Sorry, guys. My scanner once again is getting in the way of me uploading. Sketches are here & done, but I’ve got no way of getting them up. I’ve got my old, old one which I may once again try, but last time I tried hooking that one up, I couldn’t find the drivers on cd or online.
Not that it really makes up for anything, but I threw the first half of January’s into one image that I will eventually probably chuck up onto my DA or something. Nothing new as this was all stuff already scanned & completed. Afraid it’s all I can offer at the moment. Click to biggify.
Sorry again. If I can’t get my old scanner to work, I guess I’ll be in the market for a new one then.
Ugh. This sucks.
And as I post this, I am FINALLY caught back up again (at least for the next half hour). Whatta week! Sorry again if anyone was checking day after day expecting the sketches. I probably am the only one stressing out about this. I just don’t want to get complacent about this.
More work from that giant robot storyline I have brewing. Biggest obstacle I have at the moment when it comes to starting this thing is having a mech design I like. I have a tendency to overcomplicate futuristic technical stuff I design. While I love drawing detail, I don’t want too much for this. At the same time, I want something a little stand-out & iconic for this story. This one started out ok with the head, but it started drifting too far into Evangelion territory with the torso & the kind of ‘color’ I was thinking of for the face. I mean I think it works in terms of a design, but not quite for what I want to do with this story. So the head design might be close, but disregard the rest.
Now let me bask in my few remaining moments of being up-to-date once again. Ahhh.
Just as I was catching up last night, my scanner decided to pull a fast one & start giving me shit. I didn’t get it to work proper & not just make the motor noise or scan & then freeze until about fifteen minutes ago. So here you are. As I keep threatening to do more backgrounds, in hopes of avoiding Tokyo style sprawl for the umpteenth billion time, I dug out some old travel guides. Problem was, they ended up mostly being Tokyo or Japan. I did have a couple of European ones though. One was this kind of silly souvenir photo book I got from I think my mother’s trip to a travel conference in Amsterdam from like ten years ago. Every picture in this thing looks pretty much exactly the same. Similar looking Narrow building/Bridge across a Canal/Dutch person on a bike. But there was one weird photo in there of this weird corner cafe. The building couldn’t be more than like 15 feet across. And the whole block looked like it extended into the background like that. I figured it was interesting so decided to base a sketch on that. I took the basic shape, did it light in all gesture lines but did the rest later without the reference. In retrospect, I should have fleshed out the people at the cafe & the tree branches on the left better while I had the reference. Yeah, those were supposed to be tree branches.
Ok. Almost caught up…
Still playing catch up. Sorry to barrage with all these updates at once, as another’s going to follow shortly after this (once I can get my scanner to cooperate! goddamn scanner). Here’s a blast from the past. This is from an old concept I had brewing a few years back. It was basically about a garage band from NJ that stumbled onto a world tour & the trail of a lost notebook with special songs written in it, much like the sutras of the Chinese epic Journey to the West. Only instead of demons, spiderwomen, & ox-kings, this band fought luchadors, ninjas, & nazis along the way. That, in turn made it a little too similar to another comic about a rock band that only I found out about after outlining five GN’s worth of material & scripting half the first. Yeah. So ultimately, this is something I’d love to come back to, but I know there’d be a huge contingent of people who’d pick it up, read it, & think I was just stealing that other comic’s gig. Really, all the things I’m intentionally trying to steal come from the same Chinese epic Toriyama’s Dragonball came from.
From left to right, you have the drummer, the guitarist, & the bass player. Vocal duties got split between the latter two. I have my idea of what they’d sound like, but one of the few upsides of working with a mute medium is that we can each have our own idea of what they sound like & no one’s would necessarily be wrong. Not pictured is the enemy they defeat that eventually joined them as their tour van driver, & their manager who seems to have some pretty high level connections in order to make seemingly impossible things happen. What stinks though too is I had other scenarios for these characters beyond even that initial world tour story. Like time travel stories. Proper time travel stories with the ontological paradoxes ironed out & making perfect sense with allusions to it throughout it all.
Ugh.
