Storyboards for Chloe's Closet

Yo, got the ok on posting up some of my pro work.

Big shout out to Telegael, Moonscoop, Kids Workout Factory and KIKA who own the copyright to all the images you are about to see. It was a real pleasure working on this. You'll see each studios Logo above the boards, if you're not familiar with them I recommend you check them out, they were great to work with. 

Hope you dig looking at my boards, I think this is the first time I've posted any of my pro boards on the blog. Which is kinda weird considering I've been storyboarding for about 5 years now.

In case you have never seen Chloe's Closet before here's an idea of what it's like.  The cartoon itself is about Chloe and her friends who are able to go into an imaginary world based on what costume is in her wardrobe. It's a little like Narnia meets Mr. Benn ( Remember that cartoon? )

Any ways here they are, I've displayed them in a way where you can scroll through them easily using blogger, this way you can follow the action clearly. There's about a 115 images here so i figure easiest way to view em is the best


Here's the opening of the cartooon, the kids learn how to tie their shoes

Then the wardrobe lights up and the kids sing and find out where their imagination is going to take them today

The kids are Gauchos ( a type of cowboy) and they go on to meet the the Lead Gaucho who owns the ranch behind them

This passage has the whole team meeting up so they can start their Gaucho training

Chloe and Lovely Carrot ( her flying duck friend) try to round up a cow

One of the Gauchos is worried that she wont make the cut, Chloe consoles her and tells her she'll do everything she can to help her become a Gaucho

That's all im going to show. Again a bit thank you to Telegael, Moonscoop, Kids Workout Factory and KIKA for letting me show their copyrighted material.

Hope you all dig em, They're some of my fav boards that I've done to date.

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!

Wolverine iPad Pic

Yooo! Apologies for not posting anything last week but the man flu was placing a pretty decent rear naked choke on my ability to do anything. And I was so busy this week playing catch up I didn't get to do anything outside of work for the blog. I can actually count the hours spent on the drawing board for myself this week on one finger :P buuuuuuuut I remembered late last night that I hadn't finished that Wolverine pic I started on my iPad. So I thought, why not finish and post that?!

So here it is. It was such an experiment from start to finish I kinda feel that that's what I'm left here, and experiment where I started drawing Wolverine and then tried doing a BG, both seem a little distant to each other. I'm pretty aware now of what I can get from the iPad so the next iPad pic I post will be a more rounded set of images.

Drawing on Sketchbook Pro, played with in a PS express and WrapCam and a griffin stylus was used

Sample Script - Daredevil v3 #1 written by Mark Waid

 Okaaaaaay got round to finishing off that sample script. Here it is. Hope yee dig it.  Trying to do way more of these, I'll be starting another next week.

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.

Daredevil Samples

Struggling to do blog work, thought I'd have more this week. This was the only page worth posting as the rest are still scribbly blue pencils.  Between getting work finished before I start production again next week life is a bit messy at the mo but I'm still aiming to get the full test done by end of week next week. 

Here's page 1 of Daredevil v3 #1 written by Mark Waid, illustrated by ... I dunno yet and I'm avoiding finding out who/looking at the actual published pages aaaaaand any other sample pages posted online in case they hinder my illustrating of the story.   Hope my stuff holds up.

My earliest memories of DD are of him boxing in that yellow costume and in the 90's Spidey cartoon. In both those media a big deal is made of DD's gymnastic ability of sooooo I thought an MMA fighter who also does gymnastics would be a goof point of reference. Que one of my all time fav fighters GSP for reference. More to come soon, Hope you all dig.

New Character, iPad Cover & a Commission

Hey folks,

 Sorry about not posting last week I was just swamped and spent more time running around meeting people than I got a chance to sit down and draw. I did post some material on Twitter and Facebook to tie me over until I got to posting this week.

 Soooooo here's a few things, a new character that I've been working on for quite a while, her name is Carrie and she fights zombies. We'll see more from here in a few weeks time in a small comic. I'll post it up intermittently as I knock out some comic test scripts first. Also since I got an iPad for Christmas and I previously drew up a cover for my iPhone ( see telephone Tess here)  I thought I'd draw a cover up for the iPad as well. Aaaaaand Im also gonna post a commission I finished this week. Any of you Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" fans might like my version of Rand Al'Thor. So lets get to posting the pictures, that's why you're all here anyways!

