Third Rail Thrills No. 57 – Babydoll [Sucker Punch]
TRDL 2011 Series, No. 27

This was based on a sketch I did for the daily sketch challenge on #DailySketchChallenge, on DA.

Sucker Punch seems to be many things to many people, most of them polarizing. Seeing the previews and promo art, it looked to me like a live-action hybrid of fantasy/adventure gaming, anime and urban fetish. Sounds great to me! I decided to draw Babydoll because I thought she was the most striking of the protagonist character designs, with the ghostly white hair and the schoolgirl uniform. I went for a classic pin-up pose, inspired by one of the masters, and though there’s a panty peak, I think it’s pretty tame overall. I had a lot of fun working out the details of the costume and accessories, as usual…

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:

Here’s the character Babydoll, from the Sucker Punch film promo posters.

And here’s Edward Runci’s ‘Surprising Mystery’ from 1945, the pose inspiration for this one. Intimidating working from source material like that. What I generally do is print it out in black and white, and roughly sketch in the pose and forms, and then set the original aside: I’m not reproducing the original work, only drawing inspiration from it, so I try to step away from it after that … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. Third Rail Thrills No. 54 – Wasp [And Ant-Man]
2. Third Rail Thrills 49- Velma Pin-Up
3. Third Rail Thrills 38 – Brandy Pin-Up

Annotations for Finit-e: Scene 04

Scene 04 was a weird one: it took the longest, not for lack of trying, and certainly that helped and hurt the production of the pages, and the story told within them. The pages started out, as with previous chapters, as large storyboard thumbs drawn up when the story was developed over the first few years of the new millennium, from notes and concepts gathered in the late 90s. At one point, and Lung can attest to this having lived next door, I had some 178 pages taped up along a long wall of my loft, which was quite impressive looking but daunting, thinking about the work that would go into getting the project done. And this was just Book ONE of a three book series plotted out. Over time, as you may have read, I began to systematically scale the project back, condensing the events that comprised Book One, and bringing in more of the events from Books Two and Three, in the hopes of just having a chance to complete the project in my lifetime. A lot of the concepts remained, while much of the detail would necessarily be edited out from the original story. While the book Finit-e was originally conceived as swinging back and forth between the action in the field and the messy bureaucracy behind the curtains, it was planned to be doing so in very wide swaths, so Book One was almost entirely talky-talky until the final act, setting up an action filled middle volume. This was due, in part, by my love of procedurals, from law & Order to films like Bourne Identity that dared to show agency types fumbling around, watching their asses as things got messier in the field. But really, the more I condensed it, … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Finit-e Graphic Serial: Scene 02 Annotations [BONUS]
2. TRDL Finit-e Graphic Serial: Scene 03 Annotations [BONUS]
3. TRDL Finit-e Graphic Serial: Scene 01 Annotations [BONUS]

For those who primarily read the TRDL R3 Forum on a regular basis, you’ll always know about new TRDL Updates, through the announcements made in the TRDL News Section and through the posts in the individual art update categories. But for those who prefer to keep up via blog, the TRDL Blog has been overhauled and is active once again.

I haven’t maintained a blog since prior to the start of the R3 Forum, when I ran the Monkey Plus Robot Reviews blog, most of which morphed into our R3 Signals Intelligence Chatter section (reviews, news, wrongness and generall 100% minimum awesome stuff).

You can now see the site updates through this link:
http://www.thirdraildesignlab.com/blog

You can also access the blog fromt he main TRDL Illustration Site:
http://www.thirdraildesignlab.com

Please enjoy!

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

Related posts:

1. TRDL – 100,000 Hits Spectacularama!
2. TRDL v2.0 and the Finit-e Graphic Serial are Live!
3. TRDL and R3 Syndication Now Live!

Over on Artpost, a question was raised: Do you draw comics full-time, and if not, what’s your day job? This got me reflecting on how I ended up doing what I’m doing. I’m an architect who draws comics at night. That’s pretty unusual. And sometimes, when I start calculating the time it takes to do my comic pages on Finit-e, and realize I’ll be lucky to OUTLIVE the project in it’s current projected size… I have to remind myself that I love the process more than the product… because I’m effectively committing my life to it.

So anyway, for the three of you that are curious, here’s the way it went down:

I made the decision early on, maybe Junior High, that I wasn’t going to pursue comics as a profession. I loved drawing comics and characters so dearly, and yet I saw my parents, both struggling graphic designers, cycle through the feast and famine nature of freelance my whole life, and made a note to self: no freelance. Also, I was deathly afraid that the ‘job’ nature of it, the deadlines and editorial and frankly, just the real-world business of product, would suck my enjoyment of the process. As I got older, I confirmed that my personal assessment of this and how it would affect my inspiration was correct. I’ve talked with many, many professionals in both the comics and game industries, and everything I hear tells me that you can totally succeed as a professional comics/game/storyboard/fantasy illustrator, even working for hire, even on projects with conflicted focus, even under the grueling and unfair freelance systems in place… let alone if you are fortunate enough to become a signature creator, with a page rate and design influence and creator-owned publishing perks and all that which very few actually attain. … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Finit-e Graphic Serial: Scene 04 Annotations [BONUS]
2. Finit-e Survey!
3. Should I do more Dystopia Characters?

