Mouse Guard!

Again I am up late doodling around. But I have some words to say, too!

This week, Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard #2 came out. The Legends of the Guard series is a chance for some other artists and writers to get to play around in David Petersen's Mouse Guard world by doing some short stories. And it so happens that the first story in the #2 issue, "Potential," was written by my buddy Alex Kain, who happens to also be the writer for our Four Kingdoms project. The sweet art was done by Sean Rubin. So if you like Mouse Guard, I'd advise you check it out! Here's a site with some nice preview images.

Which brings me to the doodle, which is of Kenzie from the main series. :)

silly late-night painting time

Lately I've been doing some digital painting whenever I can't get to sleep. Just some fun playing around with light and pre-existing characters.

You should look up photos of sewers sometime. Apparently there's a whole group of people who like to explore and photograph them. It's surprisingly awesome.

This is actually a Redwall character, but one that only gets mentioned offhand as a long-dead ruler. With a name like Bluestripe, I figured he would be awesome. And a fan of warpaint.

main characters and thumbnails!

These two are going to be the main guys in my comic. Randy is a greenie fresh from flight training. He comes into conflict with "Red," who is pretty much the viewpoint character of the story. Red has lost his best friend in a recent mission, and when Randy gets assigned to his buddy's old bunk, he has a lot of trouble dealing with that. We're also going to see another (maybe both) of the other guys in their flight, who still need to be designed. I'll probably just grab 'em from the other concept sheet I drew; they don't figure into the story much.

I do have the whole thing thumbnailed out. For a "short" story, 19 pages is an awful lot. However, I'm going to be doing pretty simple coloring, so it should be manageable. Jury's still out on how much color will make it into the thing.

And for some more fanart derpiness, have a silly pinup I did of the black Heavy Weapons Guy I designed. Clearly I need to go back and study anatomy again, but the painting was fun. And retro-style propaganda is also fun.

Tally ho!

Lately I've been thinking about comics and stories in way too big'n'epic ways. While my griffin story has already been outlined and will indeed require tons of time to tell properly, I have some other ideas I've been throwing around. And I worry that I'm automatically trying to make THEM epic, long-format stories.

Which, ultimately, leads me to fear that I'll never get ANYTHING done.

So this WWII idea, I think I'll commit to getting a story *out.* Get some characters worked out, and throw them into the war. First mission, perhaps. And if I like it, I can always do more and think about story arcs and whatever. :d

Of course, I'll have to bang out some good characters/designs first. These guys are just an experiment in drawing different-looking dudes that fit the 1940s-military-flyer look. I'll be playing with some styles, too.

Let's do this thing.

*FACEPALM*

There have been talks of a live-action TMNT film reboot movie since Nickelodeon gained rights to the franchise last year. Now I hear they're thinking of a 2012 release... and Michael Bay is reportedly going to be involved.


That is all.

Thunderbolt!

And old artbug has resurfaced as of late - a desire to draw a comic about WWII fighter pilots. So my Memorial weekend was (appropriately) spent devouring the subject in text and Youtube form. Who knows if I'll get a story worked out before the bug goes dormant again, but at least I can gather resources and practice drawing difficult things like AIRPLANES.

These were referenced from photos, except when otherwise noted.