This illustration was done for the TRDL R3 Illustration Jam, the subject being Kirby’s New Gods.

When I was working on my previous Mister Miracle piece, I was doing some supernet searches to get a costume color reference for color rendering at the coffee shop that afternoon, and I came across this scan of an old Kirby concept sheet for Mister Miracle that blew me away. It’s the little things: the details in their initial pass, the colors, probably more influenced by the markers available at hand and now weathered by age more than design, but still… the whole thing spoke to me. So i decided to do a second piece showcasing Miracle as he appeared in that first sketch.

Here he is, selling bike U-locks.

Please enjoy!

:::

You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

:::

Process Notes:

My Process:

On this piece, I was inspired by the colors in the original sketch in their current form, whether faded or design… the tones just spoke to me, the olive/ maroon/blanched yellow… so that’s what i went with.

Here’s the inks, before some tweaks and adjustments. I ran out of room on the page so he’s footless, poor New God… but I drew a sample foot so i could remember the cool design.

Here’s the digital feet. Done digitally.

On this one I did flats in rough blobs first so i could see if the colors were a terrible mistake. I think I darkened the red a bit and added some saturation to the yellow but otherwise they represent the original piece pretty well. There were costume details I had to extrapolate, like his collar and some stuff going on with his belt. Not a big fan of that wonky holster, but hey.

Here’s flats and then the rendered version afterward.

From there, it was just building up the ad in the usual way. I love the idea of him hawking the product like that. It would be like Houdini selling padlocks. Anyway, good stuff.

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute – Mister Miracle [and Big Barda]
2. TRDL Tribute – Ultimate Hawkeye
3. TRDL Tribute: Power Woman + Iron Fist!

This illustration was done for the TRDL R3 Illustration Jam, the subject being Marvel’s Thor…

This was somewhat topical, given all the recent stuff released about next summer’s Thor film. I never LIKED Thor as a solo book all that much as a kid. I liked him in the Avengers, I liked his anachronistic exclamations… I even own about 30 issues of the title from the Simonson days. But the Asgardian stuff was often, much like Marvel’s spacey business, a little beyond my interest level growing up. To me, Asgard and all the Asgardians and their foes were merely characters in the Marvel Super Heroes RPG for me to destroy.

But boy, do I love the relaunch, thanks to Coipiel’s art. Man oh man. Makes me actually WANT to read the stuff.

The original concept of this piece was to have Thor standing over the fallen torso of the Destroyer sentient armor. Then I saw this occur in the comics recently and felt swiped, so I planned a different direction (him standing on Surtur’s giant face)… but then I said to hell with it, and drew the Destroyer helmet anyway, and eliminated the full figure. It was the helmet I wanted to show anyway, more than the largely uninteresting armor itself. I wanted to show it empty. Anyway, there we are. Current Thor costume, etc.

Please enjoy!

:::

You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

:::

Process Notes:

I started with the current costume, which I adore actually…

SInce the original concept was to have him standing over the body, one leg up, I drew this roughly, focused on Thor, and decided I’d do Destroyer digitally, as I was working late at night and didn’t have reference for Destroyer’s business at hand.

Pencils

Once I got wind of a recent scene in the comics where Thor had ass-kicked the Destroyer armor, I lost my enthusiasm for the piece. I didn’t want to cover recent material, you know? I settled on the giant face of Surtur. But still, waited until Thor was done before deciding.

Inks

Now I started refining the inks, changing things about the legs… and decided I was getting a naggling, niggling deja vu about this piece I wasn’t enjoying. So I separated his leg stance and changed the concept.

With Thor complete, I was ready to move on to his foe.

But before I get to that, a few details:

As usual, face was fully rendered before I proceeded with the costume.

Also, I swapped out his torso plates with digitally rendered ones. Much better than my freehand squiggles.

OK, so in the end, I realized what I wanted to do in the first place was the classic Medusa Vanquished pose, with Destroyer’s helmet being held up… specifically showing it being empty, as the armor is sentient. So I just went with it. As you can see in the finished piece, it was done digitally. Since I had changed the stance, and with the deja vu solved (described in a sec) I decided against the torso. It would have been easy enough to do, but I just wanted to focus on the figure. Also, I used this opportunity to try a thicker primary contour on Thor than I have in the past. It seemed to fit his stature. Hopefully.

