Figure construction class

Most of the entries in this blog to this point share an origin with the "Intro to Comic Art" class I took from Comics Experience.  During my extended downtime from blog posting I took another class from Comics Experience.  This one happened to be the "Intro to Figure Drawing and Construction".  As with the "Comic Art" class this was also taught by Robert Atkins.

Thor vs. Dr. Doom

Ugh!  It has been a long, long time since I've paid any attention to this.  I know my subscribers measure in the single digits (actually, single digit.  As in one.  Hey, Neil!) but one of the points here is to keep up with it and make people want to read it and use it as a promotional tool.  Well, someday at least.  So, I need to get back in the swing of things.

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.

Iron Man!

Been a little while again.  I'm just about finished with the last page of the Heroes for Hire samples.  In the meantime I worked on a gift for my nephew, Max.  It was his sixth birthday a few days ago.  He and his younger brother are the only grandkids for both sides of the family so it's safe to say their birthday present loads are pretty substantial.  Considering this I thought I'd take a different route this year.  He's been an Iron Man fan for quite awhile and since I have the ability to make a half ways decent Iron Man drawing (I hope) why not do that for him instead?  Here's what I came up with:

Heroes for Hire page 2

I've been away longer than I had hoped but I finally have page 2 of the Heroes for Hire sample pages I'm working on ready for posting.  It's been done for a number of days now but I've held off posting it here because something was just a bit off.  There are things about the page I like and things I don't like.  That's pretty usual.  But something about the page was bugging me just enough that I had to let it sit for awhile.  I finished making some changes tonight and I am happier with the page now than I was before.  Here's the "finished" product:

Heroes for Hire sample page 1

As I mentioned in previous posts, I'm currently finishing up an Intro to Comic Art class at comicsexperience.com.  I'm using the script for Heroes for Hire #5 to pencil three pages to use in my portfolio (story written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning).  The above is the first page I've completed.  Puppet Master is the big, goofy mouth in the first panel (and the large smiling face in the foreground of the other image), Misty Knight has her back to us and Punisher is in the center of the image about to install some holes on Misty's forehead.

The script picked up immediately from the events of issue #4.  Without going into too much detail Misty had just "awaken" from Puppet Master's control in this very room and was try to escape when she ran into 6+ feet of homicidal maniac blocking the only exit.  As per the script, since Misty was just getting up from the hospital bed that Puppet Master had her in, she was still wearing a hospital gown when this story began (awfully nice of Puppet Master to make sure she was in a gown don't ya think?).  I decided to keep her in the "costume" she had been wearing in previous issues since I plan on putting this in my portfolio and I don't want to keep explaining why she's wearing the gown.

It took me longer to complete this page than I had originally hoped.  Aside from getting busier at work recently I also had some struggles with this one.  As of a week ago I was ready to either walk away completely or take a break, work on another page and hopefully come back with plan to make it work.  I had a couple of friends take a look at the progress (at that point it was just blue pencil roughs).  Not surprisingly they thought something was a bit off as well and gave me some feedback.  So before moving on I gave it one last shot and made some changes.  As it turns out I was happy enough with the results that I kept working at it and came away with something that I'm fairly proud of.

The funny thing is it was mostly just Punisher's legs that seemed to throw the whole thing off.  He just wasn't situated correctly within the shot and it seemingly made the whole image seem...."off".  Before I made the changes to his lower half I didn't feel that the perspective was really working and Puppet Master seemed to be sitting too low or Misty and Punisher were up too high or something else that I just couldn't put my finger on.  But now things seem to be working out much better.  Well, from my point of view anyway.  Maybe something is still off but I'm much happier than I thought I would be a week ago.

As I mentioned earlier this is part of an assignment for an art course at comicsexperience.com.  The instructor for this particular class is the one, the only Robert Atkins.  As part of the course leading up to this point we were instructed on picking out a script and doing three sets of thumbnails (3 to 4 pages per set).  Here are the thumbs I created for this page:

Robert felt that the second image would work the best and suggested that I widen the first panel and include Puppet Master gripping the microphone in the larger, splashy image.  The final image turned out pretty faithful to the thumbnail image but I decided to go with a 2 point perspective on the final instead of what looks more like a 3 point on the sketch.

So there we are.  We've only got a few more days to access the forum so I'm hoping I can get the other two pages finished by then but that will depend on my work load.  Plus, there's no real deadline here so rushing these would be a mistake.  Regardless, I'll post my work here once it's finished.

Heroes for Hire sample cover

Here's the finished pencils for the cover.  Okay, so there could be some refinements here and there but this is finished for all intents and purposes.  The final image wound up very similar to the breakdown version.  The thumbnail seemed to have more of a bird's eye view than anything that followed.  Obviously there is a greater attention to detail here as well.