Pirate Captains and Black Flags

I really meant to be updating this blog more frequently than I have. Quick updates: Billie VS Season 3 will begin "airing" on March 10th (or thereabouts). I'm still working at the mobile game company, and I've been getting better at UI art/ implementation.

We've been watching Black Sails in lieu of other shows (Sleepy Hollow wont return till next season, I've given up on Agents of Shield, and American Horror Story has finally wrapped up). There was a brilliant moment in episode 3 where Captain Flint gives this look that speaks volumes. Just, one simple look. SO GOOD. I decided I HAD TO DRAW IT.

Step 1: Take a Screengrab of the episode.

Murder. Thats what I'm thinking. MURDER.

Step 2: Start Drawing! (Using bad shadow blocking).

"haha wut" indeed

Step 3: Draw on top!

Yes I do constantly write notes to myself as I draw

Step 4: Keep drawing!

This is what happens when you draw at 11:30 at night

Step 5: Dont stop no matter how wonky the drawing looks!

Its a good bit closer, but still OFF

Step 6: Yeah, that looks too wonky. Start over, the next day. On lined paper. In Pen. Completely from memory. 

I knew I had to draw the picture without the reference

Step 7: Trace during lunch!

(Get called out during lunch)

Things are still not quite right...

Step 8: Tweak like crazy until the drawing looks like you think it should! THEN ADD COLOR.

Definitely murder

Step 9: Be happy with the final result UNTIL you look at the original image. Wait - he had a cut on his nose? And his hair goes round all the way on the top of his head - and *not* flat? UGH, I'll re-draw this tomorrow :P

I do appreciate his eyebrows are more dramatic in my drawing, and his eyes a bit bigger (I like the cartoony style!) but all in all I'm quite happy with the way Captain Flint turned out. 

Cover Design - Process Work

From start to rough color blocking: took me 2 hours. Then I went in and started smoothing out the color and adding details, which took another... oh, 2 hours I'd guess. I stopped to wash my dinner plates, to open a window, and then to surf the web a bit. ... Its rather awful how much the internet sucks my time. That and tv shows. I have a choice to make. Either I can be productive and make stuff, or I can watch the next 6 episodes of Person of Interest (and catch up with the recent season). Its hard! I love PoI! Its addictive. And I'm in for a doozy, as the next 3 episodes are all tied to each other (cliff-hanger style) so I cant just decide to watch one episode and stop. :/

Finished at 10 pm

Making a decision or two...

... And managing not to stick to any. I was possessed (as one usually is) by an idea and began pursuing it in my nighttime hours. I'm thinking of doing a new series for Big World Network. Or something. Its been a sad dry spell for more than a couple of months - so writing anything at this point is good news. Upside: its not a comic, so I dont have to decide whether or not to stop working on TSU. Downside: I know how long my furious spur of inspiration lasts, and its very short. I know, inspiration is overrated. SERIOUSLY. But I've been staying up SUPER late trying to get all these scenes and thoughts out of my head before they get lost. Just to have a framework to go off of. Interestingly enough, I have a whole second season planned, but no first season... I'm going to have to work on that.

Anyway: I figure I'd be able to hack something out, framework wise, for the first season, and then resume writing for BWN. And include illustrations, as they seem to be working the most for me (instead of comics >.> poo poo).

I started drawing specific scenes from my night time endeavors - and discovered that the easiest way to take it from thumbnail to final product is to just trace it in photoshop and draw/color it in there. Which I'll have to do for the Not-God Loki scenes I doodled in January. And I'll have to start drawing scenes for the first season of this new idea. ... Oh, it needs a title, doesn't it? YEAH. 

One such scene. In fact, the only scene I've taken from all the little sketches I've doodled. I've got a lot more work to do on this one, but at least its started. And I really like the color scheme and character expression. Sadly, this is an illustration from the second season. I know - how can you have a second season without a first!? Easy: I'm the queen of getting ahead of myself and writing what I like to call "fanfictions of my own, unwritten stories." In fact, I think I may have more fanfictions of unwritten stories than the stories themselves. One of my friends claims that its technically cannon if I wrote it for myself, but I like to think of them as backstories (or future stories) that no one but me will ever read.

Season two, on the other hand, is cannon, I've just got to figure out how the character gets there. Where does she start? What does she do? What sort of character arc occurs? Who's the big bad - and what sort of themes does the storyline deal with? There's a lot of work ahead of me. But at least I have a clear vision of where I want to go. Its the getting there thats going to be interesting.

A Promise is ... (part 1)

Remember how, in the beginning of this month, I promised the rest of the new year sketches? Yeah? Well here they are! Apparently there were FIVE. 

A little sequence I did for a ... weird, not fan-comic that's been rattling around in my brain since I first drew the character. The panels are out of order, which is why there are numbers next to them. 

Some dot-eyed characters. Having fun and such. The woman at the bottom is Elanor. I think the style could easily be transfered on the other characters. Maybe instead of Crime Noir it could be more art deco? Hmm. Something to try. Also: the two characters at top are The Familiar and Gemon - and though I think The Familiar is perfect, Gemon isn't. He looks too boyish. And he's more the "tall, dark, hansom" type. Or, at least, thats what he likes to believe. Cause The Familiar is WAY taller than him.

