A few months ago I was vising my moms house where I found a box of old drawings I did when I was a kid. There were drawings I did of Veritech fighters from Robotech to comic book and super heroes. Last night I was looking though theses treasures from my childhood. I had a blast remembering how I’d stay up late, looking at my comics and wanting to create and recreate these awesome art works. One of the drawing that jumped out to me last night was this one of Iron Man. I drew this 20 years ago in 1989 when I was 14 years old.

In the late 80’s I was reading all the Marvel Comic I could get my hands on, but Iron Man was on the top of my favorites list. I’m a huge science fiction fan and Iron Man was a perfect meld of Sci-Fi and Comics. This drawing was a recreation of the cover of Iron Man 244, it was originally drawn by Bob Layton. I remember being blown away by the split screen showing Iron Man’s then current suit and his original grey one. I had to redraw it. So this is not a tracing, but a recreation of a cool comic cover. This is how I learned to draw. I’d look at a comic and try to recreate it. I didn’t take any art class when I was young, but I loved to draw.

Looking at this drawing I did as a bright eyed kid so many years ago really reminded me of the passion I had for comic book art back then. I feel very lucky that as an adult I haven’t lost that passion. I plan on posting more of my childhood drawing up, so keep an eye out. -PoW, Zap, Zooom!

A few months ago I decided to draw Vader’s Fist, the 501st Legion. I’m a huge Star Wars fan and wanted to draw something cool. I usually draw comic book characters but I think it was a fun change to draw some sci-fi stuff. The 501st Legion are cool because they are in the prequels, the original trilogy and the extended universe. They are the highest most elite Stormtroopers in the Empire. First starting off as the best clone troopers then as Darth Vader’s personal squad. Check out this article at Wookipedia to learn more about them.

This is my final digital inking of my original 11″x17″ drawing. I used my graphic design skills in adobe illustrator to ink the 501.  The original drawing was done with an HB woodless pencil. I  posted it in an earlier blogpost, Vader’s Fist – The 501st Legion – Pencil Drawing. Check it out if you’d like. What’s really cool is if you do a Google image search for “Vader’s Fist” the original pencils show up on page one.

For this digital inking I decided to use Adobe Illustrator. I’ve done inking in Adobe Photoshop before, but I find that I really like the way my digital inks look in illustrator. In illustrator your inking are in vector, this allows you to enlarge the image with not pixilation. So if I really wanted to I could make a print the size of a building and it would look awesome and sharp.

The tool I like to use in illustrator is the pen tool. I do have a wacom table, but I feel I have more control with the mouse and pen tool. It lets me create a smooth/jagged line in my piece. I work with anchor points to create curved lines, straight lines and solid shapes. There was some line work were I did use the brush tool with my wacom tablet, but most of this digital inking was done with the pen tool.

I’ve very happy with the way this digital inking came out. Ever since I moved to Santa Fe last year, I’ve felt a real recharge in my art work. The penciling and inking of Vader’s Fist, the 501st Legion is a great example of this. I had a real blast inking it. Shazam!

I am currently working on the comic book “Dark New World” with Carlos Parra. It’s a continuation of his independent zombie film. He’s introducing a lot of new characters into this awesome zombie infested comic world.

Here are the initial character design sketches for Private Andrew Martinez, one of the new characters from the mind of Carlos Parra. The character is a veteran of the recent Iraq war. He uses the skills and training he received from the armed forces to survive this Dark New World.

Private Andrew Martinez - Military Uniform

With these character design sketches I took into consideration Martinez’s military knowledge. Carlos sent me several photos of solders in uniform for the general look he wanted for Martinez. I used these references and modified them a bit to come up with his look while still keeping to the standard U.S. Army desert uniform. He’s in 30’s so I tried to show that in these sketches. He doesn’t look to old or to young.

Private Andrew Martinez

In a previous blog post I put up a video of me drawing this character design sketch, Caught on Video – Character Design Drawing.

Check out the Dark New World zombie comic book blog. We’ll be updating the status of the comic, posting more character design sketches, and eventually selling the comic there.

I was very fortunate to be able to attend the “MOVIES, GAMES, AND COMICS PANEL” this weekend at the Albuquerque Film Festival 2009. The speakers on the panel were T.Q. Jefferson: the Marvel Comics Director of Games, the Eisner-nominated Pander Brothers: Jacob and Arnold Pander, and a writer/director from Rogue Taurus Productions. It was a great relaxed panel where they told us about how they work with the story, licensing and marketing of their projects.

T.Q. Jefferson from Marvel Comics showed us a trailer to the new Iron Man 2 video game, which by the way rocked! He also showed some awesome character design concept art for Iron Man and Crimson Dynamo. He explained how the video game and the movie are both coming from the same place, but can still stand equally on their own. The story in the game is not a retelling of the new movie, but just a new adventure with the same characters and spirit from the movie. The game has been in development for over a year now, so the creators know the general idea of new movie but not the whole story. He hinted that the games for both the Thor and Captain America movies are already in development too.

I had missed seeing the the Pander Brothers last year when they came to the Santa Fe Film Festival with their award-winning identity theft thriller SELFLESS, so it was a nice surprise to see them on this panel. Jacob and Arnold Pander are both well established comic book writers and artists. They have worked for both Marvel and  DC, in film, video, animation design and illustration. Arnold Pander talked to us about his newest project Tasty Bullet, a graphic novel he’s working on with Jonathan Vankin. We got to see a really cool trailer for the graphic novel too. He also explained what type of promotions they have planned to bring readers to the book, including an ARG (Alternate reality game) and the creation of vintage commercials for the tasty drink. The graphic novel will be published by Image Comics.

Rogue Taurus Productions is an independent film company based in Albuquerque, NM. They have created several movies which were filmed in New Mexico. It was interesting to hear the writer/director from Rogue Taurus assessment that comics, video games and movies all come from the same place. The desire to tell a compelling and interesting story. He commented on how the beginning process are similar to each other, but they create completely different story telling mediums.

This was a great panel and I really had a fun time listening to what they had to say. I learned some new information regarding the creative writing process when it comes to licensing of properties. Thanks to the Production Central ABQ for hosting this panel through the Albuquerque Film Festival 2009.