Hope you all had a safe and pleasant new years celebration, and that you’re ready to hit the ground running in 2006, because I sure am. Here’s what’s happening at TRDL:

2005 was a busy, busy year for me. I got married to my uberhot Mrs. Bot, managed a solid workload in my day job as an architect, did some traveling, not enough cycling, but lots and lots of drawing. On the TRDL front, 2005 was especially exciting because it saw the closure of my Monkey-Plus-Robot-Reviews entertainment blog (a link still exists in the Robotic Links section) and the opening of the R3 Forum you are reading now. We welcomed 240 members, began hosting the This Week art jam, and became the home of the Picture This! Virtual Studio. I had a number of larger design projects under my Third Rail Design Lab banner, a few of which are still under wraps, and one of which is soon to be announced. And on the commission front, my healthy backlog of work was (hopefully) matched by my efforts to satisfy those clients in a timely fashion. What was missing in 2005? My anticipated publishing benchmark for my graphic serial, Finit-e. To be honest, I just took too many commissions, and with everything else going on, there never were many days to hunker down and work on the project. I did a ton of writing, designing, planning, and drawing on the book, but not enough to meet my goal of launching it on the web. But fuck it, that’s the blessing, and the curse, of self-publishing.

What’s in store for 2006?

Less commissions, I hate to admit, though I’ll still take on the right ones, and from clients who understand the schedule issues. I’m still ahead of the curve, I think, in … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. Happy New Year from Third Rail Design Lab 2010 – 2011
2. Happy New Year from TRDL 2009
3. Happy New Year from Third Rail Design Lab!

Yesterday, Third Rail Design Lab reached the 100,000 hit mark. To the big guys, that’s like three minutes of traffic. But we don’t advertise, don’t market much, and largely get spread around through word of mouth, so to speak. So that’s a lot of clickeroos.

We also recently welcomed our 200th member to the TRDL R3 Forum. That’s also small potatoes to the big guys, but huge to me, considering that this forum was a place for a couple of knuckleheads to argue about which superhero film is cooler or why I drew one foot larger than the other in some pic. Today, we have all of the entertainment news and reviews content from our old Monkey+Robot Reviews blog, plus a weekly art jam, links and galleries, and host a virtual drawing studio.

I think this is all quite swell.

Once I noticed we were actually getting some pretty reliable traffic, I started working on a celebratory illustration for hitting the 100,000 hit mark. That was back in August 05. On honeymoon, actually.

Let me know what you think. I hope you dig it. By now, I hate it. It gave me carpal tunnel.

Here’s to the next 100,000 hits, I say!

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

Related posts:

1. TRDL Finit-e Graphic Serial: Scene 04 Annotations [BONUS]
2. TRDL Tribute: Batman Begins
3. TRDL Blog is Live

This piece was listed in an auction on the Bendis Board Charity Auction to benefit the victims of hurricane Katrina. The winning bidder, Robert, went on to be one of my repeat clients, so it worked out well for everyone!

This was done for the This Week Jam, though retroactively. It was drawn on the white sandy shores of the Mayan Riviera… I haven’t drawn Big Barda before, but she always was one of the coolest of the Kirby women in the DC universe to me, whenever I came across her. Maybe there’s something to the powerful woman thing, but she has always had the presence, to me, that DC wants Wonder Woman to have. Physically imposing, unimpressed, confident and sexy. Anyway, this was clearly a fun one to draw.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute – Mister Miracle [and Big Barda]
2. TRDL Special Edition – Maestra [For the Sparhawks]
3. TRDL Tribute: Wonder Woman Golden Age Revisited

This piece was done to commemorate the release of Chris Nolan’s Batman Begins. It accompanies the dual-reviews we’ve done for the R3 Forum, which you can read here:

http://www.thirdraildesignlab.com/forum … php?t=1320

I managed to convey, somewhat unintentionally, some of the remaining stiffness in this incarnation of the suit, though it’s far better than the previous versions. There’s also the difficulty of translating to comic art from film, a costume translated from comic art FOR film. But overall, I think it worked out OK. Again, I didn’t go to town trying to capture Katie Holmes’ likeness, but more my mental impression of her Rachel Dawes character. Dig those rockin urban chic boots! Anyway, hope you like this piece, and if you feel like some suspiciously dense bedtime reading, go check out the reviews and add your comments!

View the full illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute: Batman Begins Pre-Film Concept Art
2. TRDL 2011 Series No. 35 – Iron Man vs. Batman
3. TRDL Tribute- Ranger Liu Connel