:::

So the deja vu? It was my Thor sketch from the last Thor Jam, which occurred during the Civil War thing. I had drawn the sketch, but wasn’t too happy about it. Then Joao came up with basically the same concept, and OWNED it, so I aborted mine. I’ll dig it up later, for the records…

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute – Thor [Civil War Spoiler]
2. TRDL Tribute – Thor [Joao]
3. TRDL Tribute – Loki 01 [New Thor]

This illustration was done for the TRDL R3 Illustration Jam, the subject being Hope Summers, from the X-Men ‘Second Coming’ storyline.

I’m not totally up to date on the status of this character, as I’m about a month behind in the reading, but in general, she’s been the first new mutant birth after M-Day, and was sent into the future with Cable (Nathan Summers) to protect her from getting assassinated by any number of anti-mutant folks, parallels obviously occurring here with what happened to Nathan himself some twenty years ago or so. Anyway, the big tease has been: is she a reincarnated Jean Grey? I don’t know the answer, and I don’t want to be informed. However, I LOVE the costume design. Less so when they added the Akira-swiped tattered cloak and big gun, but as a bodysuit, it’s top-notch. It appeals to me on a personal level because of how similar it is to the design language of my TRDL Universe characters, where bodysuits with simple patterns and exposed faces are the norm. Anyway, here’s another TRDL Pin-Up, this time an advertisement for Summers Brand Redheads all-weather matches.

Please enjoy!

:::

You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

:::

Process Notes:

So these Cable covers were my inspiration. Great shots of the costume, though depending on the colorway in the art it veers from green to blue. I chose green. For science!

On to my stuff:

Often, when I’m going to do a pin-up, I’m not sure at the outset if it’s going to be nose art bomber girl stuff or a propaganda piece. In this case, I had the idea for the matchbook company right from the start, and drew the framework for the ad in the pencils…

Here’s pencils. In some ways I like this face better, but it changed as I went. I made some modification in inks, as here the hip-cock isn’t working visually for me as much as I wanted. I wanted the posture, but not a saucy pose…

Here we have inks as scanned (greyscale) and then again after processing for rendering. You can see that I was finding another case of my patented over-chinning problem, which required some correction in digital inking in Photoshop. You’ll also note I draw little arrows or dots as I eff up the inks to remind me to correct them digitally. Other than the costume and face issues, I also corrected some of the whips of hair, and enlarged her feet to be more proportional.

As usual, I start with face and hair first, and fully render them before proceeding. It grounds the figure for me.

With costumes, armor, etc I have a few approaches, depending on finish and complexity. In this case, the bodysuit is largely monochromatic with an accent color, so I chose to fully render the suit first, then add the gold afterword and match the shade/shadow lines manually.

Here’s the suit fully rendered in the green. I wanted to add some lushness so I gave it more value steps in the color than I usually do.

The gold has been added. I wanted a really deep, luscious gold color, rather than a sharp, bright gold. The gold used here influenced the background and many other tints and hues in the finished ad.

Here’s a blurry close-up of the ad material. The final piece remained close to this original sketch, though I used the stormcloud with lightning instead of a raindrop in the Triangle of Promises…

This ad was an example of the challenges in preparing an advertisement around a pin-up girl. The figure was long vertically, which hampers the usual, more modern means of laying out copy and reinforcing the brand and product name. The older ads from the 20s and 30s often had asymmetrical copy positioning, and the earlier stuff often just had the girl in some abstract pin-up situation, and a brand at the bottom, and that was it. I’m trying to be a little more creative…

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. R3 Jam: Hope Summers [X-Men]
2. TRDL Tribute: Dagger
3. TRDL Tribute: Pirates [Three-Pin Maria]

This illustration was done for the TRDL R3 Illustration Jam, the subject being ‘Bubblegum Crisis’, the seminal cyberpunk anime from the 80s…

I never actually SAW the anime back then, but I was a fan. I mean, I loved anime and manga, and I liked this genre, which is to say, girls in lingerie wearing powered armor riding motorcycles transforming into more powered armor. Actually, what appealed to me more was the flavor of cyberpunk trappings the show had, at least from all the stills and things I gobbled up. Obviously they were trading heavily on Bladerunner, down to the character names, but more so it was one of several projects that influenced my preferred gaming environment: post-future, corporate-domain techy, dark, urgent and slim on the junky, trashy post-apocalyptic side of things. Also, I totally stole the Boomers for use in my campaigns.

