Another snippet....

Hit some logistical hurdles that are being sorted out, but here's another little bit of art to hold you over...

I've been neglecting the blog again, something that is too easy to do when busting ass.  Too many pots on the stove, all of them wanting to boil over all at once!

Here's a peek at the halfway point between pencils and inks:

Christmas is coming, check back in and see what I bring you.  Thanks for reading!

Cover process for Scott Sigler's Infected (part 2 of 4)

I usually do thumbnails followed by rough pencil layouts before moving on to finished pencils and inks. It's an extra step in the layout process, rough pencils, one I will eventually eliminate with experience.  But at the moment, it's an extra step of close examination of design meant to catch any errant problems that I missed in thumbnails(or, in this case, a pretty extensive reworking of the design)

So, without further ado, layouts!

This is the fun part of comics, at least for me.  This is where the design problems are solved and where heaps of life and energy exude from rough pencils and gesture sketches!  Alternate approaches are explored and the bulk of where your education in art comes into play.

I started out with a list of what I wanted included on the cover and roughed out some simple thumbnails, the  best of which you can see at the bottom of the scan.  I also included some notes on a color scheme, if you can call areas of "warm" and "cool" colors an actual color scheme.

I liked the original sort of major character, Perry Dawsey, looking over his shoulder from a low angle that was originally done in the pitch cover.  It gives a deceptive and dark look that really works for me, but in the original he was wearing a jacket.  Cool jackets are fun to draw, but they mask the physique underneath, so it's just Perry's gorilla arm on display in a form fitting T-shirt.  Light coming from his back, shadows almost masking part of his face instead of hair.  The angle isn't quite low enough, there is a bit of an eye confusing tangent where Perry's forearm meets Dew's left arm, minor corrections made in the finished pencils/inks(next post). Much improved!

From the thumbnail to the layout pencils, Margaret Montoya is still on the right, looking a bit concerned,  but now joined by a pensive Amos, both in their BSL4 hazmat suits.

Dew Phillips is taking a less active pose than in the thumbnail, more reflective of his character, who looks before he leaps, something that allowed him to survive beyond his twenties and thirties in his line of work.  Complimenting Dew is his reactionary partner, Malcolm Johnson, who isn't quite as savvy as Dew, and pays the price early on.  Fittingly, Mal is a little more emotional, striking an actiony pose bearing a look of angry determination.

Behind them is a swath of fire, smoke billowing up, drifting left.  The Brewbaker's funeral pyre?  Perhaps, but it lends a bit of warm backlighting to the center of the image, bookended at the top and bottom with the cool colors of snow and winter.  Two massive oaks silhouetted at the top against a cold night sky(an important location element that bookends the entire story).  Warmth of the fire fading to cool tones of the powdery snow below, where the body of Alida Garcia lies, blood pooling behind her like butterfly wings.

Room is left for the logo(designed by the talented Michael Keller), which Perry will float in front of, trees framing it from behind.  There's room left for additional writing or a UPC at the bottom.

Overall, a pretty solid design, very influenced by the sort of collage approach of Drew Struzan.

Next post:  Pencils and inks!

Cover process for Scott Sigler's Infected (part 1 of 4)

This is part one of four posts covering the process behind designing and creating the cover(or one of them) for Scott Sigler's graphic novel, Infected.

Originally, I knocked out about six or seven interior pages and a cover as a sort of proof of concept to pitch to a publisher.  The cover for that was pretty cool, but also a little rough.  Some interesting ideas, but didn't quite get to where I wanted to go.  But for the sake of your entertainment, I include it.

In the original, I still hadn't nailed down the look of Perry, but I liked the idea of a lower angle shot of him looking over his shoulder at the viewer.  It gives a sense of deception and dominance, a look that I brought over to the new cover(which you will see in the next post).  I punched it up a bit by giving him a knife to hold behind his back.  It was effective, and overall it was the best part of the cover.

I also included Dew, aiming his gun off to the left, the direction against forward progress.  Awkwardly, I might add.

Equally awkward, another shot of Perry, cutting into his arm.  Besides Perry being on the cover twice, it also gives a bit more away than I want for the first image you see.  As I said, I still hadn't cast a look for Perry, so his face is obscured by a mop of his blonde hair, which actually looks kinda cool.  Anything that covers a face adds a bit of intrigue and mystery, maybe that's why it's done to so many comic book characters.

The background was a cool idea in my head that didn't really play out well on paper for a couple of reasons.  Essentially, there are two people in hazmat suits trapped behind glass in some CDC lab, one desperately pressing his hands against the panes bearing the CDC and biohazard logos.  The two problems with this are, well, it's all taking place behind the logo, and the smaller guy in the far background just looks like a doofus.  As a stand alone poster or ad, maybe it works, maybe it's kind of dark and moody and cool to look at, but as a cover with a traditionally placed logo, kind of a fail.

This got the ball rolling, though, and that's really what mattered.

Next post: Layouts for the new cover.

Another Infected sneak peek!

It's been a bit since I posted, just letting everyone know I'm still alive!

We just bought an apartment in Sydney, sorted out some immigration paperwork and acquired a dog(a whippet)!  Things are beginning to settle down, I have a place to sit down and work again, so thing will be getting back to normal.

