Happy Halloween!

I just sat down this evening to get a post up and found that the piece of art that I wanted to share is delightfully Halloween appropriate! So, enjoy the art, enjoy the holiday, and enjoy some zombies I guess.

Revising my development process

I've been having fun working with a new process for creating book three. Instead of handling the book one page at a time, start to finish, I have been working through the whole book all at once in phases: layout, sketches, pencils, inks. It's sort of like being a one-man assembly line. Using this method I have already completed the first draft of writing and layout for this issue and am about half way though the sketching.

This has been exciting on a number of levels (and I will probably go into more detail in subsequent posts) but the number one thing that this has done for me so far is it has allowed me to see the writing process unfold very quickly through a series of iterations. I got started by breaking down the events of the narrative into a page-by-page sequence and then divided that up into simple panel layouts and basic dialog. At this point I can take a first simple read-through of the story, sans images but with a rough idea of pacing.

Following this step I proceeded to measure out all the panel divisions for all twenty-eight pages of the issue. I enjoy doing this because it allows me to trace off the exact size and proportion of each panel in the book when I sit down to do my sketch-layouts of the content. Before I proceed to sketch layouts themselves. The result is a series of large, pre-pencil, sketch-compositions from which I lightbox when I start penciling.

While I have used this sketch method in the past, this is the first time that I have done large segments of a story in sketch form before proceeding to finish work. By doing it this way I am already getting a preview of how the story will actually read before I commit to development that will be too

costly (in terms of time) to fix. I expect that in a couple of weeks I will have finished this next phase of development and will be in a position to read through another iteration of the story and begin making serious edits as necessary.

I'll have more pictures as I complete the sketches and move into the penciling phase of the project (one of my secret hopes is that the new process will force me to take my pencils more seriously as preparatory work for finished inks). Stay tuned!

Moving to a new location!

My new site is up and ready to accept visitors.

Very special thanks to Ian Wilson for the design. I'm really excited to have my own site again and I'm looking forward to having it grow with me. I've had a few domains over the years and I've always had to scrap the site once I switched projects, so for once I decided to go with a domain that I can keep.

Check it out!

www.ewlynchcomics.com

Feeling in the groove.

Just finished inking a page. I've been waivering back and forth between tech pens and brushes for a little while. I went all brushes on this one and I think I'm finally getting the hang of them. It felt natural, and I loved working with them. It was a nice change of pace.

Big changes coming soon!

It is really late, so I will keep this brief. This blog will be moving soon to a new location on my very own webpage. Development is coming along swimingly (thanks to a friend who I will credit in due time) and the design is looking great; so I'm pretty excited about it. I will drop a link here when the move takes place, so keep checking back.

In the meantime, some drawings!

Zack Snyder: Typist

The following excerpt is taken from the script of the Cohen's Brother's film The Man Who Wasn't There.

STUDIO

               Ed enters, uncomfortable. He looks around, taking in the 

               high-ceilinged space, which is dominated by a grand piano.

               Carcanogues has followed him and now runs water from a tap.

                                     CARCANOGUES

                         I speak to you on ze phone, non? You 

                         have a special interest in music?

                                     ED

                         Uh-huh.

                                     CARCANOGUES

                         Ah yes, a music lover.

                                     ED

                         Well, I don't pretend to be an expert.

                                     CARCANOGUES

                         Ah.

               He uncaps a small bottle of pills, shakes two into his palm, 

               tosses them back and washes them down.

                                     CARCANOGUES

                         ...Ah-hah.

               He twists a cigarette into a long holder, sticks it in his 

               mouth and lights it.

                                     CARCANOGUES

                         ...Mm.

                                     ED

                         Well? How'd she do?

               This elicits a Gallic frown of consideration.

                                     CARCANOGUES

                         Ze girl?... She seems like a very 

                         nice girl. She *plays*, monsieur, 

                         like a very nice girl. Ztinks. Very 

                         nice girl. However, ztinks.

                                     ED

                         I don't understand.

                                     CARCANOGUES

                         Is not so hard to understand. Her 

                         playing, very polite.

                                     ED

                         Did she make mistakes?

               Another gallic moue:

                                     CARCANOGUES

                         Mistake, no, it says E-flat, she 

                         plays E-flat. Ping-ping. Hit the 

                         right note, always. Very proper.

                                     ED

                         I don't understand, no mistakes, 

                         she's just a kid--I thought you taught 

                         the, uh, the--

                                     CARCANOGUES

                         Ah, but that is just what I cannot 

                         teach. I cannot teach her to have a 

                         soul. Look, monsieur, play the piano, 

                         is not about the fingers. *Done* 

                         with the fingers, yes. But the music, 

                         she is inside. Inside, monsieur...

               A two-handed gesture, indicating his heart.

                                     CARCANOGUES

                         ...The music start here...

               He waggles his fingers:

                                     CARCANOGUES

                         ...come out through here; then, 

                         maybe...

               His wave takes in the heavens:

                                     CARCANOGUES

                         ...she can go up there.

                                     ED

                         Well, look, I don't claim to be an 

                         expert--

                                     CARCANOGUES

                         Then you listen to me, for I am 

                         expert. That girl, she give me a 

                         headache. She cannot play. Nice girl. 

                         Very clever hands. Nice girl. Someday, 

                         I think, maybe, she make a very good 

                         typist.

A little something I worked on for Christmas

Here's a piece I worked on for my Fiancee Rebekah. I got her a book for Christmas, but the cover was so bad that I thought I'd do a new one. In the end my own cover had its own set of issues, but I thought I'd share it anyways.

In color.

In black & white.

I had a bunch of musings to post on digital coloring, the peril of pink skies (it's supposed to be dawn), and illustration as cover art, but I'm out of time and I have to go. Maybe someday.

This was really hard.

I don't like to brag (feel free to dispute this I guess) but I also don't appreciate false modesty, and when I have done something hard I want people to know how hard it was. I took several cracks at this image, and wasted a lot of time trying to figure out the perspective in it. You can see several of those attempts below. The final image is by no means perfect, it does have plenty of compositional issues that we could critique to no end, but the perspective is sound. It looks a little wonky at first glance (that's one of the compositional issues) but by all means, look very hard at the perspective. It works. I'm proud of that.

This was a second attempt, building off of lessons learned in the first. At this point I am lightboxing together two layers of perspective because having all the vanishing points on the same piece of paper was throwing me off.

This is an example of one of the perspective objects that I lightboxed in. I pinpointed the axis on which the cube would pivot so that I could line it up with axis on the ship's gyroscopic thingy.

The first attempt. This one got so messy that I had to start fresh. Also, the cube is wrong.

The finished product. 

This blog is not dead. I am not dead.

Hello all.

It has been a while. I am stopping work for a brief moment to let the whole world know that this blog is not dead. If you follow this blog, and you don't personally know me, I am not dead. I haven't posted much recently because I have been frequently between jobs, and harried with learning new skills (ones that earn money), and sorting out getting married, and eeking out a very little time to draw.

Since I get so little done these days, I haven't been spending any of it on blogging about the drawing that I never get to do. One of the things on my list of things to do (what I am taking a break from right now) is learning web development, and building myself a personal site. When I do I may just install wordpress and move my blog there, but at least the spirit of this blog will live on.

At any rate, don't give up on me yet.

And what the heck, look at this picture!

I was totally going to write some great stuff about process. Oh well. Maybe next time.