I’d still love to do it. And occasionally, I get these kind of urges to just say fuck it. I mean it’s not that I intentionally pulled anything from that other rock band comic. It was original to me when I thought it up. We both just came to the same conclusions. But at the same time though, to me, there’s still something cheap about putting out something people have already seen before. That’s a job for the Big Two, not me.
I kid.
I don’t want to get into the habit of making excuses. I’ve been doing the sketches, but because of multiple factors, haven’t been able to upload them until now. Sorry if anyone else was checking back regularly or expecting a sketch. Right now, here are both Tuesday’s & Wednesday’s respectively. Thursday’s & Today’s will follow suit soon after, as I’m still in the scanning process for them, but I’d like to get these two up while I can.
These two are both again for my giant robot story. One is a character you’ve seen before that I’m really just trying to get used to drawing, & the other is one I don’t think I’ve really been able to put down on paper yet. This is pretty close, but still not there yet. Basically, she’s human, but a bit different. And from a planet with an incredibly harsh climate.
This week, I was devoting a lot of idle thought to the way I want this particular story to play out. A lot of what I originally had was just sort of really out there thoughts about what should happen & then specific scenes, but nothing cohesive. Well much earlier this morning, shortly after waking up, I had a random idea that led to me filling in those gaps in a proper, meaningful way. It means that this other girl plays a bigger role in the story, having her own alterior motives & acting more proactively as a catalyst rather than the kind of expository mouthpiece of the weird alien culture. And this probably means nothing to everyone other than myself, but once I get some serious work done on this, it’ll all come together for you.
In the mean time, again, really sorry for the hold up on these. I don’t want to fall into the habit of mass uploading as I know how I get with things like this. It’s all slippery slopes until things don’t get done. Once I get caught up, I’ll go back to my regular schedule.
Another day away from my scanner. I’m still trying to draw environments, but can’t scan anything right now. I’ve gotta resort to something I had floating around on my hard drive for this one. It’s a work in progress establishing shot from a very old Void comic I started for my character Slaughterface that was tucked away in a backup of a backup file I had on here. For his own storyline & not from a proper battle. Don’t think it ever got shown though, so here you are. It’s Slaughterface’s camper parked in the abandonded parking lot of like a dirt mall. In this old comic, I was toying with the idea of making the pages gif files with limited looping animations. Like those jumbotrons in the background were going to scroll through over & over on the page.
Speaking of Void, the Speed Death Tourney’s started up over there. Creators submit fresh, brand-y new characters battle in week long comic battles to the death. This time around, they’re going from 48 to 1 lone survivor & champion. Go check it out.
And thanks very much to Steven Sanders! Dude’s awesome!
Wish I could have finished off my first month of daily sketches with a bigger bang, but I have to go away a bit later on & I don’t know if I’d get a chance to scan anything later. And since after all this talk of environments, someone just said who cares what they look like, post one; I did. Trying to think along the lines of that Steampunk Mariner story, I was going for a coastal sort of whaling town, but only got about the inland part done before having to go. I started losing interest & wasn’t quite feeling the architecture I was giving it. It’s neither really seafront or steampunk at all, lighthouse withstanding. I feel really bleh about the whole thing really. I dunno.
But for now, it’s a sketch. And that’s one month down. Sigh. Today’s aside, hope you’re enjoying what you’re seeing here. Thanks to those who come by every now & again. Thanks very much to all the regulars. And extra special thanks to all those, both online & off, with the reactions & feedback & support & everything. It means a lot. This has so far been pretty fun, although I probably stress myself out a little too much over it at times. The work would probably be better if I wasn’t so strict with it, but the work probably wouldn’t be happening if I was being lax. So hey, to middle ground!
Kept drawining environments & locales & things of that nature today. I have a few back burned to develop for later sketches but none that I started were really keeping my interest. In lieu of them, I went back to that Snow Crash well again for today’s sketch. Here’s Juanita Marquez as she was first introduced in the Black Sun. I used a halftone to pixelize it. While I really like the idea of the xerox machine flat black & white avatars coming from shitty quality public machines, I put a bit of detail into the sketch & didn’t want to totally flatten it. Well ok. Here, if you’d prefer.
