All In A Mouse's Night

Decided to throw some colour on this drawing from last week. First timing colouring with the Cintiq. It was definitely easier than colouring with the mouse.

Afterglow

And here's the inked drawing from the previous post... but now in colour. I'm pretty happy with it, although I really need to learn how to do better "glow" effects. The little lights around the base of the tree just aren't looking like what I envisioned. I also need to figure out how I want to handle smoke (make it an opaque white cloud or something like what I have here). If this was for publication, I would be more of a perfectionist. But, since it is more for helping me prepare for the actual drawing of the book, I'll let it slide.

Perfect Love... Gone Wrong

Not perfect but whatyagonnado? Don't have time to smooth out the rough edges on this. The Perhapanauts aren't going to ink themselves.

Violently Happy

I made some adjustments to the ground area of the drawing from the previous post and then added some colour, in Photoshop. I'm pretty happy with the result.

Night Fever

Work continues on the UFO story but I thought I'd give you another sketch that I've done in preparation for my collaboration with James Powell.

James is fleshing out the story at a fever pitch and I'm loving what he's come up with so far. This is just my first pass on the main character of our still unnamed "near future" project.

Distant Early Warning

Putting together a new project with writer/editor/pal James Powell. It's still in the very early stages but James and I are excited to finally get the chance to collaborate on something together. This image is not of anything in particular, I'm just trying to get a feel for the drawing and colouring style that we are going to go with for this story.

Something's Coming

if you click the image, it will get bigger, you know?

Something new in the works....? Time will tell.
Lines and colours by moi.

Oh yeah, the Braids of the Gorgon pitch just went out to its first potential publisher. The waiting begins.

Fear of Pop

And here it is, the last page of the Braids of the Gorgon pitch. My thanks go out to Rico Renzi, colourist of the Perhapanauts, for his guidance and time. He shared a few tricks of the colouring trade with me and really helped me make this last page sing. Thanks, Rico!

Diary Of A Madman

I thought I'd do a post about my process for coming up with the new cover for our Braids Of The Gorgon pitch. A visual diary, of sorts. I know I dig these kinds of things when I see them on other artists' blogs. Are you seated comfortably? Then we shall begin... Step 1.
This is the first ink sketch I did as I started to get a sense of what I wanted on the cover. I did a loose drawing in pencil and then just let the pen and brush do the rest of the drawing. I was pretty happy with this, hand/temple roof tangents aside. I did up some simple colours for it and shipped it off to James and Ken for their reactions.Step 2.
One of the things that James suggested I change was the placement of our resident Gorgon and place her behind the temple. I did a few quick sketches to see how that would look and thought it was an interesting idea. Step 3.
I felt the emphasis was too much on the architecture (something I love to draw) and made it smaller and had the Gorgon more prominent and more "gorgon-like". I decided that a logo placed on the bottom of the cover was probably not the best place to have it. Instead, I pushed the whole image down and left more room at the top for the logo. I was also flirting with the idea of adding some figures, like Damara and Perseus, in the foreground but decided that it was looking forced and taking away from the narrative of the image.Step 4.
I then picked up my brush, grabbed my cup of ink and did this. No pencil drawing, just ink and all the happy mistakes that can happen. I dug this drawing and sent it off to the Braids crew (Ken and James). I waited breathlessly to hear their reaction. Well, maybe not breathlessly...Step 5.
It was suggested that I try and open the Gorgon up for a tad more detail and to maybe put a hand coming forward to give it more tension. All great suggestions, so off I went to my drawing table and redrew the image. Again, no pencil drawing first. All ink, baby! I was jazzed with this and decided to throw some colour over it.Step 6.
With colour applied and the Braids logo (designed by Avi Goldberg) in place, I sent this off to Ken and James. And, what do you know? They liked it as it was! Cover complete!

Hope you dug that! See you on Friday!

Tales of Brave Ulysses

Every Greek epic should have a narrator character. Someone who brings you up to speed on the story and interjects relevant information, from time to time. This is our Narrator. Who is this mysterious orator and what is his/her connection to the tale he/she tells? I can't say! The identity will be kept secret until the last page of the mini series!

This is the last Braids character sketch. At least for now. We've got more than enough material for the pitch, so I'm changing my focus to working on a new cover. I find covers hard to do but it's a good challenge. I'll start posting some of my work of that next week.

My (new) computer is acting up so I'm hoping this will actually post...

Divine Intervention

This is the Pallus Athena, patron goddess of Athens. She is another one of our major characters, as her presence is woven throughout Braids.

One of the things I love about Braids of the Gorgon is that it deals with the mythology of the ancient Greeks. As much as I love Eric Shanower's Age of Bronze (and I really do love that book), I can't help wishing it had some Greek Gods in it, meddling in human affairs. That's just where my heart felt interests lay. Heck, they don't even have to be almighty Gods erupting with cosmic power. They just have to walk among the masses and exude their divine influence.

