Wednesday, April 25, 2012

OPTIONS!!

Hi-
I'm going to go with the newer inking style even though there were some people voting for the older one. I'm okay with that.

HOWEVER ... I'd sure love your feedback on three options for the book:
1) All black with gray tones
2) Black line art with sepia tones and sepia half tones
3) Black line art with a shade of blue for tone and blue half tones

Any of these float your boat more than the other?

I'm listening. I SWEAR!



Here they all are!
I need feedback and discussion.

Tom

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Before I Go Any Farther...

Here's two versions of the same three panels on Page Three of the graphic novel. I'm bored with Tom Lyle, so the first version is very traditional (and a bit heavy-handed) work by myself over my pencils.

It's serviceable, but I'm just not feeling any real "guts" to this style. It seems safe.

So, in class on Thursday I started trying some other things. My fellow classmate (odd to say that, since he's also a former student and teaching assistant) Phillip Sevy and I talked quite a bit about options that are different, but not TOO different.


Thus, the next version.


It's done with a much smaller "brush" and a scruffier rendering style that I think adds some energy to the piece.

Am I correct? Am I nuts? Did I not push far enough?

Let me know what you think.

I'm really trying to do something a bit different.

Now, just to tell you: gray tones will be added to this page eventually, so the pages are "inked" on layers and some of the background will be all dot screen.

It looks kind of cool. I'm also going to make all of the gray tones (when they get converted to halftone screens) into a sepia tone and the original foreground elements will stay black.

I have a very rough sample of what that might look like here.

This was done using the older version of the "inks", so it would be different on the final.

Also, on panel one I did NOT finish doing the layers that I wanted, so it would NOT be all sepia after the branch in the foreground.

I only took two hours to produce this. It's an exercise for class and it DID convince me that I should seriously consider making this a two-color project. It could work.

FEEDBACK???

Don't hold back (but don't be mean.)




Tom

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Last four Thumbnail pages for now!



I've thumbnailed the first 20 pages of my story, but it's time to do some finished art, so here are the next four pages (and last I'll post of the thumbs) for your perusal. We're setting up the hike and the event that is the catalyst for everything that happens. Let me know what you think.

I spent about 2 to 3 hours (or more) on each page. They're more like loose tight roughs, but I wanted to be very clear where I was heading,

I'm having fun working with my writer ... ME!
He listens to all my suggestions and agrees with most of them.

What a guy!


Tom

Friday, April 6, 2012

These are THUMBNAILS

Hi-
I wanted to make it clear that the pages I am posting are just thumbnails at this point. I am not trying to get faces correct or totally get the bodies correct. It's just setting up the story.

I am hoping to start some finished pencils next week.

I'm attaching pages 2 and three to this post. On page 2, the flashback story ends and then we come back to the present day and it is a scene around the campfire where I have just told this story.

By the way, my class did a critique of all of my pages on Tuesday and it was really hard for them to try and criticize my work. So I started it for them. After that, all went well.

Let me know what you think.

Tom

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Still Alive (and about to be here regularly!!)

Okay-
So, starting this quarter I'm officially an MFA student at SCAD in Illustration. I'll get me degree in about 5 years (only one class per quarter while I'm still teaching full time.)

For my first class I'm taking an elective where I'm working on the thumbnails for a graphic novel project that I've been talking about for 6 years (yeah, that one!)

I'll be posting some of the thumbnails, pencils, inks, and tones/letters as I do them.
I'm trying to do 8 pages this quarter so that I can have samples to show to a publisher in France.

Let me know what you think.

The opening scene is a flashback to my youth, playing catch with my older brother.
I'm terrified. I'm not worrying any about consistent faces or characters yet. I'm just trying to get the story down.

Here's the thumbnails to page one:


Feedback/questions are appreciated.


Thanks.


Tom