Manic Monday!

Well, it's another Monday. It was a busy, crazy weekend here and Easter's come and gone (and I've got no bacon left in the house!). Fun, fun, fun... now let's see what's been going on in the world.

It's Manic Monday, let's turn this mother out!

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Yeah, I went there. Deal with it. You know you love it.

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I think that the greatest untapped market right now is 'Easter songs'. I mean, besides "Here Comes Peter Cottontail", what is there? And yet, look at the market! That's a simple issue of supply and demand, my friends. Nothing in sight.

Well, except for this gem. My god...

Ya know what? Nevermind, no Easter Songs. We're obviously not advanced enough yet as a race to get them right.

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So the highly anticipated (at least by me) book about Alex Toth, "Genius, Isolated", is due next week. I cannot recommend this enough. Having seen some preview pages and read some of interviews, its' an amazing look at one of comics' certifiable legends.

It's going to be a series of three books, looking (roughly) at his early, high, and late career. This is one of those books that I think is a no-brainer purchase, whether you're a fan of comic books, animation (Toth created Space Ghost and had a big hand in the Fantastic Four and Super Friends cartoons) or just great art in general.

Or, maybe if you're lucky, I'll let you borrow mine.

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A couple links for your Monday perusal:
* Awesome San Diego food blog Sasha Eat World ,with great photos and wit. What more do you want?!?
* I've linked to it before, but if you're not reading Agent of S.T.Y.L.E., I have to wonder what's wrong with you.
* Slightly off the 'pop culture' beat, if you want an accurate, honest look at American politics, Glenn Greenwald is your man. He makes most mainstream 'journalists' look like high school reporters.

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Last week (or so) I started on this piece on Heket, Egyptian frog goddess. Here's step two in the process.

Tick tock, tick tock...

New Gods Update! (The Missing Ink)

So, here's an update on the New Gods page I've been working on. (The roughs for this bit of it can be found here )

The lettering turned out great, if I can be so bold; you can tell by the roughs that, for this page, I really considered it a crucial part of the layout. The 'fun' of this has been the roughs (a lot of quirky storytelling challenges, many self-imposed) and the lettering (which helps overcome some storytelling problems and is just plain entertaining). It's a bit of work now to get to the finish line with this one, but I really want to see this done (not always a given) so rest assured true believer...done it will be!

Soon.

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The Missing Ink!

Well, it's Friday, not Wednesday, but I finished this piece today and so it's going up now.Our penciling selection for this installment of "The Missing Ink" comes to us from Phil Jimenez. Phil (I had him as a teacher, and we're Facebook friends, so I can refer to him by his first name if I want! lol...) is known for a wide berth of projects he's worked on (Tempest, X-men, Infinite Crisis) but he's probably best known for his run as writer and artist on DC's Wonder Woman.

Phil's work is very line intensive, detailed and carries with it a great deal of emotion, even in this piece, which is theoretically a skecth. I'm not sure where I pulled this Wonder Woman drawing from; I found it online and that's about all I know of it. Ask Google!

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Working on this (the first time I've tried inking Mr. Jimenez) I realized that I would need to switch things up. Usually I'll ink hair in brush, not nib or pen; this makes sense, as you generally want the organic, soft line of a brush for something soft and organic. However, I started inking with the brush and realized that the sketchy line (it is a sketch, I guess!) needed a line that would firm it up a bit and give it a solid volume. I switched to nibs and pens, and I'm glad I did.

I think it turned out alright! (Phil's pencils are on the left, and my inks are on the right)

Stuck In The Middle (Here I Am)

[Updated: I'm on schedule!]

So, starting a new page featuring Wolverine fighting Mystique (more on that to come) I realized that the last panel, one of the biggest on the page, wasn't really working

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It's a tricky thing, in that the panel or image looks fine, but that's all it looks. There's two purposes in a panel, to 'inform' (communicate effectively the information, i.e. that guy's got a gun, or "Damn, she's anatomically perfect!") or to 'entertain' ( make something look good or give the reader their money's worth).



