I'm bored with everything I've tried, except art. So I'm settling down and starting a studio. Prepare for epicness to ensue! I've got the help of some very talented artists and we'll be on kickstarter.com soon. I'll be posting on here as often as I remember if you'd like to keep up with the projects I work on. Little Dethklok to tickle your fancy.

Working things out

With the amount of work I've been given and the amount of school work pilling up, I had to choose one or the other. School has to come first, so for the time being I had to drop Saguarrior for the time being because I was not being paid. However, this gives me an opportunity to work on my new project "Sins of our Fathers." That name isn't going to stay, but that is what I named it back in 8th grade. Till I get some more on this project, I'm going to leave you with this. But be excited! I have a great staff working with me on SooF. Sounds silly, soof -

Here is a picture I drew for my friend of Lion-o from the Thunder Cats!

Gifts from Typographists!

I have two separate people working on the typography for the comic. These are both 15 minute sketches done by the candidates and I have to choose between them. If you leave a comment you can vote too!!! Feed back is awesome!

Candidate 1:














Candidate 2:

Playing Games

Fable 2 just came out and I have barely done anything on the comic. My excuse is that I'm waiting for the two possible typography artists to get back to me- but honestly I should be drawing up my pages. Don't buy a really cool game until your done with work. That's all for this week. Next week- tons more for you.

Laying Out the Pages

After I received the complete story the first thing I did was laid out the entire comic in thumbnails. Same size I did the layout for the cover art. This way you can see all your layouts side by side. See if you have too many of one layout, if you need to change a page or two so it doesn't get redundant for the reader. Here are the sketches I did for the layouts.

I don't want to give away much of the story, so you can't make them bigger, but this is the general layout of the comic all in all.

I did these simply with pencil and pen. I wouldn't suggest using a good pen, seeing as how I ran out of ink and these are just for me to look at - kind of upsetting. Here is a close up of one of the panels. It's an action scene and wasn't that strong when I first laid it out.

After I looked through the comic I found panels like this and drew them on an 8.5" by 11" to see if I could spruce it up a bit. This is what I came up with.

Now that I drew it on a larger scale I can see that I need to fix the middle panel a lot, make him quite a bit bigger, and I can also see that if I even the bottom two panels out more it could help with the general aesthetics of the page. I went back on my smaller layout and fixed it in pen, which I had drawn in pencil.

After laying out all the pages I can now redraw some of them so that they won't be so consistent in design. That way the reader gets a little more variety of layouts. Due to the fact that this comic is new I also tried to stay away from anything too extreme so there would be no question on losing the reader in some spots. After we establish a fan base and story then we can get some cool layouts drawn like in the work of Ed McGuinness. 

(By the way) I draw the initial sketches with a blue col-erase pencil, also known as a non-photo pencil, so that it just won't show up when I scan it in as an illustration. Or I can just drop all the blue levels and threshold the image to make it all black and white. 

Ahead of the Game

After I received the first rough draft of the story line the second thing I did, after sketching out the bad guy, was come up with layouts for the cover. This is called being ahead of the game. Even though you may not know the entire story line or even what the writer or higher ups had in mind for the cover, your first idea should always be sketched out. Even if it is a terrible idea, and you know it, be sure to sketch it out on a piece of paper. 

This insures that your initial idea, good or bad, will be out of your head and leave you free to think about your other work. Plus, you can always come back to it later and touch it up if it's a good layout. 

I would not suggest starting by looking at other work. I would suggest trying to be as creative and original as possible. After you have 4-5 original sketches, search the net for your favorite comic artist and see how he approaches covers. Mix it up with someone you don't know and see if you can't come up with something innovative and different.

I did a few sketches, just using the idea that Saguarrior would be fighting a new mysterious nemesis, but then I ended up choosing this design. As you can see I started out real small, this is no bigger than a business card.

Secondly I drew another small sketch to see how it would work with the title and comic tag, then did some crude coloring.

Finally, after I was happy enough with my layout I drew a 8.5" by 11" drawing with some more crude coloring, just so I could get the idea out of my head. To go the extra mile I even opened up Illustrator and did a mock up of what the title may look like, and added it in. This also helps me see that I may need to move the skull over a tiny bit, or just change the overall direction of the figures. The brown square is where the LoS Comics logo and issue number go. 

I think it's pretty aesthetically pleasing, and I came up with a cool new way to shade Saguarrior while I was drawing it. Going the extra mile is never a bad idea. Now I have a fresh mind to think about my sketches, and I also have a cool layout to play around with when it comes time to draw the cover. 

FYI! This is for my personal convenience. I'll only show my co-workers when the time comes to discuss potential issue covers. :)

Starting work with the Writer

After you land the job you should be introduced to the writer you'll be working with. Typically you'll be working with a seasoned writer who has been working on the story line since dirt existed. But thankfully when I met the writer I found out he was fresh to the team, like myself. So the first thing I got in my inbox was a rough sketch of a bad guy and a short story line explaining why he was who he was and how he became it. 

This is what I got.

I read the short description of his background. Disgruntled worker gets blown up at a chemical plant while working after hours. The explosion turns him into burning flesh / x-ray skeleton thing who is constantly burning. That was the basic jist. So instead of the tribal loin cloth he is wearing I switched it with a half burnt up hazmat suit. Other than that I just tightened up the skeletal structure, took away his jaw (in the writer's story) and stylalized the flames a tiny bit. 

This is my sketch.

Just to be thourogh I cleaned up the blue and had my color artist (Brad Elliott) do a rough coloring. In the final version we'll add a few things and change the colors a bit, but it was nice to take our sketch a few steps further, just to impress the higher ups. Typically you won't choose your color artist but because of the smaller project I got to choose my partners for the visual aspect of the comic.