Back Blogging

Hey folks sorry about the flakey posts these past few weeks, really been squeezing out every waking minute of the day recently.

I did another storyboarding talk this week out in DCU as part of their Media week. Got made a member of the DCU MEDIA PRODUCTION SOCIETY, not too shabby! :) This is me after the talk with events manager Aisling Sinclair, who I must thank again for the invite.

 I got some new stuff done before Thought Bubble this weekend. Thought I'd post that stuff up.

A few pin ups and some new sequentials I'm working on from a Deadpool sample script

Hope you dig em!

Here's the Pin Ups, Reeeeeeeeaaaaalllly like drawing Black Cat :)

Here's some Deadpool pages I'm working on

More of these to follow soon


And more of these too, I wont be posting up any more inks of these but the pencils I will for Sure, Here's the complete page one of Carrie and Rufus

That's the lot, time for me to clock back into work again

Laters I'll gfill you all in on Thought Bubble next time. Have a good weekend!

100th POST!!

HEY EVERYBODY ( HEY DR. NICK!)

this is my 100th blog post.. somewhere Dan Spencer is laughing at the guy who never blogged and used to shun technology. But here we are, Technology embraced and a 100 blog posts later.

Here's my folio for DICE, the finished Northlanders pages I did last week and some Secret Avengers pages. Had a lot of fun on these

I just got sent my Ignite talk that i did about storyboarding as well, I was hoping it would be up on the website for the 100th post but alas it aint so, hopefully I'll have it for next week!

right these pages, they show action, some talking heads, cars, helicopters, longboats, they show some super heroes and some vikings. Covering as much as I could and here's hoping these are the pages that land me that job in comics!

Hope yee dig em! see ye next week, same Ben time, same Ben channel :P

Comics Folio

hey folks,

here's some Northlanders pages you haven't seen & one you have seen before. Still have a rake of pages paneciled and not inked, only going to throw up the finished pages between now and DICE. Might throw up the in progress work on twitter.

Hope yee dig em. More to come next week, I'll prob put up my entire folio for Dice next Friday, so look at this post as a sort of Friday the 27th post 0.5

50 Shades of Trixie

Hey folks,

Just managed to squeeze this pic out today. Maybe some of you know Andrew Hickinbottom's character Trixe? Well if you follow his Facebook ( and if you don't I recommend that you do so straight away) you'll see that everyone kind of has a go at drawing this character. I've wanted to for a while now so gave it a shot today.

Lots of fun to draw, I can see myself drawing her again just for kicks! hope yee dig it. I didn't want to post another in progress page of comic art, they'll all get postyed when they're done. so hope this fills a gap until next week!

Really digging drawing women at the moment ( as you could probably tell from the last number of posts ), might even take a page from Bruce Timm's book n draw a bunch for a book we'll see how that turns out.

If you would like to get you hands on a book of designs let me know via Twitter/Facebook and  IF I get enough interest I'll try knock one out for Christmas or something! Linsk to both my twitter & Facebook are to the right! :)

Laters!

Storyboard Workshop & A New Pin Up Girl

Hey folks,

a day late with the post but better late than never. I've just been busy this week.

Before I say anything else I want to say THANK YOU so much for showing such an interest in my storyboard workshop. Amazed with how quickly it sold out, i promise i'll make it as good and worth while as I possibly can. Thanks again!

Big thanks to Pegbar, Animation Skillsnet and The Science Gallery too for making all this possible.

Aaaaaaand below is something I drew up yesterday. Clearly I haven't had enough fun drawing pin up girls so here's another.

It's actually a character for a poster I put together for a friend of mine who's running a striptease aerobics workshop in Wexford. If any of yee are interested in the deets, give me a shout on facebook/twitter and I'll send em your way.

Kinda dig the character so here she is in all her glory.  As usual I prefer the black and white.

I'll do my very best to get next weeks post on time as it's been two late posts in a row now.

Anyways, chat then folks!

Fun Stuff!

Hey folks so here's this weeks blog post.  2 black and whites this week!

This is a birthday card I did for a mate of mine, she's been asking for a picture of Shakira's ass for a while, I felt it was my moral duty to oblige. Here's Shakira doing that 'bum lift' thing from the she wolf video

Aaaaand this is a project I've been ticking away at for a while now, just getting pieces done in  small pockets of free time. It's for my mate Paddy Lennon, he's a writer and he's currently sorting out his superhero novel 'Flare' and he was sound enough to ask me to do the cover. I've been one of a lucky few to read this book, It's Class! Recently Paddy has put excerpts of his book up on his blog so give it a read here so you can get a taste of the book and then spend all of your monies on it when it's out!