Anyway, I’ve never drawn any of the Bubblegum Crisis characters. Actually, I take that back, I think I sketched some in high school but they are gone to the ravages of time. Anyway, I wanted to focus on the signature details of these Hardsuits, namely curves, glossy paint and the crazy helmets. I’ve prepared this one a contribution to my TRDL Pinup Series as some nose art bomber girl stuff.

Please enjoy!

:::

You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

:::

Process Notes:

I worked from two sources on this piece: a line art prototype sheet for the suit, and a fanpage compilation of color models for Priss. There are a ton of variants, both for the original and the later updated series, and lots of great model kits photographed but overall, not a ton of material on BC out there, which surprised me. This was the suit I wanted to do. It’s not my favorite design of the series, but I thought the colors would be an interesting challenge.

On to the illustration:

Here’s original pencils. I was going for a pose that focused on the curves of the legs, butt and the long forearms, as these were the main design features I liked. That crazy bulbous helmet with no forward optics is happnin’ here too. Priss used a rail gun and a laser in this suit.

These are inks and then flattened, prepped inks. I scan to grayscale first, do some cleanup and press to black for rendering.

What I actually found difficult is allowing for that sexy curve in the rear. It’s pretty classic anime. But man, it’s METAL. No joints here? But anyway, I rolled with it, for science.

My usual color process goes one of two directions: If there’s flesh involved, I tend to color the flesh through shades and highlights FIRST. It grounds the character in my mind. But when no flesh is visible, I often flat the whole thing at a zoomed out scale, then come in, clean it up, get it ready for lighting. Here, the latter.

My shading on this one was a combination of low-opacity blacks and fresh-mixed pink. The black was about 43% or so. You may note I tweaked the colors of the blue and pink to punch more.

Here’s a detail shot of her helmet. I was going for a high luster to the shine on this armor, which I don’t often do.

Here’s the finished piece, ready for background and such. Came out pretty nicely all in all…

Metal sample credit: 7E55E-BRN via Flickr!

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. R3 Jam: Bubblegum Crisis
2. TRDL Tribute: Kasumi
3. TRDL Tribute: Black Orchid

This was done as a commission for an international client, the subject being Ultimate Hawkeye. She had seen a previous work, my illustration of Cannonball, on Comic Art Fans, and wanted something similar, in terms of pose, general look, etc. We went back and forth a bit talking about the specifics of the piece, which was pretty awesome because she was very clear on what she wanted, down to the stubble. Some tweaks along the way included upswept hair vs the way Pacheco draws it (down), more stubble and a head positioning change. Otherwise, it was a smooth and fairly fast process. I quite like the result. It’s hard, if you haven’t tried, drawing a fit but not roided out hero just standing with calm repose, rather than punching or hulking out or whatever.

:::

You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

:::

Process Notes:

To start with, I went for a design somewhere between Joe Mad’s overwrought version and Pacheco’s simplified version.

Joe Mad’s version…

Pacheco’s version (TRDL preferred!)

:::

On to my illustration…

This was the first loose pencil sketch. You can see the Pacheco style downswept hair here.

This was the revision, with new hair and more details sketched in so she could see where I was going with the outfit and face and the like.

Here’s inks. As is often the case, I found some things to correct as I went, and did. And after this scan, I decided the legs needed to be longer, as did the left arm, so I made digital adjustments, thanks to some feedback from Wifebot.

Skin done! Medium white-guy skin tone.

Here’s that hair. As my skintones lean to the browns rather than the pinks, I have to be judicious when selecting the range of yellows and tans and such i use in blond hair, especially when it’s sandy or darker blond like his…

Flats are down at this point. I love monochrome costumes, you know this.

Shades are down. For the costume, I used a black reduced opacity layer for shade. This differs for how I do warm colors, where the shade is hand mixed and applied. So to speak. I mean, per color.

This is the piece fully rendered, and I stopped to pan out and look at it with fresh eyes. I determined the legs needed to be even longer than I initially modified, so I went to town in Potoshop.

Here’s the corrected limbs in proper proportion, awaiting clean up.

Here’s the cleaned up piece, with digital fill in work done in the rendering.

:::

The client requested one minor change before completion: raising the head.

