Even more Venom?

I hope you fine folks out there aren't getting bored of all the Venom pics, cuz it's time for another one!

Haven't had much chance to get to anything else this week (vacation coming up, and spent an unfortunate time working my other job) so it's more Venom for you today. I'm really loving the changes that have occurred in the last couple weeks, and I feel like the piece is starting to take on a life of its own. I've been trying to avoid cutting corners, and I've done a bit of reading on the ConceptArt.Org forums regarding digital painting, and the way colors work together. I'm far from mastering it, but I think I've come a long way.

Highlights this week are the carapace on his back, and the changes made to the arms. Hope you guys dig it!

Next up I'm going to be tackling the tail, and maybe tweaking the teeth a bit. After that I might actually call it finished!


Along with the Venom piece, I've been roughing out ideas for a Black Cat print. I'm thinking it would be prudent to have at least one print with a female character, and since I'm already working with the Spider-man mythos, I opted to continue in that vein.

Here're some quickies...

Time Traveling Tuesdays!

I posted my very old design attempt at Orcs last week, so I thought I'd follow it up with a series of comic pages in which said orcs appear.

There's six pages (of a planned 8) but I'll break them down into 2 page chunks so that I don't blow through all my work in the next few weeks. Apologies for the quality of the scans, I don't have an 11x17 scanner (yet) and these pages are over a decade old...

Quick tip for those who don't know: pencillers will often use mark a series of x's into a space they intend to be filled with black.

Gotta say, it's kinda painful to look at these now so I'll try to do a quick summary of the story, but I don't want to spend too much time on 'em.

I was looking to create an adventure story, and these first pages were supposed to kick off the grand quest. It starts off with a young man exploring an underground cavern, in the hopes of finding some treasure. He drops down into a room full of gold and trinkets, and picks up a gauntlet with a huge gem on it.

The drawings themselves are kind of fun from time to time, but man oh man is the storytelling bad. I think I'll go through and do a crit of these and some of my other pages at a later date, maybe make that an every Thursday thing.

Ugh, Mondays

In the midst of a stretch of shifts, and I haven't had a lot of time to get drawing. On top of that, my main email address seems to be under fire, and I just spent an hour trying to get it back from whoever hacked it this time.

That said, I've got a couple rough sketches for today. First up is another attempt at the design of Valor. I've got the basics figured out, but the details of waistline and upper legs are giving me a headache. I don't want it to be all one piece, but I don't want it to look like he's wearing a diaper either...

Next up is Vengeance. He's a major player in the story I'm looking to tell, so I won't dive into details. You'll probably be seeing a lot more of him in the coming months though, as I really want to have his and Valors designs as finished as I can get them.

Weekly Warm-ups

Trying to get a few different weekly "events" organized for the site, so that I have a bit of routine to rely on when looking through my art to see what I should share with everyone.

I'm thinking Fridays will be the day that I recap the week's progress, as well as post a few of my favorite warm-up sketches.

First off the warm-ups.

I don't have a lot to say about these beyond the fact that Art Adams is effing awesome. Well, that, and I was having some fun with the pencil tool in photoshop, and working on some serious contour lines.

And now the recap.

I've stripped Thor back down to just inks, and am trying to get them finished up ASAP. So far I'm liking where it's going, though I'm noticing that without the hair blowing the whole piece loses a ton of its energy. Guess I'll have to make a point of getting that back in there soon.

The working title for this one is Fighting Time, which I really don't like. Unfortunately if you fill your directories with Untitled#1, Untitled#2, Untitled#3, etc etc, you spend a large chunk of your day trying to find the piece you want to work on, instead of actually working on it. So it got a name, and if you fine folks out there have suggestions, please shout 'em out. My goal here is to match it up with the banner logo at the top of the site here, but it's kind of a pain. Not only did I do the banner at 72 dpi, which is totally unprintable (it'll come out a jaggy pixelated mess) but I also did it in dimensions that no printer is going to want to work with. So I'm stuck trying to rebuild the composition while at the same time hoping to keep the vibe that the banner has. Wish me luck... Oh, and I'm thinking I'd like to put a quote on the right hand side, something that involves mans constant battle with time, but I haven't been able to find one yet. Suggestions are welcomed.

Finally we've got Venom. I think it's coming along quite nicely. It's a got a crap ton of work to go, sure, but it's looking pretty bad ass as it is, and if I can carry the style throughout the piece I'll be very happy with it. This one's just going through the detail work, so it might be tough to spot the changes from last time. One thing I'm a little uncertain of is the anatomy of the front most forearm. Once I get wrapped up here I'll take it to CA for a review before calling it officially done, but if anyone can explain/redline the issue and the proper way to deal with it I'd greatly appreciate it.


And that's it for this week folks. G'night.

It was Wednesday today? Oops...

Was about to head to bed when I realized what day it was. Sorry about that folks, guess I should pay more attention if I'm going to claim to have any kind of regular schedule here.

I spent most of today working on Venom, and I think it's coming along quite nicely. Not a lot to say about it though... If you see any glaring errors, or have some brilliant suggestions, feel free to send 'em my way. Feedback is always appreciated.

Did some sketching last night, trying to work out a villain for Valor. I wanted something with a power/threat level similar to the Hulk, but wasn't interested in yet another really big, strong, tough guy. So I started working on a telekinetic. Think Tetsuo from Akira as a super villain instead of a misunderstood kid. Dunno if it'll stick around, I think I'd rather more of a costume and less "normal" clothing, but I might keep the cape as a bit of an homage.