Living up to its name...

As I've previously mentioned, I've drawn an eight page story for Heske Horror's 2012: Final prayer anthology, written by Bob Heske himself. Its a lovely looking book with some great short stories so I'd recommend picking one up.

I love seeing artist's process work, and I experimented a little with my approach to the following page, so with Bob's permission here's a little 'script to finished page' post:

1/ Bob send me his script:


Page One

6 panels.

Panel 1:
Exterior Nursing Home. Night.
Snow is on the ground. A shoveled, paved walkway leads us to a brick building.
A sign outside: Rosebud Nursing Home.

DEX (OFF)
How’s she doing today?

NURSE (OFF)
Not one of her better days.

Panel 2:
Interior nursing home, a drab, depressing room.

ANGLE ON – A 65‐year old woman (AIDA) who sits in a chair by a window. She looks much older – her hair is white, her skin loose over her brittle bones. Her eyes are blank, her mind lost in a fog.
There are blinds in the window, a crucifix on the wall, and ugly print wallpaper on the walls.

DEX (OFF)
Frankly, mom’s best days are behind her.

NURSE (OFF)
That’s true for us all, Dex.

Panel 3:

REVEAL – DEX, a 40‐year old man with a boxer’s sturdy build wearing a wool coat. Beside him is the attending nurse, DOTTIE, whose ample cleavage fills out her white uniform quite pleasantly.

Between them, hanging on the wall, is a calendar. It shows December with the 21st day circled.

NURSE
At least the world didn’t end. December 21st, and we’re still here.

DEX
Another false Apocalypse. Like 1984, Y2K, and Planet X in ‘03.

Panel 4:
ANGLE ON – Aida, in her own world, almost appears to be listening to their conversation.

NURSE
Looks like we’ll be here to celebrate Christmas after all.

Panel 5:
Dexter watches Aida leave the room, admiring the view. His right hand reaches inside his coat.

DEXTER
Mm‐hmm.

Panel 6:
Dexter pulls out a REVOLVER and stares maliciously at his mother with dementia.

DEXTER
Some of us will.

Apologies to Bob as some of the formatting is lost while transfering to the blog. Bob also embedded lots of really helpful reference material into the PDF, which were extrememely helpful in picturing the scene as I read the script, but since I didn't directly reference the images and this blog will be long enough as is, I've left them out.

2/ Small thumbnails to layout the panels and figures:

Often on first pages, I like to make one panel larger than the rest to pull the reader into the scene. In this case though there was a lot of information to portray; most of the panels are establishing shots of different characters and the last is the 'action' shot. I made panel 3 a little larger than the rest as it establishing arguably the main protagonist Dex, but I had to make the other panels stand out clearly as well. The above jpeg is probably the actual size I drew it, at just a few inches tall.

3/ Pencilling (work in progress)

Drawn on 11 x 17 inch bristol board. I looked up some photos of old ladies and I think the side view of Aida in panel 3 was pretty close to the imageI found, as I needed to see which way glasses sit on the nose, but for the most part I didn't use much direct reference. I wanted Dex to look different from my other male characters, so he's based very loosely on Bruce Willis on panel 3, just to give me a starting point. I've heard he look like everything from myself, to an angry Gary Barlow, so I don't think the likeness is too obvious.

4/ Working out panel 2: I'd just downloaded a free 3D modelling program called DAZ3D and was having a messaround with finding a nice pose for Aida on the chair:

I experimented with different angles, but ended up ignoring the model and just going for a simpler angle as it was the first time Aida appeared in the story, I needed to establish the calander on the wall, and leave room for dialogue. I also felt it was appropriate to start off with an almost mudane angle, then go for the more extreme angles when the action started on panel 6.

5/ Inking:

I starting inking the piece, tidying up and refining the artwork using mostly the new Rotring ink pen I'd just picked up and a little bit of brush for the bigger black areas. This was my first time using the Rotring on a proper comic page, I felt the pen would bring a grittier look to the page, which I thought suited the story.


