10-9 - Character Portraits

I'm in the process of setting up a Wiki for information on 10-9, mostly my own worldbuilding notes so I can quickly find them.... and because Wikis are highly addictive and fun things. :3

These babies were sketched in Manga Studio EX 4 which I'm starting to get the hang of, printed at full 8.5x11 and inked with a Maru Nib and Brush. I'm rather fond of the result myself. :3

Enjoy~

10-9 - Out Of My Depth - Complete And In The Can!

Heya kids~ School's out for the summer and this blog kinda fell by the wayside with it. Here's hoping to fix that with a little peace offering of the final letters to the 10-9 one shot 'Out Of My Depth'.

While I finished it and it was a hell of a trip I think this marks the last time I do digital for a long time. :3 Stay tuned for more~

10-9 Oneshot Now In TECHNICOLOR~

Hot off the press and distributed through the intertubes~ This oneshot is one step closer to being in the can! Monday is lettering day and I already know I have a couple panels that are going to need some editing magic.

But at least the coloring is done! :D My theory behind was the story would start out with muted tones save the red of Ahimsa's hair, then reach it's climax into high saturation and then end with muted tones again. Page four with the monochrome effect in those panels I used specifically for psychological/cinematic effect but still I'm a bit unsure if it'll fly since it's four panels of it. I like it. But we'll see how the critique goes. :D

The kitten is still The Best Thing Ever. XD She's a very curious baby!

Enjoy. :3

Out Of My Depth: A 10-9 Oneshot

I can't believe I pretty much penciled all these babies in two days flat after struggling with it for WEEKS. I actually went backwards with it. Starting with Page Five and the final panel and working my way up on all the pages. :3 I feel it kept the style over all FAR more consistent. And glory be it was done 100% digital. Once I accepted my cartoony inclinations and focused on being speedy I'm super pleased with the results. :D In the end I found a completely new way of doing eyes and my own certain iconography for noses. The fact that I treat the mouths like rubber works much better in this look then my feeble attempt at being super realistic.

And yes. Ahimsa totally talks with his hips. For seriously. *dies*

The kitten is the best part in the history of ever. The End.

The lettering won't happen until the 26th, so for now I hope the story's clear enough. :3

Enjoy. :3

Failure To Communicate

Second Page of the 10-9 Oneshot 'Out Of My Depth'. Trying out some different things and making my way! :D Noel Sickles' inking style has been a BIG inspiration for me for this project and while this page doesn't look like it has a direct influence I'm still working on getting similar marks. Done with a Kolinsky brush to carve out my blacks and a Nikko School Nib which is crazy stiff and can easily scratch the paper I'm begining to get some flex out of it. :3 Also more and more I'm really loving on the Bombay ink I've been using. Dare I say I might like it more than the Holbien. :O

There's actually three errors on this page that I'll need to edit. Likewise beef up that lining of the balloons. :3

Enjoy. :3

One Tin Soldier

Finally the first page to Out Of My Depth is OUT OF THE GATE. After all of my fussing with Digital versus Traditional the only thing that WAS Digital in the end was the page sketch. I tried to ink this baby three different ways and finally settled on this one with a quite Noel Sickles but still me flavor. I love me some Sickles something fierce. I'm so deserate to get my hands on the new compilation book of his work.

Now I just need to color this brat of a page. And the four pages following. D: Editor's Day here I come! >E

Letters From The Front!

More progress on my Editor's Day/Comp Color Final the 10-9 short 'Out Of My Depth'.... Irony is I never realized how somewhat autobiographical such a title would become with this thing. @_@ I seriously feel almost out of my depth with pushing new things.

Up at the top check out the VAST difference between the Ahimsa on Bristol and the Ahimsa done in straight Photoshop. Welcome to my madness. @_@ A good friend actually nailed my problem between the two mediums on the head: The tools. A stylus is made to go any number of directions with a flick of the wrist. A pen and brush can only go one way and you pull your arm. I keep treating traditional tools like they're meant for a digital media when they don't do that. EUREKA. I hope this is the 'switch' I needed to flip in my brain. @_@

Below is the sketch of Page 1 which as giving me pure caniptions forever. Once I figured out what I needed to do and employed the Work Smarter Not Harder attitude from Dianna and Brent I realized that many of the shots on this page called for the same angle, or the same composition. So TAH-DAH. Cut and paste time and just redraw the proper parts! I hope I can have this baby at final digital pencil tomorrow. >E

Oh and pretend there are pinetrees in that first panel. I had actually painted them in and deleted the layer because I didn't need them at the time. XD

How Crazy Is This?!

