A wee closer

Just a bit more left, but I've run out of gas for the evening. Thought I'd share the latest step. Until tomorrow.

Color prelims

Okay, here's a quick peek at the progress on the Sphinx piece. Instead of doing just your standard pin-up I've decided to give Mafus the cover treatment. Still have plenty of shading and highlighting left to do along with dropping in the old-school logo and a little Nova in the sidebar. Probably also going to drop in a dramatic caption complete with rough edges 'cuz that spells danger, True Believers!

Whilst I drag my coloring heels

Here's my Colletta treatment of Mafus' Sphinx. Hopefully, the colorized version will be up tomorrow. I've been Super-Dad all weekend since the wife is out for her 15th college reunion, so's my art time has been at a minimum.

UPDATE: The colored version will be another day in coming. Had a wild idea that I want to try to implement. Hopefully it'll work out for the better.

UPDATE 2: It looks like the idea is gonna pass muster. If I didn't have an 8am meeting I'd be up all night knocking it out. Can't wait to get cracking on this tomorrow night.

Now in beautiful Mafuscolor!

As you can plainly see, Mafus has completed the colors on the Hitman/Mawzir piece. Can't you just feel the cold clammy fingers of Mawzir? Doesn't it look like his breath would smell of pickles and other dark matter? Of course you can, thanks to Mafus' mighty Photoshop skills. Of course, I'm a day behind on inking his piece and he's bouncing out of town for the weekend, so I'll be plying my paltry talents to colorizing his contest drawing. Seems only fair.

30 Days of Night

As I mentioned earlier, Mafus and I hit a matinee of 30 DAYS OF NIGHT Sunday. We had both read praising reviews of the film, so we had no real trepidation going in. We even believed that the film might actually be better than the book for once and we were right. (I reread 30 DAYS later that night and the movie held up over. No bones about it.) Sure there were a few bits that could’ve been cut since the film did seem a little long. I understand that they had to stretch the tale out for the full thirty days, but they didn’t have to make it seem like a full thirty days. We were both impressed that the vampires acted like vampires and not velveteen fops spraffing on about the beauty of the night. No, these were hungry, mean, bloodsuckers that had no qualms about taking human life. They were smart too, using bellwethers to draw out fresh meat. A very nice touch. The gore is unapologetic and downright harsh at times. (Ol' three-chop Eben does quite a bit of lumberjacking necks.)

The environment helped (or is that hindered?), too. We walked out feeling half frozen ourselves. The filmmakers tapped what John Carpenter had done with THE THING: isolation and weather became the second monster. The characters knew how to handle the cold as occupants of Barrow, but knowing an environment doesn’t take away its teeth. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

The characters, both new and from the original story, were well done. The two tough married cops from the graphic novel went from an archetype to really being flawed humans that you could care about. You felt their fear and compassion whereas in the comic you didn’t feel a whole helluva lot since you knew they were the “heroes.” (I’d say more, but I like to keep it spoiler free.) Some of the bit characters could’ve gone the way of the dodo, but you need more than just a few talking heads to move a story along and add layers of tension/danger.

All in all it was one of the better horror flicks I’ve seen at the theater in quite some time. I look forward to picking it up on DVD once it’s released. Give it a peep if you haven’t already.

Random ink

Slow weekend, so I thought I'd do a quick ink job just to update this tired old thing. Did this one all with markers. For some reason I find markers a cop out, but I've got some much more control and steadiness with 'em that I can't complain too much. Erasing is the real issue I have with markers as the ink almost always pulls off and you've got to go back and darken it up. That's all I got for now. Mafus and I will be hitting "30 Days of Night" in a couple hours and I'll blab about that later.

Finally a new post

Polished off the contest piece this evening. Nothing to write home about, but good enough to post about. I was a little too uptight about inking at the beginning, but loosened up and had some fun with it at the end. Not the greatest, but excellent exercise and practice. Need to keep the mojo going and keep producing. I've passed it along to Mafus for some more of his brilliant coloring and I'll post the results when he shoots 'em back at me. Until then...

Anybody else see this?

Anybody else throw up in their mouth? Did the Silver Surfer nail Captain America, who then spawned this bastard? Seriously? Who thought remaking Cap's classic uniform was a good idea? Oh wait, that's right. The same knuckleheads who came up with Spider-Man's armor. Yeah, that went over like an adamantium balloon and is still going strong to this day...hold up, no, that went the way of the dodo during Civil War. Guess that means we'll be treated to another mind-boggling event to undo this damage next summer. Joy.

