Thor - digital inks of my pencils

Here are my digital inks of Thor, the God of Thunder. He’s one of  Marvel Comics main characters. A founding member of the Avengers and actually in the very first comic book I ever read. This is his new costume he’s wearing in his new monthly title.

This was a pencil drawing of Thor I did last week. It was a quick drawing using an HB wood-less Ebony pencil.  I traditionally use an H6 pencil for light tight penciling. For this I actually was able to achieve good detail with the softer lead. It’s good to get out of your comfort zone and try different drawing tools.

I inked this drawing digitally using Adobe Illustrator. I didn’t do it in one sitting. I took my time and did it in small spurts during the week. (Usually watching a Netflix movie on the side). I’ve only just recently started inking my drawings on the computer, which is ironic because being a Graphic Designer for over 10 years you’d think I would have done it years ago.

I like using Adobe Illustrator for inking, I know a lot of people use photoshop which is a great software too. The reason I use illustrator is because I like saving my inks as a vector image. Vector images are great because there’s no worries about pixelation. They are always super high resolution even if it’s reduced or enlarged.

For this inking I only used the pen tool with my mouse or Wacom tablet. It helps to give me the look I want to achieve. I like the sharp edges and thick to thin lines I get with it. There’s an amount of control I feel I have with the pen tool. I think in my next digital inking I will use only the bush tool. Like I said earlier it’s always good to try different tool. I plan on coloring this inks in the near future using Photoshop.

Thor - pencil drawing by Ralph Contreras

Here’s a pencil drawing I did of Thor the God of Thunder from Marvel Comics. It’s his new costume he’s been wearing since his return to his own monthly title.  Which by the way is a very excellent read.

This drawing started off as me just sketching while watching a movie, but became more detailed as I got into the drawing. I totally lost interest in the movie. I have recently been drawing mainly with an H6 Staedtler wood pencil, but for this drawing I decided to try a different lead. I actually used a much softer pencil, an HB wood-less Ebony.

I tried not to sharpen the pencil or use an eraser much. I started off with a very light sketch and build on top of it adding details and shadows. The lines on this drawing are much thicker then I usually do. Using a softer lead was a challenge for me, but I really like the results. I’m excited to digitally ink this in Illustrator. I will make sure to post the inked version when I’m done.

Comic books have always seemed to be an important part of my life in one form or the other. I’ve been a fan of the stories, the rich character development and histories, of course the art work, a hardcore collector, and I even owned and ran my own comic shop for years. My all time dream is to be able to create my own comic book or be involved in the creative part of the industry. I am in the process of achieving that dream, and with hard work and determination I know I’ll reach my dream.

When looking back at my love affair with the comic book genre I realized that I actually remember the very first comic book I read. This was 25 years ago and I was like 9 years old. I didn’t go to any comic shops and I wasn’t actively looking for a comic book. I was just at home being a nerdy kid playing with my Star Wars toys. My aunt Ruth came over to my house for a visit. She handed me a stack of comics. They were taken from her husband who was a comic book collector. She was clearing out space at her home and thought I might like them. I had never really been interested in comic books before, sure I had watched Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends as well as  the Super Friends cartoon. So I knew about superheroes, but this was my first introduction to the amazing world comic (sequential) story telling.

The very first comic I read from the stack of comics she gave me was The Mighty Avengers 242. So this is officially the first comic book I ever read.

I remember the cover caught my eye because I wanted to know who the shadow figure was and why everyone looked so shocked. What I also remember most about this issue was the introduction of Mockingbird by Hawkeye to the Avengers. It was a good introduction issue for a new reader like myself.

There wasn’t really a lot of action in this issue, but there was a compelling story. The comic showed me how this group were friends and close like family. This can only really be showed in a long running story. So I wanted to know more about these characters.

It ends with Captain America, Wasp, She-Hulk, Thor, Captain Marvel and Hawkeye heading to a strange structure in Central Park New York and getting zapped away. As a kid I didn’t know what was happening, did they die or what?

The next comic book I read was Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars 1. With a great cover like that you’d think it would’ve been the first one I’d read. It’s actually my good fortune that I  read this comic next. The Avengers 242 leads right into this one. You can imagine my pleasant surprise to discover the Avengers didn’t die but were instead transported to an arena with a lot of  other super heroes.

Again being that this was my first time reading comic books it was great to start with this issue too.  It introduced me to all the major characters (heroes and villains) in the Marvel Comics universe. With a quick synopsis of who they were and what they were all about.

The premise of Secret Wars was that of a super cosmic being named the Beyonder and how he gathered earths greatest heroes and villains to basically fight to the death. The winner would receive their hearts desire. I remember how Galactus flies to attack the entity and is swap like an insect. As a 9 year old kid, this just blew me away.

The third comic I read was probably the most famous of the lot. Amazing Spider-Man 252. As most people know (well at least the one’s in comic book circles) this is the first appearance of Spider-Man’s black suit. Which we later learn is actually an alien Symbiote life form. Years later the suit eventually becomes one of Spider-Man’s deadliest villains named Venom.

I was familiar with Spider-Man from his Saturday morning cartoon series on tv, but this Spider-Man was very different. This Peter Parker was much grittier. He wasn’t as go lucky as I had known him from the cartoon.  With the addition of this black suit the charter just seemed darker to me.

I remember the first page of the comic shows the Daily Bugle with the headline about missing super heroes. This issue takes place after the event of Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars. So I was excited to know that Spider-Man would survive the Secret War. This was my first Spider-Man comic I had ever read and I was very intrigued by how different it was, I was super excited to read more.

The final comic in the group my aunt gave me was the one that showed me the depth of story telling and character development that could be found in comic books. Sure I was only a kid but the story really blew me away and I knew this was something special. The comic was Phoenix the Untold Story and my introduction to the world of mutants and the X-Men.

This story is a reprint of Uncanny X-Men 137 with the original attended ending. It takes place after the Dark Phoenix Saga and is where Jen Grey is judged for her crimes as Phoenix. Like the Avengers comic I read, this group of heroes were more than just teammates, they were a family.

This comic book takes us through the minds of all the heroes, showing their hopes and dreams. It shows the love that Jean and Scott have for each other and the pain her loss will bring to the whole group. The X-Men fight against aliens with their own powers for Jean’s life. In the end she sacrifice’s herself before the darkness that was Phoenix could return to harm her friends.

As I look back at these first comic books I read, I fully realized how lucky I was. These were ground breaking stories and a great way to start my life as a comic book reader. I had no knowledge that comic book stores existed back then so every time my parents would put gas I’d look for the comic section. I didn’t care if the comics were bent (which they usually were) I was just excited to see what cool new stuff was out. I remember there was a gas station named the Good Time Store and it’s logo was a big smiley face. That’s where I always found the latest issues to Secret Wars.

It’s been a great 25 years of comic reading. There have been so many great story archs and a few not so good, but it’s always been a huge pleasure. These stories have had the greatest visuals imaginable and anything is possible. I’ve read all the great character development through the heroes adventures and tragedies. Although I started as a Mavel Comics fan I now read other comic companies like DC, Dark Horse and so many Independent comics. I know that the next 25 years and most likely the rest of my life I will enjoy reading comic books. They are our modern mythology and I thank my Aunt Ruth for introducing them to me. Shazam!

Last week I was working on character design sketches for one of my characters named Nemcromn. These were drawn in a pocket sketchbook I carry around. I thought it would be cool to upload these to show the steps in my thought process when designing what I want a character to look like.

These are sketches of Nemcromn’s Face. I did a 3/4 view, a front view and a profile. I was trying to capture a sinister look. He wears a skullcap. His face has two major scars and his left cheek has a one that stretches to his ear. He’s a mystic Zombie Necromancer so I tried to reflect this in his skin by making it look a little rotten. He also has no pupils.

Here’s a front full body view. I like to draw a quick sketch of the form, then I can start customizing the characters look. When I originally came up with Nemcromn’s look a few years ago I was really into Brom’s art work. With his industrial mystic goth creatures and characters .

Here’s a sketch of Nemcromn with a little more detail. The skullcap stretches to cover his upper chest as well. He has leather straps wrapped around his waist and chest. The chest traps hold a small cape that goes over his left shoulder. Like the sketches of his face, Nemcromn’s body is that of a corpse.  I wanted to show the scars and stitches that cover his entire body.

So who is Nemcromn? In life he was a Stephen Boyle, a wealthy adventurer who traveled the world looking for new and exciting challenges. Rock climbing, deep sea, and sky diving. He wanted to experience any and all he could. He began to get bored with theses type of challenges and started to look inward and beyond. This route took him to dark places and eventually to the study of life beyond death. Using his vast fortune he bought all the knowledge he could in the study of life, death and the undead. He became a powerful living necromancer and his studies taught him of the dark power that coexist with all life. In these studies he learned of celestial object traveling though space that could increase his power 1,000 times that of what he could possibly achieve on his own.

He discovered that one of these objects would fall to earth. Planning on taking the energies from the fallen object, Nemcromn using his original identity took 6 of his childhood friends on a dangerous hike up the mountain where he knew it would arrive. Like his former self his friends were also adventures in extreme sports. Planning on sacrificing them and using their life forces to bond with the energies Nemcromn made a fatal miscalculation. The object fell to earth sooner then he thought, hitting the group and killing everyone but two of his companions. Nemcromn died in the impact that day. The power he craved was completely absorbed by one of the survivors, John McCarran. McCarran used the power to become one of earths most beloved heroes, The Radiant Guardian.

Nemcromn who was now a master of life and death was not so easaly defeated. No one knew of his secret life and Stephen Boyle was buried at his family plot. Several weeks after the funeral Nemcromn the lord of the dead dug himself out of the grave. He was now a powerful mystic zombie with more power then he had when he was alive. The necromancer used his dark knowledge to escape the afterlife. Now with a new purpose, he wants the destruction of The Radiant Guardian and the complete control of the world’s dead and living. He works in the shadows sending agents both dead and alive to set his plans into motion.

A few days ago my girlfriend was cleaning one of my old portfolio cases. I had told her she could use it for a collections class she is taking this semester.  As she was taking out my old work that was still in the portfolio case she noticed there were some ads I created for my old comic book shop “Modern Age Comics”.  I had created them few years back and I had totally forgot that they were in there. They were actually pretty good and I’m kinda proud of them. So I’ve decided to post them in this blog as a walk down memory lane and to showcase some of my old comic shop work.

This black and white flyer is actually the very first flyer I created for my store. I created it in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. The images are halftone dots. I have always been very fond of using halftone dots. I remember making hundreds of xerox copies of this flyer and plastering them all over town and the university which was across the street from the shop. I had a lot of fun with this flyer. I remember choosing the image of Catwoman for this flyer because she had a great pose and I choose Guko from Dragon Ball Z because he was in a very dynamic shot.

This second flyer is actually the back of a magazine named the “Green Frog”. This is from the very first issue of this NMSU student created magazine. I was approched by the magazine’s editor-in-chief who was also the marketing director. I wanted to make this ad a little more youthful and found a great image of Marvel Girl and Spider-Man in more updated costumes. This was a full color ad and I used a red header that complemented the red in Spider-Man’s costume. I liked the targeting image I choose with the anime chacter too. This was a fun ad to create.