Final assignment

My final assignment! I got some really great feed back, so I'll make those changes for when these pages are actually in proper use... which brings me to exciting news. I'll be starting up a weekly webcomic called Making of an Android in the new year. These pages take place near the end of the first chapter after lots of character development leading up to Liz's breakdown. I chose to do these for my assignment as I felt they worked best for what was asked, and frankly, it was lots of fun to get into the meat of the comic.

I'll post a link for anyone interested once the site is up and running with the first page.

Week 4 comics!

Week 4 assignment: 8 panels/1page max, an argument between your character and a person they hate with an emphasis on dialogue. 

Tried a different panel layout and actually used real text for my text bubbles. So many text layers. Elizabeth/Liz take after their father, if it wasn't obvious. It's the reason why her father won't look at her. She looks too much like him and is nothing like his baby girl. Her mother, meanwhile, just dropped off the deep end when their replacement daughter started growing a personality of her own.

Edit: Made some changes suggested by my professor to make the text and panels flow a bit better. I'm going to keep challenging myself with page layouts. Hopefully I'll pick up how to do lettering better along the way....

Week 3 comics

I was sick for most of the week so this one was done mostly this afternoon over the course of ~3 hours. The assignment was create a biography of a character in a page or less using words and images. I gave up on trying to use thin lines for these comics. Thick, varied lines all the way!

More comics

My second assignment: the death of a character in 1 page/8 panels, no words, only pictures. It ended up as a joint death scene as the only way I could see Liz choosing to die (as a robot she's essentially immortal so long as she can keep herself in good repair) was if her partner, Sike, died.
I had more trouble with this one than the last since I haven't drawn these two in a long time and Sike got a gender swap since I last drew him/her (and she's old here; man I'm such a masochist). So both of them are horribly off model and I suck at fine line work. Whatevs.

Comics

3 page in 4 days! I love being healthy!

My Alma Mater offers all recent graduates a free course in their continuing studies school so I'm now taking a class on comics (Yay!).  This is for my first assignment, a day in the life of one of your own characters in 24 panels or less. I thought I'd just do rough pencils and some tone here and there but I ended up doing more than that. Still fairly rough, but I'm trying to be less of a perfectionist so I get things done.

P.1 might need some explanation; Amelia grew up and was born in a brothel. As a young woman she came into a large sum of money and used part of it to buy said brothel to ensure that those unfortunate enough to end up there, like her mother, would be well looked after. She visits almost every day; the time she spends there goes towards paying off the contracts of those under her care (she cannot buy the contracts outright so she bends the rules by charging herself high fees to see each person there).

A pretty personal post

So I've been sick for the last year and a half. I started writing a comic about it a month ago before going in for intravenous iron therapy (I had a persistent and severe iron deficiency). Of course, right as I finally broke down and wrote out something to get rid of my angst and anxiety regarding the last year and a half of my life something actually worked for a change and I'm healthy again. I got a clean bill of health on Wednesday; I spent the first half hour crying/laughing hysterically and have teared up several times since then. I finally have my life back.

This comic feels silly to post now that I'm healthy again, but I'm posting it online anyways as a kind of memento to the last year and a half.

East meets West

Another Threadless design (with a lovely typo in the title, great going, self). Please vote here!
This one's for a design competition with Loftwork, a Japanese company. I worked with what I know best, comics and fashion/costume.

Mini post

Hey everyone, I'm not dead, just a bit under the weather. I probably won't be posting as frequently over the next month or two. Such a drag as I was really in a good groove this semester. Anyways, here's a couple of sketched done over the past few weeks.

Inspirations - birds, always birds. I love those little guys, as if that wasn't obvious by now. African wooden masks as well as pretty much any kind of mask that I've encountered in my trips to museums like the ROM and the Menil Collection.
Red col-erase, 2 weeks ago?
Amelia's face is off in the profile. Her jaw does not look like that. I'm not sold on Rodrigo's owl mask. I think I'll be fiddling around with that one some more.

Inspirations - mongolian boots (because they are so incredibly awesome), the hair styles I came up with for the Rapunzel pair, some old sketches
Red col-erase, 1 week ago
Been writing a lot for the All Hail universe thanks to the short story I'm working on for class. I decided that I needed a good look for the Northern Tribes that was very different from the look of Sentrans like Amelia, Rodrigo, and Adrian. I ended up using a lot of old sketch ideas and working with simpler, more angular lines than the puffy Sentran look. Lots of layers of wool to combat the cold. I think I need to incorporate the design on their boots into their clothes more.

Bechdel Test

So, this started out as a simple parody and quickly became lots of fun and pretty good design/layout practice. I know my parents and possible friends of family are going to find this, and to them I say, if Hans was a girl no one would take a second glance. That's why I made this, to point out the baffling disparities in the roles and portrayals of men and women in movies.

