DevCon News

This Saturday I'll be up in Plymouth for DevCon, with a Doctor Who theme going on. Which also features Colin Baker (the sixth Doctor) along with Sophie Aldred (Ace) from the old Doctor Who that I grew up watching.

Of course there will be other stuff going on to besides Dr. Who too. I will be releasing issue one of "A Shadow of Steel!", my self published comic title that I started last year with issue zero. It is a bit dark where I am now so can't take any photo's of my comic right now, but I can show you this awesome limited edition print that is exclusive to DevCon...

It'll be A3 in size and at about £5 per print, and you can get your hands on one at DevCon in Plymouth this Saturday.

If you want to find out more about this convention  click here to go to their facebook page.

I will post up some photo's of my comic tomorrow when there is light.

22 Panels Comic Art Exhibition Poster

An image I have contributed to the 22 Panels Falmouth Comic Art Show's poster for this years exhibition, whose title is inspired by Silver Age comic artist Wally Wood. For those unfamiliar with Wally Wood he created a quintessential comic 'cheat sheet' known as '22 panels that always work', that contain various compositions of panels to make dialogue heavy scenes in comic books dynamic and engaging.

This leads onto the image I have done. The event organizer wanted exhibitors to create their own rendition of a panel, or more from Wally Wood's 22 panels sheet. These panels will be used to create the poster to help promote the show.

And so here is my panel...

Went for a 50's sci-fi-esque rendition as an homage to the type of comics Wally Wood drew back in the day, and the ones I adore most.

For this piece I decided to try something new, and went about inking this panel with a Rotring art nib pen. I have gotten very bored of using fine liners which often create dull lines, which is something I have known awhile and couldn't be bothered to try other things till now. I absolutely love this pen, and shall be trying it out more so I am more comfortable using it for my comic work.

Finally in case you are interested, other artists that have been working on this poster and will be exhibiting at the show are Lee O' Connor, Jack Teagle, Tiernen Trevallion, Henry Flint, John Spelling, Paul Grist, EdieOP, Steve May, Rob Cross, Phil Harvey, Keith Sparrow and Grayham P. Puttock.

Another DnD character

Finally got round to start playing the game with friends from Uni, and got round to sorting out the last persons character. He decided to be a human cleric of Ioun called Abraxis...sounds like a cleaning detergent. In any case quite pleased with how he came out, especially the colours of his outfit. I like to think I succeeded in making him evoke an oriental quality to his appearance, as the friend that plays this character has a fascination for all things oriental. 

Experimental Batman part 2

Decided to push what I did yesterday a bit further, with interesting results. There are a couple of failures, and they were due to using markers over pencils which is hard to control that led to them being ruined and unfinished. The rest however were done in a similar fashion as before though some are done a little differently. One example is that I used the markers as a base colour only, and then gone over it in polychromos pencils to add tone.

The third image on the top row shows a bit more what I am striving to achieve. Essentially I plan on doing a complete greyscale noir image of Batman without having to ink my line work. It has been refreshing and overly different to how I normally work, and I can see this being used again for future works so I will continue to push it further.

Experimental Batman

Currently doing a bit of media experimentation with polychromos pencils and marker pens. I'm currently working on special noir styled piece for an upcoming event with my local comic book store, celebrating the 75th Anniversary of The Batman. Though scanning images done in pencil and markers has always come out very poorly, so I tried a higher resolution. It does look better than usual but it's not quite to my liking. 

The far right image is just pencil over marker blended with a marker pen. It didn't achieve the desired affect as the pencil didn't really blend or smooth out onto the marker.

The middle image is just pencil over markers in a near finished state just to give an overall idea of what the finished visual would look like. 

The last image is the same as the previous expect the use of pencil to add tone over the marker on the face and top of the cowl, via sansador on a tortillon. This is closer to the affect I wish to achieve, and aim to push it with further samples. 

D&D

So me and my friends decided we'll try play D&D which is something I've been wanting to do for a long time now, and to build up a bit more excitement I did a bit of character art to make the adventure more personal.

So here is my character, Karrathus The Morning Sword a Dragonborn Paladin with his hamster called Porkins. 

My friend's Tim character Thorian, and Elven Ranger. Although he is not in the drawing he does have a nameless pet crow.

And here is Diana's character Luinwe, and Eladrin Warlock with her pet snow fox called Tilly (yes we all seem to have pets in the party) who is by far the most elaborate looking character of the group. 

There are two other people in our group, but they have yet to make their own characters but I'll post those up once they get round to it.

I have never played this game before and nor has anyone else in our group so it'll be a fun experience I'm sure. 

Artist Hour

Hey folks, whilst I'm still working on issue 1 I thought I post this little sketch I did during artist hour.. For those of you who don't know, artist hour is an event held on twitter every Wednesday from 9pm - 10pm, with a random theme as a challenge. Last night there was no theme, so I decided to do an Indiana Jones sketch.