THE HERO CHICS!

I decided to create some alternate versions of my female superhero character

for my Latino, African American, and friends of other ethnicities out there.

Who knows, maybe I'll put them on t-shirts next.

The hero chic

My patriotic heroine. Started off as a rough sketch that I decided to color later on.

Full page color test!

 Here is my full color comic book page. As I mentioned in a previous post, this is a test page, to help me see what my comic book would look like in full color. I decided to post the original, inked, black and white page next to the color page, just to show what a difference color makes. In a previous post, I mentioned wanting my comic book to have the feel of an animated cartoon. This is partly because i've always seen my comic book in an animated form as opposed to the traditional  comic book color format. Nonetheless, I am pleased with how this 1st test page turned out, as this will allow me to improve on my colors and get better on future comic pages.  I look forward to showing you more full color comic pages in the future. I hope all is going well with your projects too--STAY CREATIVE!

See you around space cowboy!

Here is the completed version of my Cowboy Bebop poster. And I must say, that this was truly a labor of love. I enjoyed the process of making the poster so much, that I decided to post another step-by-step process of how I made the Cowboy Bebop poster in the future, so stay tuned.

The latest W.I.P.

 

 

Here is a preview of my current work in progress.  I won't say much about it now, but when it done, I'm sure you will enjoy the completed artwork. I have also consided posting another step by step breakdown of my process, detailing from start to finish how I created this Illustration. So check back soon for more updates.

STAY CREATIVE!

SHA-BAM!

Some updated character designs from an older project I worked on years ago being pitched for an animated show.

Color Test for comic page

Here's a another test page for my upcoming coming book. I have been doing a few test pages to see what the characters in my comic book would look like in full color. I also wanted to test myself by coloring more backgrounds and special effects. Lastly, I wanted to work on my timing for coloring comic book pages. As you can see, I wanted the characters to have an animated feel, as if they were characters in a cartoon; and I am still working to get better with that style of coloring.

These two panels took about 4-5 hours to complete within 2 days. I know that sounds long, but it was because I had to do some revisions to the original artwork. As you can see in the original black and white panel below, the energy particles around the main character had to be redesigned. While it looks good in black & white, I discovered later, that I needed less special effects, and more room for dialogue with the word balloons. I also went over some of the inked lines to close gaps and strengthen my black lines. The character in panel 2 was inked perfectly, and turned out really nice once color was added. The icing on the cake for me was coloring the special effects. I definitely get excited when the colors turn out how I see then in my head. It gets me motivated to do more coloring.

I must say that I enjoyed the challenge of finding the right spacing for the word balloons too. Creating the right word balloons is a learning process within itself and I am eager to learn more about it. After it's all said and done I am about 90% pleased with the end result. As I mentioned earlier, I am still practicing with colors, so I want to improve and get faster.

Just a little sample!

I can't believe it's May already! It seems like January was just yesterday, and I was putting together my list of creative goals, detailing what I want to get accomplished this year artistically, and there is still so much work left to do. But anyways, here is my latest post for this month, a sample page from the webcomic i'm working on. I still have a few things to tweak, and perfect regarding my coloring; but I thought these panels would give me, and you, the viewers, a pretty good idea of what to expect once my webcomic is completed. Hope your projects are going well too--STAY CREATIVE!

Future hip-hop!



 

Here's more teaser art from the graphic novel i'm working on. It's not the official artwork, but just some promotional artwork to give people a taste of what i'm doing. The official poster will be completed later this year. However most of the characters you see here will have new colors and designs. I'm very excited about this project and cannot wait to share it with the world once it's completed.
 

How about a little sneek peek?

Wow, it's March already and it certainly has been a busy year for me, busy I mean as in productive. I'm nearly finished with the new introduction for my web comic and plan to get the webpage up and going later this year. I've also been working on new character designs and revisions. I decided to offer up a little sneek peak into one of the characters i've been working on. I was so pleased with his design and color scheme that I almost couldn't decide which color scheme I liked better for his sneekers, the black with blue trim or the white with blue trim. I'm kind of leaning towards the black sneakers though. What do you think?

 

The Process...



Finally, my first post of the new year!

