Old ideas

in days of old when I had hair, me an my mate Shane Oakley (go to his blog you'll love what he does with a marker) would come up with oodles of ideas and plots, and these sketches show a character we worked on, albeit too briefly. It was something we put to one side to work on later. Sadly we didn't come back to it but I've done some sketches of the main character today (when I was supposed to be working) and a strange old man. Ladies and gentlemen:Robbie Rockett

deadline hell

Not much to show, still inking up the 10 page story and the deadline is a loomin'.
But I did do a bit of sketchin just to give you lovely people something to look at.And soz about the zombie, but there's something in me that just loves sketchin' dead things.

a doodle too much?

Now this started as a doodle.
I'm sitting there, drawing an eye when it all goes out of control and I end up with a sketch with loads of pencil shading.
I know there's a bit of dodgy anatomy but it didn't come out to bad.
And the scanner did an Ok job picking it all up.

working on a comic strip part 2

So like I said in the last post, I've received the script, read it, done some layouts and some panel studies. I thought I'd show you good folks just what I mean.
Top image is the the page of script, written by Steven Stone. He has sweated and agonised over this story and now he gives it to me, and I have to come up some images that'll do his story justice.
2nd image is the layouts-a very (and I do mean very) rough idea of how the page will eventually look (I hope).
Now the next 4 images are the panel studies where I'm trying to work out how the characters are behaving. I try to get the anatomy right and to give it some movement.
The reason there is so many is that certain things might not look right so, I'll have another go. The record, if anybody's interested, for a single panel is about 10 versions.
So the next image is me happy (more or less) with what I've got and so I'll light box the sketches on to the actual page. I tighten up the pencils, correct any mistakes and add any background that's needed.
The final image is the completed page. It shows just where the panel fits in relation with the rest of the story.
You have to aware that I'll do that with every panel. (aren't I an arse!)
And there you have it- a full blown comic page.
Next I'll ink it and then letter it, but that's a tale for another day.

Working on comic strip part 1

So I'm working on a 10 page story for Insomnia publications' Anthology title- Layer Zero;Choices.
I've received the script, read it a couple of times, seen where I can have fun with the panels and seen where I have to do "the boring bits, i.e. the bits that move the story along but are not as fun to draw, e.g. talking heads shots.
I break it down into layouts one page per page of script, very fast, very rough, just to basically give me some ideas of the flow and placement of the panels. Sometimes these layouts make the final page, sometimes not, depending if I can think up a better angle.
Comics are a visual media so the more exciting you can make it, the better.
From the layouts I go on to draw some studies. These will be a panel at a time, just so I can get the anatomy about right and the shadows, then when I'm happy with the studies I'll light box it onto the comic page.
I used to skip this process and work straight on the page, but I'm made that many mistakes or got so much of the drawing wrong, I was forever rubbing out the pencils and putting dirty great holes in the paper. So I do it this way on cheap photocopy paper and I save a fortune on expensive thick paper.
You can see the examples of what I've done so far... There are a couple of layout pages and some studies.
Next time I'll show you some detail of how I work on the studies and finally some of the actual pencils.