I created this comic book in 23 hours with the help of my girlfriend (she inked the pages) for 24 Hour Comic 2008. Click on any of the pages to see larger. If you start with the 1st page you can read the whole comic. Shazam!

This was the first year I participated in the 24 Comic Book Day. The goal was to create a full 24 page comic book in 24 consecutive hours. It was organized by 7000 BC and True Believers our local comic shop. There were over 20 artists who drew their own comics. We all met at Warehouse 21. A great community center for youth and the arts here in Santa Fe. There was even a small exhibition showcasing the comics we created.

I had a blast doing this and will definitely take part again this year. I can’t wait!

I’ve been collaborating with my friend Carlos Parra on the continuing story from his Dark New World film. The movie was created on a budget of $3,000 dollars. It was a great zombie movie. When Carlos decided he wanted to continue the story in a comic book I thought that was a great idea. He then asked me if I wanted to be a part of it. I didn’t even give it  a second thought. Of course I’d like to be a part of the Dark New World comic.

This video shows me drawing a character sketch to one of the new characters in the Dark New World zombie comic book. His name is Private Andrew Martinez. A survivor of the zombie apocalypse. From my understanding the first story arch will be centered around him. Carlos sent me several photos of military uniforms to inspire me. I took those photos and tweaked the regular US desert uniform for this character design.

Check out the Dark New World zombie comic book blog site to see the final character design drawing. The blogpost is: Andrew Martinez – Character Sketches.

-SHAZAM!

With the original Batman’s death in Final Crises there were many theories of who would take on the mantel. With the conclusion of Battle for the Cowl we learn that Dick Grayson officially become the new Batman. Grayson is the original Robin who has been going by the the name of Nightwing for over 20 years now. In the new ongoing comic Batman and Robin “Batman: Reborn” written by Grant Morrison we get to see Grayson as the new Batman with Bruce Wayne’s son Damian as the new Robin.

A few months ago I did a character redesign of Batman. It was for an on-line contest by Project Rooftop tilted Batman 2.0: The Dynamic Do-Over. Check out the contest winners.  I’ve communicated with a few of the other contestants by Twitter, Deviant art and personal blogs. Although my redesign didn’t place I had a real blast with this project.

I posted my final redesign in a previous post. I’ve decided to post my sketches and show the stages of my work for fun.

These were my initial sketches of the redesign. I was looking for a way to incorporate Dick Graysons’ personality form his Nightwing costume into his new Batman costume. Playing with the bat symbol going across his chest, the colors of the suit and adding more compartments for the bat gadgets on his boots and gloves.

Here is my final pencil drawing. I had a lot of fun with this adding shadows and highlights.

This is my actual first digital inking of a comic character I’ve ever done. You’d think I would have done it before being a graphic designer for over 10 years. But I always seemed to keep my computer design skills and my comic penciling separate. For this project I decided to go for it and try inking in photoshop. It was fun and I think I did a good job. I’ve actually started digitally inking in Illustrator now. I like working with vector because the  inking never loses sharpness.

With the inking done I moved on to creating grey tone flats. Flats are done to help the digital coloring of the peice. this way you can select a whole area and color it quickly. For fun I tried different color schemes for Batman’s new look.

This is the final stage of my Batman 2.0 character redesign. Again this was my first comic digital coloring. So I’m very proud of how it came out. The drawing is competently colored with shadows and highlights.

I learned alot with this project, but most importantly I had alot of fun.  – Shazam!