Tuesday 29 March 2011

OK, Justice Once




Really, I should be posting about my recent talk but I've been renaming and filing loads of classic Jose Luis Garcia Lopez DC style guide art from the late 70s/early 80s...for me, his art defined the look of what superheroes should be as i grew up, with his adorned on all kinds of merchandise and advertising. He can still draw most people off the table...

Then today i saw this new Kevin Maguire cover and thought "Oh-ho yes!!"...

And then I saw the Smallville Blue Beetle and Booster Gold and thought "Hmmmmm...."

Monday 21 March 2011

A Few Quickies




Just a quick post...I'm HOPING to get round to posting about my recent talk based on/inspired by my book at the weekend but in the mean time, thought I'd just post a few quick pics...

From the bottom:

A pub sketch of an animated-style Batman, not particularly based on any screen version. I've been looking at a few animation model sheets lately (particularly liking the Young Justice and Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths designs) and I think I'm going to attempt to design a decent stab at animated versions of the Avengers as DC seems to be able to piddle all over Marvel's cartoons from a very great height...

Next up, Cyclops in a Tron style, done for Chris Askham's new art blog. I kind of rushed the backgrounds so I've removed it from this piece, taken odd the glow but added the visor glow. It looks less Tron, but I prefer this...

Finally, a piece I'm working on for a charity project in aid of the Japanese Tsunami relief effort. I wanted to do something a bit hopeful so searched for pics of survivors and this pic cropped up alot and seemed powerful enough. I originally planned to add a Japanse rising sun but I don't know if that would detract from the image. I'm not my own biggest fan but I'm quite happy with this so far but feel I may cock it up by fiddling with it too much...

Saturday 5 March 2011

Who's that? Just me, chekin' in !




Gonna have to be a brief one: I've finally completed all my notes for my talk on comic films and TV shows next Saturday (http://www.thefallenangel.co.uk/spexpo/london.htm) but I'm gathering together visual reference, which is enjoyable but time consuming. I have most of the stuff I need though so my only real concern is my voice now: I'm on a course of antibiotics so hopefully I'll be able to say more than three sentences before hacking up.

While compiling this visual ref, saw this Hulk pic and you know when something amusing just tickles you? I had to put in the voice bubble.

Anyway, I completed a Cinebook graphic novel called Blake and Mortimer, a 50+ year old Tintin style book that took a bout 300 years to read (slight exageration but take my word for it, it's a tad wordy) but was a joy to look at. I fancied trying the clean line style and for no reason I can remember, I settled on doing all the Doctor Whos. Dunno why, but there we are. Drawing didn't take long but it's taken a few weeks to get round to the colors, which I did this morning.

Using the clean style was quite nice actually and I had no real probs with the faces but the main composition threw me a bit, especially as I hadn't really left myself room to actually draw much of anything.

Eventually, I dropped all the non-Doctor stuff as unnecessary distractions, enlarged and repositioned the Matt Smith doc, may have slightly done the same with Tennant and drew the planets on a separate sheet, then scanned 'em in and comped it all together. Went for a simple gradienty starfield thing as I still have no idea how to pull off the effect I have in my mind's eye without doing it the traditional freehand way.

Anyway, once the talk is done, I plan on tweaking the book and sending it off to be proof read (Rol, this may be news to you but I've not been able to get to the post office with your completed letter and copy of Odds and Ends II yet!) ((Oh, yeah, Odds and Ends II is out, a couple of glitches with gradient printing that were fine in my proof copy but nothing to get too narked about)) and printing off a handful of new copies: they're too costly to print up a load hoping they might sell somewhere, which is why the first edition is unpriced). After that, hope to get the old juices going with Chris Askham's new Facebook art blog (I'd like to do something this week but there's no way I'll get anything done this week) then at last embark on my own one shot before returning to Lonely Boy.

Hmm, I'm knackered already!!