The characters your looking at here in the cover are (going from left to right are) Aimee DeWitt and in her superhero uniform she's kicks ass as Revenant, Ryan Curtis also known as Flare and Hiroshi who rocks it in a pretty awesome Mech suit, or as Paddy put it so elequently ' basically War Machine on steroids'!

Hope you dig em. See you all next week, same Ben time(ish), same Ben channel.

Miki's Comic "The Jolly Roger!"

 More writing for Carrie & Rufus than drawing Buuuuuuuuut some awesome news! My friend Cara has joined up & is going to letter the book! Huzzah! Cara's an awesome graphic artist & when it comes to any thing to do with type she's a hero! Check out her stuff here,  here and her twitter here

As promised in an earlier post, here's some fan art of my friend Miki's comic the Jolly Roger. I remember Miki saying on one occasion that this character from the book was the most fun to draw, he wasn't wrong.

If you don't know this book or Miki, you're really missing out, here's a link to his artists facebook page, hit the life drawing album, caricature album and obviously the Jolly Roger album, you'll leave inspired.

Anyways, that's me for this week. More next week. I'll have some more Carrie and Rufus work & something to go with em!

G'luck!

Shelter From the Storm

New piece up. Playing with black and whites again. Enjoyed this one, it's a bit different than stuff I've been working on lately, this was just a drawing for drawings sake.  Just about got this done today,

I was about to start work on a friends wedding card, looked over some old reference. I was always a big fan of Rodin's 'The Kiss', such an awkward pose for both people, so you get the idea that it's something that only lasts a second before one has to completely change their position. but the way they are just so entwined together really hammers home that feeling of 'one-ness'. Decided I'm gonna start doing some of my own versions on famous pieces I like ( big ask right?) for the mean time, here's a piece I've called 'Shelter From The Storm'... yes I was listening to Bob Dylan recently

Still blogging once a week! See yee next week!

Fred's Got Slacks WIP

So as promised, a new blog post.

This is still a work in progress but I really wanted to keep the weekly blog posts going so here's Fred, she wears slacks REALLY well! A mate of mine asked me to do an album cover for their band Fred's Got Slacks ( awesome name right? ) You can check out some of their stuff here .

It took me an AGE to get around to it but I finally am. Pretty happy with how it's going so far, when it's finished, I'll post up the final piece.

Really enjoying doing my black & whites lately so here's another!

And here's the colour in progress. More to come soon. I'm hoping to get a bit more time next week to work on some new blog stuff as well, between trying to get to the 2D Fest this weekend and clearing out work for it, it was next to impossible to do a whole lot more this week.

Anyways go enjoy the bank holiday weekend, I'll see you all next week! Laters!

Celtic Warrior

Friend of mine, Artist on Marvels Fearless Defenders and all around nice guy Will Sliney brought out a book he's been working on called 'Celtic Warrior The Legend of Cú Chulainn' and you can pick it up in all good comic book stores now!

Will is working on something at the moment and he's asked a few artists to knock up some Celtic Warrior pieces for him. I was lucky enough to be one of those artists.  To keep up on everything Celtic Warrior make sure you're following Will's twitter account here.

I have always been a big fan of the Cú Chulainn legend, it was great to see it done in a book that does the tales so much justice.

Here's my rendition of Will's Cú Chulainn, hope yee dig it!

R.I.P.Damian Wayne

Hi folks

Had one of those messy weeks this week and didn't get to finish the sample pages. They're almost there, one page left, but I want to post them all up together instead of dragging them out into 3 blog posts. Soooooo in the spirit of blogging at least once a week I do have something to post in the absence of the sample pages.

It was a sketch I started doing last night. Kind of a 'cool down' sketch after finishing work for the day. But yesterday I saw a new group on Facebook called the Irish Sketch Society you can see em here . So I decided I'd do something Batman themed.  What I scratched out is pretty much what you see here. And since it was a cool down drawing I really wasn't to pushed about anything too technical, just look at shapes and composition. Since Damian Wayne, the new Robin died last week I thought I would draw a grieving Batman.

So here's Batman outside his cave. Just spotted a dead robin, that could have been killed by one of the bats in his cave for all he knows. Obvious play with the colour red here for Robin, Batman almost with the blood on his hands the red leaves from the trees outside the cave to show his spirit flying away. 

