Catching the Digital Wave

 This week was the first all digital Sunday strip I produced for Judge Parker and the direction I plan to head with that strip, though I will continue to produce The Phantom "old school" with traditional tools. Nothing beats pencil, pens, brush and ink! I never loose anything, paper doesn't crash or have to be migrated to another format, tech, but I can't keep putting it off either. I'm hopping on the digital wave.

It was a bit tricky to draw this as I was using my Wacom tablet and have yet to purchase my Cintiq, which will probably happen this week. That means I was not drawing on the screen but looking at the screen as I drew which made it a bit slower and having to redo things a few times to get the line right. Here is where the 30 Plus years of muscle memory come in. I know how to make the strokes from memory, practice, its just a bit of finagling to get them in the right spot using the Wacom, the Cintiq will solve that.

After nearly 7 years on the Judge I have a huge stack of art and I need to save space as I go forward doing two strips, essentially doubling my output, and there is not much of a market for the art on the soap strips, though there is a big demand for the Phantom art, I have already been getting inquiries for dailies.

I also hope to be able to speed the art up by going digital--or that is the theory that all my fellow artists who have gone digital say will happen. Terry Beatty produces both his Phantom and Rex Morgan strips digital and he says its faster. I think doing backgrounds with programs like Manga Studio is faster as I can go over my swipe without having to draw it out then ink it. I used to do this in a way back when I used my projector and I could project the swipe/photo and ink it directly under the projector. Its also the way things are going commercially and I have to adapt to the needs of the jobs.

A year back I had to produce a Star Wars kids book and they need the art all inked digital so Disney could re-purpose any of the art later. I also want to produce some digital paintings and concept work for myself. If I continue to teach in the future, something I am sort of on the fence with at the moment, I will want to be proficient with the digital tools--besides I think it will be fun!

                                              The most recent week of the strip in process

I just turned in my 12th week on the Phantom and I think its my best week so far and Tony DePaul's scripts are a joy to draw, especially when he gives me room to stretch out like this week. The Phantom is a fun job but a hard one as any long running legacy strip is full reference issues. So far I have received love and also a bit of hate from the Phans. I knew coming on some folks are not gonna like it, they hate change just like when I came on The Judge, but it's mostly love, and some are great folks, welcoming me in and following my work over the years and some are whack jobs, going over every single line and are quite insulting. To those types well, they can take a long walk off a short pier. They are the type you can never appease and I know from many Parker Snarkers they are the type to just always say negative things no matter what.

I have a lot more Phantom reference now and that helps a lot, and its still a job I feel I'm growing into and will for a long time. I haven't even draw The Phantom himself more than a few times in the purple costume, I've drawn him in his civilian guise the most. Studying Sy Barry's work on the strip I can see his evolution on it as he grew with each story, and the different pencilers he had draw the strip also evolved and change his style. He started the strip the year I was born, funny to think 54 years later I'm doing the strip.
                              Below is the most recent week of the strips which ran in the paper.

Here is another Judge Parker week drawn by me and guest inked digitally by my best buddy Bret Blevins. Bret has been doing a lot of digital work for several years now and I think he really knows how to use the programs and give it that "old School" juice!

I have also been on a bit of a buying binge with all the great books coming out now on comics and strips. This is the haul from the last few weeks, the IDW Artists Editions are really fantastic! So great to see the Adams one and the Wrightson as well. I think Thrill Kill might be Adams best drawn story and the Muck Monster leads us right to Wrightson's never topped Frankenstein adaption. These guys were huge heroes to me as a teen and still are a big influence on my work today as well as Toth and the great DC War Gods of Kubert and Russ Heath. For up and coming artists we live in a golden age of great repro of great work to study, love and learn from.

 I have also had a chance to get out and do some painting which you can read about over on my Philadelphia Plein Air Painters Blog!

I have also been really going through a huge cleaning and purge of the studio which will go on for a while. I recently got rid of my stereo in the studio as I listen to all my music over my computer now, and which loading the equipment out I came across this old tape of the voice track from working as a storyboard artist on the Batman cartoon. I have many of these tapes and eventually the switched to CD's and then MP3's. I'm sure in another 20 years I'll have a similar pic of some old and no longer used platform or tech.

