What lurks behind the cupboard door....

Theres this cupboard, right beside my desk. The mess of it was unreal, stray pages, forgotten sketch pads, abandoned stationary and much much more, I was always scared of opening it incase it came toppling out on to me. But recently its been really annoying me, so today when I got in from work I ripped everything out and organised it. Amongst it was a little A5 sketch pad from last year sometime that i had all but forgotten about. There was 8 pages in it, 8 pages I challenged meself to, one page in one hour. I remember doing this to see if I could tell a story without any direct dialogue, and to see if I could draw fast... so here they are ( rough round the edges but with a lively energy I like) .....

Page 3 finished!!!

Colourin page 3....

Been flat out this last week colouring, not something im very fond of. It always takes me awhile to get into it but then I stops being a chore and becomes enjoyable. I think part of the problem comes from tackling it all yourself, you get sick looking at it, but with page I found myself quite excited earlier. I was worried a week or two ago that my decision to not put in any blacks when inking was weakening the images, but now with "some" added blacks and a touch of dramatic lighting I can see it strengthening and am alot happier with it. So here what ive got done one page 3 over the last 2 nights....

On other news, Ive done a shot blog interview for Daniel Clifford along with several of the other artists contributing to the Newcastle based anthology "Sugar Glider" you can check out here.

Colour process...

Ive put up alot of processes on here, but all dealing with the line art more than anything else, and I was just sitting messing on photoshop, turning on and off the layers- I enjoy seeing it come to life and thought id share. Wile good of me I know....

...so you already seen the line art for this page, the first thing I do is flat colour everything, the colours at this stage aren't necessarily the finished colour but more for selection purposes ...

...cause this is a night seen I add a layer over the top filled with blue then lower the opacity to what I want...

...then comes some blacks to add more depth....

...add a midtone to the edges of the blacks, usually a 70% grey...

..then light it up...

Alien sketch...

Quick break time sketch from the colouring....well back to it then....

Preview....

Quick wind down profile sketch- Captain Nemo....

Getting there now....

I know for a fact that Im going to fly throw the next few pages. Doing this one was finding the way I wanted to do it as of course the colours I was going to use, so now that I have the most of that information I should be able to fly threw the rest. Plus the next few are dialogue heavy and just involve the 3 characters talking..... only one slight horde.

Jez,.... are you's not bored yet....

....yip, "more fracking zombies" I hear ye say. What? stop judging!! So I'm a slow worker, well its in half assed half finished technicolour so at least be happy with that. But, I will do a piece for the blog specific at the weekend. Promise.

I am a very unsure colourist, never had while good colour theory and I know its hard to say when this is work in progress but if anyone has any colouring advice or tips for me, please let me kow in the comments. Cheers.

The characters got ripped out from the top of the walls earlier, was not happy with the way I left them so figured, if I take them out I'll have to redo it better. The first pic there, page 3, have I put in too much in the second panels, opinions would be most welcome.....

Bits and bobs...

Sunday, Sunday....
I done a clean wipe of the laptop last and havent put back on all my files but when I do Ive got pages 3-4 fully finished of Zombies Hi, and hopefully some interesting news about it in the next few weeks. So today, computerless whilst Holly worked her computer magic I decided to get two tattoo designs out the way. The first is a redesign, the tattooist said there was too much detail and I had to strip it back, putting in more shading instead of lines. The scan of this looks pretty bert in comparison to the real thing, my scanner has been gradually degrading as of lately. Everything comes of so ragged and pixelly!  And the second was a real quick one, just to see if it was what the 'tattooee' wanted, ill get round to tidying it up if its ok.

And this next one is, well it says....

Also got my piece pencilled for the Eclectic Micks blogs birthday bash, so wish I could post it, had a lot of fun doing it but you'll just have to check their blog on the 24th February. Enuf said.

A charcater that will coma along later in the story.......

Just a quick screenshot....

Arrg...ahhh,...nahhh...fuck it!

ITs the bottom left panel, its just annoying me, think im going to rip it out at a later stage, right now I want to power on to end then edit after. This is just the characters, sweet thing about setting a book in your town is you can go get the perfect pic reference for it. Unfortunately I've been too busy to get near the town. Im currently working my through the inking of page 4, and everything else is top secret so your getting more zombies, and thats it. Ok.

A year later..........

So Zombies. 

