Friday, August 24, 2012

Entry 155: Blast From The Past- Part 12

My fellow dudes and dudetts,

I bring you another Blast From The Past.

Last time I did one of these entries I talked about my first comic book series, "Assassins Guild," which I did back in 2001-02. I also talk about how during that time I got an internship at Wildstorm studios. That internship started in early 2003, but before I get into talking about my time at Wildstorm, I've got a bunch of random drawings I want to show you, all done bettween 2000 to 2002.


This is from the year 2000. There was time there when I was catching Pokemon on tv everyday. I got to a point where I was liking the show so much that I wanted to draw it. I did this page purely for fun. 

I did include this page in my portfolio at that following year's SanDiego Comic Con. It got some interesting reactions. Editors upon seeing this page would act like I was some kind of weirdo and that they were to cool to be into Pokemon... I'd immediately loose respect for them. They don't know. 


Also from 2000-- this was one of 2 pieces I did for Dark Horse. A few Blast From The Past entries ago I mentioned meeting Chris Warner at the Comic Con and continuing to send him my work. Well, my persistence soon payed off when he gave me my FIRST professional work. It was a big deal, even though both of the pieces were never intended for publication. They were for something he called "The Dark Horse Bible"  which, as I understand it, is just a catalogue of properties they own. So he needed a few images to go with a couple properties. 

In revisiting this piece for posting it here, I filled in the blacks and added the pixel tones and splatter.
I believe this was done in 2001. This was a pin-up I did for the comic, Decoy, from Penny Farthing Press. I actually did a bunch of pin-ups for them, one right after the other. I did 2 Decoy pieces, 2 Zendra pieces, and one Victorian piece. They were published in the comics. I took a break from doing Assassins guild to do these.
At the 2001 San Diego Comic Con I did a portfolio review with Crossgen and it went really well. Bart Sears told me I had "chops" and was really nice and encouraging. He gave me this "test" packet that included all this info about the company, a sample script, and even paper to draw the pages on. It was the most promising portfolio review I've ever had. So I drew the sample pages and sent them off to Crossgen. I really thought this was going to go somewhere. I never heard back from them. They went bankrupt soon after that and disappeared. So I didn't feel so bad about it.
There came a point in 2002 when I realized that I was a dummy. I felt like I had learned nothing in school and that it was now up to me to educate myself. I started reading a lot. I also realized that if I was going to be serious about being a comic book artist I should probably learn something about inking. So I bought a brush, a nib, a set or Rapidagraph pins, ink, and some sketchbooks. 

The piece above was an adaptation of a play by E.E. Commings from his book "I--Six Nonlectures". I wanted to draw the whole story but I got no further than this page. 

I started inking this page with a nib, but I wasn't really liking it and switched to using my rapidagraphs. 

The piece at the top of this post was my first attempt at using ink wash.

Another ink wash piece. This is referenced from the Woody Allen film Stardust Memories. 

Also from this time period are the two rapidagraph drawings I posted back in this post:  Entry 129: Mini-Blast
Here's another movie referenced piece-- from the movie Buffalo 66.




Years before Travis Charest did his Space Girl I did this... I say that as if calling a character "Space Girl" is so creative and original.

Here are some more pieces from this time period.


That last one is a re-visit to a character I've talked about before in these "Blast" entries, back in entry 5.

I'll leave you with this weird face, I found when I was looking through all this old stuff.
Blogged and Blogged

5 comments:

  1. I really love that New York piece. It's really impressive to me. I got the feeling you sort of wrote it off because it's referenced- but every time I think about what an amazing artist you are one of the first things I remember is seeing this piece in that bucket of illustrations. I don't think I ever saw that Woody Allen ink wash- it's beautiful. Like something you'd see out of those old Warren magazines. I may have seen that Hiro piece- I can't remember. I love these blast-from-the-past drawings. There's something special about them. They're oozing with talent and promise.

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    1. Promise that would go, to date, unfulfilled.
      I guess, I feel like referencing something directly is such a different muscle than creating something "from scratch" that it doesn't mean as much that it look good... But I do like that drawing. I used it as the first image in this post, after all.
      This BFTP post was a particularly fun one to do. Going through all my old drawings is like going through old photo albums. This post has a lot of stuff in it that I had a good time doing, except for the Crossgen thing. With those pages I had put a lot of pressure on myself to do well and the subject matter wasn't something that I care that much about.

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  2. I dig that NYC piece as well. And the Batman is crazy cool. the way the cape cuts through the image reminds me of JHW3's work on Batwoman, and that is a serious compliment as you well know. And the city above Batman is groovy too. And you actually got the weird look on the Aeon Flux woman pretty well, not to mention her boobies-very accurate to the cartoon! (which is mostly why we all watched, at least why we first tuned in) - Sean W

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    1. Thank!
      I appreciate the JH comparison... I'm not sure what inspired that. I do know that I was looking at some John Van Fleet when I did that background.

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  3. The Batman and Aeon Flux were both ones I wanted to comment on too. I really like the chunky black of Batman's cape. It looks so stylish with the detailed background.

    And Aeon Flux's pose looks super cool! I love that leg extending away from us.
    I think there's a little something more happening with the choice and ambition of her pose and Hiro's pose below. They both are a little extra cool. A little bit more imaginative...
    Its not the typical, "Hey this character is cool!".

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