Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Yaga Sketchies

Yo!

So, sorry for the late posting. I did some sketches of Yaga and Vassa (along with Yaga's home/ship) a while back, but of course they have been hanging out in my sketch pad being useless. These are pretty darn close to the final character designs (They seem to always change whenever I actually get to final pencils). I'll post some of my page thumbnails and pencils as well over the next few days to get caught up, but this is a good start, ne?





Oh yeah! Does anyone think that using Illustrator for line work is "cheating"? I'm never happy with my inks and love how clean the Illustrator brushes I created turn out. Any preferences?

Thanx - O

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Workflow Exploration

After finishing up my thumbnails I came to the realization that I have to figure out a way to produce this thing – some kind of workflow from pencils to colored & lettered pages. After a little research I came to three possible workflows:
1) All By Hand (I very likely won't be doing this)
2) Hand/Digital Hybrid
3) All Digital

My first inclination was to use some flavor of a hand and digital method (and I still might), but I came across this book on Amazon that describes an entirely digital process. I ordered the book, received it yesterday and went through a quick exercise that covers the rough sketch to inked drawing completely in a digital environment. This is my first experiment with some added color. On the plus side, the workflow is super streamlined even though I'm a little clumsy sketching on the Wacom tablet at the moment. On the downside, my Wacom skills need some work and I don't end up with nice pencil sketched pages like I would in a hand drawn process. Also, digital inking is also going to take a bit of experimentation in terms of brush settings, but I think with a little practice I can get my skills to an acceptable standard.

I still plan to try a hybrid flow (hand pencilled to digitally inked and colored) before I decide which way to go for the actual pages of my comic, but overall, I liked the all digital method and may end up employing it. Here's the drawing that I did.



Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Storyboard Thumbs, Revised

Hey all, a quick progress report. I finished storyboard thumbs for the complete 12 page story and I've given it a name – Soul Shadow. It's about a jungle boy named Honovi who's spear fishing when he gets sucked down by a lagoon monster and on the brink of death his consciousness passes into the Shadow Realm. This is where Honovi and the reader are introduced to the concept of a soul shadow. I'm going to leave out any spoilers, but for now here are thumbs for the first five pages!

Friday, June 24, 2011

PIG - Storyboard

Hi guys, my name's Doug. I'm farther behind with my story than I wanted to be at this point but I've been working to catch up. I wanted to post my storyboard so you guys can see what I'm working on. The story has been changed many times but this is the latest iteration.

The story is kind of a psychological science fiction that takes place in the not to distance future. It is tentatively titled PIG and follows the story of a human test subject as he is subjected to the experiments of a cold, sadistic scientist. The tests center around the mind and body connection after death.

I'm envisioning this as a story that spans several chapters and this first chapter is about the death of the lead character. My hope for the series is that it will capture and hold the readers attention because of the questions it generates. Who are these characters? What is there connection? What are the experiments for? This first installment establishes the central characters and the dynamic of there relationship (scientist and test subject). If you want to check out the storyboard then just click the link below. Will post more soon.

Monday, June 20, 2011

thumbs for black horse brown cow

Here are the thumbs for my horse and cow story. I'm calling it Alienated:

Spread 1: Opening splash with intertwined wildflowers in extreme foreground. Title on opposite page.

Spread 2: Horse eats flower. Then series of shots that establish the cow and horse's inseparable relationship over many seasons. Cars pass in the foreground. Passage of time concludes with an abrupt black frame.

Spread 3: Panoramic spread of horse and cow apart. A van passes through the scene but screeches to a halt. The people in the vehicle are puzzled.

Spread 4: A family of three gets out of their van speculates about events which led to cow and horse's separation. The father theorizes there was a silly misunderstanding.

Spread 5 and 6: The mother speculates peer pressure from other livestock caused the break up. The son is much more inventive in his theory: He imagines that a spaceship has come down and terrorized the horse, abducted the cow, performed unspeakable experiments, etc. He speculates that the cow was later deposited back on to the meadow—but not quite the same.

Spread 7: The boy concludes his elaborate tale. After a brief group deadpan, the family erupts in laughter. They return back to their car and pull away.

Spread 8: The horse looks on as the van drives off. Camera pulls back. Final page splash shows the back of a shaken and alien-tagged cow.

End.

Friday, June 10, 2011

kintoki-con June 18–19 in Sac


Just a heads up that two of your fellow Yarners will be exhibiting at Kintoki-Con this next week. Ms. Leliel (aka Amanda) will be in artist alley along with Choko (aka myself). Come on out and check it out.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

This is a story called WEIRD. It's about a guy who wakes up one morning and notices his head is missing. Not only does he have to deal with finding his head, but also interactions with the people and environment.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

evolution of cow


The dairy cow has evolved to this. Dialing in horse now.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Hello and a lil info on my story...

Hi Everyone!

For those who do not know me, I be called Orysia.
Coming in here a bit late, so I'll be playing a little catch up (forgive me!).

I am planning to take a classic Russian faery tale and give it my own kind of twist. Hopefully you've heard of the witch called Baba Yaga. Classically she's an old hag (well...she is) that either lures children into her clutches for munching or tricks lost girls into becoming her servants. After doing a little more research on her, I found that she also has been known as a guide and a representation of death/life, etc.

ANYWHO, my version will feature a witch named "Yaga" (don't even think to call her Baba) who guides the lost souls of children in modern-day society. The 'trick' is that she is a little less than altruistic in her intentions and to not be trusted. She encounters a child who becomes a bit wise to her tricks and eventually gets the upper hand on her.
I also plan to incorporate some other elements of the classic tale, such as the three horsemen and the chicken-legged house, but this is my start for now.
I have a few character sketches that I am moderately pleased with, so I will scan and post those soon. Still working on the script, but my goal is to have some thumbnails up for it next week.
Thanx!
O

Monday, June 6, 2011

more background sketches

Okay, I lied. A few more background sketches before I post up the thumbnails. I started out drawing Holstein cows but those are a bit stereotypical. Also, there's the fact that the story is now called Black Horse, Brown Cow (I switched the adjectives). The Jersey cow (page 2) is a perfect solution and I think I can get a very original character out of it. The cow will be the feminine cast member and the horse will be male. The species of horse is still up in the air. I'm probably going to go with something in the draft horse direction though. We shall see.