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
2015 “Vulgar Display of Artwork” Tee Shirt Designs
Another year, Another metal themed convention tour tee shirt for Jason Lenox. 2015 is a tribute to one of my favorite metal bands,Pantera, and their metal albums. Elements from their LP’s “Cowboys from Hell” (title below name and font), “Vulgar Display of Power” (Play on name, and font) and “Great Southern Trendkill” (Snakes and font) all played into the final product.
I used my SKULL KING and GORGON MEDUSA artwork to fill out the images needed for front and back.
Thanks to Andy Mylin for the layout and Collegiate Pride in State College, PA for the production and coordination!
Front Artwork
Back artwork
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
Gorgon Medusa – Final Inks
The completed Gorgon Medusa artwork!
Another highly detailed ink piece- slight changes from the pencils- the breasts, eyes, and center head relationship with the top two snakes were changed to make some corrections on minor anatomy and layout errors.
The snakes were hard to do, especially the complex mouths and jaws, but the final results were really worth the efforts as they really bring the entire composition together as small gems of detail for the viewer to explore.
Final words on this commission-
This was done for my friend and client, Carla Knapp. Just a quick word about Carla, when I got back into the art scene as a public figure (read:doing conventions, selling artwork, making comics etc.) about 3 years ago, I was introduced to her as a supporter of fantasy art at her store in Huntingdon, PA. She asked to buy what I had (at the time one book) and gave me $20 and said “we need to you making artwork”. Carla has always thrown up flyers for conventions I have been at locally and always supports just about whatever I am up to. Recently she fixed my computer as well- so I would ask any of you that are in Huntingdon to support her business if you want to help someone that actively supports my art, and the fantastic art scene in general.
Im excited that she can have some of my original artwork to put with her other awesome pieces of original art!
Huntingdon Computer Workshop
600 Washington Street
Huntingdon, PA 16652
(814) 641-7312
https://www.facebook.com/HCWorkshop
Gorgon Medusa – Final Pencils
A really fun commission of a mythological creature I have wanted to draw for a while, and when a client asks, for this I couldnt resist.
Of note-
1- I really wanted to make a pretty woman under those snake scales, and do an angle to enhance the fact that her face has depth and form- not a front on portrait style composition.
2- The snakes- gorgeous but hard to get them right. My first draft (below) had it like a headscarf with 5 snakes, it just didnt really look good, even though it was easy to “account” for all the snakes. Then I mixed it up and made her hair more of a forest of snakes, which visually looked much better- it was just harder to make sure the physical layout of the snakes made sense. Finally- getting the “curve” on the snake bodies was a trick, I kept drawing them straight, and it seemed wrong, I had to really get into the less simple snake layouts and make myself get into the snake anatomy (like you thought there was any?!) Then those changes affected the physical layout at times (mentioned above) which made that part difficult to say the least.
I loved the final pencil art here, but it was a rough road. This piece really ends up being a companion piece to “Vampire Lich King”, which is highlighted by the square shape as a framing device behind her. You can see that other art here.
Final Draft
First draft
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.
Setsucon 2015 Badge Art Contest Entry
Working on an entry for the Badge Contest at Setsucon, the Penn State Anime Expo, and my first show of the year to be at locally every year! Rocking an old school anime theme, inspired by some of my favorite 80’s anime. You can read about Setscuon here and the badge art contest here ! The theme for the contest is childhood memories, so I designed the show mascot girl like she was in something like Dirty Pair, Project A-Ko or Bubblegum Crisis. I put her in the snow with a soviet soldier style winter outfit to complete the winter time theme of the January date for the event.
Below are my final inks and pencils for this project, I hope to see you at Setsucon 2015 on January 24th and 25th at the Penn Stater Convention Center!
Final Inks for Project
Pencils for Project
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