So my girly girl got me a wacom tablet for my birthday. I’ve been getting familiar with it, and decided to try out some painting skills I haven’t flexed in many a year. It’s a pic of the Recluse. Just not going to forget that guy. Anywho, here we go.
Filed under Art, Comics, the recluse
I had an idea for a character on the way to see Stallone’s new shoot ‘em up, Bullet to the Head. It was for a character that was simpler than other characters and stories I’ve been developing. It was an insect based character, I just love those. Anyway the character’s theme is based on roaches, filthy disgusting roaches. He’s a pest to the criminal underworld.
The idea here is to do one page stories akin to the old Hostess snack ads from the 70s and 80s.
The comics would feature a villain of the week an we catch the action just as it’s about to get resolved. For the first issue I have the hero fighting a squid themed villain, Carl O’Marley, PHD. The Roach is trapped and has to find a way to escape. That’s all I thought about going in before laying out the action in a thumbnail.
After I lay out he basic action I drew it, inked it, then in the Marvel Way added the dialog. And there we have the first installment below. 
The following images show the thought process for framing the second installment of The Red Roach. As in the case of the first strip, I just thought of a basic situation and laid out some interesting ideas for images based on the characters I wanted to use. This time I used the Pigeon as the antagonist. She’s just your basic winged flyer, bust so is the Red Roach. Again I start with the basic idea of them flying and I have to find a way to resolve it in a few panels. I decided I’d rather not have him hit a woman, so she had to crash into a wall.
Here are few flight and collision studies for the Pigeon.
Below is the finished product for the second installment.
You can go ahead and follow the Red Roach and his continuing adventures here at theredroach.wordpress.com.
Filed under Art, Comics, Entertainment, graphics, The Red Roach
The Recluse is another child of my brain. I’m switching gears from Beeboy, to do a tighter character piece. Straight forward story telling, not the overwhelming multi-media nightmare that Beeboy was becoming in my mind. The Recluse is going to have a leaner cast and just be a twist on a familiar character. Her’es a logo I think fits the mood I’m trying to set. Simple, eh?
I’ve done a few logos for the media company before, this one is just tighter to me. I’d believe in anything that this graphic was representing. Yay me!!!
H.A.R.R.M.
Son of Dane Whitman, The Black Knight and Titania
A very Pull Pile Holiday card for my friends at the Pull Pile Podcast
Batman Beyond with a cape.
Warren Worthington III as a carny
Filed under alternate universe, Art, Comics, Entertainment, photoshop, pop culture
Work has slowed my pace, here are a few Redesigns for Art Jams on CBR. The first is Quentin Quire, Kid Omega, in the trappings of a Greek/Roman god-king.
The following is the offspring of two Avengers. One being Thunder Strike, a guy who stood in for Thor for a while. The other is a chick named Magdalene, who was pretty much a Marvel analogue for Big Barda, from Kirby’s Fourth World. 
Filed under alternate universe, Art, Comics, Entertainment, fiction, graphics, pop culture
Getting back on the wagon. Beeboy back in effect. Starting with Thug-o-Nomics, the delusional gangsta rapper that gets caught up in his own hype.
This is from Round 4 of Comic Book Resources Project CBRunway. The theme for the week was John Hughes’ classic teen film from the 80s,”The Breakfast Club.”
We had to make the archetypical characters, the Brain, The Princess, The Basket-case, the Jock and the Criminal, into Super Heros. After selecting a number between one and five I was assigned the Jock, Andrew Clark, played by Emilio Estevez. The character he played was an athlete on the wrestling team in detention because he duct taped some poor saps butt cheeks together.
He looks capable of juvenile evil.
So my approach was to give him the basic super hero strongman look and add a few touches from the movie. He has typical wrestling gear, a mask and his varsity jacket from the film. Here’s the inked drawing.
And the final colored image.
As the Gym Class Hero, Andrew Clark dons his varsity jacket and wrestling uniform to take down the bullies and creeps at Shermer High School redeeming himself for having once been a locker room bully. He asked the “Brain” to soak his costume in “chemical X” to make them more durable, the treads on his wrestling boots are reenforced with a metallic rubber to help him keep his ground and his mask is worn under his headgear, because it looks a little less silly that way. His belt is a novelty belt he got on line, a replica of the championship belt from his favorite pro wrestling company and his fingerless gloves are padded to protect his knuckles, and not leave bruises on wrongdoers.
Filed under Art, Comics, Entertainment, fiction, hollywood, pop culture
It’s been a while between posts, life crept up on me and spun me around for a loop. But I think I can manage this once a week again. Anyway here’s a treat. A two for one shot in the Comic Book Resources, Project CBRunway competition. First up, CBRunway : Round 2 – Gender Bender. In this round I had to swap power sets for two comic book characters, the challenge being the characters are of different genders. One has to be male, the other female. I went with Doctor Doom and Black Canary. It made sense in my head, but the end result wasn’t a voter favorite. Such is life.
