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BULL-PEN

Star Trek - Arena

One of the most loved and most laughed at original Star Trek episodes is "Arena." As a kid, I loved the tense drama of Captain Kirk being hopelessly outmatched in his man-to-man mortal combat with a big rubbery lizardman. These days, I find the episode hilarious and awesome at the same time. So I thought it was good subject matter for some Bull-Pen treatment.

Lost Bounce!

Mike The Knight warm up doodle. Done this morning, I had started some of the inks for the boards but felt things were a bit flat so decided to have a little doodle, which acted like rotating a crank-handle! Now I'm back into the inks with a little more bounce in the lines.

When working I can often feel like I'm just going through the motions and as soon as I recognise that I have to re-engage as a loss of connection to the work is a loss of intimacy, which shows in the work. That's why sometimes I feel I really -have- to take a step backwards in order to get further forward.

Metroid

I started this out as a bit of stylistic fun to road-test some ideas for the Bull-Pen. I may have gotten a bit carried away with it, which is often a good sign.
I had to set it aside for a month to meet some deadlines, and it felt really good to sit down and bang out the finishing touches this weekend.

Poses.

Most of the time I sit and figure out what pose I'm after by doing variations on the pose. Then there are those times that the pose comes to you pretty much all there! This is one of those.

I had an incling of an image in my head of Antman vs and Ant-eater. Antmans pose pretty much dropped right out of the pencil as my second option.

My two thoughts had been just before the leap and swing and then this one of the mid-swing. Mid-swing won by a mile and was just way more involving and dynamic.

One of the great things I enjoy when looking for a pose, even in an instance where you get a good one off the cuff is looking where to tweak it in order to get the clearest outline/sillhouette from it. Here in the sketch you can see the camera left leg has been moved. Originally I was looking at having it more towards the camera/viewer but the killed the movement. I drew the arm up by his face as part of the swing first but started to wonder if an extended arm might give balance to the pose and quickly realised he needed to look coiled and that the straight arm tipped his centre of gravity the wrong way for the eye movement through the image.

Saturday's Warm-up Challenge.

Draw a baby version of a DC character or a version that is cutesy enough to be Baby-friendly ;)

Attack!

An initial design for an in-house piece.

Facial expressions

I love collecting images of expressions. I have several modelling books dedicated to the subject in my library. Most expression sheets and therefor gigs tend to look for the obvious expressions:

(Here are some wonderful Spongebob expressions, executed masterfully)



But I saw this one online and have often struggled to feel that the normal looking characters get to express themselves. Thought I'd share the image and link to it.


http://urlybits.com/2010/05/womens-facial-expressions-explained/

Keep in mind that experience outways reference. Reference is there to remind you. It's like if you pick a knife up by the blade, instead of the handle and cut yourself, the next time you need to pick up a knife you are reminded more accutely which end to use;)

Warm-up, Cool-down!

I don't do this every day but some day's I need to get my eye in or, as in this case, I feel they day has been hard work and have been struggling to hit my rythim. On those days I like to do a few observational doodles to garner a bit of fun and flamboyance to the line.
Today I spent a good deal of the day looking at my Photoshop Actions and then when I tried to wrap my head around some boarding it just wasn't working for me. So I kept plugging away until I was pretty happy but it felt like walking into a head on gale. So as a Cool-down I jammed these pieces together.
It is pretty important, to me at least, to keep it fun, particularly on the really tough days!

Tail-Kicking!

Seems like every character and their sister can fight like a ninja and cause major problems to proven powerhouses these days. I guess showing a z-rate villain smack around an a-rate hero they gain some comicbook credibility, right?
I don't think so. I think that really you are undermining the a-lister's standing which in turn damages your properties as a whole.
A character, like Robin, should have to fight tooth and nail to keep up with even a relaxed Batman otherwise, why have him at all?
Robin is learning (all be it for forty years! ;) ) But Batman on his worse day would run rings around Robin on his best.
Robin is a more relatable character in a battle, Batman would seeingly take down a crowd of assailants effortlessly, we can see that effort, luck and persistance are Robin's key cards in his deck and that is far more relatable. This provides us with a stepping stone. From us, to Robin, to Batman and that is a product booster. Where-as if Robin could match Batman, well that undermines him.

Teen Style Baby!

Hi guys, well over the last few months, on and off, I have found many a moment to play around with a comic style that I'm aiming at a teen-audience. It really needs to be something that fits into our Bull-Pen Studio processes and something I feel that I can reproduce consistantly...nothing used to bug me more when reading a comic than a character looking awesome in one shot but then less than admirable in the next!

Here is a drawing of Hope Summers done a little while back but done with my eyes squared on the style.