Comic WIP

Couple of test pages for a webcomic I hope to launch very very soon. Just seeing what I can do in a limited amout of production time.

Vera Milla

Okay, forget everything you may have heard about not doing the painterly thing again. Apparently, I suck at such predictions.

I've been in desperate need of a new desktop for quite some time now, one starring my newest spy lady character. Yes, I know she looks like the esurance chick, but I hope I've at least made Vera not as annoying as she is.

Had to assemble quite a few reference images for this one. First off was the pose, which I got from this lovely photo by Then I dug up some head shots of Milla Jojovich, plus a frame from some old concert footage of Lady Miss Kier of Deee-Lite for the hair. Finding decent reference for her shiney leather catsuit was strangely very hard. I would've though there'd be an abundance of suitable images now that we're living in the future and stuff. Had to dig up some stills of the four chick jewel thieves from Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. Even then, I don't think I followed it too closely. I think I made Vera a bit more diffuse, just because I likes the slightly grainy textute I was getting with the dodge/burn tool.

May update this one later. Want to design a sidekick for her. Got something in mind, so hopefully it'll be up soon.

The Negotiator

Been awhile since I posted here, been spending too much time at deviantArt, so I thought I'd shared the love this time.

This one came to me in a dream. Popped into my head for an instant, then I told a friend about it, who finally clued me in to the fact that it would probably make a decent next project. Had to fudge the scale of the saber handle a bit in order to get it in the frame and still have room to show some of the blades.

As good a job as Ewan did in the prequels, Sir Alec is the definitive Obi-Wan, even if he had his misgivings about the ensuing fandom that sprung up as a result of Star Wars.

Sir Alec has always been one of my favorite actors. He did a near perfect Hitler in the made for TV film 'Hitler:The Last Ten Days." I even read someplace that he considered the Hitler role to be his favorite of his own performances. He also did a turn as Jacob Marley in "A Christmas Carol" and, of course, his acclaimed appearance in "Bridge On The River Kwai."

Sometimes I try to imagine what the prequels would've been like if they could've somehow cloned a young Alec for the role. THAT would've been sweet methinks. It almost would've redeemed George for the whole Jar-Jar debacle...almost.

It's late. I collapse now...*thud*

Unfaithful

For those who might be wondering, I've been posting on deviantArt lately. Really liking it there. Still wanna post here, but it might just be highlights from what I put up there, at least for awhile. I like have a couple of different places for my art, each for different audiences, though I'd have to change/delete a few of the pics on here to make that premise work. ^^;

The link is down to the right, where it says "Lotsa Lotsa Links", silly!

Sketches!

More characters for my RP thread that I 'borrowed' from other, better works. Kovacs should be obvious to anyone who reads comics and/or keeps track of trailers for certain anticipated film adaption of a particular comic. Ethan is Samantha's younger brother, who's teamed up with Kovacs who, in my RP, has his own reasons for hunting Sam.

In the RP, Kovacs does NOT don his familiar 'face' nor does he go by his hero name. I wanted someone rugged and fit, and the unmasked Kovacs seemed to fit the bill. I also used Hugh Laurie from House as another model and merged the two of them. Thanks goes out to Kittyhawk of SGVY for suggesting him!


Playing around with expressions and how to draw her head from different angles. Her hair was tricky to get to work, but I hope I came up with something that's distinctive and easy to make.

Meet Winston...

He's Vera's new magical animal guide. Acquired from a Sharper Image store in the mall, he's the best Hermod could come up with on short notice, plus he had a discount card.

Right now, he's helping Vera survive in the forest by procuring food for her. (Hey, he's trying!)

Winston's primary job is reconnaissance, stealthfully checking out enemy positions from above with his highly attuned optic sensor eye thingies. Unfortunately, he's a wind-up model and his spring does tend to give out at the worst possible times.

He has other abilities, but I'll elaborate more on the RP thread later. As of now, it's 1:58 am and my creative ideas are getting a bit too random, even for me.

...and there!

Really like how these came out! Quick, easy and looking pretty darn slick IMHO.

Who are they? What's their story? Let's just say they're related, know each other very well, but have never met face to face. May reveal more to those who don't already know in future postings.

Beginning to think more and more that Flash is the best thing I've used yet for doing a cell-shaded look. Works great with either a Wacom or Cintiq and you don't end up tempted to play around with a lot of filters and effects. You just draw (and finish) the thing! I just might end up doing my comic this way, if I can get around my latest bout of writer's block...