I know there’s a brief description of her but I had a hard time finding it again, so I kinda just winged it on the hair & clothes. I just kind of remember her being very forthright & no-bullshit, & so smart it unintentionally comes off as cold & calculating sometimes. That’s what I was really what I was aiming for with this. In her hand’s the hypercard with the L. Bob Rife Library Data.
Don’t quite know if this will mark a return to doing the Snow Crash sketches for the next few days or not, but check back regardless, wouldja?
On a whim, Witzke & I decided to take an hour & a half drive to Montclair, NJ. First let me say that everyone should have a favorite astrophysicist. Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson just happens to be mine. This evening, we saw him interviewed by Stephen Colbert for free & it was quite rad.
Just before leaving for this thing tonight, I did this little sketch (scanned it rather quick before too). After the interview & a quick Q & A session with the audience, Dr. Tyson held a book signing. While he signed my copy of Death By Black Hole, I told him had I heard him speak at a much younger age, I’d probably be a scientist now; but I ended up doing comics instead. He loudly insisted “No! We need comics too! They’re important!” Then I offered him this sketch as a token of appreciation for what he does & he freaked out. So now, Neil deGrasse Tyson has a sketch I did of him as a Galactus of sorts (thus the mini Silver Surfer), with a bite taken out of Pluto. He asked if he could post it on his facebook. And I told him it’d be an honor. The dude’s badass. And my favorite astrophysicist. He should be yours too.
One of those days where I didn’t have a lot of time to draw & when I did put pencil to paper, nothing all that great happened. I did work a little last night on a sketch I had started a while ago. Just excerpting a bit of it for now & I’ll show it again once it’s all finished. If you’re unfamiliar, this is Huggie Beefoven, lead vox of the Real Steal from Sheldon Vella’s Supertron comic on Zuda. Master of Hair Metal & also a Doctor of sorts, Huggie’s pretty badass. Go read it.
Like I said, this is just an excerpt as I have started the rest of the band on the same page, but they’re really rough. While mostly robotic, the hair & veins were a little too lightly penciled to get pick up on his right (our left) forearm. Sheldon’s work is intense & insane. I mean shit, the dude’s made a comic about makin’ eggs way more intense & fun than it has any freakin’ right to be. And after meeting him this past summer, the guy’s just as nice (& batshit) as his work. You seriously oughta check his stuff out if you haven’t already.
I’ve been trying to work on more environments but I’m coming to realize that if it’s not a cityscape, it ends up feeling boring to me. I dunno. It’s probably just a stupid thing I gotta get over, but I have more than a few started. Hopefully with a bit more work, I’ll have some worth showing soon.
And this would have been up way earlier had Photoshop decided to be a buddy. Scanner’s been running ok (knock on wood), but for whatever reason, photoshop’s been killing my machine the past few days. Seriously. 300dpi or not, it shouldn’t take half an hour to simply ‘rotate canvas.’ And I checked for malware; nothing. I seriously gotta get my desktop comp fixed.
Yes. Bearstranaut.
From my sketchbook (thus the weird shadow on the left hand side I couldn’t get rid of) while at a local bar’s trivia night with friends. This is largely a tribute to Brad Neely’s stuff, which I watch fairly often, but a lot of earlier this evening. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of Bearstranauts, please watch the third segment of this (& check out more while you’re there if you haven’t already). While in my opinion not nearly as great as the Professor Brothers series of shorts he does, but still pretty great. Yes, that is the head of a dead scientist in the helmet. I don’t quite know how the bite would be taken out of the jaw, but strangely, for me, it works. Totally going for one of those astronaut press shots with this & I think that part turned out nice. Sorry it’s so halfassed though as I was kind of out & about. More soon.
During the 70’s & 80’s, Japan started putting out a lot of movies featuring delinquent girl bike gangs & torturous yakuza chicks. The chick in this sketch is kind of a nod to those. Pills in one hand, bloodied bat in the other. The kanji on the arm band is some of the only kanji I remember from my high school bullshit nerd otaku days. I was gonna draw a bike, but I ran out of time. One of those fancy Japanese custom ones a la Burst City. Like the hair & the torso; but everything else in this one didn’t quite work for me. Oh well. There’s always tomorrow.