Context: For Editor's Day here in ATL and in Savannah I'm doing a five page flashback story to 10-9 of Ahimsa's days as a fresh faced private before he became the royal badass captain of his own task force with emotional constipation.


Futher Context: It's also my final project to Computer Coloring.


NO PRESSURE.


Considering this pretty much is the quater I have to do things three times over before getting it right and I have 20 days to get this baby done give or take a day or two it's time to kick it into high gear.


As you can see the top was a study I spit out today that was completely digital the bottom being three panels I attempted to draw and ink by hand. Isn't the style deviation rediculous? @_@ It's just something I do completely naturally. Put a stylus in my hand and I rock out, put a pencil in my hand and I'm like a five year old with crayolas. It even befuddled Nolan a bit when I showed him the side by side comparison.


Unless I'm mimicing a simple style you can pretty much kiss anything uber complicated goodbye when I'm using traditional media. It's been explained to me that my hand 'gets shy' on paper and the second I screw up that's the end of it, however when I work digital it's only a matter of deleting the layer and going again. Likewise the difference is time. Traditionally easily takes me four times as long to do anything, Digitally on the other hand is a fraction of that. The speed between the two is rediculous.

Obviously I'm going to need to get advice on how to make the Uber Pretty on my paper and not be shy about it.


Is it considered somewhat creepy if I mention how awesomely hot Ahimsa came out in the digital study? The poor lamb and his shorn noggin. XD Rock that uniform Private!

Trials Of Triple A #4

And now we're back to our regularly scheduled lunacy for dear little Triple A and his long suffering best friend John. One day John will make a man out of the Boy Princess.... it just won't be today.

Again I get to sneak My Little Ponies into something. I know, there's a special ring of hell waiting just for me. *laughs* Still figuring out how to block in the shadow shapes on Triple A's jacket, it's still not there yet for me, but I'm figuring out his hair more and more. This was done digitally again as there's zilch workspace and terrible lighting here at the folk's place. I really don't like the digital inking on these and think I'm going to set up in the kitchen and bust out the Holbien and the G-Pen.

Enjoy. :3

The Trials of.... Rapunzel?!

Let's just say we have too much fun on over in The Connector office, for April Fools we're pulling a little switcheroo where everyone switches out on everyone else's comics. I won't tell you who's doing what as that would spoil the surprise, but as you can see here the strip I picked to spoof was Rapunzel by Angela Sasser using the Trials of Triple A Cast and Triple A himself as the..... not quite fair damsel.

I tried to stay true to some elements of Rapunzel, such as being done all digital, and echoing the 'scratchboard' like shading from it in Triple A's jacket. However Rapunzel constantly uses a single Meta-panel in a homage to Dave McKean's Sandman days and very rarely do I have a gift for them. I'm still trying to work out being more careful of my accidental tangents! I'll kill my tangenting tendencies yet!

Enjoy. :3

10-9 Sickles Style!

The assignment was we had to study a cartoonist from the past and draw an image in their style. There's that history thing again that's like my wonderdrug. XD This time I chose to mimic Noel Sickles who's an artist from the 1930's most famous for ghosting for Milton Caniff on Terry and the Pirates and then ghosting on Scorchy Smith, which after the artist's death became his own baby.

The composition is all me, and somewhat looking almost something that came from Steve Ditko, but the inks, pasteups and screen tones are all Sickles. I've become really obsessed with the guy in these last two months, a lot of what he was doing as an artist is a lot of the direction I want to go in.

Enjoy. :3

10-9 Character Bible

Finally getting around to posting the finished product. :3 Ahimsa, John, Meghan, and Vulcan, my little gaggle of babies. The theory behind the designs besides Bruce Timm on Crackrock was to base each of them off a single simple geometric shape. Ahimsa being a triangle, John being a top, Meghan being the circle, and Vulcan a square. My inspriation for it was of all things as usual for me Historical in the case of Russian Suprematist Art where it was just geometric shapes on canvases. I can't seem to count a single thing I've drawn that hasn't linked back to an artist or movement in history. I'm such a complete history nerd. XD

Hope you like. :3

A Double Dose Of Triple A!