This panel was doing the former fine (she just beat up Wolverine and is now standing there looking victorious) but just wasn't cutting it for me in the later category. She's kinda just standing there.

I've decided to lean a bit more towards entertainment. We'll see how it goes.

Stayed tuned!

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UPDATE:

So, I managed to get the revision in today and decided I'd post it before polishing it up. Here ya go!



It's interesting. There's not too much that's different. I did shift the hips a bit and of course adjust the head and arm, but more than anything else it's a commit to pushing the decision I've made. Going with a kind of pin-up within a page means pushing it.

I think it works, but we'll see tomorrow. Artists are a cowardly and superstitious lot.

Manic Monday!

It's Monday, and as my daughter would say "A new day has come!". (She's really into Dora The Explorer and someone said that once. Or something.)

Let's do this!

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You heard Lady Gaga's new single "Judas" yet? If not, go listen then we'll talk.

Back? So, what'd you think? Here's my review: I'm enjoying it, though I'm getting neither the immediate sense of satistfaction or surprise (as I did with "Bad Romance" and "Poker Face") or delayed, 'A Ha!' enjoyment (as creeped up on me with "Telephone" and especially "Born This Way") The criticism against "Born This Way", that was a retread of area mined by Madonna, is a more accurate descriptor of "Judas".

To me, it sounds incredibly similar to "Poker Face" and "Bad Romance"; the stuttering, high dance beat of the former mixed with the time changes and aural atmosphere of the later. The middle eight/ bridge is great (the spoken elements contrast nicely with the clear, 'clean' chorus). The gothic feel is also nice, but again feels so similar to the world created to "Bad Romance" as to be not surprising.

Perhaps it's context. If this had been a B-side to "Bad Romance" or another single from "Fame Monster" it would be much more of a standout, but as something that is carrying the new album in the wake of "Born This Way" it feels a little bit like Gaga's treading water.

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Another Trivia Night has come and gone. We didn't do so well, but what can you do? Besides drink another IPA of course.

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I just picked up a book on the Super Friends cartoon. Yeah, that Super Friends. You know when Super Friends doesn't suck, and I'm sorry to fans out there but it mostly does? It's when you've got comic legend Alex Toth involved.

Legend is a word, like genius, thrown around to often and mostly applied to people who just do particularly good at their job. Legend and genius are words, especially in a young medium like comics, that need to be saved for special instances. Kirby. Eisner. Adams. And Toth. This book is just picked up has some Toth pieces, both written and drawn, about the Superfriends cartoon and the process of creating it. This model sheet is from the cartoon, but not from the book. Imagine if that pretty crappy cartoon had had this much effort and life behind it?




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On my artistic shelf this week: I'm listening to the Beach Boy's "Pet Sounds" (better than every Beatles album except Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's), starting a novel "City & City" that I'm borrowing from a friend, and finishing up a fascinating book on the various social classes in Ancient Egypt. Research, that one, but still really interesting. Nice when those two sync up!

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Here at the Nunez house we've had a return of the gophers from last year, and I think I scared them off (i.e. killed them. Sorry.) with some strategically placed pieces of Juicy Fruit. Really works, it's true! (That saccharine crap's good for something!) I decided I'd honor my worthy foes by creating a super-villain in their names.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Gopher! I promise to pass on any royalties to their gopher families.

Egyptian Thursday!

So, the post on this one's going to be brief. This is Heket, Egyptian Frog Goddess. Early goings here, with the drawing and posting to be continued tomorrow...

FROGS!

New Gods Page

So, the Green Lantern page that I started last week was taking a bit long. Which isn't, in and of itself, a problem, except for the fact that I'm trying to go a little quicker with these one-off pages. So... we're putting that one aside and moving on for now. I'll get back to it, sooner rather than later I'm sure. It's been fun so far, and I'll make sure to post it once it's done.

