BRass Knuckles

New project. This page took about 5 hours to get to this point.

5 Ladies and One Pirate

The title more or less says it all.

Page Template

The new template works great. Still thinking about Illustrator and/or PhotoShop, but so far so good. Two-page template is about 30% done.

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A Boy named Troy

Amy convinced me to do a comic for Jackson, which I hope to have done by Christmas. This is the main character, Troy.

Awful Alvin and Lampy

Back in 2002 I started drawing for the first time since high school. In those days I liked to pause DVDs and draw single shots. This shot of Alvin and his dastardly henchman Lampy seemed am appropriate beginning.

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Captain Fabulous

Kinda reminds me of a statue of Stonewall Jackson I saw at Bull Run.

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Bean Boy

This one took about 90 minutes blueline to inks.

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Monster Chip Cookie

New idea in the works...

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Digital Cover Part 2

Added shading and some color. Logo is in the works.

Digital Cover

Working on the wireframe for a cover idea. This one started with a photo of a woman doing an extremely athletic maneuver and morphed into the character sketch. It loaned itself nicely to the concept.

GIMP does not yet support layer groups, so my master template is a little cumbersome.

Poses

I found this picture of an acrobat and decided to comic it up a little...

The pose took about 2 hours to get and I'm still not 100% happy with it.

Random GIMP Stuff - Classic Cartoons

Before I re-discovered the GIMP, I drew a lot of Looney Tunes and Tex Avery stuff by pausing the DVDs. Jackson would hang out while I did it - a real fun bonding time.

Now I have been able to digitize and color them with the GIMP...

The layering capability allows me to use clean lines and smooth color, but allows me to keep in the penciled lines for a more hand-drawn look, since that's how these drawings began life anyway.

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The Goat That Defied a Prom Queen

The second-to-last assignment of the AACC class involved character design. Pulling a random object out of my instructor's righteous metal lunchbox, I had to extrapolate ten character traits that could be applied to a human being. Using those traits, I had to design a character with a full turn sheet, and then do a one-page story about that character doing something inappropriate.

I pulled a plastic goat out of the lunchbox.

I racked my brains for all of Wednesday and Thursday night, desperate to apply traits like "non-discriminating in diet choices," "extremely agile" and "solitary" to a human being. Then Friday night Amy came home and saw what I was attempting to do. Without batting an eye, she said: "That's a teenage boy." Pause. "Who's really into parkour."

A wise woman is more valuable than rubies.

The turn sheet was done by Saturday night, and I started on the page Sunday. I did not get a chance to add dialog (for which Sam castigated me) or fully render the electric effects (more castigation), but all in all I was happy with all panels except the first one. The background was also  non-existent, but the idea of a teenage boy blacking out a major metropolitan area by rail-grinding across power lines seemed appropriately inappropriate (and quite awesome)...

Billy Parker comes across to me as sort of the resident mercenary at his high school, performing dirty deeds if you've got the cash. I also pitched "Billy Parker vs. the Prom Queen" for my final project, but Sam much preferred the simplicity of "Killer Commute."

Billy Parker. The goat that became a boy. The boy that became a parkourist. The parkourist who defied a prom queen.

Do Not Touch, version 2

So my instructor assigned a second version of this comic. I tried to work on darkening it up and improving story clarity.

Do Not Touch, version 1

Here's the first strip I did for AACC's Comics I class. It had to involve a parakeet, beer and satanic possession.

Fun with the GIMP

I originally did this Spider-Man last year, and recently re-did it using the GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program). I did the whole thing with my MacBook's trackpad, which meant it took quite a long time to do all those weblines. Maybe that's why Marvel went with the straight black costume for a while...

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Killer Commute

So a few months ago I was sitting in morning gridlock, thinking to myself, "man I wish I could just *be* there right now!" And ditto at night - I wished I could just be done with my day and then just be... home.

Then I had an idea about a guy who commutes to work, from his home in 1850 South Carolina. Seemed a little difficult from a continuity standpoint.

Finally, after a particularly difficult day, I wondered how bad somebody's home life would have to be in order for the worst job in the world to seem good by comparison.

Marry these three ideas and I got this project.