Thats what I might rename this blog; Gios-Zombie-Art. Everyone loves them, and most comic artists will have found themselves drawing them at some time. Then you and your writer mate are a bit blocked one night and go in to one about - ' it would be cracker if Derry was under seige from zombies' ' toooo rite, with the walls and all...' and so on. The derry zombie seige story was born. But that was a year ago, actually slightly longer than a year. And not long after that I got a graphics tablet and Manga Studio for Christmas, figuring the best way for me to practise was to dive straight into doing a story. Of course Zombie seige was in me head, so below you'll find some of my first digital work and the origin pages of  the new improved 'Zombies Hi'. Those who check the 2Dcollective blog will recognise these pages from last year...

                

The reason I went on this little visually induced time travelling experience was, Im working on a shot on Page 4 and its looking down From the walls at a crowd of zombies, remembered this and figured I could tidy it up and use it. Pay homeage, not laziness. Comparing them to what I'm doing now, I can see a good improvement which is always good.

Just trying something...

This is me started pencilling page 4 of Zombies Hi, no surprise there!

Zombie HI - Page 1 Greywashed

"Suicide 2; the saw"- Finished.

Suicide saw, inked

Feeling more comfortable digitally inking these days,  although the first piece I contributed was by hand, Ive done this by foot. Naw,  not really, graphics pen just. Its kinda scratchy but i think it helps with the tone, im going to throw some greys or something in the back to finish it up.

"Suicide 2; the saw"

Just a rough for now.....

Mess around sundays...

Didnt get awhile pile done tonight, having a sorta lazy one. But you can see it cleaning up alot in what I did do, some anatomy changes and reworking form the pencils in the previous post. Ill get this finished off the mara, then I have to change projects briefly to make sure I meet a deadline, more on that later.....

"In your heeadd, zooom bay zooom bay...."

Yip, more zombie stuff. Its the main focus these days. Below is the pencils, (quite rough and with a few anatomy problems that I'll fix when inking)  a very poor scan of an A3 page using a A4 scanner so excuse the dark bit in the middle. This wont effect me but as ill be making it blue and inking over the top, and the stat of the inking just to show the change, the clean up. Ive approached this one differently, in the sense that Im only doing the charcaters and leaving the background to put in digitally. I just so handy with perspective rulers in Manga studio.

   

Page 2... Complete...

This page shows up for a thrd time, except now it finished-I think. I've being having bother deciding when im finished as ive been told by a few that I tend to over work my stuff. Considering this is the third time this has shown up, do yous liking seeing things being worked up or should I just stick to posting Finished pieces and processes?

Getting there now...

So I did manage to do a bit more, still a good bit to do but this page is coming together nicely I think....

Zombies Hi!

Got the pencils finished off earlier and started inking. The gap at the top of the page is for the title banner, I'll be away from the computer for a while so I won't get to finish this off for a couple of days. On a different note, I've been receiving a few proposals aswell of this one. Some exciting stuff going to be happening this year, I'll keep us up to date as I great the finer details.

 

Fini...well just starting really...

Just thoguht id throw up the finished page saying I just finished inking it. Going to leave the shadows until I greywash it in photoshop, and sure if it doesnt work out its easy enough to throw the blacks around....

Work in progress.....

The previous post, zombified sketch of Gerry anderson was done to let Danny... well get a giggle, but it was also for a story proposal we're working on. So he appears again here in the work in progress of what will be hopefullybe the  first page of "Zombies hi!". This is my first time digitally inking over hand done pencils, I'm liking hows its turning out. Digitally is really good cause I like my work clean ( unless the story is stylised gritty of course ) but mainly cause ctrl z is a miracle for my shakey hands!....

Zombies Hi!

A super fast, Gerry Anderson sketch-Zombified.

Getting creative with Death....

Kill yourself creatively. Ok, sweet, I can do that. Hrmmmm...mmmm...aaahhhh I got it.

Stephen Coffey is putting together a book to raise money for a suicide charity. Through twitter he asked for artists to contribute one shot pieces. So heres mine, with a slight bit of the process behind it.

Once I had me idea I roughed it out digitally....

...I originally intended to try doing this completely digitally but wasn't happy with how raggy round the edges it looked, so it took this as me inked pencils if you will.....

...printed it out and light boxed a roughl outline leaving must of the drawing to be done with me new rotring technical pens....

... was really happy with how it ended up but knew it needed a wee something else, so I coloured the sky with a simple gradient in photoshop and thats it. Finished product below.