A twofer tonight! Here's the colors for the Ahimsa action sheet which I got it down to such a science took only seventy minutes, I timed myself by watching a disc of Band of Brothers while working and finished twenty minutes into the second episode on the disc. Let's hope I can stay that speedy! :D Only the..... Ahimsa minus his uniform has any complicated cuts on him because I wanted to bring out his muscle tone and that's the only one that took any amount of time to do. :3

The second is the latest Trials Of Triple A strip which won't be seeing print until next week. But here's a sneak peek. :>

N-Joi. :3

The Trials of Triple A

Since my previous concept for my Character Design Final tanked, which was just as well since it wasn't my first idea anyway, my Editor in Chief of the Connector was really taken by it and she had been really on my case to start submitting a strip again regularly.



I was watching History of the Joke on History Channel and one comedian explained that he found his material by making fun of his life. So I thought about it and thought about it and what better way of the true story in my own life of the constant running gag of how it seemed my straight friends were magnets for gay waiters. XD Also more of a play with black and white shapes, forground, middleground, and background, as well as what I've been learning in character design all rolled into one. There's a couple tangents here and there that aren't going to kill me but I just know to be more mindful of them in the future. Also Memo To Me: Don't hand ink elipses. Just DON'T. I think I'm going to experiment with Chibi Ahimsa's hair more because I'm unsure if I like that halo around the sections of it. I mean it's done with a purpose but I can hear Shawn screaming in my head of 'AUGH. HALO HALO HALO. YOU FAIL.' D:



Enjoy and look forward to more. :3

10-9 Character Design Progress

And here we have the distinguished badass Captain Siven and his constant thorn in his side the intreptid war correspondent Saint John Burroughs.

The colors for Ahimsa gave me the most grief considering 10-9 is a black and white book I had to really use my noodle for what colors would his uniform have. I really love the combination of muted cools with the intense cools and makes the red of his hair really pop. He's going to make an interesting maquette that's for sure. I just hope he doesn't break in baking. D: His waist is a concern of mine. I might have to bake his hair tail and bang seperate and glue them on because those are seriously too delicate.

John's design was a lot of fun and I'm picking up a lot of time saving tricks from my classmates such as the case of his arms in the front and back veiws. They're doing the exact same thing so why draw both arms when you can just dupe and flip it. XD Also John's coloring went really quickly considering he has such boad flat planes like in the case of his coat. I really went crazy with the lapels and collar because I was making the subtle suggestion of royal arrogance as well as maybe a little flamboyantness. :> Also he's completely constructed of the same top-like shape his face. I just squash and stretch it where needed. While his hair seems a bit on the 80's emo look I thought it was a happy medium to portray spikyness as well as give that flame suggestion again. :3

And at the very end we have sketches for the pose sheet of the Captain. He's a lot of fun to get down into drawing. And I can not count the number of times I ran around my room slinging my Swifer and broom around like billy clubs in order to get the feel for the poses. I'm lucky I didn't break any lights! :O

Atteeeennnn-TION! Captain Present!

Needless to say here's my now third take on my Character Design final. Of course now I've made it that much harder for myself but this is what I'm most rediculously pleased with. And here we have Ahimsa again, only in his thirtysomething hardened adult version from 10-9. I kept every single girly thing about him but figured out a way to still make him read as very much a male. This was actually a really different approach for me with him, considering his lines are usually all curved and not a single hard angle to be seen from toe to head but I decided to go the opposite and everywhere there was a curve to put in an angle. Inspired by the contrast panels on his uniform, I decided to constuct him completely in triangles with the exception of his rectangular face.

In the end I feel like his hands still aren't quite large enough, but they're okay with his huge feet. And even not in color he still reads like being a big guy due to the proportion distortion. What makes me even more happy is he seriously looks like he could ruin someone's day. Kinda a far cry from the pretty femmy young thing he used to be. :3

The Beauty and The Beast

Here we have the complete model sheets for Ahimsa and John for my final project in Character Design as well as another addition to the Yearbook: Momentary Thing mythos which I'm calling this installment 'Yearbook: Health Class Hell'. To define Yearbook: Momentary Thing in 25 words or less it's a prequel story to my current brainchild of 10-9 of Ahimsa and John as teens in high school and their adventures, misadventures, coming of age, and saving the world a handful of times. 10-9 takes place ten years after the end of Yearbook where a very different and hardened military captain Ahimsa is reluctantly reunited with his best friend and now rock star journalist John as they have one last bloody adventure in a world gone to hell.