Here’s the original, slightly down-tilted face.

Here’s the revision. Subtle, but I think it worked!

Cut/print!

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute: Ultimate Carol Danvers and Captain Mar-Vell
2. TRDL Tribute: Moon Knight [TRDL Client Redesigns]
3. TRDL Tribute: Cherie

This was done for the R3 Illustration jam on Third Rail Design Lab’s R3 Forum, the subject being a Redesign Challenge: design a contemporary upgrade to DC’s iconic Wonder Woman.

Well, you know I loves me some redesigning. This jam was created as a special response to the now infamous Jim Lee redesign for Wonder Woman that has a vocal majority outraged and a minority willing to wait and see. I didn’t hate the redesign, but it triggered some great discussion with my wifebot(tm) over the nature of ‘contemporary’ when it comes to redesigning iconic imagery: how much change is too much change? What’s the objective?

I really like a lot of the themes of the Wonder Woman look of recent years: thick black hair, less stern face but not too young or too old, the colors, if not the unexplained American iconography… I wanted to keep enough of her look that someone who didn’t know what was going on could look at the drawing and say: ‘that’s Wonder Woman’… in terms of brand strategy there’s two schools: if the brand has totally failed, starting fresh with something radical can reinvent the brand and give it energy; on the other hand, a well known brand that needs a little freshness needs to retain the identity on which it has traded as legacy. I went this latter direction. I don’t need giant boobies falling out or crotchal attacks in my Wonder Woman. And in fact, I actually dislike the hard-muscled, older, angry WW I see too often these days. At the same time, I wanted to get away from familiar American iconography, but keep the bird form, changing from a stylized W-shape evoking wings in the modern look and going with an actual exotic bird motif, suggesting her elswhereneess. I love the red and white boots, and bare, athletic legs, so kept those, but added some bird bling to the edges. The wristbands, belt and headband are all detailed with carved imagery, the former using the bird again, the belt using a peace-wreath cipher, and the headband incorporating one classic star, but embellishing it. I wanted the hair to be flowy and sensual without being overdone. The lasso is hooked in the back, not the side, for ambidextrous reach. And as for the white briefs and neck/chest wrap, I just like the look.

Here’s what was pretty cool about the piece: I did two versions: the classic gold, and a cool silver which had been knocking around in my cortex. I preferred the latter, but wondered if it strayed too far from classic WW… would it stand up to the ‘recognizable brand’ test? Well, as I was considering this, and getting feedback from my buds in PT!VS, my regular UPS guy came into the office and saw my monitor and said: "hey, awesome Wonder Woman!"

Well, then!

I don’t know if this would be judged more or less harshly than Jim Lee’s biker jacket version, but it was my sensibility.

Please enjoy, hell yes!

:::

You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

:::

Process Notes:

To start with, here’s Jim Lee’s controversial design:

In my original pencils, I had some problems with the arms and the lasso, but I knew I’d solve em in inks…

However, I didn’t. So, more editing and tweaking to get her where I needed to be to start rendering.

OK, moving into rendering:

I went with a darker skintone than you usually see int he comics. I know her ‘Amazonian’ ethnicity is undefined but loosely Greek inspired in the modern era, so I went with a nice tanned, olive complexion. I like her raven black hair but I actually lightened it to give us something to look at. Sometimes I like the black hair opaque, but here I wanted to study the flow of the sculptural massing of the hair.

Heres the silver version…

…and here you can see my gold treatment for the outfit.

I gave the bodice some ribbing to evoke the flag imagery we lost in the stripping of American iconography from the design.

Effing glowing golden lasso! Here you can see that it hitches from behind. So to speak.

Lastly, the white. I know that might look weird to some, but it ties to the white in the boots, gives her a centurion/ ambassador feel to my eye, and balances the intensity of the red. I gave her a neck and chest sheathing because I think it looks rad!

:::

And here’s that variant version:

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute: Wonder Woman Golden Age Revisited
2. R3 Jam: Re-Re-Redesign Wonder Woman
3. TRDL Tribute: Old Timey X-Men [Cryptohistorical Redesign]

This was done for the R3 Illustration jam on Third Rail Design Lab’s R3 Forum, the subject being the X-Men, specifically a REDESIGN in an old timey theme.

