Ghost Town completed

I finally finished Ghost Town, and you can find it here.  It's not quite what I was going for, but it's fairly close and honestly I was losing patience.  I doubt the rest of my buildings and neighbourhoods will have quite that level of detail.

To cleanse my palette, I also did a character design of Boss Lyubochka.

I think I'll try to tackle a bar interior next.

Project Rooftop

Project Rooftop is a really fun site frequented by an assortment of artists (professional and amateur) who are all head-and-shoulders better at the craft than I am.  The site is dedicated to remixing/redesigning classic superhero costumes - trying to get something new and fun for an established hero or villain without losing the essential qualities that made the character's original costume unique and recognizable.

Each entry is judged by the site's panel of judges, who discuss their own particular philosophies about what makes a good costume in doing so.  I don't always agree, but it's usually very insightful.

All in all, it's a site I keep going back to in order to, both for learning and inspiration.

That's a redesign of Luke Cage by Ray-Anthony Height.  Luke Cage hasn't really had an actual costume since the eighties (which was this).  Check out the PR page itself for many, many more.

Blarg

Internet problems are preventing me from accessing things at my leisure. I'm making this post from a friend's connection; hopefully by Monday things will be fixed.

Anyway, two new drawings:

Vitalia Portrait

Sewer Encounter

Friday Art Time

Only two to share from the past week: Guardian and Tremor.

I have... Hmm... Five more character designs to do. Then I've got some location designs, and a cityscape, and I'll be ready.

Incidentally, I've now passed a 1-for-1 ratio of favourites for my DeviantArt account. My rating is 1.18. Which is... a good sign? Though probably not a good sign that I care about my DeviantArt stats... :/

Arts and a Schedule

So, I've got three more arts to show:

Xenos (not really a character but a race design, these guys being transdimensional refugees)

The Master

Powerhouse

Also, after thinking on it a while, I've decided I'm going to give this blog a schedule; a different thing to post about each day. In theory, it will be as follows:

-Monday: Gaming/Webcomics/Nerdiness in general.

-Tuesday: Internet links, wherein I share some random bit of the internet that I find amusing or enlightening. This will often be something involving Youtube.

-Wednesday: Politics. This could be either a news article, a series of related news articles, or a rant of some kind. There's also no guarantee that it will be related to Canadian politics, but it will be political in some way.

-Thursday: Non-Political news. Basically anything news-related that doesn't fall under Wednesday's topic.

-Friday: Arts! Where I share all the art-related stuff I've done throughout the week. If I don't have any of my own to show (or sometimes even if I do), I'll share some other artist's work that's caught my eye, or perhaps a how-to link.

OMG Two Posts in One Day!

Just dropping some arts on y'all.

Unit One

The Grey Warlock

Arts and Webcomics

Two more designs finished:

Princess Starra and SkyArrow.

Someday I'll be done these, I swear.

Someone once asked me what webcomics I thought were worth reading. To give me a break from yelling about Harper, I figure this would make a good topic - so over the next few blog entries, I'm going to be sharing the webcomics on my reading list, and giving mini-critiques explaining why I think each one is head and shoulders above the rest.

String Theory: This is billed as a supervillain's origin story. It's funny and cute, with a cartoonish style, with a nice blend of humour and drama (leaning heavily toward the humour side, admittedly). The first bits of the comic are in black-and-white, and colour elements are introduced in a thematically-appropriate manner as the story progresses. The writing is solid enough that I can even forgive the occasional spelling error.

Rice Boy: This is actually a trio of comics, two of which are finished, and all of which are easily among the best webcomics have to offer. The eponymous Rice Boy is the first story, with a very simplistic art style and a fantastically surreal setting; the story deals with themes of the nature of the divine, faith, and fate, and creator Evan Dahm's style really evolves throughout what turns out to be a truly epic story - one that strikes me as something like a cross between Bone and Alice in Wonderland.

Rice Boy is followed by a prequel of sorts, Order of Tales, which is a pen-and-ink romp involving bards, romance, evil overlords, and the importance of stories. It's not as good as Rice Boy, in my opinion, but it's still very, very good.

Lastly, Evan Dahm is currently working on Vattu. It's just gotten up and running - I'm unsure what the story's going to be about, or where it fits chronologically in his world setting, but even at first glance you can tell how far his art's come since the beginning days of Rice Boy.

