Friday, November 20, 2009

More comic work...

Ok - first up, meet Sprocket. Primary robot on-board Lucy's ship...
He's quite a good egg, but sometimes he has attitude...

... as well as a set of rocket powered skates. He's chief cook and bottle washer too. Last, but by no means least, is Crykk and Honest Jock...
Crykk is the Engineer - someone you should have complete understanding with, which is a problem, as the only word that Crykk knows is "Crykk!" Luckily (for Him) Sprocket is fluent in Crykk. Honest Jock is the used spaceship salesman on WayPoint Station, who's primary purpose in life is to separate the Captain from his hard earned cash...

Some of these cartoons are shaded in pencil - this is deliberate, as I want to use them as a platform for futher work later on, possibly in ArtRage3... Yes, ArtRage3 is imminent, and it comes with a proper inking tool - my christmas's have all come at once...

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Lucy and The Captain


These are a couple of characters I'm looking into for a new webcomic (I gave up the idea of the hamsters - not enough scope). I'm really please with these ones, although in the future, I'll probably change the black shirt - trousers for color, to improve the look. Lucy is the second in command of a trading ship, and is our much beleaguered heroine. Her Captain (name to come) is basically a well meaning, Captain Hastings type (utterly hopeless, in other words). Other characters will come soon, but as for these too, I'm happy enough with the design.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

My Experiences with Bristol Board

This month, I finally got round to purchasing some Bristol Board, just to see how it compares. Up till now, I've used either straight 80 / 110 gsm copying paper, or 250 gsm smooth off-white card, so I took 1 A3 sheet of Bristol, and prepared to destroy it...

First impressions: very smooth. Lovely to pencil on, and you can erase really easily. So far so good then, so on to Inking...

Tried some dip pens and indian ink - not as impressed as I'd thought I'd be. Just as scratchy, and no real improvement. Brushes next, and yes, about the same. Then on to technical markers. Again, no real improvement, everything about the same. Bring on the brush pens...

Again, no real improvement, but I noticed more smudging, as if the ink was taking longer to dry. On to the LAMY fountain pens...

..And disaster! Smooth to work with, but noodlers absoluetly hates Bristol - it slides like a dog on ice! I was happy enough, until I came to rubbing out the pencils - smudge, smudge, smudge...

Also tried my UNI Signo white gel pen for correction... Got some strange results. Definitely depends on ink drying time being longer on Bristol.

Long and short? Use technical markers or brushes - everything else hit and miss. Makes me wonder if marker paper would be a better alternative...

On a side note, I'm starting to think about reducing my working pens to...

0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7/0.8 Technical Markers - usually Pilot/Faber/Staedtler
Black brush pens - small and large, filled with acrylic ink.