Sunday, January 22, 2012


Going for a look a little different that the John Solo project. (just to see what happens.)
Here is a inking/digital zip-a-tone test panel. Got a pipeline process now in play with my Pshop build files.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012


Sketchbook drills prep for some of the pages.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Character Concept



Here is a character design for one of the antagonists. Chief of the "TigerMen of the BalliBalli Jungle!"

Yarns Exhibit

I'll post more information in the coming months, but the Yarns anthology will make its premiere at the University Union Gallery at Sac State this spring. The exhibit will run from April 23–May 18; reception May 2nd. More details to come. This will be a great launch for the work as all of the artists of the book are alumni of the Sac State graphic design program. Please look out for a flurry of posts as we make the big push to get our pub finished and ready for the show.

A few scrap floor pencils


Some pencils I did for a first run at my YARNS contribution around October-Novemberish. Unfortunately I had to draw these pages before I came to the conclusion that I didn't much care for the rest of the story, and decided to start over.

One of the challenges that I've set up for myself is that I want to continue this story into a mini-series, so this start to that story which will be in YARNS needs to do a few things for me.
  • It needs to set up the story that I have in mind, but haven't necessarily fleshed out yet.
  • Even though it will continue, it needs to have an end that makes sense in six pages.
  • It needs to be, and set the stage for the story that I want to tell.
In any case, I thought I'd share these scrap floor pencils. And, no they aren't actually on the floor.
- Mike

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.