from my sketchbook and pieced together the panels of this page.

Not a very difficult page really, so a good one to ease back into working on the book. I initially drew the doctor in panels one and two off-model since it's been awhile, but the colors and ink work are all done.

I have to go back and letter it just to see if my layouts work, then it should be all done. That's it for tonight! Good night and God Bless!

In 80 dates

Quick post for tonight as well as the last post of 2012 for me!

A friend of mine has been drawing up some 1 panel comics dealing with the 'adventures' of dating. It's light hearted fun that takes from her and her friends' dates, but when you read through them, you'll find more than a few that I'm sure you've been on before (the female version of Date 11, for me sticks, out in my mind the most). Head over Approaching the issue in 80 dates to check it out and I also have it in my links section.

Anyhow, to show my support as well to thank her for the great blanket she made for my daughter for Christmas, this post is dedicated to her! Complete with fan-art! (And of course, it will be complete with the neverending battle process-post.)

So first off I do a quick sketch. I went through her website and picked which character I wanted to draw. At the same time that I was composing the image I was also trying to figure out how to draw her characters. Truth be told, I just went right into the final inking phase without really figuring out 'my style' for them, but it worked out in the end.

working fast and furious on the sketch phase. I kept it loose to get my idea down quick. A little too loose maybe...

In the inking phase, I started filling in blacks, which among other things I did strays from the style of the comic, since there are no heavy black areas. I figure I can solve it later in the coloring stage. It was kinda tough since I had to go through the website again on the inking phase, because my sketch phase wasn't very tight. I was very loose, so certain details like what characters were wearing aren't in the sketch.

something very cool occurred to me as I was drawing these characters: essentially they have the same face, but there's a lot of attention on their hair that really sets each person apart from one another. 

Next up, I add colors. Here's where I REALLY break the art direction that's been set (and hopefully she won't hate me for going completely off-model!). I still kept in mind how she worked the colors in the original strip. My natural Bomb Squad coloring tendency is to add shadows to help pop out characters from each other. However, the original strip's style is simple, but specifically chosen shades of gray for the colors. It was very tough not to rely on my old coloring tricks, since every character was on top of everyone else in my comp.

I have a version where I don't use a color fill for the black inks and it looks pretty cool too, but I think the purple fill on the line work helps connect it better to the original strip.

Approaching the Issue in 80 dates gets superhero-ey!

And that's it for me! Go check out my friend's website and read through it already!

ESWAT

Still haven't gotten into the flow of working on my third issue...  My daughter, my wife and I are all sick, my hotmail account (which I haven't used in years) has been hacked, and all my yahoo email and contact info has been deleted. Also, my portable hard drive with a lot of my professional work has been messed up, so I can't access it.

I've gotten lazy and in between taking care of the baby, the wife and myself I've been doing hard core video game time with Sonic Racing Transformed and Mighty Switch Force on the Wii U and Bayonetta on Xbox.

Suffice to say, I haven't been working on my stuff.

However, since my last post was about shinobi, I thought to throw up some more old-school gaming art from the archives...

Now that I think about it, this dude is kinda like a mature Mega Man...

E.S.W.A.T. was my system seller for the Sega Mega Drive (Sega Genesis, whatever). I think it came with an Altered Beast pack-in (which was still all the rage back then and I also really liked), but I asked if I could swap it out with this awesome game. I think I played it at a friend's place and I really, REALLY liked it. I would go to a friends house and played all sorts of multiplayer games, so I doubt we played ESWAT much. But it made quite an impression!

I remember these sliding dudes were a pain in the butt!

The game has an arcade counterpart, but plays totally different. The home version was more like a shinobi game and had two levels where you didn't have any armor: you were just a normal cop. The difficulty was pretty hard, but it was a lot of fun. My hardcore gaming muscles have atrophied what with all the continues and save points these newfangled games have nowadays, I doubt I could hang with it anymore. I DO fondly remember towards the end the suit gets an awesome power up and you can unleashed this super attack that had you spin in place firing a GIANT laser from your arm (which overheated your suit, so it'd be a move you can't always do) destroying everything! Fun stuff.

This was a blast to mock-up. The foreground buildings were built by a coworker then I painted over it  and drew a lot of the background,scaffolding, and glow effect-y things.

Life was a lot simpler then! The Mega Drive box art for this was awesome, I remember, and googling it up shows that it still is as awesome as I remember! Anyway, that's enough nostalgia for the day!

The neverending battle (in my body and mind!) continues! God Bless and thanks for stopping by!

P.S. I remember drawing the giant green boss robot too, but I think I may have lost that along with the stuff on my hard drive! What's left of it, lives on in that screen mockup above!

Shinobi on the PS2

I've finally gotten a chance to update the ol' blog today. But before I get to the post's title a little comic book project update. I've been able to thumbnail out until page 12 of the book. So I've at least hit the halfway mark on that! I'll post my roughs next time.

I've moved desks this week, at work, so I've lost my lovely window seat. However, over by the new spot, I'm sitting by an artist that I used to work with a LOOOONG time ago at Digital Eclipse (The sadly shut down Backbone Entertainment's old name). He's a very talented dude! But anyway, I may have forgotten this, but it turns out we have alot of things in common. Including video games that we LOVE. And two of them are the Shinobi series on the PS2.

He still is the Hot(SUMA)ness. Wah wah wah.

I remember loving every minute of the first game when it came out and totally being blown away (and thankful) when a sequel came out in the form of Nightshade. I don't think it made a lot of money, so this version of the IP stopped at that sequel. I think another game, Ninja Gaiden, came out and wowed everyone with it's looks that year. And sure, Shinobi didn't look that great compared to a lot of the games around at the time, but it's gameplay was something unique and new, and it kept me absolutely hooked! I never liked the gameplay of Ninja Gaiden at all, Shinobi was just a better designed game. It still is at the top of my action games list (happily alongside Bayonetta and Gunvalkyrie!).