Taking that break from Snow Crash characters for a bit. While I did draw more than just characters today (I was planning on doing another city shot but it was getting too complicated & saved it to finish on a later date), this concept ended up being the best simple thing I did today. It’s more from the same story as shown here. Don’t know quite how I want to pull this thing off, but I’m kind of doing it as a challenge in a way. First, I tried a more expressive, shonen manga-y style with it, as I kind of think that’s what this story would ultimately be. I mean I’m attempting to make this thing “All-Ages” but in the same sense as shonen manga/anime are. Kids would be safe watching it, but if there’s fighting, consequences are going to get shown.
Still kind of toying with this steampunk-y New England Whaler vibe for it too. Considering giving them some sort of hovercraft or airship instead of just a traditional wind powered boat; but still keep it very maritime & everything.
I’ll get back to the Snow Crash stuff shortly. It was just that I’d cover a part of the book & then have a hard time going back & trying to find the description or like I’d sketch & then find more bits that weren’t mentioned earlier & get frustrated. So I need a breather from that, but I’m not done with that yet. I want to draw bits from it. Possibly in comic form, but only after I kind of loosen the load of other things I need to get done first.
Twofer post, to make up for this weekend. These were done Saturday & Sunday respectively. Saturday night, after sketching the Uncle Enzo sketch, I ended up getting really tired really quickly (I’ve been really off my sleep schedule as of late), & instead of driving the hour back to my place, I just ended up crashing at Sean’s (Thanks again). Sunday morning, I came home, posted that thing making excuses & then had to turn around to go to something some other friends were doing, where I did most of the Vitaly Chernobyl sketch. I came home from there with ample opportunity to post, but my scanner started acting up much like it did the other day. So basically, I said fuck it, & played a little Tekken & watched some movies before falling asleep.
Now, after a fresh restart, I was able to get both images scanned, so here they are. Didn’t really use the book much to help get descriptions for these guys, so I mean it’s pretty much just what I interpreted from memory. When discussing what Uncle Enzo should look like with Sean, in my mind’s eye I kinda saw Harvey Keitel in Mean Streets, only had DeNiro not been such a fuck up, you know? And while I didn’t quite capture that in the face, it’s pretty close to what I was thinking overall. In fairness though, while cool, he is one of the squarest characters in the book. I mean you got samurai & skaters & rap stars. Overall, he’s just sorta this generic mafioso, you know?
When it came to Vitaly Chernobyl, for some reason I couldn’t help but think of the Eugene Hutz analog in Wristcutters, before he accidentally offed himself. I gave him some scruffy facial hair like that too, but it didn’t come out in the scan. I guess it’s maybe a little more old school punk than what the book really was going for, but I like how the look turned out (not so much the legs & goofy-ass iori pants). The geiger counter & respirator kind of bring it on home for me. The shirt contains two of the four words I know in Russian & it’s supposed to read ‘No Tomorrow’ while he’s shouting the cyrillic for the Ukrainian word for ‘Reverb.’ At least according to google. Why he’d be actually shouting the word? I dunno, irony.
So when I started this, I promised myself I wasn’t going to get too stressed about posting before midnight each day. And then I did. So I’m sorry if anyone else’s disappointed by everything getting posted late. But I did draw! Chances are, you don’t give a shit & I’m making a bigger deal out of it than is needed. Still, I’m a little pissed at myself.
Also, while I’m really digging doing these Snow Crash sketches, I’m falling into this rut of just character sketches again. So I might take a break & then come back to this after a bit. We’ll see. I haven’t sketched anything yet for today.
Another Snow Crash character. And while he’s only briefly mentioned, he’s gotta be one of the more interesting characters: Sushi K. I guess in 1992, a Japanese Rap act seemed much more of a novel idea than it does now. I mean there’s a bunch out there. Only a handful seem ok (or amazing in the case of DJ Krush, although he’s not an MC), but that doesn’t mean they’re not out there. And with all the otaku subculture bullshit structure in place, I’m sure they’d stand a much better chance of cracking the market than in the book too. Still, Sushi K’s pretty fun. With “hair bigger than a galaxy”, instead of guns & booty, this dude’s rhymes are more about his viability in (what’s left of) the American marketplace. And to turn a phrase, said rhymes are delightfully whack, & serve as a soundtrack to Hiro checking out a gutted corpse that helps to set the main plot in motion.