First Day In The Skull Cave

 Today marks my start on The Phantom as the regular artist on the daily strip as the torch is passed officially on the comics page from the late Paul Ryan to me. Its hard to still process that it all happened so fast, Paul passed away only two months ago and within a few days of his passing I was hired by King as his replacement and had to hit the ground running fast. Luckily Tony DePaul the long time Phantom scribe as well as the folks at King and fellow Phantom artist Terry Beatty who does the Sunday strip gave me as much help to get up to speed quickly as I came in on the very end of the current story line. I also did all of this while still keeping up on drawing Judge Parker.

This was exactly the same situation that lead me to get the Judge Parker strip when Eduardo Barreto passed away back in 2011. No artist likes to inherit work this way but the comic strips must go on and this situation is very similar to what happened to John Prentice jumping into the drawing chair on Rip Kirby when artist Alex Raymond was tragically killed driving Stan Drake's new sports car. King was is a panic to replace one the the greatest cartoonists ever on short notice.

I met Paul only once that I remember clearly at a con many years back though we rubbed shoulders at Marvel on books like Quasar with me following him on that book when he left to do other books like The Avengers and The Fantastic Four. Paul left us all a great legacy to enjoy and be inspired by for the ages with his art for Marvel and his long run on the Phantom.

I posted the pencils for today's first strip and the final versions and you can see there were some changes swapping the King and the Colonel. its hard to jump in on something like this and grab the characters and the feel of where the story is at and the actors as it were so I spent as much time as I could reading over the last several weeks of the story and Paul's art.

I also belong to s small club of artists who have also drawn both Batman and The Phantom. They include Jim Aparo, Terry Beatty, Don Newton, Carmine Infantino (As a Ghost for Sy Barry), Joe Giella ( Ghosting for Bob Kane), Graham Nolan, Paul Ryan and myself. That's pretty good company!

 

 Here is a recent commission just off the drawing board I completed for a fan of Bats and Killer Croc based on my cover for Batman 512. For now back to the drawing board!

Judge Parker Process

 More pencils and inks from a recent Judge Parker Sunday as the Spencers return from the year long  ( just a few days in strip time )storyline trapped in the RV park.

I inked 99% of this with an old Esterbrook pen nib which you can find by hunting around.

I did use a XS Pitt marker for the small faces. Looks like its a long story about building a factory and possibly a romance with Neddy and her Hunk assistant Hank. But one never knows in JP land, it might just be a year of blue balls for everyone.

Judge Parker Process: Inks!

Here is the inked Sunday strip, the pencils are  posted below. I mostly used a Pigma or Faber Castle marker and a no. 3 brush. In general I use the .5 and. 8 and the small  Faber Castle for faces. I do all the line work first then go back and use the brush to finish it all up, line weights and blacks.The most fun was doing the bird on this Sunday.

Judge Parker

This weeks JP, the first time I get to draw sam in his office and Gloria his secretary. With this story line I'm getting to draw more of the cast which is interesting and fun.

Read a whole issue of Doll and Creature--for FREE!

A few years ago I worked on a really fun project called Doll and Creature with my buddies Rick Remender and John Heebink. They wrote and drew it and I inked it and I think it's one of the best, if maybe not the best inking job I have ever done. The book was originally a graphic novel that came out through Larry Young's company AT/Planet Lar, which Rick later got reprinted in color at Image as a 4-issue mini-series and then reprinted/collected as a graphic Novel.

Well now you can read one of teh entire issues online for FREE right here. I had a lot of fun on this series and hope that maybe someday we all can either revisit that dark zombie-like world of the future or work on another project again.

Martians Go Home--Inks Done

I have finally finished up the inks on the first issue of Martians Go Home and I am now quickly moving into coloring and lettering and next month I'll be knee deep into penciling issue 2.

More Martians

Here are a few more pages of inks on the Martians Go Home project.

Martians Go Home--INKS

Here are a few pages that I've inked up on MGH, I'm more than half way through inking the first issue. Most of the inking on these pages is done with a No. 4 brush and the ruling done with a Hunt 108 pen nib and a little Micron Pigma pen.

