Day 28: She-Hulk #tzadvent

If it's a Saturday, it must be color time. And what better color this Christmas season than green and She-Hulk. On this, I mostly focused on the feathering strokes used on hair. I wanted to get something that looked as natural as working with traditional brush and ink. I think it came out pretty well.

I have two tones for my shadow layers. I have a brown I use for daytime scenes, and a blue that I use for nighttime scenes. Most of the color pieces I've done have been the default brown, but here I used the blue. I think it plays well with the green skin tones.

To my mind, She-Hulk's best uniform was when she was with the Fantastic Four.

The current one didn't really speak to me, as it looks mostly like a swimsuit without much character, though the colors are good. But the costume she wears on Agents of SMASH with a biker short cut I think suits the character well. I just picked a purple closer to her current comic book incarnation.

Day 27: The Lone Ranger #tzadvent

No, I haven't seen the new film, so don't ask. I might catch it on cable or Netflix. But I'm a fan from way back. I used to get the radio shows from the library, and I watched a couple of the shows and the Filmation cartoon. And I knew all the lore, from where he got the silver bullets to what made the holes in his mask to who his descendant was.

And I loved how Clayton Moore never showed his face in the show. I borrowed a little of that when I created Ben, the mysterious leader of the Benefactor Agency in my Raider series. I never let him show his face unmasked either.

Nothing bold or new in my process here. I am turning the screen a little bit more, zooming in and out a little more, so that I can make the most comfortable and smoothest stroke possible. When you ink on board, you're spinning the paper all the time. I'm still finding that level of comfort when drawing digitally.

Day 23: Machine Man #tzadvent

Not all these grand experiments work. This drawing is maybe 80% of what I wanted it to be. It's not bad. There's a fair amount of Kirby in it (as it should be, since he created Machine Man for, of all things,the Marvel Comics adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey) and I like the pose. But what I was really trying to do was make custom rulers to ink the bands and the extending arm on the character. The rulers are great because they let meuse pressure sensitivity to add that directional weight.Check out how the telescoping arm lines go from thin to thick. That went well.

I was less successful with the arm and leg bands. What I did was ink the figure without those bands, and then create rulers to put them on a second layer. I had a hard time creating the right shape rulers.Years of working in Illustrator make me expect pen tools with bezier curves to work a certain way. They don't. I know I'll figure it out eventually, but three iterations of this drawing and I just said "Let's do what I can with what I can work."

That's partly a failure, but it's also a decent work habit, I think. I could have spent another co

uple of hours or more figuring it out, but I decided to use the tools I did have in my toolbox to finish it. You don't always have the the luxury of infinite time. Sometime deadlines don't allow that. So you have to figure out a way to finish with the things you have and still make it appear in your acceptable percentile of professional.

Day 22: Animal Man #tzadvent

Day 22: Animal Man Drawing-wise, I kept this one pretty loose. I was attempting to record this (which didn't work) and was working at a lower screen resolution to try to get around the lag. Somehow, working at the larger size kept me from tightening up the drawing. It may not be apparent, but there's a touch of Kubert and Severin in this. At least to my eye.

The tools and Nostromo at this point have become almost second nature now. So I think we're doing pretty well.

Day 21: Red Tornado #tzadvent

Day 21: Red Tornado

I didn't change my workflow at all on this one, but I think I'm getting faster with the programs now. For being a color one, this seemed to go a lot more quickly.

I fought with the pose on this one. I didn't want to skimp and tornadoify his legs. I had to come up with a pose that worked. Him using his powers lent itself to a cool vertical, and I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Four days left until Christmas. Get to shopping!

Day 20: Dark Phoenix #tzadvent

Day 20: Dark Phoenix I've settled into a nice rythym on these. I'm pretty comfortable with all the tools and key commands. There are a couple of more ones that I'd like to figure out how to implement (Quick Mask, Inverse and switch Foreground/Background respectively) but for now, I don't use them enough to make them replace existing ones.

I also tried to screen record making this one. Right now, it seems like recording is causing an unacceptable lag in the drawing tools, so I can't make that work. Maybe I'll see if I can do a uStream broadcast or something like that on one of the next ones, at least. I'd like to post a video ofdrawing if I can do it. I think it might be fun.