God Bless you and the neverending battle continues! 

The Neverending Battle gets Chronicled!

I made it into a San Francisco Chronicle article!

At the company I work for, Zynga, a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle wrote up an article about the things that Zynga provides as creative outlets that aren't necessarily connected to work. An employee at Zynga, Kim Herbst, set up a gallery show for all the employees at Zynga. So not just artists, but everybody in the company interested in showing their stuff has access to it.

I had exhibited some of my pieces there, and the timing worked out for me because it so happened that the reporter from the Chronicle (Stephanie Wright Hession) was dropping by to look at the gallery while my pieces were still there! And wouldn't you know it, she actually liked my pieces! I was pretty humbled and thankful that she picked them, considering there are quite a lot of really great artists at Zynga that had their stuff up too. By the way, you can have a gander at what those pieces are here and here if you're curious!

I have a nice chunk of an interview in the second page of the web article on SF Gate right here.

I ran out to grab a couple copies of the newspaper from one of those newspaper-box-thingies right by the corner of my office building. I have to tell you that it was sadly an alien experience for me to pop 75 cents into the coin slot, open the little door and grab a copy. I love the print medium. But it's been so long that for me the act of buying a newspaper was so foreign! It felt so cool! Yeah... so sad. Anyway here's a look at the paper:

Good ol' Fisto made it onto the printed page!

Anyway, if you're coming onto my blog from the link on SF Gate and the San Francisco Chronicle: Welcome! My blog's all about my process of generating art, so a few entries probably won't look too pretty but if you can stand the scribbling, feel free to look around!

Thanks for dropping by and as always, the Neverending Battle continues! (and if someone can tell me what the real name of a newspaper-box-thingie is I'd appreciate it!)

Bomb Girl Facial studies

It's been a while since my last post, and frankly this post isn't all that great either. Still it is part of the process and all that. I've had a lot of family related stuff going on lately (all the good stuff, mind you!), so my personal projects have been taking the back burner. I haven't quite gotten the hang of maintaining a balance, but I'll try this week to work it back in. I'm thinking of doing layouts during my lunch break and see where that leads me. Hopefully my engines will get revved up again.

It's funny I didn't do this earlier, but I've just recently started sketching facial expressions for my main character. She's usually just very stoic in my book (or really angry!), so it was nice to do a little bit of exploration. I think I've only touched on a little bit of this exercise, so I'll try to make it a regular thing. Hopefully, I'll be able to work some more of these expressions in the later issues. That's it for tonight! Continue on neverending battle!

My Comic Book: Issue 3 page 4 Final

It's a little depressing how long it took me to get a simple page like this done. You would think with a baby that sleeps for an average of 2 hours in between feedings, I'd have a lot of time inbetween! Yeah, I know rookie mistake! Anyhow, trucking along with the comic, and I'm working kind of different with this issue.

I usually draw, ink, letter then color a book (in that order). So what I mean is I get all the drawing and inking done first for all 24 pages. Then do a lettering pass for all the pages, then a coloring pass. But these last few pages, I've been adding the dialog as I wrap up a page. And for this page, I decided to add final colors. It's kinda nice that I can put it together to final like this... another page that I can mentally file away!

Flashback sequence

They're still trying to figure out where Wondercon will be this year, but I'm still aiming to get the third book done by then. Hopefully I'll have 3 books to sell at the con if it's here in San Francisco.I have to admit though, after finishing this page? I'm not sure I can make it by that deadline. We'll see! That's it for today. Good day and God Bless! It's an impossibly nice day in San Francisco today!

My Comic Book: Issue 3 Page 2 and 3 final inks

Whew! All done! Onto the rest of the book finally!

My Comic Book: Issue 3 Page 2 and 3 Part 4

Well my baby is born!

Hope Juliette Lee Bautista was born on August 9, 2012 at 6:55 PM! And boy, have we been busy since! I've been experimenting on just how little sleep I can get away with during the day so I can still squeeze some hours to work on my comic book.

Honestly, I still haven't figured it out! But I've got an update on that splash page I've been working on (seems like it's been awhile)...

That's it for now. Sleep deprivation makes it hard to function properly during the day and even harder to muster up the energy to be creative! Anyhow, I'm going to try to get a few minutes of shut eye, before her next feeding!

The Baby's Room: Illustration 2

The due date is 9 days away, and I actually got these drawings for the baby room done! When I see these three illustrations together, it seems that the flower count gets raised with every piece!

The wife gave her seal of approval on this one, so this project is almost done. The next step is to go scout out some picture frames this weekend (among a multitude of other things to get ready before the baby arrives). 

The Baby's Room: Illustration 3

We have 11 days to go before the baby's due date! I just finished the third illustration for the baby's room. The wife had a better reaction to this one than the first. I'm hoping to finish the last one BEFORE the baby arrives (and who knows when I'll get the right frame for these).

I might revisit the contrast on their legs if I have time... yeah, right! I just realized it's quite a difference in style from the Batman scribbles I've been doing!... ANYWAY. Good night!

The Dark Knight Rises - Bane

I don't like the character of Bane at all. When he first appeared in the comic books, he just didn't seem like the type of guy that could break batman (I didn't like Doomsday either).

But Christopher Nolan and Tom Hardy definitely made him a good villain in the movie.

There were some points that I still had a hard time understanding what Bane said, but I did like the portrayal of him. I thought he was a good, different type of 'bad guy' for Batman to face. And I also liked the accent Tom Hardy gave him too.

The Dark Knight Rises - Catwoman

Just sketching around at work in between renderings... I want to go watch that movie again!