The New Doctor Who

I could be (but probably am not) the first person to draw the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith, comic book-style. I did this mostly because I like his outfit. For the challenge too, I guess. And a challenge it was, because Smith is not the easiest guy to capture, and I don't think I quite did.

It'll be neat, when actual Eleventh Doctor comics start coming out, comparing mine to the "real" one.

Front Page Redesign Step 2

LWI Process Stuff

For a few months I've been drawing strips in a standard marble composition book. I skip a page, do roughs with a highlighter and Flair pen and then trace them through the previous page. Advantages of this method:

1. Marble notebooks are dirt cheap.
2. The ostensibly shitty paper takes ink from just about any implement astoundingly well, with zero bleed. And you can trace through it.
3. Ease of transportableness. I do most of my drawing at the bookstore or library.

Pic of a rough:



The inks (done with a PITT brush and 03 Micron) with some rough peeking through. This is a 600 dpi grayscale scan.



When I run this through Threshold in Photoshop at level 150, I get nice clean linework.

Making (well, trying to make) a new front page for my website based on the cover of How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way.



I flipped the layout 'cause I'm left-handed.

Still needs a logo, scanned beat-up-cover elements, dotty color and some pen sketches on the paper. The idea is that each character will be clickable and take you somewhere with content relevant to each. Just have to get someone who knows how to make that happen make it happen.

Kevin Nowlan: Nice

Been on a Kevin Nowlan kick of late. HIS BLOG is instructive and addictive, and by lurking there I got a chance to snag a sketchbook from him.

I was impressed/delighted just by the envelope it came in -- he didn't address it, he LETTERED that bitch.



And look what he drew on the back:

More Ladybug Movie Stuff

Finished a draft of the Ladybug movie script.

I turn my comics ideas into scripts like this for a few reasons. Mainly the fun of it. It doesn't feel like wasted effort to me since a screenplay is ostensibly a finished, readable thing in its own right, as opposed to an outline or comic script, which I can't see anyone caring much about.

Granted, almost no one will care about this, but what are you gonna do.

A screenplay demands maximum conciseness, which I figure can only help when it comes to translating the story into a comic. Assuming that ever happens -- I'm obviously much more inclined to expend effort on writing than drawing.

Another thing that's more fun than drawing your comic is prematurely casting the movie that probably won't be made from it. So here, two more potential Ladybugs, both kind of provocative choices.

Here we have Christy Carlson Romano, formerly of some Disney Channel show.





In addition to a formidable Eye-tie nose, she seems to have the girl-next-door sweetness the part calls for -- but Ladybug and the Ladybug lookalikes in the story also do some really not-nice, not-Disney type shit. If you got some other Disney or Teen Nick escapee to play Seraphine Miasma, I think waves could be made. Controversy, man. This is me trying to think like a producer or something, maybe trying to apply some of what I've read on Pulp 2.0 (i.e. sell the sizzle).

The aforementioned doppelgangers in this thing could perhaps be better-embodied by this person:



Yes, porn sensation Sasha Grey. I can't vouch for her acting ability -- haven't seen the for-real movie she did with Steven Soderbergh. But she did do a for-real movie with Steven Soderbergh. If she's good enough for him, right?

She'd look good in the outfit for sure, but what really makes her a fun choice for me is that she shares some of Ladybug's distinct physical characteristics.

Orson Welles and Superman

I made this for Covered, the blog where artists reinterpret old comic book covers, but it turned out less-good than I hoped, and it feels too "Photoshoppy" for the site. Everything I do is too Photoshoppy, I guess. I need to work on that.





Inspired by the Me and Orson Welles trailer. Loved the book, movie looks good, Efron and all.

Mario Art

Too lazy to scan and write about my own stuff, but I appropriated some of my friend Tiffany's trippy Super Mario art.

PVP Guest Strip

David Herbert and I did a guest PVP the other week. Scott Kurtz politely asked us to tone it down some but was okay with me posting the original.



The massive increase in hits this strip generated obliterated the Living With Insanity website but we're still going strong on DrunkDuck.

BELT

The local urban weekly does an annual comic strip contest. Here are two installments from my entry.





I guess it completely sucks because it didn't even make the "honorable mention" category.

Congratulations to the winner.

LB Pinup

Color version of a pinup I made for Official Head Ladybugger Ross Campbell. Need it for the binder. I'll explain later.

New LWI Promo

Did a new LIVING WITH INSANITY promotional image as I'm somewhat better at drawing the characters now.

Kevin Nowlan Batman Designs

I could never find these online, figured I'd upload them myself.

