TRDL 2011 Series, No. 75 – Alpha [TRDL Commission]

This was a commission done for one of my long-term clients, John, for whom I’ve done other characters for his shared gaming universe like Crash, Arclight, and several more. The concept isn’t quite a Superman cipher, but he was supposed to be big, tall, muscular, imposing and handsome. I knew it needed to make use of the alpha letter, but otherwise the design was wide open. I worked out a motif that involved some of the centurion-type imagery I use on some of the TRDL characters, based on some examples of my TRDL Universe design work I showed him, and then abstracted the alpha letter for the shoulders. I actually tightened them up more conventionally based on his feedback later, and removed the knuckle duster ‘stamp’ embossment that I had in earlier versions. From there, we tried a number of color schemes to get to the desired result. Great project. One of the most conventionally ‘super’ superheroes I’ve designed, I think.

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Artists, come join us on R3 and submit to the jams! The R3 Illustration Jam offers new characters weekly, but all jams remain open so you can contribute to any that you like, here:
http://www.thirdraildesignlab.com/forum … m.php?f=27
or in the TRDL-R3-WeeklyJam group on DA, here:
http://trdl-r3-weeklyjam.deviantart.com/

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You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

PROCESS:

Here’s the original pencils. I wanted to give him that big, just shy of caricatured physique. Tall, imposing, powerful.

Inks. Here he has embossments on his knuckle guards that are reversed, leaving the alpha mark on people’s faces. I decided this wasn’t in keeping with the character, and eliminated it later, reverting to it just being a graphic.

A morphology of color … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Commission: Holocauste
2. TRDL Tribute: Alina [RPG Commission]
3. TRDL 2011 Series, No. 17: Xena

TRDL 2011 Series, No. 67 – Glue Junkie Commission

Note: Hi-Rez version here!

OK, this one requires some ‘splainin. This was a commission done for Nicholas Frank, who has an Etsy shop called Glue Junkie. He has produced all of our TRDL and Team Lope vinyl, many of them on very short notice turnaround before events. Awesome guy. So, I did this piece to thank him for all of his work. I was given a very broad set of parameters and the opportunity to ignore them if I wanted. He had the idea of his girlfriend as the 50-foot-tall woman fighting a giant mecha. They have two dogs, and he gave me a bunch of interests and details for each of them to inspire me. From there, I cooked up a TRDL Cryptohistorical Redesign, one of these long format old-timey poster prints I have been doing when I do illustrations of friends. Here, it’s an ad for tickets to an oratory by survivors of the REAL reason London burned: Evil Doctor Lola, a mutated terrier, kidnapped our hapless engineer’s dame, supersized her and by controlling her mind with his remote, sent her on a rampage through London, forcing Nick to build a giant steam automaton to pilot in an attempt to stop her and free her from Lola’s clutches. And such.

Process notes below, including some of the easter eggs in this piece.

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You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

PROCESS:

So I don’t really do likenesses when I draw friends and real people, but I take their look to heart when building the illustrated version of them. Her’s Nick and his girlfriend before a jump.

Here’s Lola, one of their pups. Not evil.

I had the … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Commission: Holocauste
2. TRDL Commission: The USS Hamilton
3. TRDL Tribute: Alina [RPG Commission]

I’ve been meaning to do this for, I don’t know, YEARS, ever since Snackboy and I used to post our NOW PLAYING music report at the bottom of our posts: I don’t do enough status reports on the art, and I don’t talk about music enough, and I love both, so here you go.

Tonight was a rare Friday night commission art session. Wee Z went down easy and has slept soundly, and wifebot(tm) collapsed a pisosecond later. Therefore, progress. Tonight was fruitful. My piece for the TRDL R3 Jam this week, Invisible Woman, was inked, and I really like how it came out. It’s going to not only have a vintage pin-up vibe, thanks to a nice Dita ref pic, but a 60′s mod element as well. I also inked a redesign piece, pairing alternate history versions of Power Man and Iron Fist, both done for the R-R-Redesign-Weekly jams on dA: in this case, both are female, but I’m trying to steer clear of the awesome Daughters of the Dragon business, which handily handled the pair as females, albeit as different characters. Anyway, inked. I spent the rest of the night finishing two commission pieces for Paco’s Maidens and Magic Calendar Series.

