Eat at Uma's blog of power: January 2007

Oh snap.

Been one of those busy-ass school/work weeks. Hope to be able to post sometime next week, since I'll be in Niagara for the weekend. Have fun, one and all =)

--doomz

POST #250.

*Casey Palmer has just discovered that you can add multiple pics to a blog in one go*

Well THAT saved me a lot of time. DAMN. Why didn't anyone tell me about this before?!

Anyway.

250 posts!!!

Mm. That's a whole lotta posts, people! So as I sit here sippin' on some Sprite, chewin' on some Pocky, and slicin' out pages from some old VIBE magazines so I can later use them as reference for future pieces, let me take a break for a sec to get some more random sketches on the hard drive posted up for your potential enjoyment!

One thing I've always enjoyed doing for Fish N Chimps is sketching out potential storyboards for future storylines. I'll show you a bit about how I go about it below.

(1) It doesn't show in the strips I have up right now (which, granted, are years old by now), but as time has gone on, I've developed a more cinematic view for Fish N Chimps. I pretty much have the loose groundwork for the full story in my head and sketched out in various notes in my room - it just needs to be translated into comic form for everyone to enjoy. In this one below, it's the intro scene for a couple of characters - Chisel & Trim. I won't give too much away about them, though. Prior to this scene, I've used the common comic foreshadowing effect of having them drawn in black beforehand, and then not fully revealing them until this scene. They would both show up in the third panel behind Nick - it's supposed to be a market square full of people to better camouflage them.

(2) I also do a lot of practice with dialogue. Half my life is spent telling jokes, anyway, so despite the fact that I'm now trying to tell a story with my work, I definitely want to keep interlacing a lot of humour into it. If I didn't, it wouldn't be reflective of my vision. My goal for Fish N Chimps is for it to be a culmination of all my different creative abilities, which I'll keep trying to develop over time.

(3) But more often than not, it'll just be a single dialogue-less scene I wish to capture. Something I don't want to forget that's integral to my storyline. Seeing them separately often doesn't make much sense, but they're lynch pins in the path of my story when I place them in the grand scheme of things.

(4) Same goes for here.

Anyway, yes - I have things to do, not so much places to be, but you never know with me.
Hope everyone's having a day full of AWESOME.

Until next time!

--doomz

What the hell is this new version of Blogger?

Maybe we should try it out. I dunno - just an idea. So yeah, just on stopover at home before I go out against for a night of fesitivities and likely drunkenness. Right. So after getting that iPod, iTunes has been steady running me for the better part of the week. But I still try to get things done here and there. Keep some progress happening. Can't just sit on my ass and organize my music all day, right?

(returns home)

So now that I'm back, it's POSTING TIME!

(1) So I try to draw my dudes in action poses and sequences here and there to get a feel for what I think it might look like. I need to do a lot more skate and snowboarding studies to really get a feel for Nick down, and how his particular style works. Here he's supposed to be tricking on either a hoverboard, or some piece of plastic he found somewhere or something. Gotta know how to improvise, right?

(2) People tell me that a recurring theme in my work is that I like to put in a lot of little details. One of my coworkers called me "meticulous" today while we were out. I guess she's right. I like to do clothing studies when I have time to really get a feel for how clothes are designed, worn, and the personalities they fit to. So freaking versatile and varied. I love it.

(3) A lot of this stuff is idly drawn while in class or on the bus or whatever. Just wherever the mind wanders to. I wish I could use my Microns while riding the bus - I'd get so much more done. But it is what it is.

(4) I even sketch at work, but it usually looks like crap 'cause I don't have time to do anything too spectacular:

Sorry, y'all. Crazy tired.

Hope Sunday goes well for everyone!

--doomz

It's been a long time - shouldn't have left you...

...without a dope beat to step to. Step to. Step to. Step step step step to. Step to. Tiki-tik!

Yeah, so it's been such a long time since I've posted anything up that I don't even know what I haven't posted. So many random freaking files on this computer. It's ridiculous. I've gotta start consolidating (oh god, I SO work at a bank) them into bigger pictures, so that shit's not all over the place. Shit.

But enough of that. First, I'll go take a break to eat some dinner!

(Intermission)

Righto. So I think four images will be what's what for today. They're mostly just a collection of sketches that have been inked. Nothing TOO horribly exciting, I'm afraid.

So here goes!

(1) Yeah, I was sketching a little bit of everything for a bit. This was done while watching an episode of Bleach from a year or two ago. This guy was an ass, but I liked his look enough to just do a quick study of him, which I inked. It matches the likeness of dude from the anime pretty well.

(2) I'm pretty sure I posted the pencils for this before, but I tried inking some of it to really get the idea of underwater motion down, which is implied by the use of the bubbles. I eventually just scrapped it, because of major anatomy flaws and boredom. Heh. But I like where it was going - I'll try to incorporate it later on.

(3) And when all else fails, draw random headshots. I don't even know what I was thinking on this one. Kyle in a cardigan, because he's a rich bastard. That's probably along the lines of what I was thinking. I should really branch out and try drawing a lot of different stuff, though - drawing just the four dudes is probably unhealthy for my skills.

(4) Which brings us to another anthro character altogether - the MAN-DHOLE! I was trying to see what other characters I could draw in an anthropomorphic style, so I flipped through one of my animal picture books and came up with the dhole - I think it lives in South Africa or something. Business dhole by day, PARTY DHOLE BY NIGHT!

Get your freak on!

Ha ha ha ha. And so closes another post! Back to trying to keep my computer from dying!

Adios amigos!

--doomz

lineart for a jam on Void

lineart...

page 1 of Void battle...I procrastinated on this page so long the quality is like 1000xs better than the rest of the battle D:

finished version of Ino and Sakura pic...

I dunno. Blogger needs some notification feature or something.

So here I am, once again. Happy new year and all to everyone :) So I did the vanishing act again. Yeah, I'm pretty horrible for that. But right now, I sit here before my computer cross-legged, a picture that I'm inking sitting on my lap, my new iPod and Canon Powershot G7 sitting on the floor unopened, wondering in which direction I should travel for the upcoming year.

Clare's been on my ass (like, literally - if it were any closer, it'd be prison rape) about getting that Wacom tablet of mine in gear, but I keep telling her that there's something that needs to be taken care of first before I do this. I tend to lug around a file folder (Perry Ellis, no less) of drawings that are incomplete. As of some point in December, I decided that it was time to get all these pictures done and dealt with, and move on with my art so that I could progress in 2007.

So far, I've gotten more taken care of than I have in a long time. Pages are getting gradually cleaned up; I've worked out storyboard for future Fish & Chimps stories; old FNC pages are getting inked up and completed; and soon, I'll finally be able to add some new work to my aging portfolio =)

So yes, maybe I'll start posting again and seeing if I can get things up and running once more. My New Year's resolution was simply one solitary statement, and I'm going to see how well I can adhere to it.

"To improve."

Hope to see you soon,

--doomz

baLING

I've not done life drawing for a while, so it took a few drawings to get back into the swing of things, but I'm happy with how it turned out. And the bottom one is just me pretty much making fun of how you'll see rap stars posing with girls and 'dolla dolla bills ya'll' and such, and it's even worse when white guys from the suburbs do it trying to be rap stars. Anyways, as always, enjoy!