The wrap to the down and dirty high concept snobby project I did with writer Brendan Hykes. Really fun to see with the India ink!
Enjoy, and look for it in Ugli Studios Presents #3!
“This is a Sad Comic” Pencils
“THIS IS A SAD COMIC”
2015
w-Brendan Hykes
a-Jason Lenox
Writer Brendan Hykes and I have been plotting a one page high concept (read snobby) “Zine” style comic for a while now. Brendan is a writer that I met two years ago, and is one of the nicest and cool people I’ve been lucky to meet doing conventions. You can read more about him here .
So, what is this project?
Sort of like an art house film about people smoking cigarettes, doing heroin and suicide, but with wacky characters and product placement.
This is the penciled page and the final comic will be in Ugli Studios Presents #3 as a one pager near the end of the book. Inspired by two particular “artists” that drive me nuts (ask me in person for the dirt- it’s funny) and one head scratching convention that was the apex of this very independent and not easily accessible style.
I’ve been itching to put it to paper for a while with Brendan’s writing magic, and I needed to take a quick break from the “Lords of the Cosmos” to clean my palette with something a little bit lighter and fun as I gear up to tackle the last 10 pages of that particular project.
It was fun to do something that masquerades as “high concept” but really is just juvenile and insulting on several levels to a great many people. Of course, someone may see it and analyze the deep thinking and layers of meaning they see in it, then the joke is on them, this is a SAD comic, not a SERIOUS one!
LORDS OF THE COSMOS: Disciples of Umex Pinup #6 – Pencils
“From the ranks of the Disciples of Umex… The Savage Flesh Eating Cani-Bull, The Mindless Sonic devastation of the Sound Golem Groanus, and the sworn enemy of Ironshell, the Giant Turtle of the Lords of the Cosmos, the Gigantic Cybernetic Dragon- Ragewing…”
So the latest round of villains- Canibull has been in my head for a long time with Ragewing, Groanus was always a blank slate. I used a friend who is a body builder for muscle reference on Canibull for a shifty crouched pose. He was my alternate take on Beast Man from M.O.T.U. and a Minotaur- the idea is he eats humans and controls Ragewing telepathically as a creature leader of sorts.
Ragewing really was an extension of how much my fans love my dragons and monsters- to do a technological/fantasy version of a “Lenox Dragon”. I used a Crocodile as the basis for the head and really struggled to get a pose in the composition that worked, I was pleased with what came out of my sketchbook here. This character is also my evil giant monster which is the antagonist to the good giant monster, Ironshell the Turtle, seen here. The basic concept of this entire project was that the Lords of the Cosmos are a set of toys from the 1980’s so if there is a good giant creature, there has to be a bad giant creature, Ragewing fills that mandate.
Groanus was the REAL challenge from the writers…
Description: “A twisted giant created by the diabolical DOCTOR SMOG, this tall and spindly beast is a slow moving monster of destruction created as a front line shock trooper to cause retreat in the battle of good versus evil. Stupid and slow, the beast is nonetheless lethal if not destroyed early. The sound emanates from his nuclear lungs and passes over his teeth of diamonds, causing a whistling sound that can rip ear drums and crack a man’s teeth.”
I kept drawing a tall muscular guy with a big mouth with a filter inside it, and it was so flat, I knew where I wanted him from a composition point of view in the middle top left, and it just kept failing on me. Anyway, I had to tune out, and then stop thinking inside the box, and get out- if a big guy wasn’t working, then why a human at all? So I used a dust mite, and a virus diagram both from online textbooks to make a non human unique character, and I couldn’t have been happier with the weird totem pole of tentacles, spindly legs and bizarre flower like face… a touch of H.P. Lovecraft perhaps influenced me here as well.
Anyway, below are my original thumbnail and final pencils- Enjoy!
Final Pencils
Thumbnail
LORDS OF THE COSMOS: Aegeus and the Lords of the Cosmos Pinup #5 – Final Pencils
Another showcase pinup of the Heroes from the Lords of the Cosmos Team!
Tiedemies the Scientist, The Mighty Man-Tank, & Tenta-Kill the Blackwater Butcher in action on the Planet Aiden!
Notes on this page- I really went for reference on the cloak for Tiedmeies to get the folds as close to accurate as I could make them. I also used a photo of an old person to get some of the facial wrinkles looking lifelike.