Back in December of 2013 I mentioned doing a post about the process for creating my illustrations. Well, here it is, the very first step by step breakdown of my creative process for making Illustrations. I hope this review will be informative, and helpful to other artists & illustrators as well.

Step 1. Concept: Almost every illustration I create starts with a rough concept that I see in my head. The concept is inspired from something I see, read, or hear about. I got the concept for the Knight Rider poster from an episode of the show that I watched on television.  I then proceeded to draw a rough sketch of the concept that I saw in my head.  When I begin, I usually like to sketch in pen with black ink. I then go over my lines with a black sharpie marker to make them stand out more. Nothing against using a pencil to sketch, (because I sometimes do that too) but I usually use a regular pen with black ink to sketch my roughs.

Step 2. References: Any great or professional artist will tell you they either have or use references to help them create their artwork. Since I wanted to draw a poster of the Knight Rider show from the 80's, I was going to need to some good reference material. I needed  pictures of the main character Michael Knight, the car known as K.I.T.T.,  as well as the supporting characters Devin, and Bonnie. I found several photos on the internet that I used as reference for drawing the characters in their likeness from the show.

Step 3. More References: I already had the rough concept in my mind of how, and where I wanted Michael knight to be in terms of layout. The challenge was being able to get the right pose to capture the feel of him behind the wheel of the car. After drawing a few rough thumbnails of the poster, I began to think about the Fast N Furious movies. The FAF movies always had plenty of shots of people behind the steering wheel. The drivers often had a look of determination, or intensity, which is exactly what I wanted for Knight Rider. So I decided to watch a few scenes from the 1st & 2nd films, and found the references I was looking for. After quick pause of the movie, followed by a screen grab, and print copy, I finally had my next photo reference to use for the poster.

Step 4. Last References: Capturing the look of the car K.I.T.T. was very important, because it was very much a part of the show as the main character. After looking through several pages of photos on the internet, I found 2 that really captured the impression I was going for. The top photo became my primary reference photo for K.I.T.T. ,while the second photo served as a good background, and special effects reference. I wanted to show the car racing at top speed, almost, as if it were going to race off the poster. The photos were also good references for showing how light and shadow appears on the car.

Step 5. Rough Poster Design: This is what the poster looks like after my layout has been established, and everything has been drawn together. At this stage, I am re-drawing the poster using a non-photo blue pencil, and my number 2B pencil, for re-enforcing my shading and shadows. The scale of the poster has been established, as well as any fine details or effects.

Step 6. Clean Ink lines: When all the rough shadows & details have been worked out in the poster, then its time for inking. During this process, I use my Micron, Staedtler, or any other design  marker, to trace over my pencil lines with very clean ink lines. This process is very similar to how a comic book inker traces over the rough pencil lines to finish a comic book page. In order to get my ink lines very clean and precise, I trace over my rough pencils using a lightbox.

Step 7. The Finishing Touches: The poster is now ready to enter into the final phase which is coloring. I start by scanning the clean, inked version of the poster at around 300 dpi (dots, per inch). Next, I open up Adobe photoshop to color the poster using various separate layers such as: Original drawing, color flats, background colors, skin shading, hair shading, clothes shading, and car shading. I also used the gradient feature to shade both the car, and characters in the poster. After all the shading is completed, I add special effects. For the Knight Rider poster I wanted to give K.I.T.T. the illusion of speeding very fast. To achieve this, I used a motion blur filter on the speed lines to give the effect of motion. I repeated the motion blur effect on the smoke as well. The red sensor was actually copied from another photo, and pasted into my drawing of the car in the poster. To make the red sensor and headlights glow, I added an outer-glow effect. The background colors were created to resemble how the car looked during the opening credits of the TV show. Next, I wanted to add the title fonts from the actual TV show. Since I didn't have that particular font style on my computer, I had to copy and past the title font from another photo I had already (Again Reference!). Lastly, I used the bevel and emboss effects, followed by some glow effects, to make the title fonts stand out on the poster. And after a few hours of work on the computer my Knight Rider poster is finally complete. ^_^

So there you have it, a detailed review of my step by step process for creating posters. Again, I hope you found it entertaining and informative. Maybe next time, I'll do a step by step review of my process for drawing or coloring comic pages.

But until then, STAY CREATIVE!