Day 16: Two-Face #tzadvent

Day 16: Two-Face

Two-Face is probably my favorite of Batman's rogues gallery (with Riddler and Poison Ivy pretty close).It was fun to play around with the patterns on the suit and shirt here.

I think I'm finally comfortable drawing in Manga Studio. I'm going to have to work to really get the background and panel thing down, but laying out and drawing is kind of locked in. That's good. I think this Advent project is doing exactly what I hoped.

Day 15: Matter Eater Lad #tzadvent

Day 15: Matter Eater Lad

I love the absurdity of some of the Silver Age characters, and that's no more prevalent than in the 60's Legion of Super Heroes. Matter Eater Lad had the power of super-eating. He could chomp and digest darn near anything because his stomach was essentially a nuclear reactor.

He's also an example of how the absurd can still work. In the 80's, he ate the Miracle Machine and went insane for a while. It was a cool scene in a more modern story using a character with a ridiculous power.

I'm starting to think about a second set of commands on my Nostromo for Photoshop. I will frequently ink the white highlight lines in a black field (like Matter Eaterr Lad's gloves) as black lines and then do a quick mask, select and invert them to white. I don't have that as a easy key commands yet. I'm thinking through having it be a second set because I think I use those commands when I'm in a different coloring mindset.

The Nostromo is becoming an extension of my process now. So, just about halfway through this project, it seems to be doing what I wanted it to.

Day 14: Starfire #tzadvent

Day 14: Starfire

It's time for another color piece, this time, Princess Koriand'r, Starfire!

I learned even more about ruler/guides on this one, building specific ones for her armbands. I'm getting much better at it, and that's going to make me more productive as I go forward.

Tomorrow, back to black and white. Remember, if you have any suggestions, tweet them at #tzadvent or send me and email or message me on Facebook!

Day 13: Storm #tzadvent

so no time for notes on this. It's done, and I'll do another one tomorrow. See you then.

And congratulations to Robert and Sunny!

Day 12: Loki #tzadvent

Day 12: Loki

Recently, I read the Walter Simonson omnibus and, man, is that pages upon pages of cool. There's so much story there. It's great classic comics storytelling and it still holds up. I'd love to see someone bring a lot of his Thor approach to Aquaman, actually. The book is a great balance of fantasy kingdom stuff and superheroics.

He also tended to draw characters draping themselves in their throne. That was in mind when I drew this.

Art-wise, I finally figured out how to make custom rules for objects. I wish Manga Studios had bezier curves and a little better control, but I'm sure that fine-tuning will become natural to me as I practice, and that's what this whole December project is about, right? I used the custom curve rules for Loki's horns and some of the chair.

The costume is a combination of the Simonson costume redesign and the cool horned helmet. I couldn't not draw that helmet.

Day 11: Darkseid #tzadvent

Day 11: Darkseid

This doesn't always happen, but I really like this one. I wanted to see if I could get the full range of brush effects I could with an actual brush. Darkseid has rocky textures and craggy skin and a metal helmet, lots of stuff to play with.

Plus, I admit I'm a latecomer to Kirby. Curt Swan, Kurt Schaffenberger and George Perez were the first artists I really liked. They're all slick in one way or another. Kirby isn't slick, he's raw and powerful. As I've gotten older, I like his stuff more and more. And the more I learn about what Kirby did, Kirby the creator and innovator can't be touched.

So, I tried to get some Kirby in this. Some of it is the Kirby-esque textures on Darkseid's skin. And some of it was combining Kirby's range of Darkseid. In the original stories, he was a little more a stony monolith with glowing eyes. Later, he was a little more animated and wild eyed. I love the glowing eyes thing, but I wanted some of that anger and energy in the character,

And, of course, Kirby dots.

Day 10: Firestorm

Day 10: Firestorm Well, this one was inevitable, wasn't it? Firestorm the Nuclear Man, one of my favorite characters.

Firestorm was DC's version of Spider-Man, if Spider-Man could have a bad day. He's never been as fun as the Fury of Firestorm run in the Eighties. What, you want to know why? Let me tell you: The core of the book was the mentor/mentee relationship between Professor Martin Stein and Ronnie Raymond. And just as important, Ronnie, the least qualified guy in the pair, is the guy driving the boat. It's that dynamic that makes the character so interesting to me.

He's gone through different iterations, and had a strong finish in his recent New-52 version, but honestly, the classic version will always be the one for me.

Day 08: Plastic Man #tzadvent

Day 08: Plastic Man

Today's drawing is a mixed bag for me. I think it looks pretty good, but I wasn't able to do the thing that I wanted to with it:

I wanted to make custom curve rulers to ink the arms here. But I couldn't figure out how to do it, it was getting late, and I just decided to handle it traditionally. I did tweak some of the brush settings to make the arcs a little slicker. I'm not sure how well that worked.

I dig Plastic Man a ton, but stretchy characters like this are hard for me. Sure, it seems like you could do anything with them, but it's that freedom that makes them a challenge. If they can do anything, what do you have them do? And trying to get the right mass to stretch ratio isn't as easy as you'd think, either.

I'm sure I'll use the technique I didn't on this on something else, or someone will suggest Mr. Fantastic or Elongated Man or Metamorpho. It's just delayed for now.

Day 06: The Creeper #tzadvent

Day six: The Creeper Not a lot to say about this one, actually. I'm doing some work on my house, and I'm appearing at Alter Ego in Lima tomorrow, so time was at a premium. I wanted to do a different character, actually, but the limited time meant I didn't have the time to do the experimenting I needed. So instead I went for loose, and tried to give the drawing a sense of energy.

Speaking of the store appearance, day 07 may be delayed. I mentioned that I may skip a day or two and catch up on the other side. Depending on what time I get back and how tired I am, I might let it slide to the next day.

Day 04: Enchantress #tzadvent

Day four: The Enchantress.

Second female character in a row. With this one, I was less concerned about learning on the Manga Studio/Photoshop/Razer rig, and more about pose. I wanted to do a reclining pose.

It seems small, but changing the drawing to have a lot more left-to-right rather than up-and-down lines was very different. I found I rotated the drawing canvas a lot more to get a more natural movement while inking. I also did a lot more tweaking on the pencils with the transform tools.

At this point, the key commands are working well, but I'm debating changing some of them. Between Photoshop and Manga Studio, there are some common commands, like switching to the eyedropper tool and toggling the pencil and pen tools. It might be better if I used the same key for each.