First of, Carrie and my iPad cover

 This is Carrie, some of you will have seen her last week on my twitter and facebook in a less rendered pic, here's the inks on her.

 I was originally going to have Carrie on her own on the cover but it didn't really win me over so I tried to come up with a few ideas. I thought about doing a regular zombie but that didn't win me over either so I thought about incorporating the iPad itself into the pic and thought well and well the idea of my iPad turning me into a mindless zombie when I'm using it sounded like a good idea. So here's me on the iPad.

Another zombie on the iPad, This one seemed to go down really well yesterday so I think I'll also do a iPad zombie series of sketches. Might just be my warm up sketches for a while

 A whole bunch of zombies on iPads... Just me or is there something really eerie about the glowing apple logo?

 here's a coloured Carrie

 and here's a blue Carrie, you'll see why I did this in a sec

 Aaaaaan here's what the back of the iPad cover will look like

 so here was an amalgamation of everything that just wasnt winning me over, i thought there was too much going on so i simplified it a little more

This worked waaaaaaay better for me but i thought that Carrie was a little Dark

Better so there's the cover and here's the back

Left my Bennessy Logo/Signature on her lower back like a tatt, originally I had it on the back of her coat ( cause I have it on the circles on of shoulder as well). This is just for the iPad cover Carrie doesnt really go around with the Bennessy Sig on her.


So that's the cover. And since I did post last week here's the super extra bonus post this week. Rand Al'Thor from Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. i didnt know anything about this guy when i was asked to do the commission, Had a bit of fun with it after reading up on the character, hope you all dig it, the client liked it a bunch!

Mermaid commission

Here's another commission I did. Kinda made me think of somebody witnessing an alien abduction. Enjoying playing with pure black and white not using colour/greyscale. Client liked it, Hope you do too!

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

Pics!

First post of the new year! Hope you're all keeping well.  These are a couple of presents I did for a few friends of mine for Christmas/Birthdays.

The first one is for a friend of mine who asked me one night to draw her a Panda. I was surprised how much a film like Kung Fu Panda had subliminally seeped a default Panda design in me, so when I noticed this coming through in my roughs I went right back to basics blocked out a tonne of new shapes, just really quick gestures. 

Best to keep everything crazy rough at the start so trying loads of new shapes and gestures is a good thing to do and it helps prevent you over working a drawing and falling in love with what should only be a preliminary sketch and never the final product. I always find that when the shapes/pose have been rushed and not planned out/experimented enough always leaves you with a product that lacks that special something and is usually riddled with mistakes. This is the longest part of my process. It deserves the time when this has been figured out the rest falls into place.  

This particular image was when I was playing with some dog-like characteristics and shapes with the Panda. I was told a long time ago that if you're trying to make an animal character likeable it really helps to add some dog in the design/character of the animal. It's something worth keeping in mind, it always helps me anyways. Here's what I came up with. His name is Peter Panda

 The next one is for my girlfriend, it went through a few iterations again. I knew immediately it was going to be a film noir style to it. I got to play around a bit with this one. The original pose of the woman in the pic I really liked but I kept on changing my mind about the environment. I eventually settled on the last. Got to play around with some new brushed in PS that I have been enjoying. I don't think I've gotten the best out of em just yet, but something is starting to click. This is Lady Fatale

One of the many iterations

Here's the Christmas card version

and here's the final one. My fav

And here's another, This is a Mouse Guard pic. David Petersen's Mouse Guard is class! If you haven't read it I recommend you do. This was a present for a few friends of mine ( They're married now so I can cheap out and get em one present :P Ha!) They have some great art hanging up on their wall and i thought that this would fit in with the rest of their original pieces.

Since they're a married couple I kind of liked the idea of couple of mice running away together and the scape of what is at a mice's disposal in these books is huge. I had a lot of fun working on this one too.  I find drawing a good set of wings extremely satisfying. Got to play with a few new textures in this one as well.

More to come soon getting to the other end of the to do list. Hopefully I'll have as much to blog nest time as well.