If there’s a description of what he’s wearing, I either tuned out or missed it entirely. Only thing that seemed to be clearly mentioned is his lightshow afro. With Sean’s suggestion, I opted to go with two items that seemingly contrast the facets of hip hop in the early 90’s (when this book was written). Therefore, he’s got the tracksuit & the bulletproof vest. I’m sure with all the high tech polymers & alloys mentioned in the book, there’d be a much more imaginative, neater vest to be worn, but at the same time I kinda wanted it to seem easily identifiable. And I imagine the track suit to be velour. Sadly, I do have to say though, that when I first read through the book, my first thought of what Sushi K might actually look like was MC Paul Barman in really racist Breakfast at Tiffany’s style makeup.
And this is with the afro’s light show off by the way. I was thinking about making it a gif, but it’s a bit too late right now.
Also, thanks to Sean (despite refering to yesterday’s sketch as being “SO Raven.” Blowhole), & others on Twitter like Stephen Sanders, Jamil Thomas, & Tim Callahan for all the kind words & plugs & what-have-you. While I knew there was a fairly ok-sized audience of Snow Crash fans out there, I didn’t imagine it was as big as it was. People generally seem to be digging what they’re seeing & I’m really glad! If you’ve come here via that, thanks for checking this stuff out! Hope you check back often. There will be more tomorrow.
Ok… sorry.
Going up a bit late this evening. After feeling sorta bleh all day & working like a dog, I came home, took a nap, woke up, felt remarkably better actually, & was invited over a nearby friend’s to watch Maximum Overdrive. Because it’s freakin’ Maximum Overdrive. I started the sketch while there, though the mechanism in my pencil broke (Like the plunger or whatever is all up inside the pen. Basically, if I press down too hard, the lead pushes right back up into the pencil & it’s goddamn irritating for a heavyhanded jerk like me). Anyway, I got home with about fifteen minutes before midnight. I broke out my spare & busted my ass to get this finished & while rushed, I managed to do so. But then my scanner wouldn’t scan. Like… it’d start to. It’d seem like it’d want to, but then it didn’t go anywhere. I was pissed. I tried digging out my old scanner even to give that a go but I can’t find any of the drivers for it online. It was some old cheapo brand I got from Best Buy like eight & a half years ago, & I think the manufacturer went under. So instead, after wasting about twenty minutes looking for that shit, I said fuck it & went back to finish the sketch up some more. About a half hour ago I said hell, let’s give scanning one more shot. And sure enough, this time around? Worked fine… Fucker. So here is ‘today’s’: late, but here. Sorry if you checked early & missed on the update. Sorry to have to upload it as I did.
This here is Raven, still following the Snow Crash vibe. He’s an Aleut Biker with a nuclear warhead as his side car that’s rigged to blow the instant his brain flatlines. He’s weapons that keep him off radars; like harpoons & glass knives. The streaks on the legs of his jeans were supposed to be from him wiping away blood but I don’t know if it comes across clearly. I tried to get ‘Poor Impulse Control’ on his forehead but it was hard to keep the typeface at this size. The only other drawn version of Raven I could find on the internet didn’t have that. What the hell?
Another Snow Crash drawing. But since I got into that rut of drawing characters again, I decided to change things up & draw the cybernetic dog they refer to as a “Rat-Thing.” Also drew it in action. trying to capture the high speed in which these things apparently travel. After saving one after it gets mangled by a grenade, Y.T. makes a new friend. They show up later, used by a character named Ng. That part works a little better for me.
That’s all for now. Sorry. Busy week this week, couldn’t really spend a lot of time. I’ll have it to focus in the coming days.
Sorry to redraw a character pretty much two days later but this is Hiro’s Metaverse Avatar. I made a few alterations. Gave him kind of a disheveled fro instead of the chunky spikes. Tried to make it traditional, but at the same time, relaxed about it. If you’ve read the book, you’ll recall ‘big board’. Gave a nod to Sheldon Vella’s Supertron with the boxy word balloon.
