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Collaboration Comics Musings Process

Hématite – Part 1

During the last few months of 2017, Federico and I began to develop a story for a comic centered around a vampire girl. We thought it would be interesting to do a few posts about the project to share its journey, both its visual development and our experience in trying to get it published, and talk a bit about the things we learned along the way.

Federico came up with the initial concept for the story, and while the final plot changed quite a bit as we fleshed it out and expanded on it over time, it basically involved the idea of this vampire girl falling in love with a human, and a couple of subsequent events that I’m gonna keep under wraps to avoid spoilers. This early seed of a story gave us a starting point, and as we artists are wont to do, we started making some sketches, drawing and painting in search of our main character, and the mood and feel we wanted for our comic. Many ideas for a story or for its scenes can develop from visual explorations.

The first drawings I ever made of Hématite were these (plus a little sketch of Emile’s head — he’s the human she falls for):

Shortly after, I drew this character, a very early version of what would become Drunela, Hématite’s best friend (and another Emile!):

Drunela was initially just a different kind of vampire (more Nosferatu inspired) but as we continued to develop the universe of this story, we decided she needed to be something else — someone our vampires wouldn’t approve of: a ghoul.

I made a few early mood tests during my #septempera challenge of 2017:

And a couple more during my relaxed #inktober after that. As you can see in the previous images, I was searching for the right animal companion for Hématite, and here I found it! I also started to get closer to the final look of our heroine:

Later I made a quick first style test and drew this little sequence based on the outline we were putting together, but it left us both very unconvinced. I was not happy with the results at all. Federico did the colors for it and it improved some but still — the whole thing felt off:

We concluded that we liked the look of my previous Inktober images more, and switched to inking with a nib. I made this test and we both though that it quite captured the direction we wanted. The coloring style was not right yet but it felt like a solid place to build from.

So much, in fact, that we ended up including an updated version as a panel in the final comic:

And that’s where the thing pretty much took off! By now we had a decent idea of what sort of story we wanted to tell, and the style we wanted for it. We were ready to tackle some *actual pages*!

To be continued in Part II!

Categories
Illustration News

Coming back

Lumpy Space Ride

Mulita_VMaderna

Mulita_print_photo

This blog has been pretty much abandoned for quite a while, we’ve been hanging around Tumblr (my Tumblr and Federico’s, in case you’re interested) and other social media sites, but lately we’ve found ourselves missing this space. So we have decided to revive it, and give a little more love to our shop as well in the process.
So I thought I’d share some of the things that I added there today: the original painting for the Adventure Time cover which was one of my last posts in this blog, and a print for a piece I hadn’t posted here yet: my painted envelope for Mail Me Art 3. The original piece sold and the proceeds went to charity, but a lot of people seemed to like it so I thought I’d offer it as a print as well.

Anyway, hello again everyone! And expect some more news and changes around here soon!

Nuestro blog ha estado prácticamente abandonado desde hace rato, con toda la oferta de social media dando vueltas dejamos de prestarle demasiada atención y nos hemos centrado sobre todo en Tumblr (por si acaso: mi Tumblr y el de Fede) pero en estos últimos tiempos nos dieron ganas de retornar a este espacio y revivirlo un poco, y de paso ver si nuestra tienda recibe algo de cariño en el proceso.
Así que se me ocurrió, como primer intento, compartir un poco las cosas que agregué hoy allí: el original de la tapa que hice para el comic de Adventure Time, y que es una de las últimas cosas que subí al blog; y esta impresión de una ilustración que no había posteado nunca acá: el sobre que pinté para Mail Me Art 3. El original se vendió y los fondos fueron a caridad, pero como a mucha gente le gustó la ilus me pareció que estaría bien ponerla también como impresión.

En fin, hola de nuevo a todos! Ya pronto añadiremos más novedades y haremos algunos cambios por estos pagos.

Categories
Illustration

What time is it?

Adventure Time!!! Here’s the variant cover I made for the Adventure Time comics! It’s for issue #10, will be out in November. Acrylic gouache on paper, hope you like! Some details as well, for good measure.

Tiempo de Aventuras!!! He aquí la portada alternativa que hice para el número #10 del comic de Adventure Time! Sale en Noviembre. Es gouache acrílico en papel, y les van también algunos detallitos porque sí. Espero que les guste!

Categories
Illustration

Alter Ego & Urban Sanctuary

Hi there! Here’s a couple of images I created for the collaborative blog The Clockwork Ballroom. They are topic #1: Alter Ego and topic #5: Urban Sanctuary. I’m on a personal quest to gain enough confidence in traditional media to produce most of my work this way; I don’t mind coloring and retouching digitally for the most part, but I still want to do as much as I can directly on paper cause I enjoy it a lot more, so I’m using these to further my adventures in that direction 🙂 First one (the comic addicted pig girl) is acrylic gouache on paper and the second one (balcony full of plants) is ink and watercolour on paper. Hope you like ’em!

Hola a todos! He aquí un par de ilustraciones que hice para el blog colectivo The Clockwork Ballroom para los temas #1: Alter Ego y #2: Urban Sanctuary. Estoy en una especie de quest personal cuyo objetivo es ganar la suficiente confianza con medios tradicionales como para hacer la mayor parte de mi proceso de este modo; generalmente no me molesta usar la compu para colorear y retocar pero quiero tratar de hacer todo lo que pueda directamente sobre papel porque la paso mucho mejor, así que estas cositas son mis intentos de seguir mis aventuras en esa dirección 🙂 La primera imagen (la chica-cerdo adicta a los comics) es gouache acrílico sobre papel, y la segunda (el balcón lleno de plantas) es tinta y acuarela sobre papel. Espero que les gusten!

Categories
Illustration

Deathgate – Promo Image

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