Monday 2 February 2009

Ark The Herald Angel Sings




Well, I said I'd post some stuff up here, so here's the next few pages of the EC-flavoured, Wally Wood homage strip I've just finished. I didn't realise until the second page that my pens were on their way out and I couldn't get the details and control/accuracy I wanted because I didn't want to crack open a new round of pens. Not because I'm tight, as I'm sitting on a slight stock of them, but I didn't want to start using new pens for a short strip that was practically halfway through, but wanted to use them on the next strip. The nibs started flattening out to the point where there was no way I'd be able to ink some of the stuff on page 5 with them, so I cracked open new pens just for two or three panels over the 6 pages. Ultimately, I'm fairly happy with the storytelling but not the inking, which is mostly serviceable but there are some odd bits that are weird as I had to change things to cover some errors or things that didn't work.
When the whole six pages are lettered, I 'll post them up somewhere.

I'll probably get around to doing stuff this weekend again using a clean line style. I picked up Teen Titans: Year One and a Brian Stelfreeze issue this weekend to study some cleanline art as that's the style I'll be using for my next strip. Then Tone showed me some Jaime Hernandez Love & Rockets stuff that just blew me away with it's clarity. I'd only had a passing awareness of the strip and was aware Adam Hughes cited Hernandez as an early influence, which I can definitely see. I've ordered the first Jaime Love & Rockets collection off Amazon now and if I enjoy it (it looks great, but will I be able to get into the stories?), I'll buy the next two--the third one is more cartoony but has a more confident line. It's not just the clearline but also the postures and characterisation that he uses that makes Hernandez's work so good---though I can't bear Gilbert Hernandez's art!

After Rol's script, on to samples and maybe my own proper project...

4 comments:

dave said...

The thing with Jamie's L&R strips are that they go from weird mixes of sci-fi to superhero fantasy to sex comedy to punk soap to psychological horror without warning, sometimes in the same strip. His art is also very different in the early stories - you can see it's him, but it's very crude. His best stuff both story and art wise are in the The Death of Speedy, WigWam Bam, Locas in Love and Dicks and DeeDees collections

Rol said...

That's excellent work. I can see the influences, yet it's pure Nige goodness too.

Unknown said...

yeah, I warned Nige that Locas is much easier to look at than to read.

Cool strip, I look forward to covering it with text.

Nige Lowrey said...

Terry Wiley's stuff reminds me of Hernandez' stuff. The third volume was indeed more polished than the first collection (they clock in at over 200 pages each so they're quite hefty)but also slightly more cartoony, which I didn't like. As a result, rather than buy all three volumes in one go while they're cheap, I bought just the first to see if I like the stories (I'd only read one or two strips in Deadline before this weekend and can't really remember much about them).

Tonight or tomorrow will probably see me scripting those SF pages, or I could continue watching Lost season 4...