Effort Comics: A frequently not-work-safe comic that's definitely not without its flaws. The scripting often comes across as awkwardly constructed, and the plotting moves at a snail's pace. As far as I've been able to tell after reading it for the better part of a year, the comic is about some twenty-something losers (mostly) who are trying to find out what they want in life, love, and everything else, set in a world where Toons are real. Kinda like, um... I dunno, Friends meets Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Anyway, despite its flaws, the art style is what's kept me reading; the creator, who goes by the name of Ovens, has a very refined style that's pretty much pitch-perfect for her subject material. It has an energy and vibrancy that's clearly apparent even when her characters are sitting around talking (as they are frequently wont to do.)

Magellan: This is one of the webcomics that got me wanting to start my own. I've been reading it for years, and it's one of the very few decent superhero webcomics on the internets today. Made by creator Stephen Crowley and based in Crowley's home country of Australia, the webcomic follows the exploits of, generally, the students and faculty of Magellan Academy, specifically focusing on one Kaycee Jones, currently Magellan's only non-powered student. There's lots of swearing and very rarely the comic will have a bit of nudity, so it's not-work-safe but it's all very appropriate to the story.

The art is a bit rough around the edges, particularly when he's trying to portray action. What really got me reading the comic, and kept me around, is the world-building Crowley engages in. He doesn't really bother with infodumps, but you can tell lots of thought went into creating his world setting and all the characters that populate it. And he's got lots and lots of characters, very few of whom ever strike me as throwaway - I think he puts a lot of thought into who these people are, even when they're just in the background for a few panels.

Sadly, it's been on hiatus for a few months now, though it's got a huge archive of already-completed chapters and is set to start up again before too long.

That's all for now. See you next time.

Comic Book News (also an Art link)

Most people who read this blog are probably not aware of the legal shenanigans that comic book mogul Todd McFarlane gets up to. Keeping up with comic book creator drama, in particular figuring out who's engaging in douchebaggery, is a hobby of mine... So, in order to truly appreciate what I'm about to share, you need a bit of context.

Mr. McFarlane was once a big name in the comics industry. Less so these days, but he was the most popular Spider-Man artist of his day, he helped found the No. 3 publisher Image, he created one of Image's flagship books Spawn (later turned into a terrible couple of movies and some moderately cool cartoons), and he used that to springboard a very successful toy company.

Well, back when his book Spawn was in its infancy, he wanted to really kick it off into high-gear around issue 7 or 8 (can't recall exactly which issue it started), and so recruited a number of top-tier writers to write several issues for him. These were all pretty famous names at the time (at least famous for the comics industry): Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Dave Sim, and Neil Gaiman. I might be forgetting someone, but it doesn't matter - the important name in that list is the last, for our purposes today.

Most of these stories were eminently forgettable, but then they all wrote single-issue stories so you couldn't expect a whole lot. Gaiman's was by far the most energetic of the set, though, and he created a number of interesting characters and setting elements for McFarlane. McFarlane should have been grateful, because really Spawn had little going for it up to that point besides his overrated art, and I suspect he acted grateful - but as soon as he got the opportunity, McFarlane violated the agreement he had with Gaiman which began a number of long legal battles.

You can read Gaiman's own thoughts on the matter here. There's a follow-up here. He also describes some of the legal shenanigans McFarlane got up to in an effort to twist copyright law to his own ends here.

Those links show that the courts sided with Gaiman in every single instance, granting him ownership of characters he created: Angela, Cagliostro, and Medieval Spawn. Believe it or not, this case established some important legal precedent from what I understand.

Thing is, apparently Todd didn't like this much, so he created a secondary Medieval Spawn character - basically a carbon-copy of the first, so he could continue to use the (different) character without paying Gaiman any royalties (never mind all the royalties he already owed him, but that's another matter.) Well, I guess a judge took issue with this because recently a ruling was handed down with an awesomely geeky statement to accompany it:

"The two characters are similar enough to suggest that either Dark Ages [McFarlane] Spawn is derivative of Medieval (Gaiman) Spawn or it is the same character to which plaintiff owns the copyright.

