Quest Of The Gods

July 1st sees the relaease of two books I worked on for Usborne publishing. Both are part of a series called 'Quest Of The Gods', & the individual tiles are 'Flight Of The Falcon God' & 'Rise Of The Horned Warrior'. They are adventure stories primarily aimed at (I imagine) pre-teen & early-teen boys. They tell the stories of a young boy in Ancient Egypt, who rises from obscurity to be Pharaoh, & both are written by Dan Hunter. On 'Falcon God I provided the cover image only, while on 'Horned Warrior I did both the cover art & the interior greyscale illustrations. If they seem like your cup of tea, they are available via Amazon : Rise Of The Horned Warrior, Flight Of The Falcon God.

All artwork is copyright Usborne Publishing.

Conan

This is an old Sharpie sketch, so it's NOT an indicator of what my next project is going to be or anything, it's just that I stuck it on my DeviantArt page recently, so I figured I may as well stick it on here too. Having said all that,  if Dark Horse are asking, I'm available...:-)

Another sneak peek & colouring test.

Here's another panel from my creator owned project, with a different approach to the colouring. What does anyone think? This, or the old vintage (do-screen, flat, more muted & simpler colour etc) look?

Unknown Soldier 4

Here's some of the thumbnails, pencils & finished inked pages from the fourth & final part of my brief run on the Unknown Soldier strip which ran as a backup in DC Comics G.I.Combat prior to the books cancellation.
I think that due to the afore mentioned cancellation, the writers (Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Grey) were forced to wrap up the story sooner than they might have liked. I think it also meant that they weren't allowed to explore some of the more intriguing elements which had been hinted at in previous episodes (talking to crows, anyone?). But I think all things considered, the strip holds up well & is well worth a read if you feel like shelling out for the G.I.Combat trade paperback.

Negotiations on the jetty.

All Star Western #21

June 26 sees the release of All Star Western #21. Behind Howard Porter's superb cover (see below) are two tales of the DCU in the old west both written By Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Grey. The first, drawn by Moritat, features Jonah Hex, Booster Gold & Batwing, when Jonah somehow manages to find himself in modern day Gotham. The second is the final part of a story which pits the Nineteenth Century version of Stormwatch against a hoard of Apache vampires in a city of gold inside a hollow mountain.... now if that lot isn't worth a couple of quid, I don't know what is!! I drew the Stormwatch story.

A second sneak peak.

As with the piece I posted yesterday, I've been experimenting with approaches to both the inking & colouring on something which I hope happen fairly soon. As you can probably tell from the couple of images I've posted so far, this is a period set piece & as such I am so very tempted to use the dot-screen effect on the colouring (though I don't think I would use the faux aged paper effect, that might be a step too far). However, I wonder if that is something that a modern day audience wouldn't accept. So time for a little audience participation (if for no other reason than to see if anyone actually reads this stuff), of the two colouring styles here, which do YOU prefere? The vintage-look dot screen effect, or the regularly coloured image? YOU decide... as they say on Big Brother, apparantly.. Feel free to either leave a message in the comments, or email me via the link in the right hand margin.

A sneak peak

Playing around with inking & colouring approaches for a creator owned project of mine that will hopefully come to fruition in the not too distant future.

Iron Man

Done as a gift for a friend who's Grandson just luuurrves those Iron Man movies.

Unknown Soldier 3

Here's more of the art from my short run on The Unknown Soldier which ran in DC's G.I.Combat last year. These pages are from the third episode. Pencils & the final inks as per the previous posts, but in addition here, is an example of the other stage in the process, the initial 'thumbnail' layouts. I'm afraid I couldn't find a copy of the 'thumb's for the previous Unknown Soldier posts, so was unable to show them. This stage was done to pin down the storytelling. It's not a I had ever done prior to working on this strip (previously, my thumbnails were just done on the actual script & were for my eyes only before I got stuck into the actual pencil), but was done at the request of editorial for approval. It was something I found to be a big help & I can see myself doing this on every project from now on. After the thumbs were approved, I printed them out as bluelines & used them as a guide when I drew the pencils.

Unknown Soldier 2

In a follow up to a previous post, here's some of the pencils & inks for the second Unknown Soldier strip I did last year. In the last post I mentioned that the overall tone of story reminded me of the Jason Bourne movies, this particular episode demonstrates a similarity to another of my favorite movies, Taken, with Liam Neeson. The brutal efficiency with which the character goes from urbane & chatty to killing machine in a heatbeat, & the 'never hesitate' atitude is (for me) reminscent of many of the action sequences from that movie. Needless to say, when I read the script for this, I knew it was going to be fun to draw, yes, drawing extreme violence can be fun when the guy dishing out the ass whupping is doing it for the team in white hats.

Anyway, here's the art. The Letratone/zipatone effect was added digitally. It was a helluva lot easier than how I used to do it in the early 80's, cutting out endless pieces of those acetate sheets. The splatter effects were also added digitally. I made lots of splatter patterns with a toothbrush & indian ink on multiple sheets of paper, chose the ones I liked, scanned them in, & turned them into Photoshop brushes.