To kind of hasten the process of sketching this, I got my hands on the audiobook. It’s one of those ones where it’s like a billion different characters & the guy reading it does all the voices. Normally I hate that, but the book’s got a bit of a cheese factor & it kind of fits. This dude reads Y.T. like a valley girl & Hiro like Phil Lamarr. Problem is the one scene in which Hiro fights the sarariman in the Black Sun. After slicing this dude up, Hiro totally hams up this Japanese guy’s racist subtext. In this version, a really dorky white guy reads it. And it’d be ok if it was just kind of quick & done with, but this honky totally gets all into it. It’s a little uncomfortable…
Will throw some colors on this at a later date but I got some place to be at the moment. Later.
Again from Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. As promised, it’s Y.T. She’s a teenaged skateboard courier who uses an electromagnet towrope to harpoon & skitch onto high speed freeway traffic in order to make her deliveries faster.
So since I decided to sketching things from Snow Crash, I looked to see if there was any other sort of concept art stuff floating around out there. Some of it’s real nice. Others, eh. With Y.T., some of them have body armor going on like Mass Effect or the Centurions even. Others give her like an early 80’s bubblegum crisis punk get up. There’s nothing wrong with either of those takes, but at the same time, they really don’t seem to fit the description the book gives. So I tried to stick kinda close. For instance, there’s a couple of occasions when they talk about the amount of barcodes & passports & things that she’s got fastened to her coverall in order to help get her into places. And yeah, it is supposed to be pseudofuturistic or whatever, but I always assumed coverall just meant coverall, not body armor. Sure it’s got the gel padding at the joints & airbags & whatnot, but nothing too complicated. Also, this girls spends a majority of her time either on or alongside major roadways. Roads get pretty grubby. So I tried to throw in some exhaust grime in there as well.
After spending a lot of time on the details, I was going to not color it for a moment there but ended up doing so anyway. I realize her real get up’s supposed to be orange & blue but I got a color scheme to maintain here. You get the idea.
Admittedly, today was a bit of a bad day. I was hoping to get a lot done but I wasn’t getting much luck out of what I was doing. Like all the conditions were right but nothing was clicking; basically, a lot of floundering. Whenever I finally get some free time to work on something & I sit down to do so, it’s a real kick in the nuts when you can’t produce anything substantial. That includes sketches. Seriously, when that happens? It’s what really depresses me the most.
So after a bit of moping, I went out for a bit & took a ride to clear my head. While out & about, I stopped at a bookstore & saw them trying to push one of my favorite books: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. It’s close to 20 years old at this point & thoroughly cyberpunk by way of comic books (Seriously, to me, it reads much more like a comic than typical prose. Probably on account of the pace & the energy at times). I had been toying with the idea of translating descriptions of characters & scenes from that into sketches. So I kind of took it as an omen & started to do so. As I go back through the book, expect sketches. Maybe not each day, but most likely on the days I get a chapter or two in. No biggie.
So here’s Hiro Protagonist. No. Seriously. That’s his name. Better yet, this is him as he is first introduced to us. As ‘The Deliverator’, Hiro’s way too into his job as a pizza delivery boy. In a way, he kind of needs to be as part of the stipulations with a late pizza is imminent death. But at the same time, if what we’re reading is a third person account of how he sees himself, he’s one cheesy motherfucker. And seriously. A leather kimono? He’s profoundly nerdy. But seeing as he’s a hacker, it works in a way to kind of solidify him for me, having known nerds a lot like that.
Anyway, since he’s gotta sling pizzas at rapid speed, I took what they said about the armor into account & tried to mix it a bit with like a Nascar or Indy driver’s flame retardant get-up while incorporating the Cosa Nostra Pizza Logo & which credit cards are accepted embroidered on him. Couple that with the swords he takes to intimidate people into not starting shit with him & voila. The thing in his other hand by the way is supposed to be a helmet but I was getting lazy at that point & just wanted to finish up. I like how this turned out but I think my favorite touch is the smart boxes hissing steam to regulate the humidity of each pizza. But anyway, I like the way this turned out, but I think I’m going to have more fun drawing Y.T. tomorrow.