Tables Turned 01-Bechdel Test
Inspirations - action films, the Bechdel test (google it), 5 man bands (see previous post in January),  TVtropes, Vasquez from Alien, Gendo Ikari from Evangelion, Ethan Hunt from Mission Impossible, hamletmachine
So, anyways, you've got the leader, the second in command, the brains, the brawn, and the "chick". As a friend pointed out, this team is also really diverse. I can't stand the over-representation of white/caucasian persons in media so the team is also from various parts of the world. I have to thank my friends for helping me come up with these names, you're all so wonderful!
For anyone wondering, yes, that is insanely fine print on Hans' right thigh. It says "We don't know. He sleeps with the main character and then we stuff him in a fridge. What else are we supposed to do with him?" I could not bring myself to fail at anatomy and put him in the standard boobs/ass pose you so often see with girls. Instead you just have an over sexualized pretty boy.
Edit: Fixed Hans' chest. A lovely friend pointed out an anatomy issue that I wasn't aware of prior. I think things are still a bit off, but then again, I've never actually seen a buy with this body type with his hands about his head. All my models have been older and done pretty masculine poses. I'll have to ask a guy to pose like this the next time I find a shirtless man of similar body type.

At least I find this amusing

Part of a parody comic/movie poster I'm working on. I'm almost done, but I thought I should post a completed snippet. It's the realization of the comic idea I had back in January: a movie poster based on action films except gender reversed to show the absurdity of how women are portrayed in media. Here we have the resident BAMF of the team and by far the best layout of the lot, Himiko "Goldhammer" Arakawa. The Goldhammer part was my friend Kenny's idea.
I'm hoping at least one person gets the will not die joke in conjunction with her look (because normally girls like her do die).

Always the best student

Anyone noticing a trend of posts on Tuesdays? I am. Three guesses why. Here's a hint, it starts with "My professor" and ends with "is really boring." There might be some other things in that mix. Anyways, I drew some more character designs (in class, in my sketchbook, and he didn't notice*)!
*I would feel really, really badly about this normally, but seriously, the class is like watching paint dry and the prof can be a tad bit offensive every so often.

Inspirations - Finder, again, European and East-Asian historical clothing (the exhibit on Qing clothing at the ROM and obis specifically)
Today, pencil, 10 minutes each?
More designs for Liz's world, her family! Sort of. They're her mother, father, and original self (flesh and blood vs. robot Liz). I think this will be the kind of look for the clothes (at least in her household) with a more natural look for the people outside. Her parents are essentially nobility/rich; I want them to look good, but also the kind of clothes that are both 1. well-made and 2. worn every day. Does the sci-fi fairytale thing come out? I'd really like to hear people's opinions/thoughts about this.

Rowan

Here's a clean version of page 4. It's my favourite thus far so I decided to post a clean version here. I'm pretty sure every single panel of Rowan is off-model, but who's checking? 

Also, consistent light sources? HA. Ghosts don't follow the laws of physics....

More concept work

Been busy this week. I haven't been drawing much (that I want on this blog, mostly Rowan pages); I've been slowly working on/thinking about an essay for my Environmental Ethics class. Lots of fun. I think it could very easily be turned into a thesis and I'm now seriously thinking about something in Environmental Studies for my grad work. Anyways, I've also been thinking about the next comic story I'd like to work on. Here's a new design.

Sike (working name) - Heart of the Self
Inspirations - Finder, punk styles
Today and yesterday
New addition to the Heart of the Self cast (I think this story needs a better name), Sike, an electronics expert and robot mechanic who Liz befriends later in the story. Liz finds it funny that when his hair is down they have almost the same hairstyle; Sike does not approve.
I'll be posting environment sketches/designs as they get worked on. The story is a retake on traditional fairytales; the princess is Liz, a robot girl trying to figure out who and what she is, and instead of being in a land of castles and medieval yore, it's set on a cliff-side where the buildings are part of the natural landscape. It's an environmentally-orineted sci-fi fairytale, I guess.

I'm beginning to hate Rowan's braids

Rowan and the Spider p. 3 of 8

Man, this comic takes a long time to draw. I've only got 3 pages (third is half-way done) thus far, but once it's done I'll post them all up here. For now here's another little excerpt. I'm hoping to have it completely done by the time I need my portfolio. The first four pages will be done by the end of the month (I've promised the guys four pages for the publication). One page takes between 8-15 hours (I can be very slow) but it's so worth it. The only thing I really hate is Rowan's goddamed braids which need to go die in a fire. At very least I'm becoming very good at drawing hair.

Comic day thing

The guys organized a comic event last night where each artist had an hour to draw a page and then hand the story off to the next person. Here's mine (it's page two).

Pencil, about 45 minutes for both story and art

The other artist started it off with a pair of space heroes fighting a monster when suddenly! it turns out to be a pair of kids with epic imaginations. I got really tired by the last panel, if it wasn't obvious. I hope you can read my writing. This is why I always use photoshop for text, my writing is a loopy illegible mess.