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The new page I'm starting on is taken from a random DC comic from the early eighties, "Super Team Family". Catchy title, right? The cover is really what drew me in (no pun intended). Here it is, by artist extraodinaire Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez:



Great, right? It's actually way better than the art inside. The story is pretty basic. Orion of the New Gods is growing really, really big, and that's apparently really, really bad. Couple characters are trying to save him.

It's a serviceable plot, but the art is journeyman and doesn't bring much to the script. That's not a criticism of the art as such, just an observation that there's a lot of room in the work for more energy and individual artistic style.

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The next step was finding a page to work with. I chose one of the early ones. Two superheroes standing on an ever-expanding version of a third? I'm there!



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It's been a lot of fun so far. Here's a sample of the roughs (or some of them, at least). I've decided to go ahead and letter this one. I'll explain why as I wrap it up, some time in 2012.

Joking, joking...



You can see all the panels from the original reflected in these roughs. There's some experimentation going on right now, so I've added stuff, taken out stuff and moved other stuff around.

Stuff.

See you tomorrow!

Manic Monday!

Well, we're almost on schedule (this post is only a few days late now, as opposed to a month!) Let's get crazy (put your hands up). It's Manic Monday!

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It's the Inkwell Awards! Recognizing the best inkers in the comic industry. Have you voted yet?

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Your song recommendation of the week: Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi - "Two Against One (ft Jack White)". It comes from a Spaghetti Western inspired album titles "Rome" which is out later this year. It rocks. Hard. (YouTube link here)

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A month or so ago I started on a picture of Lucia as an Orange Lantern, which is a group of comic characters. (They're motivated by self-preservation and greed, and if that doesn't (sometimes) fit young kids to a tee I'm not sure what group does! Anyways, I wanted to do a more traditional caricature of her, so that's what we're doing today.

The photo was chosen by me, but Lucia insisted that she be Tinkerbell. In fact that was the second thing she said when she saw her Orange Lantern self ; "It's me!", was quickly followed by "I want Tinkerbell!".

Everyone's a critic!

So, here we are, and here's Lucia Nunez as Tinkerbell!

Sandman Page! (Wacky Week of April 4th)

[Updated]

Man, this was a beast!

I mentioned a couple weeks ago my intention to do a different comic page a week, just to keep different art muscles in shape. For my first one I selected a page from an issue of Sandman, Neil Gaiman's excellent and indispensable series. He worked with a host of collaborators on the book, and the arc that I drew (no pun intended) this page from was originally drawn by Kelly Jones, an excellent artist.

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I found the actual script for this page online, and so I was able to avoid 'starting' from where Jones had left off. It can be difficult, in the case of a very strong artist, determining your own blueprint. It can seem so natural, the storytelling choices that've already been made, and you run the risk of just reinterpreting the printed page, rather than drawing your own version of it. It's a fairly thin distinction but I believe it's a crucial one.

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I am happy with how this turned out. The pencils are incredibly tight, but I wanted something that looked 'done'. I got to get a little Art Nouveau and P. Craig Russell (there's a large overlap between those two, really) in the art. It was a lot of fun.

Hope you like it. See you Monday!

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Update

Here's a link to the Comic Script archives. Look for Neil Gaiman, and the Sandman script's the only one listed for him. It's a Word doc; I used page 24, which is the very last one.

Foto Friday!

And...we're back!

In trying to keep moving forward, as I wrap up my Sandman page, I'm also starting on another.

Switching gears almost completely, I decided that this time I'd do a Green Lantern page. It's fresh in my mind, and perfect for this kind of thing; it's from a recent issue of Green Lantern Corps. It was originally drawn by Tyler Kirkham, an artist with very different sensibilities than I have. That made this very easy. I knew that (depsite the original being cohesive and energetic) I could find my own 'voice' for the page fairly easily.

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It's in the early goings, but here's a panel that I've been working on:

First, some reference-



(There's also some photos of me grimacing, to get the lighting right, but it's much too early to embarrass myself that much. Sorry)

And here's what I've gotten from that-



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So far, so good I'd say.

See you next week!