Portraits of Mom

This is one of my school projects this quarter, a 6-pager done for my self publishing class with Chris Staros. It was a great class, I learned a lot about the comics industry and now I think I have a more pointed and professional way of approaching it. In addition to lectures we also had to do a 6 page short story and print it out into a mini-comic.

This comic I didn't do as well as I could have. I was going for a chunkier inking approach and in the end I went too far and sacrificed precise lines for more haphazard ones. I've gotten praise for the art and I got a good grade on them, but in the end I feel like this was a fun experiment in artistic styles that I'll take a ton away from, but the next work will probably be a hybrid ink style of this comic and my Calla of the Sea pages.

Story-wise it was fun to do something emotional again. I haven't really been able to tell a story like this since KCNO so it was fun to stretch the tear jerker muscles again. I think this is a fairly decent story with a responsible ending to the sadness of mourning. I'd like to do more of these shorts related to art, but we shall see. The summer is long, they could be drawn!

Sketch of the Day 5-30-13: Marvel Girl

 

This time I drew Marvel Girl. I'm really enjoying seeing them all in All New X-men. I like doing these sketches, they're a fun exercise. I've also done a few original character ones for future projects that I'll post up as well. 

Sketch of the Day 5-26-13: Iceman

I'm posting this on 5/26 but it won't pop up on the blog until the 28th. I want to get ahead on these things so I can have more consistent updates on here. Anyhow, here's Iceman! Finding a proper pose for him took me longer than I thought, and I'm still not even sure if this is the best answer. I didn't want to compress him too much, which is probably the best way to show his forward motion, but because I chose this angle, drawing him compressed would just show a bunch of his back.

Unlike the Cyclops sketch, this one is probably most in the my style of drawing. I used my leadholder for this so I ended up making the lines thinner and I used a lot less shading on his body. I was sort of approaching this one as a drawing I may one day ink so it's just pencilling practice. It was a fun one though, and I do really like his hips and his left hand. They were pretty fun and easy to figure out.

Sketch of the Day: 5-19-13: Cyclops

This is already on my tumblr, but that site is a lot easier to update when I'm not at my personal computer. So I'm a bit behind on posting my sketches of the day, so here's one that has gotten good reception (for one of my drawings anyhow). I've been really loving Stuart Immonen's work on All New X-Men so I wanted to give original Cyclops a try, and  here are the results.

This is one of the few where I didn't have to labor on it for very long. Aside from some anatomy hiccups and trying to figure out what to do with his left arm, this one came together rather quickly. I penciled this in a pad of paper I brought with me from Texas, it's sort of cream colored and I decided to use it on these sketches of the day so I don't waste the pad. I do wish it has more tooth to it like the paper I pencil on, or one of the vellum Stillman and Birns' I love so much. I usually pencil really cleanly so getting to rough things up with the pencil was a lot of fun.

Time Travel mini comic

The other day, I decided to give a more simplified and cartoony style a try. I had fun with it but I think it needs more refining to really be something I return to. Overall I spent a lot more time thinking up funny jokes and placement of balloons than I did on the art so that's probably a good way to force myself to focus on composition and reading flow instead of did of the usual stuff I fret over.

I hope this funny even to people who don't talk to me a ton, but I think the premise should be mildly humorous at least.  Here's hoping I got a chuckle out of you!

Marvel Test Pages: Daredevil, issue 2 pages 1-3

I received a really great portfolio review from Marvel's talent scout C. B. Cebulski in the winter quarter at SCAD, so I was given the chance to test my mettle on some Marvel scripts. Of the four in the pack, Daredevil by Mark Waid was the one I felt played to my strengths the most and this is what I came up with. Not my most recent work, but I felt I should post up some pages in between the digital onslaught of zombie things I've been posting and will be posting more of.

I spent most of these pages just trying to figure out how I would approach the characters appearance. I don't regularly draw superheroes it was tricky to find a way that was true to their costumes without going so far in the utilitarian realism style that it looks like a bad movie costume. For Daredevil I just had to bite the bullet and give him a body suit, I couldn't think of anything an acrobat who leaps off buildings would wear, other than a harness and safety equipment. For Cap I decided to just draw the Jerome Opeña design from the recent relaunch of Avengers. I really love Jerome's work so it fun drawing a design of his, although whether I did it justice is debatable.

There's a fourth page I still want to do but that can wait when school is out from summer break in a few weeks. I'm making progress I hope.

Zombie Digital Comic Pencils Part 2

Here is the rest of the proposed zombie comic. I'm currently coloring the screens so hopefully updates will come regularly.There's going to have to be a third part to this because Blogger has trouble laying out this many images and displaying them well.

I think what I like most about the digital format is how I can affect directly how the reader first sees the comic. When I imagine a sequence in my mind it's always in motion, so sometimes picking the right scene in a thumbnail for a page can be tricky, but digital comics allows me to use more of the motion and movement in my imagination in the storytelling. Eventually I'll work my way to doing Yusuke Murata level layouts where each press of the advance button feels like a new frame in a slow moving animation. While I don't think digital comics should be motion comics, I think some of the techniques Murata uses in the bullet time-esque moments of One-Punch Man are practically begging to be utilized in this format. I'll try to use more of that in the next digital comic I do.

Anyhow, back to the zombies.

Here's a link to the first half: http://www.jorgesantiagojr.com/2013/05/zombie-digital-comic-pencils-part-1.html

 

Sketch of the Day for 5-8-13: Damian Wayne

This late posting of May 8th's sketch of the day is of Damian Wayne, Batman's son. Damian until recently was in one of my favorite superhero books, Batman and Robin until he was killed in an issue of Batman Inc. I still love the book, but I do miss the character, he made Batman and Bruce Wayne human in a way that we don't ever see in other stories. Bruce Wayne is always the smartest dude in the room but fatherhood is clearly something he's not good at, so I will miss this character.

Zombie Digital Comic Pencils Part 1

These are the pencils for my second attempt at digital comics. This one is about a man named Connor who has to man up and rise to the occasion to provide for his wife and their soon to be born child in dire times. It's mainly a comedy so I hope you enjoy it.

As always I'm concerned with storytelling and clarity, although I've been trying to give myself challenging things to draw so I can start to work on my weaknesses.

This is the first 5 screens worth of pencils. I'll post the rest separately so it doesn't take too long to load.

Here's a link to the next set of screens after these: http://www.jorgesantiagojr.com/2013/05/zombie-digital-comic-pencils-part-2.html

Sketch of the Day 5-2-2013: Evan & Jia Jing from Wolverine and the X-men

I've been really enjoying Wolverine and the X-men, it's a fun book but also it's where some of my favorite Marvel characters end up. Evan is a character from Rick Remender's amazing Uncanny X-Force run, and he's a student now in Wolverine and the X-men. I won't spoil anything character wise but I would really recommend reading both books even if you're not into superhero stuff. I think Jason Aaron and Rick Remender both really tap into what makes these people different and tell stories about responsibility and duty and violence that I think anyone who likes a good story would enjoy. It's not about the super heroics, but the people behind the masks. This is the stuff that made Marvel different from their inception.

Back from rambling, the girl is a new mutant to the school, Jia Jing. A chinese girl who appears to be made of hard gemstones and can fly on pixie wings. She's a really good contrast for Evan and I imagine at some point they'll end up as an item. I hope so anyhow, Evan I think needs a person like her in his life.