"Much as defendant [McFarlane] tries to distinguish the two knight Hellspawn, he never explains why, of all the universe of possible Hellspawn incarnations, he introduced two knights from the same century," Crabb writes. "Not only does this break the Hellspawn 'rule' that Malebolgia never returns a Hellspawns [sic] to Earth more than once every 400 years (or possibly every 100 years, as suggested in Spawn, No. 9, exh. #1, at 4), it suggests that what defendant really wanted to do was exploit the possibilities of the knight introduced in issue no. 9. (This possibility is supported by the odd timing of defendant’s letter to plaintiff on February 14, 1999, just before publication of the first issue of Spawn The Dark Ages, to the effect that defendant was rescinding their previous agreements and retaining all rights to Medieval (Gaiman) Spawn.)

"If defendant really wanted to differentiate the new Hellspawn, why not make him a Portuguese explorer in the 16th century; an officer of the Royal Navy in the 18th century, an idealistic recruit of Simon Bolivar in the 19th century, a companion of Odysseus on his voyages, a Roman gladiator, a younger brother of Emperor Nakamikado in the early 18th century, a Spanish conquistador, an aristocrat in the Qing dynasty, an American Indian warrior or a member of the court of Queen Elizabeth I? It seems far more than coincidence that Dark Ages (McFarlane) Spawn is a knight from the same century as Medieval (Gaiman) Spawn."

Judge knows her stuff. Here's Gaiman on the latest development.

Oh, and before I forget, here's my latest character design: Jade Fan. As always, comments are welcome.

Anyway, that's all for now.

One More Before the Weekend

Hot off my tablet:

Kid Viking.

I'm getting so sick of doing these character designs... But I want to do this comic right, and that means having clean reference images. Le sigh.

It also means having scripts, which I haven't touched in some time... But that's a whole other problem, and a less immediate one since when I stopped writing I still had seven or eight (can't recall) completed issues, so I'll be good for a while.

Anyway, going to a family reunion on the weekend, I'll likely be back sometime Saturday Night or Sunday afternoon.

Another Name Off the List

Captain Thunder this time.

Alloy

Viewable here.

I've lost track of how many more character designs I want to do before I get started on the comic itself, but the list is getting shorter bit by bit.

Deviant Art Update

Been working on this one for a while:

Rooftop Battle Royale.

Drawings &c Minus the &c

So, just drawings really.

Only two new ones to show off this time.

Vitalia, who becomes the kinda-sorta sidekick of the team...
and Zortok, a former Chemical plant janitor who thinks he's an alien invader.

Infiniforce

This took me a long time to do - I wanted to get the building right, and it was four designs rather than my usual one for design pics.

In fact, I watched the entire first season of Raising the Bar while drawing this.

In the story, only one of these characters is alive enough to show up in the current day, and that's only planned to be a brief appearance... However, the characters are all pretty important to the setting, and show up in flashbacks. They appear as a park statue in the first storyline, which is why I wanted to get their designs down.

Hawkes Goon Squad

With these three drawings, I've completed designs for all of Richard Hawkes' inner circle:

Mr. Jones
Ms. Widow
Mr. Black

Add Mr. Singe and Mr. Frost, and you've got all of Hawkes' regulars. I've got vague concepts for a few others (a psychic named Mr. Book, the slasher villain Mr. Nice, and a cyborg called Mr. Gears), but to be honest I don't know if they'll ever see the light of day so I'm not worried too much about finishing their designs anytime soon.

Ten Designs Down...

...fourteen more to go before I've got all the character designs needed for the first story arc.

The latest additions to the gallery are:

Mr. Frost
Hawkes (in Power Suit)
Lex Talionis

As always, feedback welcomed.

I guess I'm a Deviant now.

To make art management easier, I've made a Deviant Art account to upload my images to.

It was kinda neat - not three minutes after uploading my first image (here), someone favourited it.

Anyway, here's what I've uploaded so far (besides Devil Girl, which I've already shared in my previous post):

Bolt's New Costume
Bolt's Classic Costume
Bolt Portraits

I'm doing colours quick-and-dirty style. In other words, badly. To be honest, I've never been good with colours, and the best I've really ever been able to manage is a very basic cel-shaded look - that's what you'll find above. I may start trying other techniques soon, too.

One of these days, I'll need to buckle down and learn me some proper colour theory.