Tenta-Kill was like Belchor, simple and easy to come up with- no idea why, but his entire character came to me in a flash and it looked great. Basically a “Fightin’ Robo Squid”
Man-Tank- wow. He has been a main character in my mind’s eye for months, but getting his scale and bulk down correctly has been hard- I had him in a prior pinup (Mechaspring’s page) and then closed him out, I couldn’t get it together. But using tons of tank reference, and a ruler to keep my lines and proportions correct, I pulled him together- and realized that just like the two headed guy from the last “Disciples of Umex” page- this was in the Transformers art camp again. Man Tank was hard to do, but I am very happy with his final product- a defensive unit that shoots nets, ropes and has defensive shield generators that is part man, part tank.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it!
LORDS OF THE COSMOS: Disciples of Umex Pinup #5 – Pencils
“Golut the Tek Dwarf and two of his monstrous creations lurch across Planet Aiden in search of wanton destruction as they hope to eliminate the LORDS OF THE COSMOS once and for all!”
Thoughts and Notes-
So I managed to get a robotic snake head with needles for teeth injections in next to a butcher knife head on the larger monster- I had a fetish going with snakes after my recent “Gorgon Medusa” Project. Additionally, I had a pile of reference from my prior snake-centric project, as well as some templates I had made from my own work with tracing paper to make rattlesnake heads- so it was a natural move to use one here. The twist was to make it not a true snake like my last project, thus the robotic snake look.
…………The two headed brute ended up channeling that blocky G1-G2 Transformer toy look- esp. with the howitzer/gun on the back- Onslaught the Combaticon comes to mind if you know what that is check him out here. And I would have never realized how HARD those blocky Transformer type characters are to draw- much respect to anyone working in that world drawing these kinds of characters all the time! Since our goal from day one was to base this whole project on an 80’s toy line that never existed, this keeps the project in line visually with what we wanted.
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A very vague character write up came with the slime character, so I made it slime in a powered suit that gives it a human like shape- in addition to the wires on the suit it has wires coming out of the Umex team logo on his head- communication and control system. One issue that came up-I had to fight hard to keep him looking like a minion- originally I had one big eye, and I was like “oh sh!t- it’s a minion!” so he got a face full of smaller eyes to break it up. Totally unintentional, glad I caught it before fellow artist Chris Flick who is always drawing minion mash-ups called me on it!
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We are still working on names for the two monster/creatures, so we’ll get back to you on that one.
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Golut has a World War two era flamethrower and his nuclear backpack- go violent hate dwarf! I used the basic template from Warhammer 40K and that genre of metal miniature dwarves to get the “look” for Golut down.
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..These three characters have been hard to get on paper, this was actually the third attempt to get them down, and it finally worked- some of my below sketches are from aborted attempts to work out these odd characters in design and composition- an evil dwarf and his evil machinations proved to be a larger challenge than I could have imagined. Anyway, it made the finished work much sweeter to finally get completed and out of my head and sketchbooks!
……………………………………………………………………………… Below are sketches, the minion look in progress piece that I caught in time , and final pencils
My Minion Realization scan…
Behind the scenes progress, sketchbook notes on some of the characters and composition study
LORDS OF THE COSMOS: Aegeus and the Lords of the Cosmos Pinup #3 – Final Inks
In their full inked glory….Zacateco, Shar-Dor the Ice Assassin, Aviteus the Winged Warrior and Mechaspring.
Notes
– Mechaspring’s face changed to a real face from a machine face to show emotion better
– The feather pattern on Aviteus and shading was difficult, I used a stippled “dark shadow area to avoid more solid blacks
– Shar-Dor’s jagged ice skin was a pain to do
– Zacateco was based on a fan who is now in the book (pre kickstarter reward) so that turned out very close to his actual appearance.
LORDS OF THE COSMOS: Disciples of Umex Pinup #4 – Final Pencils
TERRORIST DEATH CULT LEADER- UMEX!
The matching bookend page of the main villain, Umex the Defiler in a solo appearance to signify his importance to the story and his place as a leader of the forces of Evil in the world of Aiden. You can see the main hero, Aegeus, in his solo page here.
While Aegeus was straight up and down and stoic- symbolic of his straight forward approach to law and order- Umex is on an angle, and is moving, the slanted angle (dutching or the “dutch angle” read about that visual concept here) hints at his twisted nature. Small details of note- nuclear fallout ash is in the air, and an ominous dual black tower on a 3 pt. perspective dominates the background with a bridge going to a single door that connects the evil looking structures.
