Jumping ahead....

...always do it. Cant just go the proper route and do all me character design then location reference. No. I get an idea for a page, or rather Danny gets an idea for a page and I have to do it. What I'm going on about is Hunter, a very re-occurring name on this blog as of lately. Danny had this idea earlier for the opener, so I had to rough it out-Digitally. I think for all thats in it is, its luring you in, opening the door to the story so to say, shining a little light on whats possibly up ahead-thats what got me anyways.

Devil & Walter

Tattoo design...

Just finished this off, have to do an inked outline version then I'm done. I'm currently working on a 1 page story for 'Sugar Glider' anathology, I'll check with the writer- Daniel Clifford- and see if its ok to put up one or two of the panels.

Also head on over to Neilcolquhoun.com to check out his lastest Christmas story and if you haven't already check out Frank-Boiling Point volume 1. Just finished it the other day, thoroughly enjoyable and will leave you craving volume 2.  Of course, with it being Sunday there will be a new Christmas Horror on the Talesofthe.com website at some stage today.

Hunter-again.....

You ever start a drawing that you didn't know was going anywhere? Well you should, cause its just fun, and you get random stuff like this...........

Hunter- Character reference

A mix of pencils and inks here, gone a new direction with this character to try and make him look a bit more militant. I still have to properly lock down this guys face from different angles but I know that will eventually come along if I just keep drawing him. 

Boiling point...

So I've been listening away to Boiling Point, good craic so it is, I recommend it. I was re-listening to the second part to try a catch a description of Franks appearance, and sketching as I did, this is super quick-and slightly messy- shot from the first time we meet Frank and Natasha....

  ....I realised after I drew her but Natasha should be wearing a hat. Done with a brush pen and some Promakers for the greys.

Check this out......

Neil Colquhoun, is a Scottish storyteller, creator of 'Frank', he is a dreamer, night owl, tea-drinker and writer of hybrid horror/ thriller/ sci-fi tales . Frank is a short free novella now in podcast/ audio-book format. 

Frank, a mysterious bounty hunter gets more than he bargained for in his latest assignment. Becoming mixed up in the beginnings of a gang war, he has to contend with a team of hit-men, who are not like your
usual guns-for-hire!
It’s a story about a a bounty hunter, a dead-but-alive hitman partnered with an alive-but-should-be-dead criminal, an escort girl, a man who has a taste for something bad… and the Devil!

Check out the promo by clicking here

For all 7 parts go to his site at http://neilcolquhoun.com/ and don't forget to comment and let him know what you think.

New T.O.T story- process

Just last night I completed my new 10 page story which I've gotten word will be posted this Sunday on the Talesofthe website. So I figured why not put up the process, as it is a completely new one incorporating both digital and traditional mediums.

These days I find I much easier to rough things up in manga studio- it must be the eco-warrior inside me that doesn't like to waste pages. That and the quick and easy edit-ability of it.

Once I have the roughs I convert them to blue then "ink" them on another layer, fleshing it out as I go along and using photo reference where needed, to make sure anatomy and proportions are correct.

When I started this projected, Holly bought me me first Bristol board, and after using it I loved how clean the pencils came out on it. I knew from speaking with the Titan talent scout at 2D that I would have a better chance of getting work from a pencilled portfolio than an inked one, so this was a good opportunity to get a bit of practise doing some tight pencils. I light boxed the outline from the above rough, again adding more detail and tidying as I went, then I shaded her and scanned her in. Unfortunately there was a snag in the road....

....they scanned terribly!! I was so dissappointed when I seen them come out like this. Luckily this is the digital age! Using some level adjustments and going round on a layer set behind the pencils I blocked in some greys to blend the pencils, I starting to feel a bit happier with it but something was still mucky about it....

...into illustrator with it, for dialogue and a great wee filter I just found- trace/color 6. It really tidied it up this filter and smoothed it out. Below is the finished article.

Make sure to check by T.O.T on Sunday for the complete story.

hmmmm....

.... I don't know what style this would fall under, I didnt even know what I set out to draw but 10 minutes later this was looking at me. I like it.

A few Bats later...

A bit of tattoo designing......

So I done a tattoo for Tony, must be a good few months back now. It was on his forearm and now he's getting one done on the inside of his forearm, so he told me roughly want he wanted and I went a bit mad on it. The brief was a boy playing drums with a psychedelic back ground and sound waves, soooo firstly I digitally roughed up a drummer.........

