Gentlebots
this week’s character selection is HERBIE, the faithful if dubiously designed assistant robot of Reed Richards. Please enjoy!

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2. This Week Jam: Lois Lane
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It’s about half-way to the deadline, so if you haven’t started your Friends of TRDL gallery project piece, now’s a good time! Thanks to everyone who have sent me their stuff already! Here’s the details:

Welcome to Third Rail Design Lab’s first ever ‘Friends of TRDL’ gallery project!

The concept is simple: we’re ramping up for some new releases this year, including new editions of the TRDL worldbuilding sourcebooks, a site gallery facelift, and a sequential art release. In the meantime, we’ve had a number of friends produce original art pin-ups based on various characters in the TRDL Universe, and they’ve blown us away. So, we decided to make it a thing.

For the next 33 days, we are holding our first ever open call for original art set in the TRDL Universe. The promotion is open to everyone: members of the R3 Forum, art collaborators we’ve worked with in the past, friends from outside of the comic genre, artist associates, you name it. As in keeping with the tradition of the art jams on our forum, any medium, and any skill level, are welcomed. We want you to pick your favorite TRDL characters and draw em up with 100% minimum awesome.

The Particulars:

What: The 2010 Friends of TRDL Gallery Project

When: 33 days, ending on 13 February 2010

How: Draw your favorite TRDL characters in pencil, pen, color; digital, colored pencil, Pentel, Prismacolor, oil canvas, whatever. The context of this project is comic art, so certainly color comic-style art is recommended, but anything goes that inspires you will work.

The Goods: Everyone who participates will have their work featured in Third Rail Design Lab trade dress on our main illustration site as a special gallery. In addition, we will select favorites from the pool and they will be included in hardcopy published work as a bonus section. In addition, everyone who enters will be given a promo discount towards upcoming TRDL merch. But we hope it’s about the fun of an art project more than anything else…?

The Details:
- All work submitted for this project will remain the artist’s own property; however, by submitting you will be granting us permission to use the material in web and print projects in a capacity related to this project. Your work will not be used for other purposes.
- Work may be submitted in physical or digital form. Digital files may be any file format, 300dpi minimum.
- Originals will not be returned. Well, they might.
- Keep the work PG-13 rated.
- Be respectful of the original material, and of other contributing artists. In general, be classy. If it’s offensive to US, we reserve the right to reject the submission.

We hope that you’ve seen enough of our work in the last several years to have a sense of the Third Rail Design Lab original universe. We have published over 150 original characters and teams, with more or less the same amount in the can ready to be released. All of our work in the TRDL Universe is available as worldbuilding tools for artists and gamers on our main site at http://www.thirdraildesignlab.com, complete with universal RPG stats using the TRDL Carbon system, which is easily adaptable to other game systems as needed. All characters, teams, and stories set in the TRDL Universe are available to you for non-commercial use in your games. Our intent has been to publish worldbuilding tools for others to use in their games and art (as long as you credit TRDL for the material) and there’s much more to come!

You can find TRDL Characters for your inspiration:

- On our main illustration site: http://www.thirdraildesignlab.com
- On the TRDL R3 Forum: http://thirdraildesignlab.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=63
- On the TRDL Blog: http://www.thirdraildesignlab.com/blog/ … mythology/
- In your TRDL Sourcebook, which includes a timeline of events in the TRDL Universe, and detailed descriptions of the interconnected story that brings all these people together. A few copies are still available.

Please ask if you have any questions!
Also, those of you that have already produced TRDL character art, either in the jams or as fan art, will automatically be submitted in this project. Not that we don’t want you to do something new!

Thanks for looking, and hopefully participating!
Thom and Joao
Third Rail Design Lab

UPDATE: Please note, you don’t have to keep your submissions under wraps. You can post them in the jams or in your R3 Member Gallery thread as desired. Or you can just keep them secret and send to us directly. I would prefer though that one way or another you email me the 300dpi version of your submissions at some point…
Thanks!

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1. Announcing the 2010 Friends of TRDL Gallery Project!
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Allo, friends
This week we have the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Draw one, draw all, add new players, redesign them. It’s your call!
But if you haven’t read the books, do that immediately!
Have fun!

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It’s a new week, and time for a new jam selection. This time, we have Carol Danvers, the character I remember, from the comics I read growing up, that pretty much got power-violated into oblivion by Rogue when she was a villain. The whole thing was obviously a play on rape and it’s after-effects, and pretty powerful stuff for the time. She’s been a lot more in the years that followed, as well as those prior: Avenger, space explorer, military officer (her original role), you name it. So, you’ve got lots of opportunities here!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ms._Marvel

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This was done for the ‘Redheads’ jam on R3. I was all set to draw Hope, who may or may not be Jean Grey or Rachel Summers or who knows… but at the last minute, I read the latest issue of Detective Comics and was inspired to draw Batwoman. J.H. Williams III is doing such wonderful work on the title, and it’s an excellent read. On this piece, I’m most proud of details hanging properly, in general, like the belt and cape and hair. It was one of those pics I was pretty sure was going very wrong until it wasn’t.

Process notes:

Pencils:

Color work:

I did quite a bit of digital rendering for the background, and some compositing with the burglar, too…

:::

You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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This was done for our annual New Years Celebration Jam, and doubles as our second TRDL holiday card for NYE. I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw it. It’s not that Surfer is anything other than perfectly drawn and awesome in every way. It’s that Galactus is… smiling. Nice work, dude. And give me some of that champagne. Looks like a good brand!

You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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This was done for one of the jams in the R3 Forum. I can’t even remember which one at this point. X-Men? Cover resdesign? Anyway, wow. Those are tough pencils to compete against, when you are drawing a version of such a classic cover, but I totally worship his skills here, which are both mad and displayable. Colossus and Storm own it.

You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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This was done for the Princess Jam on R3. Joao totally nailed this one. I love the pointy cape ends and the materiality you get from how he rendered the cape itself. The bodice and skirt look fantastic too, and it’s one of his best female faces. I love it.

You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

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This was done for the ‘Golden Characters’ jam by TRDL’s Joao. I was really blown away by this one, which he managed to complete despite long hours at the office, and lots going on at home. I’m not that familiar with the character, despite being a Marvel Zombie (the space stuff was a little obtuse for me growing up, especially without psychedelics at hand) but man, I don’t think he’s looked better.

You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

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This was done for the Hellcat jam by TRDL’s Joao. I love the claws, whiskers and generally feline details. Plus the hunch, like she’s about to spring onto your spinal column. Watch out!

You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

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