Random Character Design Sketch Page

 

Not much to say here, just a random sketchpage I did a few months back while listening to comic book industry talk on Youtube. It's probably what got me to drawing the characters doing typical super hero crap in the background. I know it's what definitely got me to add the Google Streetview images: The person talking mentioned his old comic book hunting grounds as a kid, in... I think it was somewhere in Ohio, some little town. I like the storm cloud atmosphere in the pics near whatever freeway, so I thought: Why not have some superhero / UFO shenanigans going on there?

 

I have no idea what I was thinking with the Bond / Get Carter-style character with the gun arm though. The foreshortening is probably correct, but it doesn't totally "feel" correct. Meaning that it isn't jammed in your face Terry-Gilliam-style enough.

Forget Me Not - Art Against Alzheimer's prints

For archive purposes, some pieces from this year's 4th annual Forget Me Not - Art Against Alzheimer's, as well as a few from 2015.

Beta Euthynus Proto Comic Roughs, cont'd

Some lighting and tone studies for what would either be rough comic panels or extremely clean storyboards. Give it another 5 years and these will be considered 1st pass thumbnails.

UFO Aerodrome

...Complete with Belgian triangle floating in the background.

Besides trying to get better at laying down tone, have also been playing around with contrasts in lighting and atmosphere. Consider Catch Me If You Can as the template - or as I call it, cake frosting cinematography:

Alien Abduction take II

...The cardinal rule of drawing: Your 1st pass is almost always never your last.

(Our chimera supermodel looks a bit more worried here, which is good I guess, since more emotion in an illustration is theoretically a plus, both from a design and a story angle. Our resident proletarian android also has a bit more bounce or action to his pose, if not less rendering. Again, which of the two is more important at this stage of drawing?... Exactly.)

The mysterious Erlenmeyer Flask continues to change hands. Stay tuned.

Alien Abduction

...in reverse, as our favorite chimera lady's apparently stealing the infamous Erlenmeyer Flask from a genetics compound.

(...So food and beer with the coworkers, and now an illustration. Well... no, I've been tooling with it for the past few days. But as far as you know, I whipped this drawing out in 20 minutes after a pint. Have been hitting paintings with this greytone approach more often, since it pretty reliably establishes the values before doing a color pass. Saves alot of time.)

In any case, an ode to The X Files.

Comic Panel rough passes

Experimenting with both color and word bubbles. Ignore the text. Hopefully putting some of what Mr. Arenas spoke about at last week's CDA workshop to the test.

Have been trying to lay down a greytone pass first before doing color on an overlying multiply layer. Feels a bit too airbrushed. Need to find a simpler method that doesn't require a gang of colors, layers, and time to convey light and shadow.

Some sketches and rough 1st/2nd passes before hitting the above. His arm in the right sketch needs to be bent more at the wrist if he's placing some of his weight on it:

 (I like the top left drawing, and the middle bottom expression.)

(This one felt a bit more finalized. Would treat this as the panels before the above colored strip.)

~ UFOs and Storyboards ~

Full storyboard PFD can be found here. The thumbnailing and tying-down process to how I usually do boards, or flesh out scenes and short sequences. Panels read from left to right, with additional poses plugging inbetween at various points.

An additional page featuring the opening shot; another can be found here. The rest of the boards and story are in the PDF.

There are more development pages than here, but these are the most presentable. Anyone who takes a look at the full version can also see where I added some Photoshop finesse (relatively speaking) in terms of grey tones, additional poses, or camera work.

Probably not the most efficient time-wise to work in traditional means (Colerase and Moleskine), but I like the end result better, in linework, composition, and generally being able to see outside the frame, or further forward or behind several scenes. There's something to be said about being able to compare shot-for-shot at a single glance on an actual physical page sitting in front of you. There's also something to be said about not being rushed with a stylus on a canvas the equivalent of waxed ice.

Plenty of Close Encounters, ET, Super 8, and general UFO folklore fueling the above.

~ More Storybook and Random Sketches...~

Might as well start off with something that I won't cringe at in a few weeks' time:

And now, the cringe-worthy stuff. An attempt at telling a story. Also, words in the margins, when legible:

No surprise that UFO documentaries were on the playlist while I was drawing these. Still feeling I've got a bit of hit-and-miss with the drawing end of things, esp. the faces. These are cool-out pages from after work, and afterwork usually has an amount of mindless Youtube playing in the background while busting out in the sketchbook; so that may have something to do with it, the distraction and all. I think the trick is to not have anything visual moving in front of you on a monitor, just the audio. Plenty of the Unsolved Mysteries soundtrack and narration that fueled the above, for better or for worse.

Have noticed that I tend to have at least two panels that are fairly close in pose or composition whenever doing these things. Probably the need to do something other than a first pass that's subconsciously nagging at me; "Redraw that again, y'big dummeh!" My subconscious apparently being Redd Foxx. Which would explain the recurring theme of naked ladies.

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

The above from the last sketch book. Didn't upload it for some reason even though I scanned it months ago. Perspective's doing two different things between the Archetype Woman and the background; which is partially on purpose. Probably would need to push her pose a bit more to sell it as an upshot if I were going for something more literal, like a comic panel. As is, I'll settle for it being a lame Klimt/Mucha thing.

 Channeling the spirit of Marina.

Looking at the last sketch page of the Slumberhexen from the last post, I've got some ways to go before I can hit faces consistently. This one feels a bit better.