Usually spend about 30 - 40 mins on a warm up drawing, spent about an hour on this.

Hunger Games Commission and an iPad WIP

Hi all,

In my new efforts to blog far more often here's the latest pieces I've done.

The first is Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games. I told a friend of mine that I listened to the audiobook not so long ago and in the first book a number of moments stuck with me and I hoped to illustrate some of them. (All of which I'll illustrate soon, I Really enjoyed the first book. And now that I've written it here I HAVE to do it ). My mate Paddy remembered this and since his wife Miriam is a BIG hunger games fan he asked me to do a pic for his wife's birthday. I was more than happy to and was given a direction of ' Maybe a pic of Katniss in the woods hunting deer or something?  She likes those parts of the books.' So I got to work,

This is what I came up with. I'm pretty happy with the result, but more importantly Miriam is! Happy birthday Miriam!

I thought about using Jennifer Lawrence's likeness in the pic, but when I was doing some prep one day I developed a few more designs that I thought were stronger, this one is my fav.  I'll prob do a few more iterations of her yet, she's a great character.

On the note of her hunting I put in two deer amid the trees in the BG, I played around with their negative shapes, tried to give the idea of movement and as they are not both in perfect silhouette, it's almost like Katniss can almost hear them both somewhere in the foliage.

I wasn't going to blog these but they got quite a good reception on Facebook and Twitter so I thought I'd better throw them up here. It's a Wolverine WIP that I have been doing in my spare time on my iPad. Here's pic one from my iPad that I have done with my new stylus

All are done in the Sketchbook pro App using the Griffin Stylus ( many people have been asking what I did them with) , which I really recommend. Still a long way to go with em yet but fun to do and there will always be an iPad drawing on the go now so expect a lot more to follow.


 January has actually been pretty good, I got a rake of commissions in so I have enough Pic's to post for a while. If anyone else would like a commission please contact me via Twitter/Facebook. 

Another progress Drawing: Batman and Catwoman

Hey Everybody

Here's this weeks post. It's a very (very, very very) belated wedding present for two close friends of mine. One night over a few beers my friend told me he'd love a pic of Batman beating the living daylights out of Spidey. Me being a colossal Spidey fan said "Grand", I'll draw one up for your Wedding, only Spidey will be annihilating Bats!

Now after sobering up, keeping the idea that it was a wedding present and my friends would have to look at this for quite a long time I thought Spidey smashing up Bat's face was the wrong way to go. So I tried to go with something a little 'classier'.  This was pretty easy to figure out what it should be considering Batman was the requested hero, so Batman and Catwoman seemed like the perfect route to go down. 

The trick with this was to make this look like Bats and Catwoman are actually in love. Much like my friends Brendan and Helen. And NOT like a typical over sexed up, fan boy mess of a drawing. It was a wedding present, it had to be right.

So after struggling with it for quite some time starting something, finishing it and starting something else again. I eventually landed on this one. Fell on my feet here having struggled with it for so long. Love is supposed to make people strong and weak, I think I managed to keep the character of both of these iconic comic book heroes while reflecting the love that doesn't make Batman stand so tall, and makes Catwoman give up a little bit of her balance.

Anyways here it. If you read all I had to say above, thanks you're a proper legend!

Some really roughs first just to get it started, I'm liking making more decisions while inking/clean up these days

Started working in the details, I use Sketchbook Pro for most of my digital inking and cleaning up my storyboards

I zoom in and out a lot when I work on pieces like this, its important to see all of what you're working on

Here's the final inks on the Happy couple

After I get the drawing/inked part sorted it's into PS for some painting for a variety of brushes.

Here's a C.U. on Batman and Catwoman. I usually leave the brush editor out so I can twist and move the brush

After I get to a point with the digital flats I bring up the opacity on the greys. After going back and fourth This was the final Black and White of the piece.

I turned back on the grey on the characters and played with the Bat Signal splatter in the BG. The whole idea about displaying the bat signal was even over the city Batman watches, Catwoman still has all his attention ( corny and sort of against the character but hey, this is a wedding present :P I can do this because artistic license and stuff!)

Here's the final piece, a colour change and a re-edit of the bat signal. 

I showed the piece to my friends last night, I woke up to a Facebook message this morning. Everybody's happy :)

I'll have another blog post very soon! Laters