Here’s a preview of what I’ve been working on.
I’m trying to ink this in the traditional comic book style – with a brush (but not nibs, not yet). I’m not used to it, and I’m getting really frustrated with my inexperience, my tools and most of all my work area. I need more flat areas and though my table (graciously built by Mr Woods) is great for 90% of what I do, inking is not not of those things. It may be time to invest in a new table.
Here’s what I did for the back cover of Outnumbered #5 from Critical Hit Comics.
Here’s the first look at art from the upcoming return of Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew
CAPTAIN CARROT AND THE FINAL ARK #1
Written by Bill Morrison
Art by Scott Shaw! & Al Gordon
Cover by Shaw! & MorrisonThe Zoo Crew is back in a 3-issue COUNTDOWN tie-in miniseries! Captain Carrot reunites the team to face a threat that begins at the “Sandy Eggo Comic-Con” and quickly menaces the entire world ! The gang’s all here: Fastback, Pig-Iron, Yankee Poodle, American Eagle, Alley-Kat-Abra, and the Captain himself, taking on the Salamandroid!
On sale October 10 o 1 of 3 o 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US
Tonight I went to the Vancouver Comic Jam at the Jolly Alderman and practiced my funny animals. At the last ComiCon I bought a small stack of comics like Supergoof and Donald Duck, and in the stack was Disney’s Robin Hood – you know like the movie with the fox as Robin Hood. Of all the comics in this vein that I picked up, this one is the best, clearly. Lots of different animal characters and well drawn. I’ll have to try to track down some more of these. The first two characters are a couple of unsavory scoundrel types, a hyena and a croc, and the last is the lion, Prince John, who I totally missed when I was trying to think about lion characters (see http://www.thickets.net/toren/2007/04/16/ant-lion/ and http://www.thickets.net/toren/2007/05/01/world-wildlife-federation-of-justice-studies/. I modified the design to give him some top mane instead of the crown, and gave him a jacket instead of the robe. I think the design is a winner and my final will probably be closer to this than anything previous.
Today I was doing some studies of established cartoon lions in preparation of issue #1 of WWFJ. A free peanut if you know who this is:
Your final grade for the course was 95%, which is an A. Of course, marks arent nearly as important in this course as the knowledge and practice you hopefully gained.
True, but I can hardly brag about knowledge and practice on my blog.
Initial character designs for Ant Lion. What cartoon lions are there? Well there’s all the lions in Lion King, which are quite Disneyish, then there’s the lion from the WB cartoon “Hold the Lion” and “The Lion’s Busy” and probably others. Then there’s also apparently a Hanna Barbara character called Lippy the Lion. 
Can anyone think of anyone else?
Addendum:
Here’s the last page. Inking style changed from the brush to the pen on this one, except the big expanses of black.
Other pages:
Page 3: http://www.thickets.net/toren/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/ssz-page-3.png
Page 2: http://www.thickets.net/toren/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/ssz-page-2-small-no-tone.jpg
Page 1: http://www.thickets.net/toren/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/ssz-page-1-inks-balloons-72dpi.jpg
Consistency is NOT the name of the game. With each page I’m trying out something new. On this page there are four changes:
1. The font is different (thanks Stewie).
2. The tone is not pixelated, but smooth.
3. There’s a lot more ink on the page! As you can clearly see.
4. The balloons are all perfect ellipses. It’s quicker that way but I don’t think the comic prof approves. We’ll see.
So for the first panel, if you look at the older pencils you can see how different the ship is. I was having a hard time with the tines in this panel so at the behest of my prof I downloaded the free google 3D modelling program “sketchup” and made a dirty model of SSZ, which I can view from any angle. It worked like a charm. A CHARM I TELL YOU!
The following pics are NOT from that program. They are much nicer:
More monkeying around. I pretty much finished inking page two, but I am going to go back and fiddle with some things. I screwed up page one in that I added the balloons before I shrunk the art down to comic book size, so the edges of the balloons are too thin.
On this second page I started screwing around with tones, as you can see, but I’m not too sold on the idea. I have my original lineart scanned in so I think I’m going to go back and put in some tones by hand, with crosshatching and whatnot. Hopefully I won’t ruin the art.
Without tones:
With tones:
