Sequential Practice

A little something different this week.  Sequentials!

Not only that, but I go a little into the process from different thumbnails up to a semi completed page.


 This is my first attempt at a layout.  I don't have a script, I am just spit balling right now.  I know I want a city, PITT and Spartan.  I always loved PITT.  He was just so brutal and made no apologize for not being anything more then that.  And then Spartan (or is it Cyclops?) I just really dug his design.  I didn't understand his leg fins but I didn't care.

So that first panel is supposed to be a city...hey I am just thumbnailing, leave me alone.  Then Spartan faces off with a foot.  Then close up of Spartan.  Then PITT being stoic.  Then fight.  Then PITT chokes out Spartan. 

I thought it was a little tight and the panels didn't really breath.  There was no WOW moment either.  All the panels are about the same size too.

So this is the second attempt. There may have been a couple other panel sketches. I will try to keep better track of all my skribbles and not erase them all.

Starts with the city.  Then PITT crouching in foreground, Spartan in background.  CU of Spartan and then aggressive PITT.  Then attack.

Not much different then the first one.  I thought the panels had more room and panel 4 was more exciting.  But PITT was way too small in the last panel.  LAME.  I do like panel 4's PITT pose but it wasn't meant to be.

Here I get rid of the cityscape and just show the side of the building with a energy blast and PITT jumping to safety.  Tried a more interesting composition in panel 2 with PITT kneeling in the foreground and framing Spartan in the background.  But the pose didn't really work with the shot, his leg would have been in the way.

This one didn't change much, I tried to make PITT bigger in the last panel.  But it still was too small for me.

OK, now I am getting annoyed.  Sequentials are tough.  There are a million ways to draw something but prolly only a handful of good ones.

So we go back to the cityscape.  panel 2 I decide to show full bodies on both characters plus some buildings.  Then we do a close up on PITT, notice he is on the other side.  The Spartan charges up.  Then ATTACK.

PITT is pretty large in this last panel, which I like.  I prolly tried to draw the last panel 20 times before I got this. I couldn't figure out the perspective of PITT in the air, Spartan on the ground and energy blast between then. 

I take a step back and decide this is the best I can do right now.  I am moving the camera from long to short distance.  I am moving the horizon line up and down.  I am including background.

So I decide to stick with this layout and now clean it up.  I twisted Spartan in the last panel because the original pose was a little too lame.  However it kind of threw off my alignment of characters.  I could have slid PITT up a little but then I would have lost some of his hand.  I could have broken the panel border but that would have made the reader skip panel 4.

Now I do a quick "ink".  This is really loose for a finished page.  I did it more for practice of composition then taking it too completion.  I figure if I can fire off a lot of these quick layouts then I can get better quicken then if I did a page all the way to completion.  Really after the layout it is just polishing.  So hopefully you're polishing a diamond and not a turd.

All of these are digital.  If I was doing this page for real.  I would have printed out the blue lines above on 11x17 bristol and then pencilled it for real.  And then inked it.

I know it is a lot of steps. but I am still unsure of my skills, so I take a lot of steps.  Maybe in a few years I will be able to shorten the process.

I try to put some thicker border about the characters and foreground elements.  thin lines on the background.  Just trying to create some depth with line weight and quality. 

MTV's Liquid Television

Get More: MTV Shows

Just found out that they have all the old Liquid TV animations online now. My brain just exploded.

Monkey!

Meep!

Skeksis Back

Partin With Rux!

Diddy Kong

Guy On A Buffalo - Episode 1 (Bears, Indians & Such)

Monktober Challenge!

I gots my mind on my monkey and my monkey on my mind....

Hey ho! It's me, the erstwhile Sam Little - Little seen, little heard. Oh, the neglect I heap upon the internetz and especially strange furnishing-monikered corners of the blog-O-sphere! Truly I am a bad man.

But here I am, back again and big as life, throwing down the monkeypaw with a challenge for all who dare to venture unto this oddest of kredenzas in the month of October.

And the challenge is thus:

Draw a dang monkey. A simian. An ape. A GO-rilly. Make me some primates, kiddies. And I don't mean the old-fashioned way.

Whaddaya want from me? I like the monkeys is all.

Pencils up....

GO!

Walken Has Seen...

Devils

WTF is DJO pt2: The Big Montage

Devil Lynch

David Lynch - Funny Moments 4

Faust

In keeping with this month's 'Devils' theme...

Samuel L Ipsum

Check it out!

Devil of Greed

I was thinking about what sort of devil to draw for September, and I came back to an image that came to me in a dream I had some years ago. It was one of those rare dreams I get where everything is classical 2D animation, very colorful and well-rendered. I dreamed about this sophisticated foppish devil who dressed like a dandy and carried a cane. He was a very rotund fellow with an evil grin, like he knew all your weaknesses, and was ready to use them to trap you in a bargain for your soul. This here's the pencil drawing I did of him, and hopefully I'll be able to color it before the month is out...

Warmups

Been doing some daily (more of less) warmups to help get the kinks out.  Combining this with some really quick Google Image life drawing sessions have really helped.  Anyways, here are some of what I've been doing.

