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.

Rogue private commission

What's that? A 'Rogue' commission without any 'bio-chips' or nasty Norts? Yep... it's not THAT Rogue. Anyway, Rogue from the X-Men private commission. Does what it says on the tin.

Here's the original layout. I drew the two elements seperately, combined them in Photoshop, then after printing it out did the inking on a lightbox, adding costume details at that stage.

Unknown Soldier

Last year I did a short run on the 'Unknown Soldier' back up strip in DC Comics now defunct title 'G. I. Combat'. For those who didn't read this incarnation of the character, the premise had nothing to do with those famous Joe Kubert World War II stories, infact (from my point of view at least) it has more in common with the Jason Bourne movies than anything else. Lot's of gritty (at times even brutal) action, lost identities, covert government agencies etc . An absolute BLAST to draw, & I think a lot of fun to read too.So, if you're into that kind of thing, you could do a lot worse than track down a copy of the G.I.Combat trade, which not only has the Unknown Soldier material, but collects all the other storied that ran in the title.

Anyway, there is much too much material to put in one post, so I may return to the subject at a later date, but for now, here's some of the pencils & finished inks for the first episode I drew. As you will see, the script (by Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Grey) gave me lots of opportunity to draw a variety of historical combat scenes, & since doing the research is one of the fun parts of this job, I was as happy as a pig in the proverbial...If you want to know why the character appears to be talking to a crow in some scenes, well, you're just going to have to go buy that trade to find out..... 'cos I'm damned if I can tell you. As usual, I printed the pencils out as faint bluelines, & inked those inorder to preserve the original graphite drawings.

Wolverine Private Commission

I haven't had many opportunities to draw Wolverine in full superhero gear, so it was a pleasant surprise when a client (Rob Green) asked for a commission of him in any costume of my choice. I opted for his original yellow & blue combo, but decided to leave the cowl off so we could see his face, & instead show that in the background image. Having sketched out the two elements separately, I scanned them & combined them into this layout in Photoshop.

I printed this out, & with the aid of a lightbox transfered it to the artboard. Laying colour markers over black fineliners can result in smearing of the linework, so to avoid this, I layed the colour in first. I don't usually put this much colour into a commission, but this time, I felt the piece required it. All finished, client happy... sorted!!

The Usual Suspect...MegaCity1 styleee

Here's a private commission I just did. The client wanted this Usual Suspects style identity parade, but with Kevin Spacey et al substituted for a roster of Dredd-verse perps.... a no-prize for the first one to name them all. If you think you see Catwoman in the mix & are wondering why, well you're right, & the reason is that the client (a mysterious shadowy figure, known only as 'Chief') wanted one of the characters in the line up to be a character with whom I am associated. Of all the characters I've worked on Catwoman seemed best to fit in with a line up of crims, so that was that.

I sketched out the five characters separately, then pieced it together in Photoshop, trying them in a few different orders until I got one that I thought worked best. On a side note, I obviously wasn't switched on when I sketched out Catwoman, for some reason I forgot to give her the cat's ears to her costume... sheesh. I also got Judge Fear's helmet almost completely wrong...

Anyway, the client approved the pencil layout. At this point when doing art for publication I would print this image out as a blueline & ink that, however, since this was for a private commission, & may well end up in a frame, I figured that those printed blue pencils might look a bit 'nasty', so instead I printed it out as a black image & lightboxed it through onto the actual artboard prior to inking.

That's it, all done. As I mentioned in an earlier post, if you want something similar, it will cost you £250+p&p.