Page Eight Colored...

Page eight is colored, I'm lettering it right now...

Page Eight Touched Up Inks...

I've touched up the inks on page eight and I'm currently coloring it...

Page Seven Complete!

So at long last page seven is done.

Stickboy and Psychoboy head to the mall and end up at the arcade. The arcade is modeled off vague memories of Aladdin's Castle arcade, which was my real life first stop anytime I went to the mall in the 80's or 90's. I seem to remember the walls were a bright warm color, probably red, and employees wore red vests. The older gentlemen is based on the manager there (doesn't he just look like an arcade manager?) and he'd always have a younger guy there assisting him or watching the place if he wasn't there.

So another in-story brand I created was the arcade game Stick's fawning over: Space Chicken Massacre! It's a light gun game where you shoot killer mutant space chickens. I loved the concept because it was the one thing I could think of that was so absurd that no one would make a game of it. If I eventually do some of the longer stories for the series, Stick and the gang will go see Space Chicken Massacre the Movie at some point (think Aliens, but with killer chickens).

I took some artist license here with the military using videogames in its training. It's actually first person shooters they used, but an arcade game was much more visual, so I went with that. There were real calls for videogame censorship and, of course, this page imagines it as reality.

Ironically, a lot of modern arcades look like the one shown here, not out of censorship, but simply because arcade videogames declined as home consoles became more powerful and more popular. You might find a four-token racing game, a couple light gun games or a Pac-Man/Galaga cabinet in them but that's usually it as far as the videogames go.

And in the inside joke category, check out the claw machine with several Pokémon and Digimon in there. I told you there would be more 90's references than you can shake a stick at!

Next up is page eight when our heroes meet...Dante from Clerks?!?

Lettering Page Seven....

I'm lettering page seven today...

Political Cartoon-palooza! BYOP (Bring Your Own Paper)

Here's another cartoon with Stickboy in it, done for UNCP's student paper, The Pine Needle. This one is on a shift in policy that would've required students to bring their own paper to computer labs to print on. I don't recall if this was a proposed policy or one that was enacted, but it went over like a lead balloon with students who didn't like being nickled and dimed by a university they were paying thousands to.

The Concept Guys

Continuing with images from my YouTube video: Here's the image that The Badass was done for. It's three silhouettes representing different genres of ideas I've done plots for. The Badass represents crime comics. The other two guys represent fantasy and superhero concepts I have and are references to specific unpublished characters I've created.

This being the first art I'd done in years, I kept it as simple as possible, with silhouettes against a sunset...

The Badass

So they'll be no finished page until Wednesday or Thursday. In the meantime, I'll be posting some art, starting with some from my Introduction Video on YouTube. A lot of images appeared in there that either look cool or have a lot of history (or both).

This is one of them. I call him The Badass. I drew him for an image representing the different genres for concepts I've done plots for (and sometimes drawn penciled comics of). I've plotted some more grounded types of sci-fi concepts involving crime, and wanted that to be represented. I went with an assassin/enforcer type character, since I felt that would be immediately recognizable, even in shadow.

He was one of the first things I'd drawn in years and I didn't realize inking him with a normal pen wouldn't work well once he was scanned and colored in Photoshop. The lines weren't dark enough and confused the paint bucket and the image you see is what I got. It looked so cool I just kept it that way after turning the lines white.

He doesn't represent any specific character I've created, but he looks so cool I might come up a story up for him. Or if I ever do crime noir comics, he could be my cover corner box image.

Page Seven Colored...

So the colors on page seven are done. I doubt I'll get a chance to work on the lettering this weekend so most likely I'll be finishing this up on Wednesday or Thursday.

Page Seven Touched Up Inks

Just finished touching up the inks and I'm about to start on colors for page seven.

Touching up inks on page seven

I'm starting to touch up the inks on page seven now. I've been a bit under weather so I'm running behind.We'll see if I can still get the whole page done this week.