World of Warcraft pitch

A few months ago at work, we got to draw some World of Warcraft illos in varying styles as part of a pitch for a proposed trading card series. This fight scene was my contribution. I decided to ink it as practice for The Independents even though the job only required pencils. I didn't spot too many blacks because I knew it was going to be painted by my friend Jerry Wilson. I knew Jerry would figure out his own light sources and I didn't want to get in the way of that.

And I'm glad I didn't because he made the goblin's sword a glowing light source. I never would've thought to do that. Go check out Jerry's site to see some more cool stuff.

Independents sketch covers (& post-NYCC wrap-up)

NYCC went really well. We made a lot of good connections and met a lot of great people all weekend long. Now comes the follow-up process, which means a lot of editors are gonna be receiving these bad boys in the mail wether they like it or not. Our plan was to just get some eyes on the books at the con and offer to send a copy to anyone who was interested, but some people were so receptive they wanted to take a copy right there! It was an awesome feeling and I'm just grateful to everyone who gave us the time of day.

Anyway, this is the first batch of sketch covers I did before the convention. I spent about 15-20 mins on each, and I got better and faster with each one, though some I wish I could take back. This kind of sketching is an art form unto itself just like the inking process. I used pretty much the same materials I did to ink the pages, but I threw in a gray marker for some half-tones. It didn't show up too well in the scans, but they look pretty cool in person.

The Independents- inks

 

And now here are some inks!

Inking is a real pain when you don't do it all the time. I kinda got my bearings around page 5 or 6. Everything before that needed a ridiculous amount of cleanup in Photoshop before I was ready to show them to anyone. It was a pretty cool learning experience, all in all.

I did these mostly with microns and tech pens, but I threw in a little brush work when I was confident enough not to ruin them. Many, many lessons learned.

Check out declareindependents.com for the full colored, lettered story in the coming months. That will be home base for everything Independents from here on out, and we have plans. BIG plans.

Stay tuned. 

Also, I swear I'm gonna try to update this thing more frequently. Promise.

The Independents- pencils

Here are the pencils for The Independents short story "Burn, Hollywood, Burn" that myself and Mr. Ben Christian will be pitching to just about anyone with eyes and ears this weekend at NYCC.

This is the biggest project I've ever tackled and it was a great experience throughout. I literally had the time of my life working on these pages and I think I've proved a lot to myself in the process. Drawing comics rules.
Ben has been a phenomenal collaborator and I think it's safe to say that this is just the beginning for us as a team and the Independents as a property.

(fingers crossed!)

Tomorrow: Inks!

The Independents is copyright 2010 Ben Christian and Cory Smith