If anyone knows how to smooth out the drawing process, I'd appreciate it. I have a new iMac that's pretty fast, so I'm surprise by the added lag.

I've always loved Phoenix, light and dark varieties. I started reading the book after her death, but her long shadow always made her a part of the book. This drawing is based on my memories of a splash page from X-Men 

#175, drawn by Paul Smith. I loved his run on the book. It's what made me start picking it up. My cousin bought his first issue and brought it over for me to read and I was hooked. Smith's art was a huge part of why.

At this point, I've got about ten more drawings to do in this grand experiement. As alwaysm, your suggestions are welcome on Twitter (#tzadvent), Facebook or on email!

Day 19: The Question #tzadvent

Day 19: The Question

I used the Question piece to start experimenting with brushes. I downloaded some from the internet, and I'm not sure how well they worked. The inking was good, but they seemed to slow down my computer. I'm not completely sure that the two things are related, though I did see some things about that on the internet. I'll go back to the standard brushes and see what happens.

Still, this is all about experimentation. So totally worth it. I want to try some more.

I really dug the Question, especially the Eighties series. And DC is missing a bet by not turning him into a TV show. Great visual, easy concept, and it would work great.

Day 18: The Phantom #tzadvent

Day 18: The Phantom

I love the Phantom! I first read his strip when I was six, I think. Maybe younger. I think my family just started subscribing to the News-Herald. I remember that first comics page I read, and it was the arc where the Phantom discovered a stegosaurus (Steggy!).

I love the traditions associated with him. The whole Ghost Who Walks thing, the fact no one may see his face and live (except his wife Diana), the good and bad rings, the history of all the Phantoms… I just adore it. I hope to get a chance to work on him one day.

And yeah, I even kind of like the movie. It's one rewrite away from being something really solid, and I loved Billy Zane's portrayal. He seemed to bring the confidence of twenty generations with him, and that was pretty cool.

At this point in the process, most of my commands are set. I'm starting to change the presets on my Cintiq now. There are a couple of commands, like resetting brush size and moving items, that I want to have quickly accessible and I can't get to from the Nostromo. But there are perfectly good buttons on my pen that I can tweak.

Superman/Wonder Woman Sketch Cover

Carol and John's Comic Shop is, well, a comic shop in Cleveland at Kamm's Corners. They're doing a promotion with local artists doingsketch covers to raise money for the local food bank. All I had to do was get to the shop and pick up my choice of blank covered comics and go to town. So I grabbed a copy of Superman and Wonder Woman and came up with a concept for a holiday themed cover. Since I could work on this in my studio, I could put a little more prep work into the image. I scanned to cover and imported it into Manga Studio (yeah, I've been talking a lot about that, haven't I?) and roughed out my concept.

Originally, it was just going to be Superman and Wonder Woman exchanging horrible film versions of themselves. But the back cover was blank, too, and was calling out to be filled. So a Batman joke popped into my head and I figured, "How can I not do that?"

Then, just for filler, I drew the classic Silver Age Fortess of Solitude. Admittedly, there aren't evergreen trees at the North Pole, but maybe Superman transplanted those for the holidays. That's just the kind of thing he'd do in the 70's and 80's.

I did my rough pencils in blue and then, as I'vebeen doing, did a quick loose digital ink pass, too. Then I printed out the pages and lightboxed the art onto the cover, inked by hand and colored with my Copics.

This was a lot of fun.Good luck to Carol and John at the event. I hope to be doing more with them in the New Year.

Day 17: Black Adam#tzadvent

Day 17: Black Adam

Ask me what DC property I'd love to get my hands on, and it won't be Superman or Firestorm, it'll be Captain Marvel (Shazam-flavored). I think the book needs a fun and light touch, and probably to be in its own universe where talking tigers and evil worms can work. One day, I hope to get the opportunity.

I didn't do too much new in the technique or Nostromo commands. I have figured out how to get the zoom-scrub to work off the dial in both Photoshop and Manga Studio, which is nice. And I inked the reflections on his arm bands with a brush tool on its own layer. Normally, doing something like this wouldn't be worth the effort if I were working traditionally, but creating the piece in Manga Studio makes that stuff pretty effortless.

I still have a couple of more commands I want to link to the Nostromo, but I'm not sure that I want to give up any of the other keys. At least not yet.