Showing posts with label raw artwork. Show all posts
Showing posts with label raw artwork. Show all posts

Friday, 3 April 2015

I'm a'kick yo skinny white ass all up an' down this street if you don't stop kung-fuin' that man's throat

Chapter 19 and its attendant problems may also be viewed HERE with some word beans coming out of  faces and explaining what's supposed to be happening in case the visuals don't quite do the job.
I quite like this strip, actually, as Dredd almost looks the same from one panel to the next.  Inking, though?  All over the place.  I tried to use solid blacks sparingly on Dredd to emphasise him as being visually different from the Dredd imposter, and he only got inked with solid blacks when he was the only Dredd in the panel and/or when being angry badass Dredd, but I don't think it really came off in the end.  That last panel was originally just Dredd's chin jutting down from the top of the panel, but it looked stupid so I agreed to change it.
And so to the end of the Daily Dredd adventure.  Of the 60 panels drawn in this strip, I was happy with 18 of them.

Thursday, 2 April 2015

Science is my pie

Chapter 17 may be read HERE, though Dredd's hand is still wonky in the lettered version.
You will note that I struggle so much at drawing in the space available that things often pop out of panels, and that I continue to try drawing things in triangle-y ways.
Chapter 18 may be read HERE.  I really wished I'd left some of those SFX to Dave.

Tuesday, 31 March 2015

I'm a strong 8 in LA and a solid 10 everywhere else

Chapter 16 can be read HERE.  I am pretty sure that, as with chapter 12, I have misjudged the overall tone and ventured into slapstick territory here.  Tried to do a sort of triangular layout in the first panel to lead the eye across the action, but ran afoul of the limited amount of horizontal space available to me, so tried the same thing to a lesser extent in the third panel - originally that sound effect was much bigger and connected the two figures, but I reduced the size because it made it look like it was a thunderclap or something.

Monday, 30 March 2015

Big Bob's in the back and I think it's Hug O'Clock

Chapter 8 with its laissez faire approach to continuity and sequential storytelling may be read HERE.

Chapter 9 - including wonky crab-like hands for which the window of opportunity to make a Jeremy Beadle reference that remains topical is fading with every passing day thanks to the relentless march of time - can be read HERE.  Say what you like about Beadle,  but he didn't trade in mean-spirited humor, did a lot for charity, and he wasn't a nonce.

Chapter 10 can be read HERE, though fair warning the characters in the lettered version are still stick figures.  Still struggling with drawing what I want at this size and resolution...

Chapter 11 and attendant ill-advised attempts at both high and low angles can be read HERE.

Chapter 12 in which I misjudge the tone as slapstick comedy can be read HERE.

Chapter 13 where I try and fail to create a tangible visual reference to the film by getting the characters pointing the wrong way and then forget to draw pavements can be read HERE.  In my defence, I did at least manage to replicate the visual effect in the film of Karl Urban's face being eaten by the helmet.

Chapter 14 where I go super-original with a picture of Dredd pointing a gun at the reader that has clearly been the result of poor visual research can be found HERE.

Chapter 15 was described thusly: "I have no idea what is going on" by the guy that wrote it and can be read HERE.

Monday, 23 March 2015

Oh good, you found the vodka

Chapter 5 can be read HERE.  Note the absence of any kind of traffic in panel 2, as around this point I was becoming aware that between the resolution and the need for dialogue balloons, it might not be a great idea to add too much visual clutter that wouldn't be discerned in the final strips.  As it is, I kept things simple but still think the background in this panel just looks like a bunch of lines anyway.  I considered doing the traffic behind a full-body pose of Dredd standing up and looking tough in the final panel, but thought better of it in the end because that would just shift the potential problems of panel two into panel three, so in the end there's not much of a sense of where Dredd is at this point - remember he is supposed to be in the middle of speeding traffic - and I find myself committing an art crime I always notice in other people's comics where you get one establishing panel near the very start and then the art cruises for the rest of the scene with few - if any - background shots.  I did like panel one, I guess, but it looks half-finished around the edges.
Chapter six can be read HERE, and suffers from similar problems, although this time the lack of any sense of where the story is taking place is mandated by the script, as at this point it's just a hidden base somewhere or other.  I do get draw the actual physical location of the base in a later strip, but - SPOILER - I fuck that up as well.
I had a brainwave at this point in chapter 7 - which can be read HERE - that if I wanted to avoid Dredd and Hershey just being talking heads or stick figures in this strip, I should combine a couple of panels for a panning shot across Hershey's office as this would render both panels in the script, but also get me a larger single panel to use as an establishing shot rather than one single cluttered or unclear panel with Hershey, Dredd, and Hershey's office crammed in on one side of the strip.  This did constrain me a little in terms of where the characters would be in the shot, obviously, as apart from all the empty space at the top of panels that would be necessary to avoid plastering lettering over characters (which I don't like to see), Hershey speaks first in the script, so the eventual placement of speech balloons would dictate that Hershey needs to go on the left in the first panel, and Dredd has all the dialogue in panel 2, so he'd have to be the focus there, which is why the window is at a silly angle it doesn't need to be in order to draw the eye towards him - or towards the city he's looking at, as I'm a little unsure of what the effect is, to be honest.  I try the same combining-panels trick in the next strip, but that doesn't turn out so well, either.

Wednesday, 18 March 2015

Why would having a cat make you a better lesbian?

For chapter 2 - which can be read HERE - I drew the wrong version of Dredd again and refused to change it, so now it was a story about judge imposters whether Dave and Lee liked it or not.  For the record, they did not.
I think the plan in panel 1 was to draw some signs and/or advertisements on the Holding Post where arrested perps await pickup so that they performed some function other than just cluttering up the streets, but I ran afoul of limited space and resolution, though I suppose it's probably in keeping with Dredd's world that posts for cuffing citizens to are more common than street signs.
The 2nd and 3rd panels are where I tried to lead the eye from the bottom left to the top right, but it wasn't very successful and ended up too cluttered in panel 2 - the foreground character's hand is completely lost, yet also manages to obscure Dredd's costume, fluffing any kind of reveal - and too sparse in panel 3 thanks to my lazy use of solid blacks, but I refused to change it.
Chapter 3 - which can be read HERE - is a prime example of why most artists draw Dredd on some huge, throbbing machine penetrating the road ahead whether oncoming traffic wants it or not, but me, I misread "Lawmaster" as "lawnmower" and refused to change it, so even though he's supposed to be speeding along, it looks like he's just chilling and waiting out a hangover on a Sunday afternoon.  Note the continuing theme of buildings that look like sex toys, prompting me to think that it's good that I have comics drawing to fill my time and expend energy that most likely would have otherwise found an outlet in a schoolyard shooting spree.
I think this might have been when I stopped using Manga Studio's panel cutting tool because of the jaggy edges to angled lines and instead used its line tool with anti-aliasing.  In the third panel, the vehicles all look roughly the same shape despite going in different directions, and the grid I used to draw them clearly wasn't lined up very well as they look like they're all on different planes.  I think Dave might have asked me to redraw this, prompting a week-long passive-aggressive hissy fit on my part, as I believe that if people think you're an absolute nightmare to work with, they'll end up justifying all the trouble they had getting anything out of you in the first place and think you're better at your job than you actually are.  I call this the Val Kilmer method.