It’s almost the new year and I look back on 2021 with thoughts. It started out with promise, but I think it went downhill closer to the end. I can’t help but say I felt directionless and the stuff I’ve been doing wasn’t as amazing as I’d like for it to be.
Category Archives: Work in Progress
Let’s Make A Comic Part 2: References
I continue from Part 1 of my Thumbnail Art Section
In this section, I’ll be demonstrating gathering references for creating my comic story, Incident at the Game Store! If you’re up to having a signed physical book for yourself, you can stop by my Etsy store and grab a copy!
Since the story takes place in GameStop or a legally distinct version of it, I gathered references of the store chain.
Here’s some research how I want the Fedorable Man (That’s my name for him) to look. It’s a funny thing to design a stereotypical “Neckbeard” nerd character. There are many ways to tackle it, and there’s no one way to make any character.
I grabbed a few refs of fat people and how fat works. I got some refs of baby hands, as they seem the fattest of the hands.
When I think about the horror he turns into, I imagine a fat, bloated nightmare. Examples like The Boomer zombie enemy from Left 4 Dead or Nurgle the Plague God from Warhammer come to mind.
Reference hunting gives me an excuse to find anatomy references (These are the safe for work refs I’ll show you ;P). Don’t spend too much time, you only need the references that are relevant to your project. It helps to keep a large folder of past references to save from internet searching.
There’s minor fighting actions, so looked for punching and choking references. This is the best time to restudy drawing hands and fists.
Some refs for the crazy fluid attack on page five! It was inspired by this hilarious Rocket Jump video called The Milkman! I remembered the part where he punishes the criminal by spraying milk out of his mouth like a firehouse, drowning him.
Finally, when I can’t find a specific picture to use as a reference, I take my own pictures as references! Sure, I look like a dope, but this is what happens when you make your own references. Never feel bad about using your own body as reference for a pose.
I made sketches of the characters to keep them consistent in the pages. I don’t think I made any new sketches of the Girlfriend, which sucks! It’s not perfect, and I should’ve made more refined art to save the hassle.
I gather more references as I work on the comic pages, Now it’s time to start drawing the comic pages!
Back To Blackmask!
Autumn Draws
I’m making the finishing touches on my freelancing work. Plus, my Twitch streaming is returning while Blackmask development is moving along. I’m also preparing for next year’s convention season. All this and more below!
Altered Book Plans
I have bad news and good news about working on my self-published comics.
Some bad news is that I changed my mind about making The Pizza Man a book. Good news is: I’m going to put The Pizza Man, Shirley’s Day and Incident at the Game Store, in one bigger book!
I made several proofs, and I was just about to go forward on buying prints, but I realized that instead of sitting on many floppy comics that don’t sell that much, I’d make a big trade paperback containing not just my comics work so far, but behind the scenes stuff like my original pencil art and inks! I can even include other illustrations and sketches in the book to show off more of my artwork!
Continue readingMaking Changes
I’ve recently had an interview with Will Humphrey on his podcast Will Vs. You Talk Too Much! It’s a great time, and nice to touch back with my old friend from college!
You can listen here!
I’ve been making changes to my website when I have the time. Been video editing, drawing, and some other things in life.
Continue readingMaking of the Furs of Fury Illustration
I want to share my process making illustration art for the Indie Real Time Strategy game, Furs of Fury. Working on this illustration pushed my skills to it’s furthest because this game needed this treatment! I initially completed the art in December, but I finally got the time to make a process post and video of this illustration.
The programs I use to create most of my art these days is Clip Studio Paint. Most of the sketching and painting is done in it. I worked on this illustration on and off for roughly 5 months in 20202 over several sessions of Art Streams, weekdays, weeknights and weekends. With this time-lapse, I managed to edit it down to over 20 minutes.
Art Doings
Here’s a new check-in blog post today! Things are mostly the same: drawing things for clients and dabbling in my video game, Blackmask with my pixel art streams.
I’m struggling with my direction to take the game assets without a straightforward gameplay loop that’s not full of wish fulfillment and feature creep. So, I’m stepping back from working on pixel art until I have a face to face meetup with my programmer and learn some more Unity.
Continue readingPrinting Pizza Man
I’m pushing hard on getting The Pizza Man, the comic I completed for Journey June last year, ready to print! At the time of this printing and posting, I’ve sent out an order for a print proof! Once I smooth out any more printing and color kinks, the physical book will be ready to sell on my Etsy store by Mid-Fall!
Bumbling and Scrambling
Life’s been unpredictable for the past few weeks with doing extra hours at my day job, getting work done on Flawless Extraordinary Super Heroes, and Adam’s doing his own freelance stuff. I even took a short break away from art and the internet to reground myself and organize.
At the moment, I’m stuck on some things with Blackmask. I’m learning more workflows and thinking of a direction for making the background tile assets.
Right now, I’m learning new tips from pixel artists like MortMort, CupOhJoe and LumpyTouch when I can. I’ve also been trying out converting my art into pixels from 2D Will Never Die, It’s promising, but I’m not as happy with the current results.
My Twitch streaming schedule has also started to slip. Sometimes, I have a hard time getting into a headspace to entertain and draw for streams after work. I did one game stream to shake up my rut, but my machine isn’t good enough to play often. It might be a productive way to relax, but I don’t want to make my Twitch about gaming considering people followed me for my art.
Besides this, I’m staying a float, sporadically posting on my Twitter and Instagram. Most of my sketches I post there are environment concept sketches for Blackmask.
Sketching has taken a bit of a back seat more toward thumbnailing and writing game ideas down during my bus driving.
Despite having not much going on, I keep feeling a pressure on myself to do better than I currently am. I never feel confident that these sketches are interesting enough to post on my socials because they aren’t characters. I have a bad enough time thinking about social media as it is!