Save the Date!

My sister-in-law Alicia and her fiancé Nick had this fun comic book-inspired idea for a "Save the Date" wedding invitation, and they asked me to help illustrate it. I drew up a rough sketch, depicting the two of them as superheroes trying to "save the date" from the evil villain, on my Note II using Sketchbook Pro:

Once I got approval to proceed as well as some notes on certain things they wanted to see in the final version (something like the Hancock Building and/or Sears Tower to identify the background as the Chicago skyline, and that the hero uniforms should be primarily navy and silver to match their wedding colors), I took the illustration into Photoshop and Illustrator and got to work. Something different I did this time around was to use adjustment layers and masks to block out shadows and highlights that gave the art a cel-shading look, and then go over top in another layer to paint in halftones. It saved a lot of time when it came to trying out different color schemes on the fly, and it proved to be pretty helpful.

I feel like I found a good flow, to the point where I lost track of time, finishing the illustration at almost 2 in the morning.  Sleeplessness aside, I'm happy with how it turned out overall, and I enjoyed working on it.

Puppet Time

(For added humor, imagine the puppet speaking with a deep, gravelly morning voice...)

New sketch challenge art

The G+ Artist Sketch Challenge has been responsible for most of my personal illustration output this past week, and it's been a lot of fun.

For the fantastically absurd challenge Gargoyles in Evening Wear Dancing with Famous People born on August 25th, I submitted this comic strip:

And for today's topic 80's Movies That Should Have Happened I submitted this drawing:

The Tissue Issue

Lights out, uh huh...

Guest Comic

I'm currently working on the layout for a new comic strip. In the meantime, here's a comic from guest artist Mira, featuring dialogue from an actual conversation she and I had this afternoon:

 

Sometimes when I talk with her, I feel like I'm in a poorly translated foreign film. Maybe a Bollywood movie, since she occasionally breaks into a spontaneous dance routine.

It's a Friday

Not much on the illustration docket today... I started doodling a ship in Colors! for DS, but I'm not sure if I'm feeling it enough to finish...

I'm gratified by the positive response to the comic strips I've done recently, and I can say with certainty that I'll make a couple more in the near future. I have at least a few more ideas I want to play with.

 

I would prefer it if they stay fairly spontaneous; the minute it starts to feel contrived, I plan on giving it up. The joy of the strips for me so far has been that they're based on stuff that really happened.

Sleep? BAAA!!!

As per suggestion, here's last night's Facebook status converted into a comic strip...

Talk Time

After a long night of not much sleep because of a certain 19-month old, I had to get this out of my system...

July update

Just finished filling up my spaceship/robot sketchbook, time to pick up a new one...

 

On the painting side, started working on an exercise using the kiddo as my subject... She's growing so fast!

As for the comic book, I decided to do several short unrelated stories, and compile them into a collection more or less. I've started scripting out two of them, and two more I've written springboards for. Inch by inch, day by day...

Benerator Comix #1

Inspired by my first #trust30 post:

Panel test

Been experimenting with the idea of using Colors! to paint comic strip panels, found that doing characters with detailed backgrounds might not be practical, for the most part. Ended up sketching the character and background separate and then composited them in Photoshop, seems to work fine. Also added a texture overlay to the background to rough it up a little...

More robot dev sketches

These are pretty rough, I'm still feeling my way 'round for a style I'm confident about...

Robot rough

So progress on this robot-filled story I've been working on has been slooooow, but at least there's some movement. Here's a rough drawing, playing around with a sketch in Photoshop:

Action Method Online

I've been slowly piecing together the materials for the comic idea, with the help of a productivity manager called Action Method Online from Behance. I've been using it to collect and track notes, and write the script in bits and pieces whenever free time presents itself. It's proven to be a great help in organizing my ideas and figuring out what needs to get done.