Yearbook and 10-9 are literally like night and day in several aspects, whereas 10-9 is one continuous story and one set look, Yearbook is a series of stories, scenes, or snippets with a variety of looks much like an anthology only with a recurring cast. In the case of Yearbook it's almost like a puzzle in realtions to 10-9. Some stories are very upbeat, others very serious, some purely comedic, and a few tragically romantic, all of them offer clues into where it all went wrong for the boys and their friendship as well as the world they live in-- however it also works in the way of you can read one story and just appreciate it for what it is and leave it, or you can read them all to get the complete map of the 10-9/Yearbook Mythos.

In the case of Health Class Hell, it's being treated like almost a Direct to DVD or like a late night Cartoon Network special, the animation's a little higher quality, not quite feature film but not as simple either (If the colors on Ahimsa alone is enough to indicate.) But plot wise while it has some straight up canon aspects from the story it also a bold faced parody that pokes fun at a few anime shows of my youth and how things were censored and changed for American sensibilities due to the fact that characters that ONLY appear in 10-9 will be showing up and will be rewritten as 'cousins' or 'uncles' as well as poking fun at the true nature of John and Ahimsa's friendship as cleverly alluding to they're a bit on the more than just friends side. Besides if you can't tell just by looking at his model sheet that Ahimsa is more flaming than the fires of Pele then I didn't do my job right. C'mon he's traipsing for crying out loud.

In the past two days I've redone each model sheet twice because they didn't look quite right at the time. In Ahimsa's case I didn't like his pose and a classmate advised that if they're going to be standing there have them show a little attitude.

I did the first version of John's sheet last night, proceeded to hate it because his pose was a little to swishy for a cantankerous jerk like him, so I ended up today with what you see here. Despite the technique I'm using to color these being something immensely simple and fast I got John's first figure done in 30 minutes and the other two took way too much time that I care to think about it due to stupid things of technical glitches and my hand twitching involuntarily while trying to make selections with the polygonal lasso. The cuts on John aren't as well rounded off where they should be like in the case of Ahimsa. I might have to go back in and round them off before I hand them in. Though I am rather pleased with the colors between the two of them since Ahimsa's all about the bright and HAPPY colors even if his jacket's dark and he has some cools on him they're either very intense or have contrasting warm and bright colors. John on the other hand is all darks and earth tones, the only thing bright about him is his hair which I can only describe as cross between Bart Simpson and a buzzsaw. I love how it all goes in the same direction no matter what angle he turns and looks vaugely like fire which fits him perfectly in firey temperament and powers base. I might do an alternate version of the sheet where he's summoning fire in his palms since that's what I did his pose like that for. He's also the King of Offensive Tee-Shirts but I didn't want to be so overtly offensive despite a favorite shirt design he has which I love is that of a stripper dancing the pole and the text reading 'I Support Single Moms'. I'd figure 'God's Gift' was a suitable replacement still indicating his arrogance without being completely raunchy.

Man.... my longest post yet. Hope all that text was worth the read. :3

Hips That Don't Lie!

Part One of my Epic Final Project for Character Design class. Still mostly a WIP but pretty much Ahimsa here is getting two model sheets, one for his figure (top) and one for his maquette design (middle), plus his pose and emotion study sheet. This is as far as I've gotten in the past five and a half hours timed by watching the first two discs of Lost Season 3. I'll more that likely start sketching out his emotions before bed and pick the ones I like best.

Of course I'm going to break Nolan's brain again just because the best way to to indicate Ahimsa's prettiness as a chibi is to amp up his femininity to the max with his crazy girl hips and JLo rear. Of course it doesn't help that he's in pink. But of course his whole thing is bright fun colors, bold graphic patterns, and a hearty dose of Eurotrash. Mostly his point is when people see him walk by they go 'AUGH MY EYES!!!' because of all the clashing colors and his neuclear levels of estrogen that just radiate for ten miles. This is the sort of fun I get to have with him is the contrast and antithesis of the man he grows up to be who's all rules, regulations, nursing a deeply broken heart, and more issues than the Wall Street Journal, however as a teen he's absolutely a Pretty Pretty Princess. :3