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:

Nihon Ghost

Another piece done for the friend's obon festival booth. Despite messing around with textured brushes, thought the color came out a bit Photoshop-y, what with the one gradient used for the background. Take note of the Unsolved Mysteries lighting hitting both walls.

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.)

~ 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.