Heroes for Hire sample page 3

Well, I had more of a layoff from here than I would have hoped but I'm back.  Before my somewhat extended absence from blogging I had been posting pages I was working on for my Comicsexperience.com Intro to Comic Art class.  So, without further blathering, here is the final page of the assignment.

I'm fairly happy with the finished result.  Not surprising that I've got a few things sticking in my craw a bit.  Most noticeably for me is the similar size and pose of each of the three Punisher images.  He has is right hand sticking out in each one and it's all way too much of the same for me.  I also think I fell into some old habits again; small hands and large heads.  I'm trying to work myself out of that but it's been difficult.  It just doesn't seem natural to me.  Still, there are a few things I think I'll go in and correct before this becomes an official inclusion to my portfolio.

Above you'll see the thumbnails I posted for Robert to review for the class.  This includes one abandoned thumb that would have probably wound up very similar to the one to its right.  When I read a script I generally don't start sketching right away unless an idea really strikes me and I want to make sure I don't forget it.  Generally I can usually "picture" some layout ideas in my head as I'm reading.  Sometimes I really have a hard time thinking of everything.  With each one of these pages I had, what I thought, were some good ideas.  And everything seemed to be working out pretty well...until I started planning this page.

This one was tough for me.  I was really struggling with transitioning between the panels that Misty and Punisher are in.  Since I was working from a professionally written and published script I felt I should keep with the number of panels as was called for but perhaps it would have been a good idea to fit another panel in there.

As you can see the final page wound up being very similar to the bottom most of these thumbnail sketches.  The biggest difference being the final panel with Puppet Master.  As I look back at this particular sketch I don't see quite the same "right hand out" poses that wound up on the finished page.  The Punisher is still to similarly sized but I suppose I could do a better job of executing the final page more closely to the "approved" sketch.

Overall this was a great class.  Being able to work together with a professional artist on these pages was invaluable.   Plus the number of tips and tricks I was able to come away with made the class worth every penny spent.  I was so happy that I've now signed up for another class; starting in November Robert will be teaching a figure drawing and figure construction class.  Definitely looking forward to that.