Joao’s a busy guy, with late nights at work, a youngling to wrestle, and family obligations. Yet, when he pulls something together for the jams, it’s a special kind of awesome. Look at the details! My favorite: Wolvie’s copper claws. HAR! I love it!

Please enjoy, hell yes!

:::

You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

::: EDIT – Process notes from Joao:

This was a really fun pic to do, as I always love alternate takes on familiar faces. By the way, my favourite detail is the phoenix ornament on Jean’s hat…

Here’s some behind the scenes stuff…

First draft…

Pencil work…

I meant to include the striped pattern of wolverine’s regular X-Men gear on this steampunk counterpart. On his pants, to be more speciphic.

But then, as I moved to inks and colours, I forgot about that. Oh well.

Now, as a bonus feature, here’s a guy who didn’t make it to the final cut…

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute – Thor [Joao]
2. TRDL Tribute: Dazzler (Joao)
3. TRDL Tribute: Black Widow (Joao)

This was done for the R3 Illustration jam on Third Rail Design Lab’s R3 Forum, the subject being Thor.

Joao somehow found the time to reach up into the sky and pull out the core of the sun and then smash it onto paper. This is ridiculously awesome. I think that crabby-Void looks even better than Coipel’s version! And I’m a sucker for Thor’s current uniform, so. GREAT work!

Please enjoy, hell yes!

:::

You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

::: EDIT: Process notes from Joao:

I really enjoyed "Siege", I’m a big fan of Coipel, and I love Thor’s current look. So, this was the first idea that came to my mind when I saw this jam’s theme.

Here’s the first sketch:

Funny coincidence, the last time I drew Thor, I also got inspiration from a Marvel big event’s shocking moment.

(ok, technically that’s not Thor, but his clone…)

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute – Steampunk X-Men [Joao]
2. TRDL Tribute – Loki 01 [New Thor]
3. TRDL Tribute – Thor 2010

This was done for the R3 Illustration jam on Third Rail Design Lab’s R3 Forum, the subject being DC’s Animal Man.

I will admit: I never liked Animal Man: the character design, the character concept, or Morrison’s crazy scripts for the title. I was too young for the metal, too drug-free to dig it, and frankly, I wasn’t into DC much at the time. ReGARTless, an orange and two-blues costume with an 80s leather jacket and crazy goggles? Nay nay nay.

That said, I gave it the ole’ TRDL try. Here we have a propaganda poster advocating observational diligence around bike rack loiterers.

I couldn’t do those spacey, triangle goggle lenses so I kind of modernized that aspect of the look, but otherwise tried to keep him reasonably on model…

Please enjoy, hell yes!

:::

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!

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute: Blackhawk
2. TRDL Special Project: Team Lope AIDS Fundraiser 2010
3. TRDL Tribute: Dazzler

This was done for the R3 Illustration jam on Third Rail Design Lab’s R3 Forum, the subject being Mister Miracle, from jack Kirby’s 4th World/ New Gods work.

I’ve had the image of Barda in my ref queue folder for a long time, actually dating back to a piece I was working on as a collaboration with Vlad that never manifested. So, I dug that out to use as inspiration for Barda’s look, and drew Miracle in his old classic duds. I’m playing up his escapist thing, obviously, but also a bit of the tie me up/tie me down aspect of superhero fantasy back in the day.

Please enjoy, hell yes!

:::

You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

:::

Process Notes:

OK, so as far as resources go, I used the following:

I went with the classic Jack version of Scott Free, trying to keep the costume as simple as possible.

For Barda, I used the costume referenced in this bust. Man, I love this look for her.

My original pencils/inks clearly went crazy on the Barda side of things. I was filling up void withher in the foreground (I’ll show YOU filling up void) but I knew that the arm location and size would need to be smaller or there’d be no room for Scott to be seen beyond her, so I drew the arm closer in scale to what would appear in the final version, and figured I’d scale down Barda’s torso digitally. Which is what i did.

I was coloring this one in a Starbucks, and met a guy who was a self-proclaimed comics dork. He thought I was working on Martian manhunter from his vantage point, which i totally get, primary colors and the cape and all. I was zoomed in pretty close.

I honestly have a tough time with a lot of these older designs, but that’s half the fun of drawing them, I’d wager.

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute – Mister Miracle
2. TRDL Tribute: Big Barda
3. TRDL Tribute: Mister Sinister

Less Current »