Here are a few more things I did last year while developing the comic pitch. The inking on this was inspired by John Buscema. done with a round brush in phothshop with some size pressure sensitivity. This was one of my first attempts to get more into painting as opposed to line and colour. The book ended up being planned as painted backgrounds with line art for the characters, but I prefer to concept with a looser process.

So, as I have been typing about here for the last year or two; I have been working on a comic project all of my own. Writing a fantasy story, as has been my want since I first started to read...even before I started to draw in fact. I spent some of last year concepting out everything I wanted to put in, and the style I wanted to use. But mostly, I was engrossed in learning how to translate story ideas into finished pages. The proposed project is a series of self contained books. I wrote quite a few drafts of stories that weren't quite right for the first book, but in the end (with the help my my editor David Chauvel) I found something that worked. It is currently in the contract wrangling phase at a French publisher. So fingers crossed. Here are some of the pitch materials:

I re-drew this guy out of curiosity, to see how much my rendering has improved. The original is still one of my favourite designs. A rough painting of This sketch which was done many many years ago. Focusing on painting without line. Similar to the Blue Petal image posted below, this is a style test using line and colour with a painted background. 100% photoshop.

Drawing linework in Photoshop is starting to grow on me I picked up a copy of John Buscema ‘A life in sketches’ and was musing on how fast this guy managed to be while keeping on-top of quality (especially when he inked his own stuff). His sketches are stunning. And watching the buildup of lines got me thinking that I need to do something similar in the digital realm. The problem for me drawing in Photoshop has always been that lines get lost when you zoom out. It’s hard to see what you are doing, Hard to get a nice line, and I would always end up with a constrained feeling. Like it’s not possible to see the whole image properly at once, as on a real bit of paper. Corel Painter is better at this, even when zoomed out you get a fairly decent line, it seems to average the stroke a bit better and smooth things out. but...I just find other aspects of the app to be too painful. But looking at the broad strokes Buscema sketched with to put his first rough layout down (I think he would do his ‘thumbnails’ at full size, just straight on the board) I figured I could probably ‘sketch’ with something much larger and looser in Photoshop, and then zoom up for the final lines...filling in the details as I go...as you should when inking your own work really. (ok so maybe this is pretty obvious...but for some reason I would always try to draw like I do on paper...with a thin line for sketching) So I gave this a go, and it actually seems to be working so far. The lines in the above image are all digital, and I think they are probably as good as my pencil stuff. Plus it feels pretty good on the line by line fun-factor basis. I did this one a few weeks ago, and now I am running into some issues with how to do larger more complex images in this style (lines with painted background) but that has more to do with the painting than the lines. So all good. I have also been keeping a journal of screenshots each day which I will start posting now and then. (In lieu of actual tutorials :x)

This is another sketch done all in Photoshop. I actually have some more finished things in the works that are all digital too. I seem to be considering dropping the pencils again. It happens every year or so :) Who knows... maybe this time it will stick! In other news, I decided a few weeks ago to upgrade the Wordpress install I use for this blog. Or rather, I decided to downgrade it... After re-learning html, CSS, and PHP every 6 months for the last few years in the pursuit of keeping ‘up-to-date’ I thought it might be a good idea to stick with the most basic default template, and the least amount of plug-ins possible. Cutting down on life clutter, etc. Of course 5 minutes in and I am struggling with some ridiculously simple task that takes 5 hours to resolve. But such is the price of freedom. I am definitely not a web developer, and barely a web designer. But... I have always had aspirations on being able to design on a theoretical level. The only official art schooling I ever took was in graphic design, and despite not really getting as much as I could out of the course, I did come away with a lot of theory that related not just to page layout and logo design, but to all art in general. It is strange then to realise how badly my site has been (and is still) designed, just from an information flow point of view. I realised I was organising for ease of use. But more for my ease than others. People often ask where the art is. And I’m starting to realise my cool idea of having all my Dailyscrible Sketchblog entries in one easy location hides a good portion of my best work from people who had no idea what the Dailyscribble was. as does organising things based on time (new art etc...) great for me. Useless for anyone else. So...more re-org required. I haven’t really gotten there yet, still trying to figure out what the best way to shuffle things into categories is. I have made a small attempt to bring the more important items to the foreground via link icons on the sidebar. The typography and general design of which any of my designer friends would no doubt shield their eyes from. But I am learning. :) As always

I have been sketching digitally of late. haven't had a chance to get my full on drawing setup going after moving around between houses so it's all I have. This is just a warm up in photoshop after not drawing for a few weeks (writing scripts and getting wisdom teeth removed instead). Trying to get my eye used to the laptop screen still. I was checking out the image in my last post (the dancing one) on a proper lcd screen and it looked like rubbish :)

An actual thumbnail sized thumbnail. Scanned and painted a bit. I have this vague but nagging interest in doing some poster sized prints. Last year I bought an Epson 3800 (A2 photo printer) and have been trying to find an excuse to print something large. Most of my work to date is just too small in resolution to warrant it. This is a tentative idea along those lines. One of many.

I haven't really had anything fancy to post of late. Been focusing on writing my comic script and planning things out. Plus enjoying a break in my life that will probably not come around again for a while :> Instead I have started scribbling in pocket size sketchbooks wherever I go. Something I always strayed away from. Now I find it hard to go somewhere without one. Hopefully the feeling adheres when I start drawing full-time again. These are nothing special, just some character ideas for my book and other hand occupying bits and pieces.

Another design for my new book.