Sketches before the year ends

...Because tumblr's flipping out for some reason over showing images proper. From the past few months going back to Halloween:

Viking Onderzoek Redux, plus sketch studies

Alright, let's try this one more time: 

Whether weeks, months, or years have passed, this constant need to go back and redux older work, it's making me realize how important focus is, that it's not enough to just plug away at something and hope that some sort of osmotic improvement will be had via the lone act of pencil to paper (or stylus to Cintiq, for all you hardcore industry folks out there); but rather making a concerted effort to note mistakes and weaknesses, to learn and practice correct understructure, understanding in real time the principles of dynamics, clarity and balance... Just generally being aware of not only what you're doing, but what you're going for.

Most importantly, to have a set of technical drawing principles to abide by, a checklist of "Alright, hit that first; now onto this." I know I do, it's just a matter of formalizing it and "doing it to such a degree... that you're eventually not even aware of it." (The Book of Five Animation Discs.)

(The drawing of the sculpture's been floating around since November. Added the girl over the weekend.)

Am thinking one of the overarching first principles is: Sit on your work. Come back and look at it with fresh eyes.

And not to demotivate the Inktober crowd, but: Never ink or commit to your first pass. At least, not until you've practiced the former. The old sketchbooks are a testimony to this.

Anyhow, I think stepping away from the main piece and doing studies helped, whether in the margins or on a completely separate file. Given that Photoshop allows dragging and dropping between files, why stick yourself to one cramped canvas to figure something out:

(Still a bit too literal.)

Nordic vs Hellenic

Slightly reworked color panel from the Viking Fraulein Onderzoek series some months back. More over at the Tumblr:

(Part 1)
(Part 2)
(Full color panel)

Nordic vs Hellenic

Part of a series of fight scene vignettes posted over at the Tumblr:
~ Part 1
~ Part 2

Memory Lane, plus random viking sketch

Some older commission design pages from around '08. The concept was supposed to center around a gift certificate or gift-card service with the idea of "Thank you" built into it. I'm not even sure if it's the correct kanji or Japanese term, but that's what I was given. I also think coffee was supposed to be part of the marketing factor, as in "Redeem at Starbucks" or whatever. These are some of the more interesting pages from the bunch.

Once past the initial stages of coming up with ad scenarios, I wanted to hone in on having a flagship character or set of characters that interacted with customers. In this case, a post-WWII delivery man and his pet shiba in tow. This was before I'd heard of Hachiko.

As always, once older material's dug up, the temptation's to correct now-obvious mistakes with the new drawing toys. Ended up redrawing ~40% of each page on the Cintiq. Which when considering the over/under for how crappy some older material can be, isn't all that bad. Mostly retooling of the faces - only took several years to unlearn self-taught bad habits - and some anatomy/shape refining.

Don't remember if this was earlier or later than the above two. In any case, the request was to go beyond the simple boy-and-dog duo. I think I was aiming more for a 50's flagship character that also served as a logo.

And, a random rough page from a recent series of Hellas-meets-Viking vignettes.

Beta Euthynus Chimera Duo

Two characters that have gotten the most drawing mileage from me this past year. Skipped the greytone stage and just hit the colors as I would 2-tone, adjusting opacity on the layer as needed. Along with a host of other drawings, this one's gotten a few reworkings; but I need to make a point of just saying "~Fin~"and throwing it out there after a reasonable time instead of after months or years. Personal habits needs to overlap with professional.

(And, the Viking pic from last week. Reworked older bamboo mat painting from several years ago, revisions done in Photoshop. Not entirely happy with it, but when am I ever going to be, amirite.)

Fraulein sketches, once again

Listening to some ridiculous Viking black metal while drawing these.

(Cropped the original, since I reworked the girl on the left. See post further up.)

Not having a strong underdrawing for the faces really killed me on this one, especially for the foreground character (NB: Has since been deleted). Took more time than was needed. So as punishment, I redrew her from scratch a few times to remind myself that Photoshop has layers and opacity settings for a reason. These are all purely digital on Cintiq, by the way:

 (You can spy the undersketch if you look closely enough. Having this solid first really pays; though I find myself drawing as much on this layer as I do just trying to lay down perspective and anatomy guidelines. This works, but it's partly what killed me on the first pass of the drawing, getting too caught up in details when I should've been more concerned with overall proportions and proper facial geometry.)

Don't be surprised if part of this post suddenly disappears at some point.

Comic Panel rough passes II

This panel, and the scanned image below, would have been just previous to the two-panel color image I uploaded last time - both in terms of narrative and when I actually drew them. The above is purely digital on Cintiq, while the one below is Colerase on a Post-it note, with a little bit of PS work on the highlights. I kind of like how it turned out, and it was minimal effort in comparison with the other digital pieces this post. I may take this route more often in the future:

Some other work from this week. Both purely digital, both being reduxes on previous comics or illustrations from a few years ago. Besides benchmarking where I'm at in terms of overall progress in drawing (composition, faces, whatever), is also a good way for me to feel out how I want to work on larger projects, be it one-off illos or illustrated stories:

~ Bamboo Art... ~

~ Mille Migliocto ~

Baby's got a new set of Cthulhu wheels. (Chthulhu; Chthulu... however you spell it's name.)

Did this one as a bday present for Mr. Tokunaga. Color treatment partly inspired by Robert Williams (part of the Ratfink/Big Daddy Roth crowd).

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~ Viking Fraulein ~

Did this one quite awhile back actually. Has been hanging on the wall waiting to be scanned.

She's enjoying the ocean air, musing over what hair color her future children will have (blond, dirty blond, bleach blond).... and, awaiting patiently to pillage and burn English shorelines.

Alot of inspiration from the Oseberg Ship: The creature on the upper right was loosely based on the prow figurehead , the background patterns were inspired by carvings on the bow.

................

Both of these bamboo mats needed surprisingly little color correction after scanning. I'm either getting better at analog coloring - or my computer updated it's monitor settings without me knowing.

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(BTW, here's a cool looking picture of ancient Russians. Is either a Viking funeral or a lamentation over Minnesota losing yet another Super Bowl. The latter seems more likely.)