Ringading

Not much to say except here's the finished version of the Arisia pic...coulda spent more time on the colours but lack of time 'n' all that...also cropped the right hand side to place the figure better on the image.

Right, I'm off to watch Grizzly Man...

Somewhere Oa The Rainbow

A week ago, I happened to catch a glimpse of the new cg-animated teen Iron Man series and the new kiddie-friendly Spectacular Spider-Man show. Of the two, Spidey was definitely the best as there was something just too weird about Iron Man to be palatable (it would have been better if it was an original character rather than a licensed show). Spidey had the fashionable faux anime style but at least the show stayed true to the spirit of the comics, mixing Silver Sable, Silvermane, Hammerhead and even Foswell aka the Big Man into the mix. The best Marvel animated series at the moment is still Wolverine and the X-Men however, which I find odd to watch having emotionally divorced myself from the X-line now...it's like watching home movies of an ex-lover...

Still, while musing how DC rules the animated airwaves over their Marvelous competitors, I began watching the new Green Lantern: First Flight animated DVD and wondered why their animated features are also much more enjoyable than Marvel's. It's not that Marvel's are terrible, it's just that they're usually misjudged reimaginings that make the characters unlike the originals and a result in forgettable adaptations. DC's animated features however stay true to the roots of the characters and results in a great set of films. New Frontier is definitely the best but Green Lantern is pretty fun, a great rollicking template for the upcoming live-action version.

I've been coincidentally reading some GL stuff recently (such as the promising Blackest Night and the first Sinestro Corps War collection) and as I wanted to try and do a new colour pic, I decided to draw Arisia from the GL Corp. Her costume stands out from the other GLs because of the large amount of white so she immediately draws your eye, as she did in the DVD.

I remember her from the 80s as being quite a naive, innocent character so I wanted to keep a doe-eyed look (not modelled on but kinda like Beth from Neighbours wot sung Torn) instead of a smiling sexpot. I liked the face on the first attempt but wasn't sure I was going to comfortably fit the second leg in and had concerns about twisting the torso musculature correctly. The second version quickly went off the boil: I tried the same face but it came out wrong, the hips went wrong and the pose was boring. Luckily third time's the charm and I managed to pencil and ink a version today. I'm going to reduce this down, pencil shade it and colour it on the PC so hopefully it'll all turn out well in the end...

Rapid Random Returns!!

Giant mecha roams Tokyo (genuine picture)!!

Bloody hell, Geoff Johns follows his Legion episode by introducing the JSA in the next season of Smallville! Even better, more Lois Land than last season!

Silver #1 on the way!

Submissions to Oni also in its way! (Despite poor copies as Staples are getting more crap with each visit).

Boo! Missed out on the freebie Black Lantern rings as I'd already bought Blackest Night #1 in Nostalgia...

Yay! The new Green Lantern animated DVD is great (fuller post to follow)...

And finally, the real reason James Earl Jones had to dub over Darth Vader...

http://tinyurl.com/snatch186

My Little Oni

Following up from the last post, here are the opening and losing pages of the Oni strip.

I was leaving the first page til last as I knew the main panel would be a pain. I pencilled and inked the other panels first then began thumbnailing the main panel. I didn't get very far as after thumbnailing only the bottom most office worker, I roughed him in on the actual page and then proceeded to rough out the rest of the panel direct on the page with no thumbnailing. Unusually, things just flowed together really easy so four hours of inking later, job done!

Oni Me!

Recently Oni Comics announced an artist talent search for the convention season Stateside but they are also accepted postal submissions. Supplying three five-page scripts, the only guide is that at least one strip must be included so even though the deadline's mid-August, I thought I can easily get five pages done so I'm considering submitting some work.

Each of the three strips present their own challenge. One is a Western and I have enough reference from my old Wolf Who Thunders research to be able to make a pass but it's still a daunting thing to do a historical strip. The second strip was an espionage strip that not only involved a double-page spread (which I've never done before so I'm unsure how the bleeds/gutters work on those at this point) but some late 1980s references: as my phoneline's been disconnected for a week or so, that put online referencing out of the way so I chose the last strip.

So far, this has been fairly straightforward (there's a main panel on the last page that I'm leaving till last as it's gonna be tricky) but I'm not sure about the results. I've been putting alot of time in on these (mainly as the blocking of blacks takes time due to lots of little areas of black in the backgrounds) and don't feel like the results match up to the hours put in.

Anyway, here's three pages, with me set to ink another tomorrow...

Donna Kebab

After a few weeks of not really drawing much (mainly due to work being such a leech on my time and energy but a few other inconvenient interruptions too), finally got back to a bit of drawing today and thought I'd go in and finish off that Wonder Girl pic I finished recently.

Bit of an odd history to this one: first roughed out when I was trying to practise drawing characters at a larger (ie A3ish) size than usual, I never really had an idea of who the character would be. (Original version previously posted here: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc7A07V1_wrQ602Egc9ByIsGXcuCVP-YtpH8xvKDBapCOKG1kar_VlInjtYlJckDIWYstH7nqUs_O3k9QllLMmdjl8jEKDrs1r9MbDITfacNyRJVtjmPP17WEI7GZxTcT-FaD02b_B_nuo/s1600-h/net+sketch.jpg) For a while I figured I might use Power Girl but the proportions seemed off to me so I abandoned it. Still, there were elements I liked so I photocopied the pencils at A4 in order to better determine the errors and hey, presto, things became clear and I drew in the correct proportions.

During this recent fallow period, I dusted off the original, tweaked it and decided to turn it into the Donna Troy Wonder Girl: I always loved Perez's depiction of her and can never get her quite "on model" with his version but I still kinda like this one. Using pens to draw the lasso was a mistake though, so I pencilled a new lasso and used Photoshop to tinker with it and drop it to replace the original and ta-da, Wonder Girl is finished!

Rapid Randoms!

Not posted much lately as the things I was considering posting were not particularly interesting even to me. Subjects rejected were:

Terminator 4: Too uninteresting to gather up the requited concentration...

Blood: The Last Vampire: Bloody awful...

Political Correctness: Work-related shenanigans that I decided not to post as it might get me the sack...

Blue Beetle & Booster Gold: The first figures I've bought in yonks are the rather cool DCUniverse Blue Beetle and Booster Gold figures...

Shite Saturday: How I nearly got into a fight as I wouldn't back down to twat with a chip on his shoulder just after getting a call from my bank telling me they've cancelled my card due to fraudulent activity (thankfully they stopped the transactions pretty sharpish and stopped them)...

Carnivale: May still post about this show after I've watched the second season...

Artwork: Not done much but a teaser above plus an old semi-pencilled figure that I returned to and turned into Wonder Girl. Not too bad in the end but the lasso's wonky (used Pilot pens rather than a softer smoother pen that would have been as amooth as the pencils. I maycolour this and photoshop a better lasso in...

Michael Jackson: Actually I couldn't care less, so never even thought about posting about him..