....then I tidied it up a bit.......

....once I had this I moved on the background. I firstly made a rough outline of my arm to give me an approx finished size. Then I quickly traced the outline of the drummer and went mad on the swirly ideas. I done this by hand as it allowed more freedom than digital....

....I then scanned this in and dropped in the drummer and removed the guitar player on the wing-thing to give an idea of the finished look. This is what I  would call an elaborate sketch as I would really need to tidy it up and define it more, but am pleased with its strangeness, but its toes decision not mine so I'll post any edits made along the process.

 

Hunter redesigns....

Previously mentioned, there would be some development work and here she blows, well begins rather. This is the first piece I've done for this new personal project, Danny was back there for awhile and we got the brain jam we needed for us to see our next move. We've done two 4 pagers, and a 12 pager so it's time to stretch out to 23-32. I'm quite looking forward to the challenge! We are actually returning to use a character created for the CADI course, to give it the finish that it deserves. Its being completely revamped, quite simply-without sounding too big headed- because we're better story tellers now than 2 years ago. Below is some new designs for the main character- Matthew Thompson, "Hunter". The face will not be getting used, I was just warming up to the bristol board......

And below a work in progress Daredevil, I've never drawn him before... !

Crimbo horror roughs...

I've started working on my next story for Tales of the and it will be a Christmas horror theme all through December. Found it quite hard at the beginning to come up with a crimbo horror, I kept trying to include Santa or elves or anything else that's directly Christmassy but then I decided that I should just set it at Christmas and let the visuals make it feel like Christmas. So heres the roughs for my first page, im doing the roughs digitally but am hoping to pencil it up as I just got some swanky bristol board thats calling out to be used...

Page 4 finished...

Just got this page wrapped up, I buzzed off doing the bottom left panel so thought I'd throw it up. Im about to start into a new story for the Tales of the site so expect some early crimbo pics- sorry to the scrooges of the world......

Page 4 under construction.....

Really enjoying doing these pages, I think I'm starting to convert to ways of ze digi-tall?....

Page 3 finished.....

Zener...a story begins...

Over the last week I found myself with a bit of free time between projects, and well I couldn't have that! So I used this time to improve the digital drawing skills, and the best way to do that was to dive into a story. This I do a lot, just start random stories, no script or anything just decide from panel to panel- its about improving the visual story telling and I find this the best practise.
Zener was the character that it would involve, I have always buzzed off Zener- to be honest I think its because I had alot of input on his creation compared to some of our others.
The first page here is over worked with the effects, but I seen that I was doing too much and stripped it back on the second and third. The thirds not fully finished, but it will be as I really enjoyed doing it.....

Cancertowns' Crosshairs......

Not feeling to great today so I took a day off work to lay in bed and come round. Finished reading Cancertown, great story, and like all great stories it left me wanting more. So I decided to do a digital sketch of one of the characters- Crosshairs. Liked doing this as he has a real creepy feel to him and it gave me the chance to use some of the texture brushes in manga studio.

ahhhhh...

.. Its great to get stuff finished, especially when its been hanging around for soo long. I'm on about my contribution towards the 'If stones could speak' anthology. With that complete, its given a chance to reflect on what I want to do now. The story for 'I.S.C.S' was only 12 pages long, its still a rite bit of work when your doing the most of it on your own but it shouldn't have taken as long to do as it did. Recently having completed the 'How'd you get here?' story for T.O.T, it was 9 pages done in a much more simplfied style only took me 6 weeks and I done all the processes on that meself.
        So basically I want to be quicker, but I also want to do more!! My next target is a 23 pager at least, and I hoping to find a middle ground so I can do it with speed and good quality of art. Having spoken to Danny about it earlier, there already a story brewing.....so over the next few weeks you'll probably be seeing alot of development stuff.

Also I'll be working on a T.O.T 'Christmas horror', but more on that closer to the time.

One last thing, the 2dcollective sites back up and running, and we've decided to tackle themes- the weeks being "gothic", stop over by clicking here to check it out.

Tales of the.........

Second story just went up online, you can you check it out by clicking here

Processed fun....

If I ever make an album, which is highly unlikely considering me guitar has become a strange shaped ornament in a cupboard somewhere, that will be the title. Naw actually scrap that- that would be a shit album, it would be like the chemical brother remix of cbbc tunes. Rite enough of my hungover ramblings.