The Big Meltdown and the Return of Dr. 7

Well last week it finally happened, the thing everyone who uses a computer fears--the hard drive on my Apple 17" laptop crashed and burned. It got dumped when it took a dive--pulled by my dogs legs being tangled with the cord--i grabbed it but I guess it still hit too hard.I rushed to save what I could on my external drive as it did it's death spiral and luckily I lost only a little, so far it seems mostly music and some art which I can rescan. What I really lost was e-mail, that kinda' sucked, but that's the breaks.

A quick trip to my Mac guys and new drive was installed, a 160 gig and I then spent the next few days rebuilding my computer. Some stuff is still off, like my Microsoft office won't work, and so I am still working on the restore, but I'm mostly back up.

Things are super busy between school, work and the crash so I haven't been able to respond or post here for a spell. I finished the second Secret Agent X-9 job for King Features which will see print in the overseas X-9 mag published by Egmont. Below I posted my pencils and inks for some of the last batch of pages. I was flying by the seat of my pants and really burning along--I even had to skip a few days of school to finish this up, one of the unfortunate things that happens at times when the realities of being a pro-artist clashes with me being a student--the pro always wins. Without the moolah generated by my commercial work I wouldn't even be able to afford school-let alone eat or pay my mortgage.




I drew all of these pages directly on the board with no layouts, I didn't even do any sketches before, I just read the script and winged it as I was so pressed for time.


the only ref I had was for the plane which I googled and a few strips by Al to match Dr. 7's costume from the old strips.

After I inked and scanned each page I brought in the zip-pattern on a layer and cut or erased away what I didn't want. I have an actual old sheet of zip-a-tone scanned in just for this purpose. When I was done I'd flatten the image and away we'd go. the white zip was me selecting the zip pattern in that area and painting it white to create the old white zip you used to be able to buy.

Marvel U Cover Color

Here is the final color version of the Marvel U handbook for Twomorrow's Publishing.
This was a fun cover to do mainly because I got Tom Palmer to ink it.

Marvel U handbook Pencils and Inks

A little while ago I penciled this cover for one of Twomorrow's Publishing upcoming books, a field guide to the marvel Universe. And since it was covering the classic Silverage Marvel years John Morrow and I though it would be awesome to get Tom Palmer to ink the cover. I've known Tom for many years, and he is not only one of the best inker/artists ever in the biz, but he's is one of the nicest men I have ever met in comics. I know, it's a bit cliche to say that, but Tom is really a great guy, very much they type of person you'd hope he would be when you meet him. I worked with Tom before on Spirits of Vengeance, and even got him to ink a few pages on Darkhawk once, so this is pure heaven for me. It makes me feel like a REAL comic artist when I get one of my art heroes to work with me. Tom's inks are above and my pencils below.

ACTION PACK 34

In stores this week Action Pack #34 featuring a Secret Saturdays inked by me.

X-9 Wednesday

Here is another X-9 page finished and toned. I have been slowed down a lot in recent days by a nagging cold, but I hope I have turned the corner on it and I am on the mend.

More X-9: Page 9 Inked

here is the final inked and zipped page 9 from the story. I the previous post you can watch my process. I inked this page mostly with a Hunt 108 pen, a Pigma 05 marker and a no. 4 Dick Blick Studio Sable I bought last week in the awesome new Gick Blick art store which opened here in Center City Pilly. It was aboiy $10, and it's pretty nice and give a good performance for it's price, especially compared to the Series 7 Winsor Newtons which are at least twice the price, and have declined in quality in my opinion in recent years.

Unfortunately I had to Kill my buddy Jamar Nicholas in the process of doing this page as I cast him in the roll of the would-be assasin. But that's what friends are for...

More X-9 Process

Above you can see more of my layouts from the current Secret Agent Corrigan story I'm working on. I do the layouts small, then scan them in, convert to non-photo blue and print them out full comic art size on my Epson 1200. This allows me to work faster and to really concentrate on the dynamics of the layout; here you can see how I went back in and tightened up things a bit on the final page. I want to leave some fun, some juice to the inking stage, so I don't make everything too tight, mostly faces and guns. next I'll sling some ink on this baby and post it.

Here is a page I just finished, I added the zip on a layer in photoshop.