Kentucky...Horace Kentucky

I've recently been collaborating with a cool guy named Dakota Brown who I met via e-mail.  I've been working on a couple comic ideas of his, but in the meantime he commissioned me to do a piece of artwork for his podcast/radio drama Horace Kentucky's Chronal Detective Agency.

At first listen you might be like me and think it's your standard, noir detective tale, but suddenly you're dealing with time-travelling goose eggs and the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  If you're a fan of imaginative, interesting, absurd but always entertaining radio serials then check it out.  He's got about 9 episodes up on iTunes for free.

So here we have (from left to right) Winnie, the deep-voiced drunk, Ricky the cowboy actor, THE Queen Victoria, and the titular detective Horace Kentucky.  At least this is what I pictured while giving the show a listen.  

Again, all characters are creations of the talented Dakota Brown- this is merely fan art.

One Eye To Rule Them All...

It's been a while since I've posted on here!  I'm going to have to be better about that this year.  Kind of related- I've set a goal for myself to do at least one drawing a day for the entire year.  So far, so good.  They're all in my sketchbook by my bed.  Maybe I'll start slowly posting them on here, if I'm feeling ambitious. 

 Anyway, here's a redesign I did of Cyclops for a Fan-Art Friday over at Project Rooftop.  I feel it came off as kind of a cross between Robocop and a guy who directs aircraft on an aircraft carrier.  Aircraft Carrier Director?  Blah- who knows.

And here are a few of my initial sketches, and the subsequent line-art before I scanned it in and edited it in the Photoshops:
 

Let me know what you think in the comments!  For whatever reason, I really liked the colors I went with on this one- kind of different from what we've seen on Cyclops lately- kind of harkens back to his days in X-Factor

Terror in Black!

Once again, it's been a while since I've uploaded any art to my blog here.  I'd like to say it's because I've been busy, but mostly I've been feeling lazy/unmotivated lately.  Anyway- I'm trying to get some discipline and do at least an hour's worth of art everyday.  I threw together a quick submission to Project Rooftop's Black Terror Fan Art Friday:

I decided to emphasize the "terror" in Black Terror, making him more of a monster/brute that terrorizes the criminal element.  Anyway, it was fun to draw, and I tried to streamline some of his design elements. 

There's a Storm a-Brewin'!

Here's my entry to Project: Rooftop's Storm redesign contest.  My first thought was to make it where whenever Storm is using her powers, her hair kind of comes alive and becomes this crazy, living storm cloud.  I tried to convey that idea here, with varying degrees of success.   

When it came to her costume itself, I mostly tried to keep it sleek and basic black, with silver highlights.  The lightning bolt design on her chest let's you know what she's about (if the crazy hair and lightning bolts flying from her eyes and hands didn't already tip you off), and the flowing cape lends itself to the "living cloud" concept.

My weak attempt to illustrate her in cloud-form.  Though I'll admit, this illustration was a little rushed! 

Green Lantern: Emerald Ensemble

Here are my designs for Project Rooftop's Emerald Ensemble contest, in which they challenged artists to redesign Green Lantern (any incarnation).  Being indecisive, I decided (yay!) to redesign 4 different incarnations: Alan Scott, the Silver Age Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, who I consider to be the definitive Green Lantern, John Stewart (military man & architect) and Kyle Rayner (artist).  I came up with several different sketches for these but the following are my finished designs:


For Alan I wanted to give him a more regal, almost formal look.  I pictured him as the older mentor of the group, and wanted to reflect that in his costume.  I kept the red and green from his original look but ditched the yellow and the crazy disco color in favor of black and a more armored-looking collar.  I also loved how in the comic book "The Golden Age", they talked about Alan as this great powerhouse, so I hoped to convey some of that power here.

For Hal's look I stuck pretty close to his original design, but tweaked/simplified his lantern logo a little bit, and added some geometric shapes to break up the large areas of green.  I originally wanted to put him in his Air Force jacket, but I didn't want it to cover up too much of his costume and skipped it. 

 For John's look, I wanted to reflect his history as an architect, so I gave him a black bodysuit with green lines reminiscent of blueprints.  So, greenprints?  I don't know.  Anyway, I liked in Geoff Johns' run on Green Lantern how he described the different personalities of the various Green Lanterns and how it affected how they looked/what constructs they created.  Kyle created monsters and abstract things, Hal created simple fists and hammers, and John created complex, detailed constructs.  That always stuck with me as a cool concept.

While designing Kyle I wanted to keep his trademark mask, but other than that I figured as an artist he would try to streamline and simplify his costume.  I always thought the large area of white on his chest looked pretty striking, so I went with that, turning it into an abstract representation of a lantern.  I ditched the gauntlets and boots though- I thought they were too clunky.

And here's my group shot of all 4 Green Lanterns!  I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

 
And a line-up of their different costumes that I used while initially designing them:

 
Also, here's actually my first take on Hal, done fairly quickly right at the start.  I at first pictured him as more of an astronaut, and gave him a streamlined space suit.  I like it for its simplicity and sleekness, but went with the group take instead.

And here's some bonus prelim sketches: 

Let me know what you think of my Green Lanterns!

Black (and Red) Widow

I have a few pen sketches where I started redesigning the Avengers just for kicks.  I'm going back  and coloring them for even more kicks.  Here's one I just finished today- Everyone's favorite female-Russian-spy-turned-superhero!

 I didn't veer to far away from previous versions in my redesign, except to add more athletic footwear and place the large hourglass Widow symbol across her chest.  I mostly tried to stick with the black and red color scheme, leaving out the gold belt that's sometimes used in the comics.  

I'll be slowly adding more of these as I get around to finishing them.  I've already finished my Black Panther redesign and uploaded it to my Deviantart page if you want to check it out (link) but I'll probably upload it here later as well. 

God of Thunder

Just a quick drawing of Thor that I just finished coloring in Photoshop.  I changed a few things up on his costume, just playing around.  I wanted to incorporate a representation of the Nine Realms into his armor, so I have the nine circle plates on his chest and shoulders (yeah, I know, he has two on his knees, but disregard those- ha). 

And just to show the process, here's my initial inked sketch, which I scanned in then colored.  The second pic is my basic blocking-in of colors, before adding the finishing touches.

Initial inked sketch

Blocking in of colors and BG

 Let me know what you guys think in the comments!  Hopefully more to come soon...