I wanted to post this yesterday but blogger was acting the complete fry and wouldn't load any of the pics. On friday I got my story finished off for Tales of the, which will be up online at some stage today, so make sure you check it out. Its called "How'd you get here".  Saying I got that finished I gave myself a wee break from project related stuff and done something for fun. I've said previously I wanted to work on more poses so I rough up this piece....

I used a bit of reference for the pose, I knew even from this that there was anatomy problems but I decided to go ahead with it anyway. I wasn't sure of who I was drawing, then remembering the first strip that I done for the CADI course, I reinvented 'Hunter', a werewolf hunting half werewolf trained in the arts of black magic. Using the light box I penciled up a slightly cleaner version then inked over the top of it, making minute adjustments........

This is it scanned in as a greyscale pic. I done this to try out a new way of cleaning the pic up. For anyone interested- I left the penciled lines in, no rubbing out, to see how well it work. What you do is after its scanned  as a grey file, go to edit> adjustments>  levels. A window will appear with three small triangles along the bottom of a sort of graph thing- you move the black triangle over to the left until it becomes really black then move the grey one over on top of the black, this should remove the majority of grey from the piece, and ends up looking like this.........

... definately alot tidier looking. Because there wasn't alot of planning in this piece, I dint turn out to well, not enough definition and slightly over worked so I added some basic colour to help it out abit...............

...well thats all for now folks. The deadline for the "If stones could speak" book is this thursday, so I probably won't be posting anything this coming week.

a few random bits

This was originally meant to be Cohen, thats Detective Cohen, another of me and Danny's characters that I realised  hadn't been on the blog-sicle before.....but, I ended up with someone else, this ain't Cohen! its just some boy that was floating round me head that stole Cohens jacket and hair! The bastard! I'll call him- Pernell, the irish Cohen, why not! Done this with just brush and ink too see if it would give me a cleaner line when scanned- it did a bit.

This you'll have seen before, its the first page from my next story for tales of the, but it comes to you now in new greywash courtesy of photo-ma-shop........

Make sure to check out the tales of the website next week for the full 9 page tales, in fact get over there now a check out the lastest story from Andrew Croskery, who provides writing and pencils and inked my Stephen Downey.

The above here, is another product of Manga Studio. First of all it was really handy doing the face cause of the awesome tool which is -the symmetry tool. You only have to draw half of it!! The background is one of the preset backgrounds, which works for sketchy stuff but don't thing I would feel happy using them in print pieces. 

You've probably noticed that alot of my sketches are head and shoulders, so I've decided to start doing more full body, action pose stuff, and the best way I've figured is to draw up some already existing characters. So if you've any charcters you'd like to see me to draw just give us a shout in the comments. 

super sketchy batman

Done this the other day while I was watching some of the magic box with the pictures on it, had to put something up here it had been too long, and there was no bats up here so........its really rough, had to put a filter over it to make it half decent, think me scanners starting to act up, everything is looking grainy.

Who's there...

Another piece for the Nightmare Manor. Really like the creepiness the grey wash added to this piece.

squirmy wormy thingy.....

Return of the tree...

...so I've went back on my whole doing this digitally idea, I done six pages of rough work in Manga studio, but I came across tooo many annoying bits that counter acted the benefits of digital work- I will get there, just did some more practice. So what I done was I printed out my rough pages and used the light box to do tidier pencils, I wanted to use just the pencils but the scanner wasn't picking them up to well so out came the Indian ink and voila......

Nightmare Manor colour.....

Yo, yo yo. Just finished off colouring this. Had to do a bit of editing on this which I only noticed in the colouring stage. For instance the bleeding eyes I had just floating about in sky had to go, just looked wrong, and Larry told me that they were in the way of where the banner would go. Also, I should have put in a foreground, regret it now, but I tried to jazz it up with some grass and bushes brushes-that flows well- in photoshop. So let me know what ye's think..............

A bit of everything.....

All from the Nightmare Manor, these first couple are quite rough round the edges, but there just to give the woman making the costumes an idea what they want,.....

These next couple are for the advertising part, I'm not to sure about the colour behind the thing in the tube, so if anyone has any suggestion for me leave them in comments.

"Come in if you dare..."