Contest Piece - Pencil Sketch

I'll elaborate a little more tomorrow, but just felt like scanning and posting the tighter pencil sketch of my next piece for the Velocity contest. The recent JLA/HITMAN series obviously had a big hand in this one. Not that I wouldn't've enjoyed drawing Abomination, it's just that this one's a little closer to me heart. Well, I've blown the drawing up and printed it out, so's I can lightbox it tonight on the dope ass drawing table Mafus hooked me up with. Hopefully Half Life 2: Orange Box won't keep me from getting final pencils on a piece of bristol tonight and I'll try to ink it Thursday or Friday since we've got a hectic weekend coming up with a wedding to attend and pumpkin carving with Lilah.

Watched BLACK SHEEP (not the Farley one, the killer sheep one) while working on the drawing tonight. An excellent film. Just the right amount of humour and horror. Highly recommend it, but again, I'll elaborate more tomorrow. Onto elaboration...I did have some high hopes for this flick as the trailers I'd seen gave it a nice SHAUN OF THE DEAD kind of feel and I wasn't let down. While the main antagonist was a bit of a prat he played the character well and convincingly. The love interest was darn near perfect in her role as well. A little goofy, vegan, tree-hugger, but with the right amount of sass. My favorite though was the farmhand. He was the embodiment of Ozzy from BAD TASTE ("The old magic's still there.") and stole the show whenever he was onscreen. The gore wasn't too over the top ala DEAD ALIVE (though there is a case of pecker eating) and if you ever wanted to see a Sheep-Man shear himself this is your movie.

Final Beach Weekend of '08

Luckily, it was a gorgeous weekend for the beach. Low 80s and the water was chilly, but brisk, and I was able to finally take my first dunk of the year. (I'd've been depressed if a year went by without soaking meself in the Atlantic.) We didn't get down until Saturday, but we had the extra day off courtesy of Mr. Columbus. The beach was stormed Sunday as the weather was a bit sporadic Saturday afternoon — rain, sun, drizzle, sun — so Angie went shopping while I hung with the Princess. Sunday was perfect and we scored rockstar parking at the beach access. Going out of season is a boon ''cuz you're not dealing with all the tourons and the beaches are fairly deserted. There were maybe 5-6 families Sunday and even less than that on Monday. Lilah's good for about an hour a trip, but she seems to enjoy it, though the concept of sand still seems to confuse her at times. (She's loathe to leave the blanket still. Next season she'll be tearing arse all over the beach I'm sure.) We soaked her toes in the surf and she pointed at everybody who walked by — even clapped for her Momma out in the water. Just damn nice to get away for the weekend and absorb as much salt air and seafood as possible. Even worked out a new sketch for the Velocity contest, which I hope to flesh out tonight and tomorrow.

Nice to have you back, Tommy.

Sorry to see you go so soon. Two issues of JLA/HITMAN wasn't nearly enough for me. All it did was whet my appetite for more Monaghan. Laughing out loud in bed last night I knew I'd be slightly heartbroken at the end and I was. When HITMAN was on the shelves life was much different for me. Not better, just different. It was the time of the PREACHER and HITMAN and when both books fell on the same day it was a joyous occasion. I'd pick them up on my lunch hour, wanting desperately to read them then and there, but holding off until I could get back home. There I'd crack open a Guinness, drain it, and then crack another for reading. For these two books I'd forsake my usual law of reading my comics in alphabetical order (though I'd still read HITMAN first) and I'm loathe to break with tradition, but this was different. These stories were more important than my tradition. These were the stories that kept me going in the tough times of my fledgling adulthood and I miss them because there arent' any other stories that feel the same today. There are stories I enjoy nowadays, but none speak to me on the level that Jesse and Tommy did. Finishing the last issue of JLA/HITMAN made me realize that. Thanks, Garth and John.

Okay, enough belly-aching. Tonight I'm gonna tear apart the studio to see if I can find the HITMAN sample pages I did many moons ago. As I recall I was quite proud of them as I was flexing more creative muscle at the time where my cinematic layouts were developing beyond my regular static ones. Plus, I just loved drawing the characters—especially Six-Pack. If I don't have them here I'm hoping my 'rents do and can send 'em my way. If not, I'll do some digging when we head back in February or a visit. Until then I'll be rereading some HITMAN. Expect a Tommy sketch shortly.

Good ol' Emil

Nothing to write home about, but it seems like months since I last drew anything and the rust was quite abundant on ye olde pencil. Velocity has another contest coming up focusing on the bad guys of comics and one of my faves has always been Abomination, so he made the cut. Another gamma irradiated man-turned-monster, who could never quite get the best of the Hulk, though he's done his best to make Banner's life miserable. Don't know why he struck a chord with me, probably 'cuz he looks fun to draw. Of course I found that out to be a bit of a chore tonight. Was going to start with a full body sketch, but couldn't shake it out, so I opted for a generic head sketch to try to get the flavor of the character. Still got a long way to go (not too pleased with the eyes), but it was fun and I'm looking forward to strengthen my line as the sketches progress. The 'rents hit town tomorrow again making this probably the last post of the week. It's late and I be teh tired. Out.