G.I Joe: Special Missions Antartica

I thought I might show another peak at the process of how I create my covers. First I talked to the editor about what he's looking for with regards to the layout. He wanted Snake-Eyes, Scarlett, and Snowjob to be overwhelmed by Crimson Guards. I took the idea and put them on a sloped mountain to give the cover motion and make it more dynamic. Usually I'll draw small thumbnails just to get the motion and shape of the cover. They're pretty small and hard to read, I then draw my layout on an 11x17 copy paper. I used to draw it on normal copy size paper but found that I wasted too much time running to make copies to enlarge it so I started doing my layouts large size.

From here I transfer the layout onto my art board using my light table. Unfortunately I didn't get a scan of the pencils, so here's a scan of my "inks". I basically just used brush markers, and regular tip markers.

Once that's done I did some ink washes for shading and other cool effects. I basically just watered down regular india ink and used a brush. I also have white ink which I dipped a tooth brush in to create the snow effect, and the cover's done!

And here's the final colors by Brian Buccelatto!!

commissions..

In my attempt to keep this going regularly here's a commission I did at last years toronto conventions. I actually nabbed these jpg's from the owners website since I wasn't able to get a scan myself.

Legion of Super Heroes

So thanks to Youtube, I've been able to catch a few of the episodes online. Actually I watched 8 episodes in a row as I worked. And you know what? It's pretty good! I'm not really familiar with the characters aside from Superboy so the whole thing is pretty fresh to me. I got a couple issues here and there from back in the days, but I never really read them. But from what I've seen, it looks like they can take the concept anywhere from sci-fi to straight up super hero stories. Anyone know if its' gone beyond 8 episodes? Anyways I decided to warm up doodling 3 of the main character from the comic. And what's up with Cosmic Boy not being on the show? I guess with Superboy er.. Superman they didn't need another boyscout.

THE HERO INITIATIVE

I was asked by Jim McLauchlin to be a part of this great event they were having and I was more than happy to contribute. Ultimate Spiderman 100 will have 100 of these original sketch covers for auction and I'm blown away by the contributions of the other artists! The Hero Initiative (formerly ACTOR) does some great things for past creators and pioneers in the comic book industry so drop by their site for more info.

testing, testing..

testing... I've decided to switch from LJ to blogger since it's a lot easier to use and I don't have to keep uploading jpg's to a server. Anyways it's been a while since I've posted anything due to both work and laziness. Hopefully with bloggers easier set up I'll be more consistent with updates again. Here's a sketch of Cyclops and Wolverine from Ultimate X-Men, just fooling around.