Shenanigans

This summer I’m starting on work for my graduate thesis, an anthology comic collection with a current focus on women’s roles in the past and in the world through narrative, genre and medium. This past week I primarily been researching for the first comic I’ll be working on. It will be a retelling of the fairytale “Vasilisa the Beautiful” using embroidery as medium. The next week I’m going to start thinking about how I’m going to be incorporating my research into the script and visuals.

Just occurred to me that the picture I have is terrible for showing how much there actually is in both stacks, so I went back and took a second picture.

These are the next two inking pieces I work on. The portrait inspired the mini comic as I wanted to explore the character a little and just make a weird kind of creepy comic. It didn’t come out exactly as I expected, but that does tend to happen when you don’t outline or plan and just want to practice inking.

Liminal Space

This is some concept art for a story I want to write some time. While it doesn’t totally capture the idea of “liminal space” you normally get in pictures, I feel like it’s a good sum up of the location the events take place in. I might do some others of the different locations or try to do a more painted version of the “hill” and figure, but for now I really like the colors in this one.

In other news, if anyones interested in Cooking Companions (the game), I’m making some sticker designs for that. If anyone has some favorite more obscure games they’d like to see art of I’m open to suggestions.

This isn’t really an update or redraw of a character (though there are inconsistencies in the way I draw her stars, and that’s just because they were drawn a time apart) so much as the progression of the character over time as they develop. The first one is later in the characters story, and I just realized I forgot to color the earring in the second.

That aside, I really like the way I did the hair on that first one. The purple shading looks really nice, and I hope I will be able to recreate when I draw her again some day. I’ve also noticed I draw a lot of turtlenecks, or just big necked-sweaters.

I made a thing.

I started it last quarter in a different class (it wasn’t for the class), and put some finishing touches on it this quarter. I made it to mess around with some story concepts for a few of my storylines and characters.

The first image is “Billiam” named after the penguin depicted

One last comic from my class (that I intend to post (I think?)) and a Florida man one to boot!

This is one of the first non-prompt based ones I’ve made. Or, well, technically there was a prompt (a noir interrogation) I just didn’t use a headline for a prompt.

With this one I got to mess around with dramatic lighting and facial expressions which was pretty fun. As for the 100 followers comic thing I promised, that’s almost done. I just have a few finishing touches to put on it before I publish it for you all to see.

New Characters while I work on my Florida man comic.

The first one is a character that’s yet to be named but who is a friend of Namira’s. She used to be a run of the mill space pirate and smuggler until she became a Privateer or Buccaneer (haven’t decided which yet) for the Andromeda Galaxy.

The second is the founder of the Eternal choir, who does have a name. The eternal choir is a non-profit organization that while working with the Rangers is not apart of the Rangers nor do they work for them. The choir was formed after this big war that happened in order to try and clear up and purify the blights left on the land after the fact. Tazia is also a redraw of another character who I have since evolved.

A late Halloween comic.

Another one I made in class. I stole the idea from myself (the ceiling panel image), mainly because this was an idea I had wanted to write in my book, but didn’t end up including because it didn’t work with the flow of the first draft. While it might get included later in the story or later in revisions, for now it sits in the void of uncannon. Anyway, I had fun with this one. I pretty much listened to an entire Last of Us playlist and cramped up my hand but I think it came out well. I might do an alternate version of the last page sometime just because I have some ideas for it but for this is this.

Also, one of those arms is heckin’ janky if we’re really being honest.

Late Arrival

A comic created while under possession by the spirit of Florida Man.

The prompt for this project was that we had to have two officially licensed characters have a conversation, so of course I choose Deadpool and Ryan Reynolds (with a guest appearance from Thomas the Tank engine). I thought it would be funny, and my original idea was to reference a poorly bubbled comic we were shown in class but I didn’t know if that would read properly, so I messed around with the scripting until it became this. It’s a weird and it’s definitely silly but that’s what I like about it.

Now the question everyone is probably asking. That’s supposed to be Ryan Reynolds?! Yes. Yes it is. Believe me, the first version was far worse. The last two slides are the work in progress testament to that.

He looked like the yellow shirt kid from Polar Express in the early drafts.

Changing someone’s hairline really alters a person’s appearance.

I don’t think this is my best work and I’m not a huge fan of the colors, but I had fun making it and sharing the silliness with my roommates and classmates.

Another comic from class!

I meant to post something earlier this week, but this week was pretty heavy so I just didn’t feel up to it. I also didn’t know if I should post this one or the other one I did the week before. I’m sure you all can figure out which I ended up on.

This particular comic was a research based one, with the primary elements researched being the different faces of historical figures, the clothing Catherine wears and the throne room of Saint Petersburg palace.

I originally considered doing the piece in full color, but my brain both didn’t have the energy for that and I thought a limited color palette might look cool, especially when using specific colors to signal specific things.

Spooky Almost Halloween piece!

This is also a bit of a sneak peak of one of my other WIP’s. A sort of imagining of a scene I wanted to write but ended up replacing with something arguably freakier and more tense.

This lovely monster was created by a Fleshsmith which are for the most part a type of healer capable of stitching different flesh together without it rejecting or growing necrotic. On Gaia, many fleshsmith’s work as surgeons helping transplants go smoother and allowing for a higher rate of survival afterwards.

That being said there are some outliers who take the craft to its logical extreme. I.e. the Frankenstein extreme. For the most part those fleshsmith’s use corpses to create odd creatures that would never function or exist if they weren’t crafted through magic. Kind of like Reanimator and more specifically Reanimator 2 (Bride of Reanimator).

I don’t want to give too much away about this just because I don’t want to spoil anything about the project, but this thing is probably one of the weirdest things to crawl out of my brain using too many arms.

Some work-in-progress character busts.

Sometimes it’s just nice to draw a face, and then nothing else. Just a bunch of floating heads. No backgrounds no crazy detailing. Just a face.

If it helps with getting away from same face syndrome that’s a perk too.

First character doesn’t have a name yet, but she is inspired by the Hopi tribes culture. I need to go back and fix some aspects of it before the line works going to be finished. This is one of the pieces I want to finish the most along with some other concept art.

The second one is a detective character I’m developing for Kierans story. First time drawing a mustache that actually looks okay. I still can’t draw beards though.

Third is a forest warden. And that’s about all I’m going into that.

The fourth started with Rorschach and ended with butterfly and I like that. I’m probably going to go back and change some aspects of the vitiligo to make it less symmetrical, as well as the hair because while I like the colors I’m not happy with the shape.

Another week another comic!

This time was a memoir comic thing, and I admittedly left mine on a bit of a cliffhanger. The title of this piece is “Overactive”, and is based off my awful overactive imagination. Sometimes it’s nice and can help me build huge built out worlds in my head. Other times I commit inception upon myself and I tell myself a weird or scary thought that I can’t get out of my head. Not fun, but it’s not a regular thing.

This particular moment the story is referencing was both really scary and kind of funny looking back. If I were to make a second page, the comic would probably be anticlimactic, mainly because at a point I got so tired trying to convince myself there was nothing there that I gave up shoved a heavy chest in front of my closet door and went to bed telling myself that if there WAS something in there it would have a hell of a time getting out without making lots of noise.

As for the wizard, I have no explanation for that. None. I don’t know where I got it, or why it stuck with me so much but it did.