All the Braids character sketches have now been coloured and are ready for inclusion in the pitch packages that Ken, James and I will be sending out soon! Actually, the pitch should be ready to go for the Emerald City Comic Con, which is at the beginning of April in Seattle. There will be a few excellent publishers at the show that would make a great home for Braids. Once we know that the pitch is ready, we'll try to set up some meetings with them. Ken showed some of the Braids material around at the New York City Con and got some genuine interest in the book, so hopefully showing the whole pitch will get us picked up for publication.

Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'

Another shot of Damara, the tough as nails, no messin' around, straight to the point captain of the King's Guard.

The Braids pages have been sent to Jason Hanley, letterer extraordinaire! He's a busy guy but he's going to squeeze us in as soon as he can.

Any Major Dude Will Tell You

Another major character in the first arc of Braids is this dude. Friend or foe? I'm not telling! You'll just have to wait to find out...

Kinda Kute

The previous post was of Euryale in her Gorgon form. This is Euryale in her human form. Kinda cute for a Gorgon...

More Braids character sketches on Wednesday!

Turn To Stone

click the scaly skinned woman to see her bigger

This is Euryale, one of the main characters of Braids. Eury is the half human half Gorgon daughter of Medusa and the last of her kind. She has the snakes, the leathery wings and the ability to turn you to stone with a glance. Sounds like my kind of woman!

I'll have some more character sketch stuff to show on Monday!

What God Wants, Part 1

smash image with club to see it bigger

Here's another Braids character sketch. This one is Hercules, my favorite Greek God (or demi-god, in Herc's case). The colours aren't "final", as I haven't run it past Ken and James, but I think it's pretty much what Herc will look like for the book.

On Friday I'll post another colour Braids character sketch.

One More Time

click image. make bigger.

Here's another character sketch of Damara. I'll have a Hercules character sketch for you all on Wednesday. Maybe more...

Mother Stands For Comfort

make with the clicky to see bigger

This is Lorelei, mother of Dacius and Damara, and the high priestess of Athena’s cult. She is gifted with many strange esoteric powers. She may have been responsible for the dead of her husband...

Another Braids character sketch, as promised.
Now I'm going to lay down and continue to be sick.

The King Of Bedside Manor

give'r a click to see bigger

Still sick. Still trying to work on Braids character sketches.

Here's one of Damara's brother, Dacius. Dacius is the King of Athens and son of the city’s high priestess, Lorelei.

All Summer Single

click image to see it enbiggened

No single panel post this time! Here's a fully coloured page from Braids of the Gorgon, for your perusal. Hope you dig it.

Now I'm off to ink the character sketches for the Braids pitch.

Easy

click image to see it bigger

I've finished the colours for the Braids pages. Well, they might need a tweek here and there, but they are 98% finished. I've moved to drawing up some more character sketches for the pitch. They'll need to be inked and then coloured, but that colouring will be super easy.

Oh yeah... with the release of Perhapanauts #5 and the reading of the whole Bone collection, I have already accomplished 2 of my New Year resolutions! And the new year is only 3 weeks old. Sweet!

Any Colour You Like

click to see image bigger

Still trying to get my head around the whole colouring comics thing. There are so many hues to choose from that it can be hard coming up with final colour choices.

One such example of my inability to come up with a definitive color scheme is that of the Gorgon, Euryale, one of the main characters of Braids. Right from day 1, way back in 2001 when Ken and I had our first start working on Braids, I've always visualized her as green. In my brain, Euryale was green. Well, she was until I started colouring the first panel she showed up on. Suddenly, green didn't seem to fit her, it was too obvious. She needed to stand out, be different from the majority of "monsters". But not too different. She also had to be visually interesting when interacting with the other main characters. Sigh.

The above image is part of my attempt to find the right colour for her. I've narrowed it down to more of the blue/purple range, as red, yellow and orange don't really work when she is with certain other characters. Ken and I think we know the one we want. We still have to hear from James to see if we are all in agreement.

In the meantime, I'd love to know which one of the 4 hues shown above would you good people choose for our Gorgon. No answer is wrong so please leave a comment below, if you are so inclined.

Ritual (Nous Sommes Du Soleil)

click image to see it bigger

Here is a fully coloured Braids of the Gorgon page! This is the first page of the pitch Ken, James and I are putting together.

Colouring my comic art is relatively new to me, the only other colouring I've done was on my 5 page Dear Santa story, "Whatever It Takes" and the 14 page Trickster tale I drew. So, yeah, colouring is still pretty much a "learn as I go" experience. I posted an earlier version of the colours for this page up at Digital Webbing and got a few great critiques, especially the amazing post from pro colorist Nick Filardi, which helped me improve the page. I think it's "done" now, but I never can really tell when something is done.

I'm now almost finished colouring the third page of the pitch. The colouring is getting a little faster, but not any easier.