Holy crap, it's hot!

AC is out again. Seems to be a karmic cycle for me. Every summer, no matter where I'm staying, an AC unit that I depend on for my very sanity either at work or home is destined to break down, and as always, it does so at the hottest time of the year. Got the fan blowing and the windows open, but I'm sweating off pounds just sitting here. Yucky, I know...

Anyhoo, enough of that....ARTWORK!!!!

New character(s) for a new RP thread! Well, more like an RP thread reboot, but still! Will tidy up and render, of course.

I'm very excited about developing this new storyline. I've learned a lot from the mistakes I made on the previous thread and now I think it's going to pay off.

And Voila!

Or voila-ish. I was going to do a beach background, but my inner-laziness got the better of me, besides the fact that I just don't like having to do backgrounds. I'm all about the characters, baby.

Cheesecake!

It's Jane and Sam: The Swimsuit Special Spectacular! Yay!

Feeling more confident on clean up for the lineart. Maybe that will carry over into the color/shading phase. ^^;;

Samantha's Bane

Her so-called magical animal is looking for a nap at the moment.

Still working on updating her look. It's getting closer, but I may play around with it more.

Too tired to post much today. Nice to get some more artwork up here after so long.

Sneakers 1992-2008

Glorious, Life Like-ish Color...

And yes, that's the logo for The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Be Touched by his Noodley Appendage...

Got a chance with this drawing to play around with Flash as an illustration platform. It works well most of the time, but there's still an issue with lines that you hope are being drawen smooth and thin being interpreted as big fat blotches. Methinks that the software wasn't design to keep up with how fast a user is used to drawing using a sketchbook. Between that that the not too infrequent crashes, there's a few kinks left to iron out. That being said, I still feel way more loose and comfortable drawing-wise in Flash than if I tried it in Illustrator. Eww...

Got another Kate in the works. Might be a bit too ambitious because there's some effects I'm having to learn how to pull off, but I'm feeling more confident lately about challenging myself. If it turns out, it may end up as an alternative desktop. We shall see...

The Wrath of Kate

Two posts in one month?! Whoa! *dodges snowballs tossed by Satan, made possible due an abundance of snow in his unholy neck of the woods*

Been awhile since I posted actual art up here, so now I got my yearly quota out of the way. :P This sketch features the return of Kate, who was last seen in an earlier post and is a character in an RPG thread I occasionally post in. Not to put words in her mouth or to dictate to the audience what she's actually saying, but she's obviously a little peeved...

"Why yes, I'm well aware that some of the other girls are a bit jealous of me. It's NOT what I had in mind this year..."

Maybe I'll explain further at some future point. On the drawing side of it, I got to play with the Cintiq on this one. Flash and Cintiq seem to go real well together for me. There are a few annoyances, but nothing to make me turn to Illustrator *shudders*. Also, I've been practicing on drawing hands lately and I'm just starting to feel a teeny bit more comfortable with getting all the fingers into an expressive, natural position. Still need reference to pull them off, probably always will.

The Changing of the Reel

Though it pains me to do so, the time has at last come to retire my college era demo reel. Yay, though it hath served me well (eventually landing me my first professional animation gig), alas time has only made me see how much I didn't know back then. The guy in the orange Barney suit just moves all over the place instead of gesturing with anything resembling intelligible intent (though I guess it works for that particular character :P) The little puppet bit near the end of Dementia is still one of my favorite moments. The rest is either non-character work or stuff I could never get rendered, due to end-of-semester deadlines and (at the time) skill level restrictions.

But fear not! A new reel consisting of actual 'professionally made' material has been procured for your amusement.

This is but an early draft consisting of the best clips I currently have handy. As new stuff becomes available, I'll be tossing it in with the rest.

This will also serve as the vanguard for the newly redesigned piercedbrains.com site, which is also in desperate need of a make-over. Been training myself in Flash secretly, at night. (crap, shouldn't have posted that, ahh well...)

Won't be making anything too Flash-y (groan), but it'll hopefully be enough to allow me some control over the design of the key elements. I know I could go the easy route and just throw in some Google/Flickr plug-ins, but I guess I have a thing about sending the link to my supposedly professional site to a potential employer and having it just be a link to a Flickr page or be it's own page but have 'powered by Google' watermarks all over everything. Just call me Mr. Control Freak...

Testing out a photstream plug-in

Ahh, survived 2007...whew!

And what better to ring in the New Year than with a little ditty by Mr. Leonard Nimoy and Friends!