BADGE - page 1

Alright, here's page one of "Badge", my western story. The plan is to post pages as I finish them, with no set schedule. Once I have a decent number of pages done to act as a buffer, I'll create a site for the strip and make it a proper web comic. Right now, I'm just trying to get into a production groove, see if the story has any legs, and to get some feedback (good or bad):


I'm producing the pages at full print resolution in the event that the story ever goes to print. Here's a full rez shot of panel three as an example:


I thought I'd go over my process (which is still evolving), in case there's any interest. I'm working from a loose outline which should honestly be tighter than it is, but I want to get this story rolling before I find more excuses not to do it. I'm drawing thumbnails for each page at about 2"x3", scanning them in, then printing them out at 6"x9" and penciling over that:


The finished art is all done in Photoshop to save time and to allow for more experimentation. The goal is to build up several simple techniques to get an illustrative look in a relatively short amount of time. The first step is the inking, which is primarily focused on form and laying in the graphical black elements. I want the story to have a bit of a rough edge, so I created a brush that gives me a look similar to black Prismacolor pencil on textured paper:


Next, I go in an lay in some medium greys, mostly flat with a few gradients:


After that, I go back in with a brush I made that has an ink wash feel to it to give the page some extra texture and tonal value:


One all that is in, I go back and do a polishing pass with digital screens (like the old zip-a-tone patterns that old comics used) for more tone and texture, some digital spatter (which I used to do with an old toothbrush back in the day), and finally, just going in and punching out some white highlights on things:


After the lettering is done, I overlay a scan of old parchment paper to give everything an antiqued look and I'm pretty much done. It sounds like a lot, but really, I'm just building up several simple steps that add up to (I hope) a lush, finished look.

When I post the second page, I'll re-post page one without all of the blabbing.

Thanks for taking a look. Like I said, any comments, good or bad, are appreciated.

Logo Loco

I'm working on some logo ideas for one of the stories I'm trying to get off the ground. It's a western called "Badge" (the first page is done and will be posted later this week) and it's very much influenced by a lot of the classic western films. There have been some other western comics that have come out in the last few years, but a lot of them are either very modern feeling stories with a lot of graphic language and violence or they are "westerns plus", i.e. westerns + horror, westerns + scifi. I don't have a problem with either approach, I just thought I'd try some thing different, something more old fashioned.

A lot of old movies (not just westerns) had really great hand painted titles, like these examples:


Lettering is not really my thing, so my results in trying to get that look are mixed, but here's some raw lettering that came out OK (by raw I mean that I haven't done any aging or outlining or anything):


I'd like to avoid using any sort of stereotypical western fonts, but I found a few that had a nice feel without looking like the Purina Chuck Wagon logo:


I've also messed around with the idea of replacing the A with an actual sheriff's badge, but that might be too cutesy:


No final decisions yet, but as the art for the story starts to develop, all of this other stuff will fall into place.

Funny but true

I realized I haven't posted anything in a while which is ironic since I've been very busy with a lot of different art projects. One of which is this Fear Agent pin-up I've been chipping away at during lunch. I wasn't going to post it until I inked it, but what the Don Heck.

A few weeks ago I was at the 2nd annual Windy City ComicCon and went out to dinner with a group that included Tony Moore, artist on lots of cool stuff but probably best known for his work on Fear Agent with writer Rick Remender. I've always liked Fear Agent - it's right up my retro alley - but I had never drawn Heath Huston or anything else from it, so that's where this sketch comes in:

What's Old is New Again

Here's a quick sketch I did to experiment with style & texture. I drew it with pens and a black Prismacolor pencil on canvas paper so that I could get the graininess of the paper to show up. I added the zip-a-tone look and spatters in Photoshop and then laid down some flat colors to finish it up:

This closeup shows the texture a little bit better:


My inspiration to try out these new (to me) techniques came from several sources. I was looking at some movie posters from the '50s when they started using more graphic styles (like this poster for Vera Cruz), also some of the illustrators of the same era who were experimenting with looser rendering techniques (like Mitchell Hooks here), as well as a contemporary comic book artist named Dave Johnson who uses a lot of these same inspirations & techniques but gets a very modern feel out of his work (like this cover for 100 Bullets).

For as little time as I put into it, I like the results, though I need to see if something like this would work on sequential pages. It might be too abstract to look at page after page.

Pulp in Progress

I'm slowly chipping away at inking the group sketch of pulp characters I posted a few days ago so I thought I'd post a little work in progress detail of the Spider, the Shadow and most of Doc Savage's widow's peak. I know that Doc wasn't portrayed that way until James Bama started painting the covers to the reprints in the 60's, but that's the way he'll always look to me:

Backlog

After putting in a lot of hours to finish a big project at work, then taking a short but much needed vacation, and finally slogging through the inevitable post-vacation slump I'm getting back to being productive again.

I spent most of last weekend cleaning my home studio and in the process found a pile of old, half finished artwork. Since they're all pretty far along and won't require any major effort, I'm going to try to finish them up and hopefully build up momentum towards some of the other, bigger efforts I'm trying to get off the ground.

Up first is a sketch I drew when I was reading a lot about the history of the pulps - just a goofy group shot of some of the major and minor characters of the era:


I'm going to clean it up, ink it and probably color it too. I'll post the steps as I go. I also need to go back and figure out who all the characters are - there are some pretty obscure ones in there.

Technique Study

I got tired of working on my story outline, so I messed around with some techniques I've been thinking about for doing the backgrounds. Again, just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks:


Not the most ambitious example, but hopefully tomorrow I can find the time to try something a little more involved.

Pre-pre-production

Having just wrapped up the game I've been working on, I was able to have a long weekend off and managed to get a lot done on what I call pre-pre-production for my graphic novel. I already had a rough outline and a lot of notes, so right now I'm working on a more detailed final outline, nailing down names for people, places & things, and organizing my reference material for everything.

Once that's complete, I can move into regular old pre-production where I filter all of the things that inspire me into my designs for everything that will appear in the story - all of the key characters, locations and props. I'll also take the final outline and use it to break down the story scene by scene, loosely laying out the pages and writing all of the dialogue. At that point, I'll have a pretty good blueprint to follow.

I'm an organizer and planner by nature and since this is going to be a long term project that will undoubtedly have stops and starts as my free time allows I need to have this guide that I can use to keep me on track.

It's going to be a lot of work, but I'm long overdue to try something like this. I look forward to the opportunity to do something 100% the way I want to do it. That way, the only person that can hold me back and the only person I can blame for failure is me.