Side-by-side Corrections

Below are pencil sketches for the Raphael image I made recently.
I wanted to post these two sketches side-by-side to show how I struggled with his left leg. The pose seemed to work in my head - but when placed on paper, the angle of his leg and foot just didn't work at all. 

Pencil sketches of Raphael showing changes

Maybe I needed to enlarge the foot to give it a better perspective + depth -- or -- drop the leg lower away from the body. After reworking that foot several times, I decided that angle weakened the overall composition; so the whole left leg was changed and balanced out with the right leg.

Surprisingly, doing this made me see how far off I drew the center of his belt's knot. The belt was also corrected. Overall, the pose is not as dynamic as I wanted it to be, but at least now the leg is not a disturbing distortion.

Home of the Brave: Comic Strip

Long ago, in a age without stylus tablets or Photoshop, I had a comic strip which was printed monthly in a fanzine. I belonged to a online service called Q-link, which I was able to dial-up on my Commodore 128 for $.06/minute. (That's right, I had a 128k computer and spent about $60-$75 a month for an extremely slow 300 baud service. If any of this is not making sense to you - look it up on Google!!)

A strip from The Home of the Brave circa 1985

On Q-Link, I joined a forum of comic book people. The forum had collectively made their own comic book stories and images, which were gathered by the forum leader. He would then make photo copies, staple the pages together and mail them out to all members. This was the only way to share our works with each other ( and far more cheaper then downloading our works for $.06/minute.)

My contribution was doing 5 comic strips a month, based on my dysfunctional superhero family called, "The Home of the Brave". The star was Ollie, a teen who wins multi-millions in a lottery (by mistake) and decides to become a superhero. He is trained by his "Gramps", who lives in their attic and is thought to be insane ( but the truth is, he was the WW2 super-spy he claims to be.) The rest of the cast is rounded out: a sweet oblivious mother, a doubting curmudgeonly father, an insane candy store lady, a master disguise sidekick dog name Roger and reluctant frightened sidekick cat named Mew.

Very rare colored version of my comic strip (This one was my favorite of the bunch)

The fanzine lasted over 2 years (and later several pages of the strip were reprinted and revamped for a local paper called The Spa Times.) I tried to submit my work to various newspaper syndicates, all which said my work was good but the topic was too specific for the market . . . that people in general wouldn't have an interest in a superhero family. (Well over a decade later, Pixar's The Incredibles would prove those syndicate people to be very wrong.)

A sample of the 5-strip monthly format which lasted over 2 years in Comix Fanzine
These were the very first 5 strips of the series

Oh, and for those who don't know who Johnny Carson was . . .
LOOK IT UP ON GOOGLE!

Raphael of the TMNT

Several weeks ago, I did a Donatello image which seemed to get the most attention/traffic over everything else I have drawn during my digital painting exercises.
So, I did another turtle . . . this time it's Raphael.

Eventually, I will do the other two TMNTs and then compile all four images into one.

The original pencil sketch

Timmons

One of my oldest characters done in digital pastels.
I really like the texture and look of pastels for a kid's book. I know a story I have written that deals with food characters that I will do next year . . . I believe this is the style I will use for that story.

5-minute Sketch

Quick 5 minute warm-up sketch of a kitten.
Playing around with the nature brushes for the background.
The entire image was done on the Wacom Cintiq stylus.

Slugg!!!

Another character design from very long ago.
Originally this was a design for my cousin, but the look was too comical and wasn't what he was looking for.
This is original pencil digitally colored.

What sets the Hulk off 80% of the time?

Elph

Another kid's book character named Elph, the Tiniest Elephant.

I feel there's not enough personality or something lacking with Elph's look. Its important that Elph look uniquely different, to stand out from other elephants in the story. Yet, I want to keep him very simple. His body shape may be what's bothering me, because he is very limited in ranges of motion with this type of body shape. So I will put him aside for a later time -- hopefully something I see or do will inspire a new idea.

B-Day Bee

This was a little character I made for my wife's Birthday Card last year.

Side-by-Side: Pencil vs Ink  

I've recently had several people ask me to show my pencils, wanting to compare to difference between the inking lines and the pencil lines. Below is a simple side-by-side, showing the sketch and then the finalized image of the right.

It's always interesting how slight corrections and subtle adjustments are subconsciously made when re-doing an image a second (or third) time.
You can easily see the shoulders/arms have been adjusted - compared to the bee's right arm in the sketch (which seems to be too short and stiff.)

The flattening of the feet to show more body weight on a flat surface. The slightly longer balloon which gives more of a feeling of it pulling away.
Pencil details are lost when converting any image to ink. Pencil sketches keep all the scribbles and marks of the hand shaping and creating the image. For this reason, I often find I enjoy looking at an artist's pencil sketches - since it gives me an idea of the artist's thinking/creative process.

Balancing Bobby

Color Pencils on Dura-lar.
Dura-lar is a treated film that really picks up and holds a pencil line. The very smooth surface allows the pencil to glide. I find I have an easier time keeping the surface clean of pencil smudges too . . . don't know if it's because I'm more subconscious about not smudging or if it's the material itself.

Babbit

Another old favorite character of mine; Babbit.
He's part-bat and part-rabbit.

Frickin' Mickey!!!

This is something I kept for well over 25+ years.
From long ago, when I was working on nothing but Disney + Mickey Mouse designs . . . 

EVERY! 

SINGLE! 

DAY!  

Just couldn't help it . . . and he still suffers today on my tack board . . .