Other challenges were to show another angle (right side v. left side) with Umex, which is important to me as a creator to not repeat poses (unless I have to!) and to make a scary and dynamic composition for this character in his spotlight page. On a technical note- getting all of Umex’s odd shapes and body armor correct on the angle he is standing at was difficult- you can see many of my erased lines as I struggled at times with the anatomy, proportions and perspective.
Below are the final pencils, in process pencils and a small poster I made with the artwork as a promo piece on Manga Studio 5.
Enjoy the leader of the DISCIPLES OF UMEX!
Promo Poster of Umex
In Progress Sketch of Umex
LORDS OF THE COSMOS: Aegeus and the Lords of the Cosmos Pinup #4 – Final Pencils
Another showcase pinup of the Heroes from the Lords of the Cosmos Team!
Icepaw the Polar Warrior, Orchamemnon the MechaFlower, and Ironshell the War Turtle.
Icepaw ended up being the easiest of the three, I was really plesae with the subtle facial structure I was able to learn about and then execute using reference of real polar bears. Ironshell brought out my inner Warhammer 40k geek of showing a gigantic war creature, and I feel I was successful in giving the creature a sense of grand scale. Orchamemnon was hard, really hard. The original creature description we made almost a year ago was very similar to Groot, so I moved away from that, and wanted to keep it a plant based character. So I put a flower in a machine, which caused me to really get involved in the engineering of his mechanical transit robot body- rulers, compasses and drafting tools really became important. I needed more space than usual to actually show the legs, arms and flower globe to the viewer- thus 3 characters not 4 or 5. I am attaching the final pencils and the tracing paper I used to make sure that what you see works out with the parts that Icepaw hides with his bear sized body.
LORDS OF THE COSMOS… ASSEMBLE!
Enjoy!
Tracing study of Orchamemnon’s robot body- note my see through compass tracings to get the proportions, and mechanical engineering correct behind Icepaw! I made a small sketch of the entire machine in the lower right hand corner for my own reference as I worked to find out “how would this thing work?”
LORDS OF THE COSMOS: Aegeus and the Lords of the Cosmos Pinup #3 – Final Pencils
Lords of the Cosmos… ASSEMBLE!!- Four new heroes get their debut into our new universe….Aviteus, Mechaspring, Shar-dor the Ice Assassin and (one as yet to be named, go go writing team!) Watch them swing into action against the evil of Umex and his Disciples!
Aviteus- a roughly humanoid hero with a bird head, arms with extended wings attached and two powerful legs ending in vicious bird claws. Descended from the great man-Rocs of old, Aviteus soars the skies of Aiden searching for the stain of Umex upon the land. Along with Green Man’s animal spies, Aviteus serves as scout and first striker for the Disciples of Umex. His massive talons can tear flesh and rend metal when their diamond tips are exposed, but by Aegeus’s order Aviteus keeps them shod in dragon-hide leathers. Though he respects Aegeus’s ethos and stalwart resolve he longs to feel the flesh of his foes rent asunder under the might of his magnificent talons
Mechaspring: An injured and escaped Slave who fled to the mysterious RUST MOUNTAINS, where he fashioned ancient Tek-Dwarf technology to make himself a new pair of legs and arms. Now he leaps from hiding to free other slaves, making him the bane of the slavers and Umex’s agents in the harsh RUST MOUNTAINS.
Shar-Dor – The Ice Assassin From the Frozen South, where the temperature never climbs above freezing, this jagged prince can form his body into icicles of death. He can melt himself down and reform into whatever shape meets his needs. He rides his great Polar Bear, GRAUL, and swings his ice scimitar.
(Un-Named Character still under construction)
LORDS OF THE COSMOS: Aegeus and the Lords of the Cosmos Pinup #2 – Final Pencils
So I did a full character study of my main hero- the nearly invincible Aegeus, and it was a challenge- I learned the pain of drawing a roman helmet, folded arms and did some retro work on his original pinup appearance from a few weeks ago to get his image in line in both works. I placed Aegeus at the bottom of Mount Dragonspine, the location of the Lords of the Cosmos’s base of operations.
Two items of note- my son drew a brown crayon mark over the moon, and I really was happy with his sword belt and scabbard with links to the belt, my drafting tools and some reference really knocked this one detail out of the park. And for a behind the scenes photo, here is my son and I drawing below the artwork right before he got me with that damn crayon!
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