The trick was to have the characters switch power sets and costumed identities yet retain the essence of who they are. With Black Canary, I really liked her ponytail look in Birds of Prey. For some reason it made me think of a dominatrix. So I went with that, since she’s not a doctor of any kind. I looked into fetish gear and decided a mask made of leather straps said, “ooh, kinky.” Changed the color scheme of her costume to resemble Doom’s signature look and added some thigh high boots with leather straps and came up with this.
Dinah Lance as Dominatrix Doom
Victor Von Doom as Black Canary
Filed under Art, Comics, Entertainment
I may have mentioned that I am a member of the forums on Comic Book Resources. There’s an annual Super Hero design/redesign competition on the Artist and Writer Showcase section of the forums called Project CBRunway and this is the 7th “season.” I’ve participated in the competition a few times and it’s something I look forward to every year. This year hopeful participants had to submit basic costume designs for a hero and villain based on ourselves using a basic template model sheet. I went with the basic themes of positivity and negativity because these are drives and attitudes we all share, but when the mood shifts too far in one direction, you aren’t behaving like your normal self. First I got to work on the positive aspects using the mathematical symbol for plus(+) as an insignia and using bright colors, baby blue, white and yellow to show a positive attitude. And I used the minus(-) sign for the villain and inverted the colors on the computer to come up with that color scheme. Anyway, here’s my submission.
Private Positive and Negatory. Great, right?
MattBib, the moderator of this section of the forums acts as Tim Gunn and gives us wild ideas for our weekly challenges. For the first challenge he came up with the name “Sounds of the Silver-Age” wherein the contestants had to pick an iconic Recording Artist from the 1960s and give that person a super hero costume from the silver-age era of comic books. Comic Book scholars and collectors understand the silver-age to be the period between the late 1950s to the early 1970s. In this period comic fans were introduced to the updated versions of the Flash and the Green Lantern over at DC Comics and Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four… well let’s say just about all the really popular characters over at Marvel Comics.
The Flash went from Jay Garrick to Barry Allen, Green Lantern from Alan Scott to Hal Jordan.
This Explosion of Characters came from what Stan Lee likes to call the Marvel Age of comics.
That’s what comics looked like in the Silver-Age, and as for the Music Icon from the 60s, I chose Jimi Hendrix. His look lends itself to the fantastic automatically. His dress was that of a gypsy pirate, with an attitude to match. Hopefully I don’t have to give him too much of an introduction, I’m guessing enough of you are experienced.
To distill Jimi to his most memorable visual components there were a few details I wanted to keep in mind, the Afro, The Bandana, The Goatee and the Vest. There are pictures out there where he doesn’t don the vest or bandana/headband, but in my head that’s what he always wore. A lot of fans say that he was known to keep a tab of LSD in his bandana for storage, but he would occasionally wind up tripping as his sweat dissolved the tab(s) leading the substance to seep into his system through his pores. As with many of the other contestants, I went to the his catalogue of songs for inspiration for his costumed identity. He’s got so many songs that would be great super hero names, Little Wing, Dolly Dagger, Stone Free, Night Bird Flying and Voodoo Child. For a while I was set on Voodoo Child. The lyrics to the first verse sound epic:
With that bravado and cockiness as fuel I began sketching out his look. I tried bell bottom pants for him and frilly cuffs for his shirt sleeves but that was still saying Rock Star and not Super Hero. The one thing from his signature look that I could borrow from to make him a super hero was his bandana. I just rolled the headband down over his eyes and added some goggle lenses and boom, Super Hero. But nothing really came to me though that said Voodoo child and the Internet wasn’t working so well, so researching the symbolism of Voodoo wasn’t going to work out. Also I couldn’t get the Marvel character Brother Voodoo out of my head. Below are some rough ideas/sketches.
Hmmm, none of these really say "VOODOO CHILD."
Voodoo Child wasn’t working out for me as a character and I didn’t have much time to work because the deadline for this challenge was creeping up on me. For some reason I considered Purple Haze. Time was working against me, so I threw together a quick simple cartoony sketch on some Borden and Riley vellum paper without a solid character model and design to work from. As simple as it was I really liked it. I was watching Adventure Time so that world of mirth and excitement may have slipped in and made me feel good about everything. It’s kind of like what I’d imagine an LSD trip to feel like. So from the sketch it was scanning time, soon to be followed by some coloring in PhotoShop. Here are the results.
When working on a character with a purple color scheme, avoid using red.GARISH!!!
I could have gone down the coloring road all night, but it was late and I had to get this in on time for the voting thread to go up. To me A was too much like the Wonder Twins. B was a step in the right direction and C was a step in the wrong direction, ugh. D although it’s basically a simple color swap of A really made things pop for me. It’s what I went with for the challenge. Check out the Project CBRunway: Challenge 1 voting thread and check out the other entries as well. If you’re inclined to vote I won’t stop you. The voting poll allows you to vote for multiple designs so no pressure.
And just for my Ungowa Soul Power visitors here’s a slightly modified image of Jimi Hendrix, The Purple Haze.
Acting Funny, But I Don't Know Why?!? Excuse Me As I Kiss The Sky.
Filed under Entertainment, Comics, graphics, history, Art, music, pop culture
