Wednesday 13 August 2008

Zen and the Art of Submissions


Well, I've got enough pages to be able to send off a few samples to a few places. Combining the three pencilled Spidey pages Rol wrote, the Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane pages (after a quick 1-minute tweak last night to one bit of skewed perspective pointed out to me by my mate Martin) and some of the Jock pages (most pages I can live with for #2 but most have some error or other on them), I've decided to get these out to a few unusual targets.


I'm sending one lot to Bob McLeod at Rough Stuff magazine, which features a column called Rough Critique that finds him critiquing samples. I'm still gearing up for some superhero stuff but I'm happy enough with the above pencils to brave the flack I'll no doubt receive. I've sent the same samples to Panini UK as they seem to run the occasional original piece and there's no harm trying, right? The last publisher I'm submitting to now is Zenescope, publisher of a few licensed titles and Grimm Fairy Tales, an "Image-sexy" modern retelling of various fairy tales.


You shouldn't really submit other publisher's characters but it's all I have for the minute so I've started to do a Grimm Fairy Tale cover to reflect their material. Choosing Red Riding Hood, I pencilled the main figure and then placed the clothes over the figure frame. However, when inked, I thought the figure looked funny and misproportioned so I scanned it in to see how it looks at a reduced size and I THINK it's OK...but I don't want to waste my time any further on this if it's a lost cause at this early stage.


What say you?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Nowt wrong with it dude, nice bit of kink. The torso may be a fraction long, but that's how you tend to draw em on women. Not sure it's a good idea to submit covers as samples, unless you're gonna send a full colour job.

And as we keep trying to tell you, there is nothing wrong with those Jock pages.

Nige Lowrey said...

I know I shouldn't be submitting covers but I figured I need something with one of their characters! I know you should only ever submit submissions specific to each publisher but I'm never gonna look at Zenescope's output to know what their work is like as their website is mainly cover galleries.

I could wait and make up some specific samples--which would probably be easier to do than the superhero sequences despite not being overly familiar with the subject matter -- but I want to strike while the iron is hot (or it'll take forever with everything else on the go at the minute)and ultimately the art will stand or fall on its own merits.