Back in the early 90s, these Kevin Nowlan designs for Batman: The Animated Series appeared in a magazine called Wild Cartoon Kingdom.

They fascinated me. I started at them, copied them -- I was all about Lee and Liefeld and McFarlane at that point, and had never seen art this stripped down and economical. It was magic to me, that anyone could draw these characters with so few lines.

[UPDATE: Thanks to Aaron Conley of Sensitive and Important for pointing out some egregious retardation in the original version of this post.]

Work Junk

PITT brush over highlighter sketches.

Ladybug

Solarboy by Matthew Weldon

In '06 I pitched a miniseries featuring the above character to Image. It got a tepid thumbs-up from Erik Larsen, but I abandoned it for a bunch of reasons.

At the time Identity Crisis fallout was in full swing -- bloggers and comics people I respect were questioning the merits of "adult" superhero comics in a way that made me think twice about writing one. The sense was, superheroes are all clenched teeth and murder and raping now, and enough already.

Also? Superhero comedies by people you've never heard of pretty much always fail miserably anyway.

Had the series come out and been at all successful, though, it would have been all because of Matthew Weldon , who drew the pitch awesomely and has gone on to great acclaim for his contributions to the Popgun anthologies.

The detailed outline I'd written was practically a screenplay, so for fun I went ahead and turned it into one. The day after I finished it, the movie My Super Ex-Girlfriend came out, and there were a lot of eerie similarities between that story and mine. I was worried people would assume I'd stolen stuff from the movie -- as it happened, I think I ended up being the one shithead who actually saw it.

Anyway, HERE is a draft of the script from a few months later. I reworked and de-Ex-Girlfriended it and toned down the language, but then got to a less-concerned place, took the stick out of my butt and put some sexual stuff and swear words back in. If memory serves there is now just one token F-bomb -- nothing approaching the Kevin Smith level of filth the first draft had.

I like it. It's a fun read if I do say so myself. And it's short. And attention production entities, if you're looking to make a good funny low-budget superhero movie, then by golly, so on and so forth.

David Sketch

Just a reminder to check out LIVING WITH INSANITY.

Sharpie Overload

Scribbles done at work.

Caricature Master Class

Finally updated the cartoon version of me on my website.

Sketch:



The sketch was enlarged and reversed on a photocopier, then inked on the back of the copy paper with a PITT brush marker.



See the final version HERE.

My Cousin Did Something

My cousin Maria drew this. I consider it comics, and better than my comics. Zero fuss and ample charm. Way to go.



I guess I'll post these too. Maria asked me draw her a MySpace avatar a couple years ago. These were deemed "creepy" and never spoken of again. In the plus column, they were good brush practice. (They were made by tracing photocopied pictures with a brush.)

Work Scribbles

MURDERGIRL

More screenplay stuff -- guess I'm overcompensating for not finishing LADYBUG on time.

THIS is a TV pilot I wrote for some contest. It was my attempt to do a viable modern pulp character, one with a (sort of) plausible motivation to go out and (sort of) plausibly shoot mobsters.

I've thought about maybe pitching it as a comic book, if I can find a better/faster sequential artist to work with.

My version of the characters:



Susie, Susie in "kill mode," the bad guy, and Susie's roomate.

COWRITE

Determined to be a high-level Jason Bourne type operative, an awkward teenager enlists the help of a mysterious, supposed ex-CIA agent in his hometown and finds himself entangled in a dangerous plot that is way over his head.

The Cowrite screenwriting competition required entrants to come up with the first ten pages of a screenplay based on the above premise.

THIS is what I came up with.

I worked hard on it . . . and then missed the deadline by one day because the Post-It on which I wrote said deadline . . . had the wrong date on it. Stupid. STUPID.

The main character is a fan of "Agent 45," a fictional secret agent inspired by my recent discovery of (and growing obsession with) the Mack Bolan pulp series. Chuck Rogers, the grand master of Bolan scribes, is right up there with Block, Westlake, and James Ellroy on my personal enjoyability scale. But that's for another post.

Scribbles

These are from a folder on my computer called SCRIPT AND PITCH CHARACTERS. Like most nerds, I have a bunch of comic book and movie script and even novel ideas floating around in my head and I often struggle to capture the people who inhabit them in scribble form.

LADYBUG VII

A few more pages, plus a sketchy outline of what happens afterwards.

Didn't get it done but I did end up with what James Cameron calls a "scriptment." So thanks, Script Frenzy.

PART SEVEN.

I'll continue to revise, expand, and clarify.