I started the evening listening to Son de Mar, which i’ll prolly touch on later, but I ended it with Brian Eno’s Music for Airports 1. I’m a big ambient fan, and always have been: just ask any number of bored girlfriends. Eno, like some of the works of Phillip Glass, is never better than wen he’s tickling a piano. In the case of this album, it is accompanied by haunting choir work. I’m no music reviewer, so I won’t pretend to have an experienced tongue in talking about it, but what I love most about this … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. Fini-Mix
2. TRDL Tribute: Jenny Sparks
3. Third Rail Thrills 40 – Mantis Pin-Up

TRDL 2011 Series, No. 41: Crash [TRDL Commission]

This is another superhero commission for one of my longtime clients, set in the same universe as Aero, Arcangel, and others you’ve seen. Crash is a buxom young, vibrant adventurer with giant mecha arms. The intent was to give her normal clothes, but an adventuring, utilitarian edge, along with some skin to reflect her youthful flirtatiousness. Cute but can smash things.
The process notes and step by step looks at the work below…

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You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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Process:

So some of my commissions for this client are very involved, as we try to fine tune the look to get at what he is envisioning. In this case, however, it got there pretty quickly. The only major changes from the original pencils were a new bustline and less exotic facial features.

Here’s the original pencils. The eyes are a bit catlike and she has a smaller bust.

Inks, on the main figure. I inked a bra on the original bust, just for science. Vy nott!

Probably one of the funnier morphologies my wife was watched me do: I presented the client with 5 or 6 variations on busts, drawn over very low opacity versions of the pencils. So, it’s basically a table full of little drawings of disembodied booby shirts. Good thing the police weren’t nosing around.

I started with the skin, as I generally do. I wanted to hit a paler skin tone that’s seen a lot of sun. So, not really tan, but some color.

Here’s the hair: a sandy yellow blonde. The girl next door, if you will. With hair products.

The belt and satchels were done in a rich, buttery tooled leather, … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL 2011 Series, No. 15: Faye Valentine
2. TRDL 2011 Series No. 49 – Iron Man [Bleeding Edge Armor]
3. TRDL 2011 Series, No. 21: Iron Man Series – Crimson Dynamo

Third Rail Thrills No. 60 – Star Sapphire [Green lantern]
TRDL 2011 Series, No. 36

This was done for the TRDL R3 Jam on the R3 Forum and DeviantArt Group, the subject being: Star Sapphire, from the Green Lantern books.

As much as I don’t at all mind the concept of drawing Blake Lively and her 33 foot long legs in a Star Sapphire kit, I went old school. Here’s an early vintage, having bested original Terran Lantern Alan Scott. I had to do quite a bit of research on this one, from trying to glean how this particular Star Sapphire looked (and I made a few mods) to what Scott’s ring looked like, with it’s little lantern motif. Good stuff! I have to say though, I was thrown when I was doing some color checks on Scott’s outlandish threads, which I obviously toned down from the four-color days, and stumbled upon a commission sketch from Kevin Nowlan that pretty much was the same idea. Anyway, I didn’t see it at the time I drew it, so.

You can read more about the process on this pic after the jump…

Artists, come join us on R3 and submit to the jams! The R3 Illustration Jam offers new characters weekly, but all jams remain open so you can contribute to any that you like, here:
http://www.thirdraildesignlab.com/forum … m.php?f=27
or in the TRDL-R3-WeeklyJam group on DA, here:
http://trdl-r3-weeklyjam.deviantart.com/

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You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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Background:

This tiny thumb is what I based the majority of my work on, though I was bouncing around a few covers as well.

And this is the Nowlan piece I discovered towards the end. Oops.

Process:

Here’s the original pencils. You’re not … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. Third Rail Thrills 38 – Brandy Pin-Up
2. Third Rail Thrills 41 – Golden Glider Pin-Up
3. Third Rail Thrills 40 – Mantis Pin-Up

Over at Outcast Studios, the flavor is art battles, though not as exclusively as on Entervoid. It took me awhile to warm up to participating, as I prefer our non-competition sharing here on the TRDL R3 Forum. But I’ve been doing the daily sketch challenge over there and on dA for some time, and I thought I’d step into the battles a bit for fun. This was a Tag Team challenge, ie. one artist draws/inks and the other colors. Since Starkjeter and I accepted the challenge, we got to pick the subject, and I proposed: The Runaways, from Marvel, aged forward and replacing their parents as the new villainous Pride. Katie did a great job with the art, and I threw some color at it.

You can see a larger version on the TRDL site here…

And here’s the battle thread. We won, with a vote of 18 to 2. Sweet!
http://outcaststudios.com/forums/index. … ntry108740

More detail below in the process notes…

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References:

This is the Pride, a cabal of villains, all couples, that own the LA underworld in the Runaways comic’s debut.

The RUnaways tells the story of these teenagers, who find out a) they have powers or abilities and 2) their parents are supervillains. So they run away and go on the lamb.

This is Runaways’ original artist and designer Alphona’s character model sheets.

Process:

This was the original layout, as drawn by Katie. We collaborated a bit on the concepts, and she executed it really nicely.

I proposed a slight rework of the figures in order to change the balance of the shot, which she was cool with, so this is how we went forwad.

