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~

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

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

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

10-9 Designs: Round Two (Really The Millionth)

Did these over Christmas to practice my character designing and playing with body shapes some more as well as nail down quite possibly a more definitive look for the dynamic duo of 10-9. The top we have Ahimsa, who I never tire of drawing in odd ways, and bottom we have John, whom despite my absolute fear of writing him because he's one of those folks that's smarter than me, in the end has become a joy to put to paper. :3

Ahimsa being my flagship into exploring the Archetype of the Maternal Male, I describe him with a male stucture and proportion, yet make the lines all curved and softer indicating femininity. Not to mention his waspy waist and child bearing hips, which started out as an accident in early designs has very much become his trademark that all of his pants need to be pretty much custom made to suit his strange measurements. It's because of his borderline female hips I've worked other aspects commonly found in female characters into his look such as larger eyes, fuller lips, an upturned nose, and not to mention his muscle structure, particularly his pectorals are more rounded and curvy. Perhaps he is the 'Extreme Case' of the Maternal Male but I don't think him that terribly shocking or extreme in comparison to others of the archetype that have crossed my mind.

John on the other hand constrasts Ahimsa in every way from coloring to structure to temperament, he's short for a male, barely 5'10", and all compact harsh angles. Lean and in a well defined wiry way in an attempt to convey how he as a character is a very small but intense kind of fellow. I suppose in a way I'm reinventing the 'Hero' archetype as well with him since he's very much an anti-hero in attitude and actions, but he's also not the typical cliched vision of a hero being basically the Superman/Batman body type of tall and musclebound Adonises with strong square chins. My ideas for John was basically I think of him as a bulldog. Little But Fierce. People in 10-9 are typical to pass him by or treat him like a bungling idiot of no importance because he has no physical presence until he shows he's possibly the worst thing they've ever seen. Ironic that I have such a strong personality built for him considering I draw inspiration for his look from Chad Michael Murray, quite possibly the biggest tool in Hollywood ever.

Hope you enjoy. :3