More Solitary Madness

Here is another panel from the short comic Solitary that I am drawing, written by Dale Maccanti. I've left the skyline of both these images empty, as this comic is intended to be coloured and it will probably look better if the colourist adds the sky. It's a pretty detailed line drawing, click on the pic for a larger version of the image.

Below is the finished version of a panel from page 3 of solitary that i posted a few days ago. I am pretty happy with how this comic is looking, should be good.

Colouring (and inkwash) experiments

To warm up for the 24 hour comic challenge I spent a bit of time experimenting with creating tonal black and white artwork using washes and then using white paint pens and gel pens to create white highlights on them. And doing this QUICKLY. Could also be because I have been flipping through some Creepy archives with lots of inkwash comics and reading Ben Templesmith's new book too. Its called Choker and it has probably his best comic art yet. I then digitally coloured a couple, using textures ala Templesmith. Colouring is not my strong suit, so please be kind, but i think they turned out ok. What do you reckon?

This image is pretty small, you can't really see any of the detail in it. Click on it to see a larger version. :)

Solitary page 3 inks preview panel (formerly a 24 hour comic)

Ok so, i've finally gotten onto finishing the inks for the 24 hour comic story Dale Maccanti wrote for me called solitary. Below are inks for panel 2 of page 3. thought you might like a look...

sketchy

When I sell a comic or zine from my etsy store, time permitting, I try and do a quick sketch for the customer. I knocked this one out relatively quickly, but still, it turned out ok, if you can forgive a bit of wonky anatomy :) thought you might be interested in seeing this

24 hour comic crazy

Well, for the first time ever i had a serious crack at the 24 hour comic challenge. (www.comikaze24.com) It's this crazy thing where you try and write and draw a 24 page comic in 24 hours. I did it at a 24 hour event hosted my Melbournes only open comic studio, Squishface Studios. I was working with a pool of 4 writers, (Dale Maccanti, Jason Franks, Matt Nicholls and Georgia Quinn) who each wrote one short story for the project. Thanks to all of them for helping out and to dale for editing a couple of the stories to boot. I brought in a pool of writers so I could concentrate on drawing, although it did work out that i spend a lot of the first 2-4 hours talking through ideas with the writers, but i started drawing in the third hour of the challenge.

I wanted to do a EC and Creepy Mag inspired horror/sci-fi/crime anthology in the spirit of SHOCK SuspenStories. Well, i spent the first few hours talking through ideas with writers, the next 20 hours drawing, and the most i could manage was to pencil 7 pages and ink 2 pages.

I made a few rookie mistakes, one was drawing at A3 size when most of the other artists at the studio were drawing at the (smaller) A4 or (much smaller) A5 size. Drawing at A3 was not a good idea -- although it meant the 2 pages i finished will look pretty good when printed at standard comic size. It also showed my that i could never complete this challenge drawing in my 'realistic' style. If i want to try again, i will have to draw in my 'cartoon' style, as i can draw much faster in that style.

So here it is – the seven page story 'Solitary' drawn by me, written by Dale Maccanti. (Thanks Bro!) As always, click on each image for a larger version.