CoC Sketches and Some Reccomendations

I'm getting to close to my personal deadline on my pencils for the twelve pages of City of Cards I've been working on. It's daunting, starting this project, but seeing the pages start to take shape has been motivating. I'm still no master draftsman but I really love seeing my world and these characters take shape.

Here's hoping the story actually works. *laughs*

I thought it would be a good idea to do a couple more ink tests with some doodles from class, partly because I wanted to practice working with skin-tone and with rendering the ghosts.




But yeah, I'll probably print these to see how they look. Finding the right tone for skin is tricky, but I'm definitely feeling like I'm not losing much with switching to digital. My ghosts are still looking just about how I like them even if I'm still not totally used to how crazy clean digital inking looks. I never thought I'd like it as much as I do.

Next a sketch of Alex I did during guest lecture today that I did a little tweaking on later. I like it enough that I may ink/color it. We'll see, though, because right now I have little time to spend other than completing pages.



My recommendations:

Book: The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russel because of its wonderful blend of science fiction and philosophy as well as amazing characterization. I don't want to spoil any of the story because so much of this work's strength lies in the slow and earned discovery of truths.

Music: Throwing Muses is wonderfully eerie electronic folk with poetic lyrics and available to listen to right here on the internet. Give it a go and enjoy some nice music.

Video Games: Batman the Brave and the Bold Videogame is honestly some of the most fun I've had playing a video game in a long time. I honestly don't have a lot of time for games anymore but I'm really glad I picked this up because if you're a fan of the show, it really is like playing the show. It's short, definitely, but great with a friend and we can all use a little silly fun now and again. So yes, I'm actually saying to go play this game.

Progress Report!

So, I haven't had a lot to post up here lately, but that's partly because I've been busy penciling my pages for October and working on another side project I'll be posting up here later.

So, what do I have to share today? First here's a snapshot I took on Friday of the ten out of twelve pages I'd started at that point:



Next, since I don't have any more pencils scanned right now I figured I'd share something a little different, it's the sketches from today's class exercise where we were given three words and told to work out a story plot in ten panels. I actually really enjoyed this process and I'll be using what I did here later:











Definitely a lesson in concise storytelling. If you can't read the final text, it says "In the end I returned home, but my heart, my hope, and who I was remained in the depths."

So yeah, part of the exercise was to take a twist on a genre and I got True Love, Adventure, and The Underworld so there's only so much Orpheus I could stick in there. Actually, when I go back to reworking one of my stories this is a pretty good outline for where I want to go. Also, I really like drawing strange demon things.

Anyway, update! And now I can get a little sleep.

CCS Year Two: Thesis

So, it's finally beginning. We've got 16 pages due on October 11th so my plan is to pick eight pages from the first chapter of City of Cards, four from the second, and the last four will be from a dream assignment we also have.

I'm going to try to get back to some kind of regular updating schedule, maybe twice a week so I can put up progress work from City of Cards, sketches, and other material. Not too much to put up today, but I figured I'd start with a couple of sketches done in class and at the Glory Days event and some pencils from the first chapter of City of Cards.

A sketch of the final design for Lily, Rick's secretary:



A quick sketch of Ace chilling done in class:



Some pencils for page 8 of City of Cards:



I'm ridiculously happy to finally be starting this project. It's a bit overwhelming at times, but it's about time I just went ahead and got started even if I'm not 100% at the level I wish I was at. But hey, it's a learning process, right? It can only get better from here.

Ink Test

Classes officially started up this week so that and finishing up a project with some of my classmates has kept me a bit busy. I don't really have a lot scanned up at this point but I figured I'd post a test of a new inking/toning method I've been working on.



Yeah, I posted the rough sketch of this picture earlier but I inked this entirely in Manga Studio EX to see if that's how I want to proceed with my comics. Frankly, I really enjoy this process so who knows, this could be the way things go from now on. The program has a lot of options, including dry brush, and the G-Nib function is sweet.

So, well, starting now I'm back to working on City of Cards. I should have some actual completed work to show in the next month or so. Crazy time!