I was having a darn hard time trying to get the character right. Yeah, I was trying to redraw my Not-Loki, but, as I didn't have my computer up, nor the original sketches, he wound up looking like Roderick the Dentist from my never-finished story "Blackguard." He really does. Though it might have something to do with the fact that I generally draw only 2 guy faces. "The Villain" aka pointy chin, and "The Hero" aka, square chin. Everyone else is just a variation of the two. 

Not-Quite-So-Productive

I was on the Cintiq all day today (like, no joke, from 9 when I got into the project room, till 5 when I left - factoring in the 2 hours off for lunch) and thought I'd been more productive... apparently not.

(I must confess, I did this on sunday...)

Yes! This drawing! I have returned to it because a) I'm a sucker for punishment, and b) I REFUSE TO GIVE UP. Whats different? Well, for starters, I cleaned up the lines. Stuck with a more neutral/ less punchy background color, and colored all of it in flats first! This time, this time I WILL SUCCEED. 

ACTUALLY A PLACEHOLDER IMAGE! MWAHA, MWAHAHA

So, dragons/ lizards. I dunno what it is, but I'm on this strange fantastical/ lizardy creatures bent and ITS FANTASTIC. (and apparently awfully punny.) Anyway: I spent most the morning drawing/ coloring a different drawing (on the same photoshop document) but am not showing it because PLANS. PLANS for children's book/ comic/ game of some sort maybe. And they're ligit plans too. So... yeah. I'm gunna have to be a bit more secretive with it till stuff happens. :( 

Totally unrelated note: did you know there's not "Little bunny foo foo" ipad/ app games? Like, of all the weird nursery rhymes that could so totally be gamified, why not "Little Bunny Foo Foo?" (I was totes singing the song on the weekend because I'm an adult. Riiiiiiight.)

A classmate of mine. Demanded (demanded I tell you! with promises of matting and framing and posting it all over the interwebs!) that I draw a pic of him. I'm not at all done... need to add shadows and stuff. 

And last but not least, a Venutian girl. Venetian? ... No... An alien from Venus. Like a Martian but not from Mars! Right. Pseudo Disney styled cause thats how I roll. I've been reading too much comics, methinks. I just felt like drawing a superhero story...

Aaaaand that was my not-quite-so-productive day. Stay tuned for more in the next week!

Female Doctor Who

So, my facebook friends are fairly aware of an ongoing conversation about who we'd like to see play Doctor Who next. We are in general agreement that Tom Hiddleston should be the 12th, and that Idris Ebla should be the 13th - but a friend suggested that it would be interesting to for there to be a female Doctor Who. As, according to him, nowhere in the cannon does it say he has to be a white male. He just *happens* to be that. Then, kismitly, I stumbled upon this article: Helen Mirren As Doctor Who?

And I got really excited, because I finally had an image of what a Female Doctor Who could look like. Older (as in, over 30), bad-ass, and, in Helen Mirren's case, hellava curvy.

... and then I decided I'd prefer Tilda Swinton as the female Doctor Who, for reasons I cannot explain. I think she'd make a ballin' doctor but its not quite the statement it could be if Helen Mirren were the Doctor. Cause Helen Mirren is CURVY. Tilda Swinton has that androgynous look that I think is FAN-FRICKIN-TASTIC but... if there were to be a woman doctor, shouldn't at least the FIRST one be all curves? I dunno, I really dont. I'm super conflicted.

Anyway, mini-ramble aside: I spent the next two days drawing sketches and looking up reference photos for what I think the Tilda-Swinton Doctor would look like.

Work in progress. I want to color it.

Oh, yeah, and you're not mis-reading anything - I've already started beating away at a basic plot structure for a "mini-series"/ Sir Arthur Canon Doyle Sherlock Holmes styled story involving this not-doctor-who and her not-companion; in which our not-doctor calls herself The Master (which, I am totally aware, is a villain in Doctor Who). Once I'm done with the posters (2, I think, this one, and then one of The Doctor looking right at us) I'll work on her companion.

Timeshare Unlimited

I suppose this would be better suited on my Timeshare Tumblr. And I might just put it there as well. But I felt like putting it up here. Its just a thumbnail sketch, really, of the TSU chapter One cover. But somehow - maybe because a friend of mine is launching her web-comic - somehow I feel motivated to get the HELL out of my own way and FINALLY draw this comic.

I found the script and the first couple of pages (prologue pages actually) roughed up. And as I read over the script (A re-write as it so happens) I discovered that I really liked it. Like, I keep saying I continuously return to TSU because I cant think of anything better to do and its true. I cant. But its also a kicking script. A bit silly, a bit weird, DEFINITELY on the slightly unbelievable side of SciFi - but all in all a BLAST. 

The only real problem I had with TSU was I didn't know what the characters looked like. In my mind - originally at least - the style was supposed to be an uber-realistic, crime noir american comic. But I dont draw like that. And when I do, it takes forever to do. Its not fun for me to draw like that. So I'm not too sure what style it'll be in, but I think I'm liking my thumbnail sketch, A LOT. 

Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is: I'm drawing Timeshare Unlimited. Its going to take a while. And probably a lot of kicking my own butt into place - but it will happen. I'm going to start with the prologue stuff - because I have it done. Then I'm going to have to rough the rest of chapter one. Thats going to take a while...