Tomorrow Never Happens, part 1

Dearest Sirs,

If you're not prepared, become prepared. I recommend a can of motor oil mixed with Arbor Mist (Watermelon Flavor) with a twist of lime. The pretty young women of Bryn Mawr College call this a "Social Lubricant" and they guzzle it with gusto heretofore unseen outside of high-level political circles. So grab your Social Lubricant and find a large leather armchair into which to sink. And sink you shall, as I reveal what I've learned. The time-line confuses even myself, but do not be alarmed. All events recorded here happened when they happened, not when the rest of the world observes them to have happened.

I stepped outside on a brisk and sunny Labor Day morning to air out my crotch. The breeze was frisky that morning, playing its fingers around my delicate parts. I waved at the gardeners tending to the potted plants at the restaurant next door, and they waved back. A dog, small, I think, barked somewhere to the south, and I instinctively turned. The distraction worked, because by the time I turned back around, there were six children in World Wrestling Federation costume, waving crowbars, all less than a yard away. I crumpled to a fetal position. They surrounded me. One, or maybe more, worked me into a burlap sack, and I felt them heft me into a wagon. The bumps in the sidewalk made my skull crack against the floor of the wagon once every yard. I used the bumps to estimate how far the wheeled me. I counted 3,592 bumps. That's nearly two miles, for those of you with a calculator.

They helped me up and cut a hole in the burlap for me to poke my head out. The desert surrounded me. The vast, sweeping horizon was punctuated only by distant dunes, and the six stumpy bodies arrayed in front of me. One unzipped his fly. Out curled a deformed, shrunken man. As he raised a tiny microphone to his mouth, I recognized him immediately as television personality and sweepstakes mastermind Ed McMahon.

"Ahhh!" He moaned as he inhaled deeply, stretching his arms outward like a young Elvis testing out a new nudie suit. "You are the man, the man of the hour! Yes!" He pumped his fists as he said yes. "Yes! Yes!" Then he nodded and the other five children walked away into the desert. I trembled before this man-penis. "You have a duty to your country, you must prevent yesterday. The envelope taped to your chest explains it all. Yes!"

At that, he curled back into the short pants of the child, who zipped up and said something under his breath into a walkie talkie, then walked away after the other children.

The sun was setting, and I sat still.

When the whir of a prop plane came closer, I searched the sky, but against the deep twilight I saw nothing. The whir finally grew to a deafening crescendo, then cut out to a sputter and stopped entirely.

"You there! Come over, and drink!"

I struggled out of the sack and walked, taking care to step carefully on the shifting sands beneath my feet. Ahead of me I saw a match strike and flare up, briefly lighting the burly faces of two men. They looked to be lobster fishermen who have lost their boat.

"Ah, and there's the man of the hour. My name is Ernst, but you can call me Papa, and this here is Julian. We've stopped for a smoke. Care for a Backwoods? They're maduro." He rolled his Rs with affectation and held out a torn open packet that reeked of tobacco and palm sweat. I accepted his offer, and the one he called Juilan struck another match. As I puffed, I looked over the cigar end at the men in front of me. Papa was stocky, thickly bearded and wearing hip waders and a filthy red t-shirt. Julian was taller, in brown trousers, an equally filthy orange t-shirt and rumpled top hat. When my cigar was lit, Julian used the remainder of the match to light a lantern and I could see the aeroplane behind them. Pocked with rust, and decorated with the legend "Miss A Sippy" and a crude painting of a catfish-mermaid, amply bosom-ed, it stood tall over both men and me.

"Ernst, he's cold. You're cold, aren't you lad? And I'm sure he's got the hunger. Deep hunger. For a huge cookie perhaps, or some jerky. In either case, we've got work to do." He puffed impatiently on his own cigar as I nodded and sucked deeply.

"Right-o, my brother." Ernst tossed his still burning stub deep into the night and stepped into the plane. "All aboard!"

We flew into the dawn light, as I gobbled jerky, Corn Nuts and washed it down with Pepe Juice. Nervously, I peeled the letter off my chest, the tape yanking small hairs out by their roots. I unfolded it on the floor in front of me and read while Julian and Ernst sat up front, flying and farting and inventing lewd limericks. What follows is a verbatim translation of the original Semitic language mixed with Spanglish that the letter was written in (how I translated ancient Semitic will be discussed later).

"To whom it may concern. You are the keymaster. Seventeen years ago today there was an incident, the details of which are unimportant, save that it created the voidbeast known to those of us in our sect as AL HOG. We've been monitoring the activities of the AL HOG from afar, and have determined that yesterday, it became sentient. You must stop this from happening. How you do it is not important, but it is important that you do it. Please confirm your success by logging onto The Internet using this free 30-day trial of AOL (my fingers followed the edges of the 3.5" disk attached to the letter by a wad of Bubble-Eez Bubble Gum). You can find us in the Sports and Hobbies portal, or contact us in the General Lobby Chat Room #69."

There was no signature, a fact that haunted my dreams as the plane bobbed through the air towards a destination I did not know.

MORE ACTION, MORE ADVENTURE! COMING NEXT IN THE UPCOMING ISSUE OF "TOMORROW NEVER HAPPENS"!

Hitler Gets a Freelance Job

Taken from Mark Montgomery's facebook wall.

Hero Action Persons Cover

New cover for the book!