- We're only half way through and the blog's getting a little image heavy so I'll call this Part 1 and show the redraws, inks, grayscaling and lettering/finished page in my next blog post...

Shades of grey..

I finished up my work on Bob Heske's Demented story for the 2012 Anthology last week and since the book will be printed in glorious black and white, I went back and greyscaled the whole thing. Didn't take too long (did all eight pages in less than 2 days) and I think it really adds a good bit to the finished look. Here's the panel I showed in my previous post with the added grey.
Tools used to add the grey were simply Photoshop CS4, my Compaq (that Aimee and her family bought me for christmas to replace my 6 year old Sharp that could barely run PS) and the Wacom Bamboo tablet/pen seen sitting on it. The Bamboo is the cheapest of the Wacom tablets, but does the job alright for greyscaling and colouring (I'm working my way through colouring Slaughterman's Creed at the minute). For those who don't know, these types of tablets are sensitive to the the pressure and angle of the pen, so you can get a brush-like effect; changing lines weight and size) but my dream tablet would be the Wacom Cintiq, with which you can draw onto the actual screen with the same sensitivity.

The background of my laptop is "Wally Wood's 22 panels that always work" that can give inspiration when you need a fresh angle o na page.

New Tools

Last week I showed a concept image of a character from the Bob Heske's 2012 anothology and here's a preview of how she will appear in the actual comic.

Somewhere near the end of the first chapter of Cancertown I switched from pen to using almost exclusively brush for inking, but for the 2012 anthology I wanted to try pens again to see if I could get a tighter finish. The above picture was created with the following tools:

On the far left is the Pentel mechanical pencil I use drawing the foundations. Its got a nice rubber grip which in addition to being nice to hold, doesn't roll off the slanted board I draw on. You won't see any pencil in the above picture as it's all erased after the ink is put down.

In the middle is a Faber-Castell Pitt indian ink Brush pen. It's. This used to be regulated to drawing panel borders, but it's become my new favourite tool. It's actually a sort of pen/brush hybrid, combining advantages of both. The tip is flexible and now that I have a bit more control over it enables you to vary the line width a good bit, but the tip is a good bit firmer than the normal brushes I use thus being easier to control and it also doesn't need to be dipped in ink constantly so its quicker to use.

On the right is a Rotring pigmented ink pen. I just picked this up a couple of weeks ago in Bradbury Graphics in Belfast. They had just found an old batch out the back and were selling them for £1.99 so thought I'd try one. Its got a nice flow to it, but with all pens it's only really got one width to the line.

I'll probably end up going back to the brush as the pen line can often come out a little monotonous (if that word can apply here) when I'm not careful. I'll do a post and show the brushes/ink I normally use another time.

What I'd really like is a brush pen that comes in a variation of sizes so that I could get in to the small areas without having to worry about applying to much pressure and ruining the piece. If anyone knows if these exist let me know :D

Goosebumps...

I got an email a couple of weeks ago from Bob Heske, screenwriter and publisher of Heske's Horrors' Cold Blooded Chillers, the horror anthology which won an award at last years 2009 Independent Publisher Book Awards for its collection Bone Chillers. Bob had seen my work in Cancertown and commissioned me to draw one of his scripts for his next anthology 2012: Final Prayer

The book features stories from various creators that centre around what could happen on the 21st of December 2012, the end of the Mayan Long Count Calender and reportedly the start of the end of the world. I know a few other Insomniacs, such as Martin Hayes, Ollie Masters and Dino Caruso have strips in the anthology as well as so it looks like its going to be an awesome little project.

The anthology should be available sometime in late Autumn, but I'm wrapping up my eight page contribution at the start of this week. The story I'm drawing is called 'Demented' and this is the first concept sketch of one of the characters 'Aida'. She changed a bit by the time I got to the actual drawing boards, but this was my first doodle attempt.