That said, here's another sneak peek at Scott Sigler's Infected!  Just a couple of scientists having a back and forth conversation in the lad while conducting a post mortem on one of the infected!  Sort of a boring page, but I still think it more or less kicks ass, as far as squints yapping goes.  Stay tuned, and keep an eye on Scott Sigler's iTunes feed!

A bit of Illustration

Something that's NOT in a comic book.

My Aunt asked me to make an illustration/poster for her, something related to her work.  She had a poem, I believe it's a kid's poem of some sort, the author is unknown to me.  Anyway, I thought it would make her happy, so I knocked it out.  I heard it will be hanging in the lobby of some hospital somewhere, hopefully people will get a bit of enjoyment out of it.

I wasn't there when she received it, but I'm told it made her VERY happy, to the point of tears.  That made me smile, too, so I thought I would share.

Here's the poem, I didn't write it:

TICK TOCK

ONE OCLOCK

POWERPOINT

ELECTRIC SHOCK

TICK TOCK

TWO OCLOCK

FERRY BOAT

SAFE IN DOCK

TICK TOCK 

THREE OCLOCK

LOTS OF TEETH

ANGRY CROC

TICK TOCK 

FOUR OCLOCK

FIRE WOOD

ON CHOPPING BLOCK

TICK TOCK

FIVE OCLOCK

LET ME IN

THE DOOR UN-LOCK

TICK TOCK

SIX OCLOCK

COM-BI-NA-TION LOCK

TICK TOCK

SEVEN OCLOCK

CAR WITH MOTOR

ENGINE BLOCK

TICK TOCK

EIGHT OCLOCK

CHAINS AND LINK

THEY INTERLOCK

TICK TOCK

NINE OCLOCK

SAFETY FIRST

DONT THROW THAT ROCK

TICK TOCK

TEN OCLOCK

ROUND THEM UP

THE CATTLE STOCK

TICK TOCK 

ELEVEN OCLOCK

HAVE YOU FOUND

MY BUILDING BLOCK

TICK TOCK

TWELVE OCLOCK

ITS LATE SO GO TO BED

PHEWWWWWW

This Is The Place... Infected pg4&5

Page four is largely about the physical journey, the toll on Alida's body while she carries the burden of regret, stricken with powerlessness while somehow enduring more than any normal person would believe possible.

Akira Kurosawa was known for these long lens shots of action, often with that eastern sensibility that utilized depth over panning, with axial cuts during action to demonstrate longer passages of time.  I thought about that, and his favoring of cutting from these long lens shots to aspect shots detailing some essential mechanism and back again.  It gave a sense of time and scale to those beats that I enjoyed and really seemed to intuitively work for me.

With that in mind, I waded into page four with a long shot, Alida trudging through the forest.  I had a western audience in mind, so the action progresses left to right instead of foreground to background.

The next set of three panels, I was trying to play with time again, buttressing  the internal mechanics of her mind against the shots of her travels.  The removal of the gutters is meant to be an indication that it's all happening now, but in her mind, done without the conventional cloudy word balloon, which is effective, but a bit hokey for this sort of story.

Alida is still moving, attacked by the weather, attacked by her memories, attacked by the infection growing within.

The last panel, after being mired in her own mind, oblivious to the physical struggles in the real world, she is suddenly compelled to stop, suddenly sure she has arrived at her destination.  Two large oaks dwarf her, she looks up them as they reach like lovers for each other.  This is the place.

Kurosawa also used weather a lot, sometimes as almost a character on it's own.  I tried to push it a bit within the prologue as an antagonist, inspired by his work, but also trying not to over do it.  I think M Night Shyamalan tried to make his film, "The Happening", in that same direction, maybe believing that combining Kurosawa's nature/weather sensibilities with his surprise twist ending formula would make his film work with the brainy crowd as well as the plebeians. I think all he wound up doing was proving you really can take a good technique or formula too far and thoroughly butcher a movie with heavy handedness.  So, I try not hit the reader over the head with this, instead just quietly build the conflict.

Page Five:

That fight comes to a head on page five.

Right away, after arriving at the end of this odyssey, the moment she realizes this is the place, she abruptly commits suicide.  The protagonist dies on panel one.

In the book, she puts the gun to her temple and pulls the trigger, I picture a lot of angst and torment, maybe some screaming as she pushes hard to force her finger to pull the trigger, fighting the cold, fighting the infection, fighting her own survival instinct.

But I thought that story had already been visually told with the previous four pages, so I made a minor change, Alida puts the gun to her heart instead, a choice suicidal women often make, and she quietly ends her own life.  Less bang, more whimper.  I decided that it would be more interesting if, after suffering the duplicity of her mind led by the influence of her infection, after domination by those paranoid inner voices caused by her parasitic invaders, she was able to hide something from them as well.  Hidden was some untapped reservoir of strength and hope, powering an intent to foil the "triangles" by killing herself, their vessel, before they could do whatever it is that she was brought there to do.

The weather takes over, an incessant force of nature with endless patience, and with the passage of time, it washes away everything, Alida, the parasites, her tracks, any evidence of the struggle(minus a gunshot wound to the tree, which hold court above).

Did any of it even matter?  She still dies, she still loses, but the conflict for control is more pronounced, maybe humanity has a shot, maybe not.  Check out Scott Sigler's INFECTED if you want to know what happens next!  Look him up on iTunes for the FREE audiobook or check out his site or your local book store for the print version.  Or, stick around and find out more about the graphic novel!