 AAAAGGHH! I'm Excited! I hope you are, too!! I'm also a bit anxious, as I'm doing this one all myself and I've never really done any coloring. I'm sticking with flat colors for a variety of reasons, but it's good enough for Hawkguy, so it's (probably too) good for me!
We'll take a trip down memory lane with Roeke while, in the present, she faces The Spider one on one! On September 3rd, we'll begin STAGE TWO: A SPIDER IN AUTOMATIC CITY. See you chumps then, peace! --Jhustoe! I don't know if if this will work, but i recorded a chat that i had with my collaborators. Here it may or may not be: interview UPDATE: Here are some visual companions for the interview:  Some design ideas for The Guardian by James.  James starts finalizing the Guardian's body design while working out different takes on the head.  Some of Amanda's colors without my lines getting in the way.  More Manda colors. I believe I mentioned before that a lot of the kablowee and lined atmosphere gradients were completely her input. In that last panel I had her make the white yellow for the final 'cause I thought it looked a little too "Rising Sun."  Squiggly lines become a fiery explosion under Amanda's tutelage. Also, it looks kinda eerie with white in place of the smoke (which I'd rendered on the page, hence it disappearing with the lines lair).  Amanda added a lot of the effect and detail to this one. Including a little more definition in the detail of Roeke's eyes. There's an amazing comic artist by the name of David Aja (pronounced A-Ha, as in "Take on Me"). He draws the Hawkguy parts of the amazing Hawkeye comic. He calls his layout/thumbnail sketches "Little Shits." So, now, let me show you my... little shits. Wait. That didn't come out right. SHIT, neither did that! (okay, I'm done now). 
The cover! Pretty close to what ended up on the page, actually. That will be the case a lot of times. I don't often change my mind past this point. I kept a running list of reference I'd want to look up to help me draw good.
Originally a full on DPS (double page spread, not damage per second- nerds!), I chickened out and boxed up the main elements of pages 2 and three.
You can see me working out the paneling in the margins... after crossing out whatever I didn't like on the layout itself.
Did a lot of my thinking around the sides of this one. I definitely prefer where it ended up to some of the alternate layouts floating here.
Oh! I knew I did this SOMEwhere. The image in the bottom left is my aerial view diagram of Roeke's house. This helped me keep it all straight when I was drawing these scenes.
I had fun making these pages "mirror" each other. Well, mirror and flip.
I don't remember where, but I saw some comics where the framing would cut off a good chunk of the character or action, leaving a lot of open space in the panel. I like that, so I stole it. But then I doodled the whole figure anyway so I could wrap my head around where everything goes.
Sometimes, artist-Jhustoe complains about how many panels writer-Jhustoe makes him fit into one page. What a jerk. Obviously, the panelling stayed pretty much the same for these, so those are my "I've drawn this already" X's, and not my "No, not this way" X's.
I mentioned the progress bar before, right? I think I started that several pages in and went back to add it to the other layout pages, haha. What a dork. Also, pg. 16 technically has 10 panels, but I reassured myself that there was only 7 had any actual drawing to be done.
It all starts with stick figures. Also, the Champion (or ChampBOT) still hadn't gotten its name changed to The Guardian yet.
Oh, look at that! The blackout page was waaay different in the layout stage, it was real boring! I'm super glad I changed that. Now it's one of my favorite pages of the issue.
What angle best captures a yawn?. Also, great note, Jhustoe: "MOAR TREEZ."
Buildings are hard. I stole designs from the background of Mega Man games.
Well, thanks for checkin' this out, y'all!
Next week, we'll chat with James and Amanda about their process (I'm doing the 'interview' tonight, as a matter of fact). Then, on the 27th, we'll maybe sneak a peak at issue 2, which'll start September 3rd. Good riddance, --Jhustoe!  Here are my initial sketches for the logo design. I stole heavily from Mega Man (I never bothered learning whether that's supposed to be one or two words). My favorite was making the triangle behind the letters into a digital blur. Then there's my note to my sister, I left this on her desk one morning. She agreed! 
Some of the first concepts for Roeke's look, and some bad puns. "No sunglasses (that's a bad idea)." I don't think I was actually planning to give her a scarf, I think that was a separate doodle, figuring out how to... draw scarves. There are a few attempts at naming the world this takes place in, not that it ever gets mentioned in the comic... . My initial instinct was my usual one with regards to giving her a thin jawline, but I wanted to work against my usual "type." The image of Roeke breaking down after losing Miri was one stuck in my head early on.
Early Torch and Guardian concepts, before passing them on to James.
Here's a mix of my designs, and my practice sketches based on James' designs. The Torch and uppermost Spiders are me working from James' designs. The guardian and the Spider on the bottom right are my designs. Thank god for James, right? I do actually really like the Guardian here, but it was too similar to the Torch in the end (and I had no idea what to do with his legs...).
Here's my first Miri designs, complete with size reference to her mom, and some name ideas (none of which were Miriam, if you can't read them). I had Neene, Aldina, and Mynd. No, thank you, haha. Then, here's where I worked out Roeke's face and look, is she wielding a blaster of some kind there??? And what's with that mask, anyway? Oh, yeah, and I'm working out Roeke's name on this page, as well. ROKKA!
I was gonna throw the whole issue's layouts on here, too, but this is getting lengthy as is. Maybe that'll be next week's post? I still need to interview my collaborators, so I can get their voices in on this thing, too. Anyway, take it easy, folks!
--Jhustoe |
JhustoeBorn in California, Justin now resides in Portland, OR. He's had a passion for comics from a very young age Archives
February 2017
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