SHAMWOW

As readers of this blog may or may not remember, I'm planning on making a graphic novel for my portfolio. This idea sort of fell on its ass for a while and I haven't been doing anything with it, but then about a week ago I spontaneously started drawing again. I've been reading drawing books on the human body, so that when I draw people, they won't look like stiff action figures. Let me tell you, trying to memorize all the muscle groups and getting it all to look right is really fucking hard. I sort of put it aside to begin with just because it was so frustrating.

Then yesterday, it literally just 'clicked.' I sat down, and I got it, I knew exactly what to do. I don't agonize over which line goes where anymore, I know where the muscle groups are supposed to be, and I do it.

Forgive the shitty digital camera photos, my scanner is currently out of commission.


I think I might need to work my on shading a bit more, but that's okay, because this is going to be in black and white, so it's not like the shading gradients need to be all that detailed anyway. I think my biggest problem is that I overthink fucking everything, and I obsess over the smallest little things that no one even cares about. Hopefully once I get into cartoony mode and begin to develop a style of my own, all of that will be drowned out.

I still can't decide if I'm going to ink everything on paper, or scan them and do it in Illustrator. I read that doing it digitally is gaining popularity, but it takes a lot longer. I might just have to invest in a tablet.

I'm really happy with these. I haven't started on the concept art for the novel yet, but I don't think that phase is too far off if I keep this up. Perspective still confuses me a bit though, so I'm going to nail that down before I start designing the weapons and ships and junk. I want this depiction of the future to be somewhat realistic, so I'm reading a couple books right now written by a collection of engineers and scientists speculating on what human colonization of space will look like. I also need to learn how to draw clothes. That's the whole point of drawing half naked people, once you're familiar with how the body moves and curves, it all just falls into place, because clothing just wraps around everything (you have to pretend it isn't on a flat plane and think three-dimensionally). I also won't really delve into this until I go through some actual professional work (Transmetropolitan, Walking Dead, The Boys) so I can actually have an idea of what I'm supposed to be doing. This is fun as hell.