I laid down shade elements for the first pass, to get a sense of how they would look together. Old Lace, … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute: Runaways
2. TRDL Collaboration: Micevengers!
3. TRDL Collaboration: Appleseed

Heyall,

Recent updates to TRDL this week (and one this weekend) include Babydoll from Suckerpunch, a Cryptohistorical Redesign of Vandal Savage, Elphaba from Wicked, and the Iron Man MKII armor from the wayback machine for the Iron Man Series.

You can check em all out in the gallery, as well as process sketches and Post-It note pieces done for various projects. It’s been a busy week.

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The TRDL-R3-Weeklyjam remains Suckerpunch, but the new jam will be announced on Sunday, so be sure to check back. All jams remain open indefinitely, so browse around the TRDL-R3-WeeklyJam.deviantart.com group and on http://www.thirdraildesignlab.com/forum to see if something catches your eye! If you know anyone you think might want to join the jams, pass the word around…

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On the TRDL project front, I’m wrapping up five commission pieces this weekend, which will be a relief for those clients, and allow me to clear the deck for the next batch. Meanwhile, we’re working to put together the next edition of the TRDL Sourcebooks, which is in the editing phase. Very excited about it. Also, some TRDL art is going to be in two publications in the next few months, which I hope to be able to talk about soon.

Let’s have a good April!
thom

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum
here!… Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. Finit-e Serial: Update
2. The TRDL Sourcebooks Update
3. TRDL Update: Finit-e Scene 02!

It’s been awhile since I posted an in-depth look at my personal process. My origina post on the topic was over three years ago, and a few things hanged for the better, though my drawing time itself is much more limited due to family responsibilities of children and steaks-in-the-freezer requirements. Anyway, this is not the RIGHT way to do this sort of work, just MY way. I recently was asked a number of questions about my inking style, which was generously referred to as ‘spartan’ (I think of it as streamlined, but compared to proper inkers, it’s not much more than tracing my equally simple pencils and making some judicious lineweight choices. Nonetheless…) so I thought I’d follow up that conversation with a full TRDL Method update. If you are interested in how I do this stuff, read on!

The piece being rendered below can be seen here!

The Tools:

I use Borden and Riley #234 Bristol in 9×12 pads for the paper these days, and I’m very happy with the tooth and the portability of the pad (though the size requires cutting down the stock if I want to print blueline onto it.) I use your old fashioned ‘natural’ finish #2 pencils for the pencil work; not blueline pencils, not mechanicals, not fancy art sticks. Just wood. I ink with pens, not nibs, though I greatly admire nib and brush ink methods. I prefer Microns. I’ve used refillable aluminum cartridge pens, as my partner Joao uses, but I go back to the comfort of the Micron. I used to use India Ink pens but the ink changes color over time. Anyway, I use a number of lineweights: 005, 01, 02, 03, 05 and 08, though I use them in pairs or threes, based on the scale of the … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. The TRDL Method: Thom’s Tutorial [Archive]
2. Finit-e Survey!
3. TRDL 2011 Series No. 85 – Enchantress

My friend’s son Alex drew this. He’s going to be a superstar, so get your commission art dollars in order. I love it. And I can’t WAIT until my daughter starts pushing pencil like this…

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum
here!… Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute- Captain America
2. TRDL 2011 Series No. 64 – Captain America [Film Version]
3. TRDL Tribute: Captain America 2008

TRDL 2011 Series, No. 17: Xena – Warrior Princess
Third Rail Thrills No. 51

This was a finished-up render for a sketch done for the #DailySketchChallenge on DA, the subject being: Xena, Warrior Princess.

I don’t think I’ve ever drawn Xena before, at least that I remember. She’s in the commission queue for later this year as well, so this was a goof first take on how I’d approach the character. It’s kind of tough when you draw a stylized live-action figure, at least for me, because I didn’t want to try and do a straight-up likeness of the actress, but I wanted to capture her presence, the athleticism, and all that cool detail in her armor… but at the same time, i wanted to play with the details my own way, so i did. Hence the Lovecraftian imagery in the armor. Anyway, swords and sandals quota met for February…

An explanation of the project and process notes below…

Artists, come join us on R3 and submit to the jams! The R3 Illustration Jam offers new characters weekly, but all jams remain open so you can contribute to any that you like, here:
http://www.thirdraildesignlab.com/forum … m.php?f=27

:::

You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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Background:

Here’s Lucy Lawless in all her bad-assery.

Process:

The original pencil rough that I did for the sketch challenge…

late-night inks. As usual, a host of issues to be worked out digitally.

For example, the sword hild and cross bar are all over the place and out of alignment with each other (for the undrawn sword, you see) and some of the inking errors would require a finer level of digital editing later.

I nice, darker tanned skintone. She’s out in the … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL 2011 Series No. 56 – Jason from Gatchaman
2. TRDL 2011 Series No. 31: Scandal Savage [TRDL Redesign]
3. TRDL 2011 Series No. 85 – Enchantress

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