Bunch of Barbs

A while back when I started working with Lee Garbett on Batgirl, I did some sample inking.  Lee sent me a high resolution file of Barbara Gordon from Batgirl #11 we were working on.  Here's the drawing of Barbara...

 At the time, we were developing an inking style for his pencils.  Lee asked if I could ink Barbara as a test page.  I was happy to give it a whirl.  Not only was it fun, I wanted to challenge myself and decided to ink it in SIX completely different styles.  

 I  photoshopped the penciled piece and placed them next to each other all nicely on an 11x17 page to be printed out in blue line for inking.  Kinda giving it an Andy Warhol feel to the art, which made it an exciting task to complete.  I slapped ink over the images and numbered each image as follows...

#1 was inked with all brush in heavy thick to thins around the holding line.  Interior lines were inked with a brush going thin.

#2 was ink with all brush, only this time, I gave it a lighter softer touch throughout.

#3 The holding lines were inked with a brush giving it an angular edge to it.  Interiors were inked with a quill.  Crisper and angular.

#4 The holding lines were inked with a brush giving it a thick bold flat outline.  Interior lines were also brush work.

#5 was inked all with a quill.  At the same time, giving the whole image an angular feel, not to mention broken lines and lots of dots for the imagination to complete the lines.  Lots of flicking with the quill from thick to thin and back.

#6 was inked completely inked with microns in different tip sizes.

For as long as I have been inking, I can always use any combinations of brush, quill, microns, or any of the tools individually and make them look exactly like each of the Barbara's above.   After a while of working with the tools you have, you learn that each brush, quill, or pen can ink something with a certain look quickly and more efficiently.  Give me a black ball point pen and I can still ink it looking like a comic book page.  It'll just take twice or three times as long to complete.  Knowing what tools to use, just speed things up.

Anyhoo, after the Bunch of Barb exercise,  the both of us liked how option #2 turned out and we went that direction.  When it came time to ink over the original pencils, here's the result...

I'm off to Comic Con in Sunny Saaaaandy Eggo!  When I'm back, COMIC CON PICTURES!!!

BLACKEST NIGHT: BLACK LANTERN CORPS Vol. 2

My comp copy of Blackest Night: Black Lantern Corps Vol. 2 Hardcover which I did some Wonder Woman inking for it.  

My inks over Nicola Scott's pencils.  Here's a double pager.

More info at DC Comic's website here.  In stores mid July.

WORLD OF WARCRAFT BOOK 3

Hardcovers!  I've inked 44 pages over Mike Bowden's pencils.  This was an exciting project to work on not only because it was a WOW (World Of Warcraft) book, but also my first time working with Wildstorm.

Below are some nice inked pages for your viewing pleasure.

This one, I went all out and crosshatched the shadows in the background.  Mike Bowden indicated blacks, but I figure... what's the harm in cross hatching it?  If it doesn't look good, I can always black it out later.  Turns out, everyone dug it!

This one's a double page spread.  Every time I work on a double page spread, it feels like it takes a long time to finish.  Then I sit back and realize, it should be a long time.  It's inking two pages!  Still,  If feels like a long time because to me, it's one page.  Given it's two pages attached together, But still one giant page.  Often times, I would need to fold the page back on the attachment and ink in like regular size.  Double page spreads are huge!  One time, I've inked a commission piece that was four pages big!  22x34 is size!  HUGE!  Anyhoo, that's another story for another time.  Back to WOW...

Another pretty splash page...    

And another...

Finally, not quite a splash page.  This is a patch page for another page.  What's a patch page?  Sometimes after artwork is finished, there may be editorial or licensing adjustment requests.  When that happens, new artwork would be drawn on another page which will then be moved over to the original image.  

You're probably thinking, "Why not just erase the drawing and redraw it on the same page?"  In this case, the original page (see below) was sent to me for inking before hand.  During editorial or licensing, I was asked not ink panel two and wait for a patch page.  I'll ink the rest of it, wait for the page above and ink that.  When I'm finished, I would then send all that to the colorist (or production) and they'll piece it together for the printed book.  Kinda neat how patch pages work, eh?

World of Warcraft Book 3 is in stores now.  More information here.

BATGIRL #11

Batgirl #11 is out in stores!  My inks over Lee Garbett's pencils.  This was the first time I've worked with Lee and I must say he's a blast to work with.  A very talented and creative individual.  You should check out his blog.  Lots of fun stuff.  www.leegarbett.blogspot.com

From the get go, we hit it off and started to create a inking style for the overall art.  There were two art teams for this issue.  I inked Lee Garbett's part of the book which was the first fourteen pages.

With the pages I inked, you can almost see the inking style morph (you'll have to pick up the book to see the rest of the pages).  For example, in the earlier pages, I used straight edges for all backgrounds and inked the characters in a bold, almost flat outline.  Using both brush and pen.

Towards the end, I put away all the straight edges and free handed all the backgrounds.  The figures, I opted out the thick bold outlines and give them more of a line width bounce all around.   Almost brush work exclusively with minor pen.

Here's the page colored by Guy Major.

 Here's the last page of the issue.  A beautiful splash page of Batgirl and Man Bat.

And the completed colors for it.

Batgirl #11 is in stores now.  For more info, click here.

CLOAK AND DAGGER One Shot

Cloak and Dagger one shot!  Thirty two pages I've inked over Mark Brooks pencils in blue line. This was released a while ago.  I got this issue in my pre-orders from the place where I buy my comics.

Interior pages.  Since I inked thirty two pages in this issue, I'm posting more images this time.  Here's a nice splash page with Dagger...

Here's Dagger and Cloak...

Dagger and Cloak, Cloak and Dagger...

Cyclops chatting it up...

Storm, Namor, Northstar, Angle, and Pixie...

Buildings and Cloak changing into something more confortable...

In stores now.

Longshot. Unpublished work.

Unpublished LONGSHOT work for Marvel from a long time ago. My inks over Pete Woods' pencils during our Deadpool days at Marvel. It was supposed to be for a one shot stand alone issue. We worked on a bunch of pages. Before the project was completed, it got scrapped.

Below is what was supposed to be the cover for the one shot.

Kingpin's origin on one page.

And one of my favorite pages with all the details.

FINAL CRISIS Trade Paper Back

Final Crisis trade paperback comp came today of which I did some work in.  

In stores June 2.  More info here.

R.E.B.E.L.S. #16

Got a big batch of comp copies for REBELS #16 because I inked the whole issue.  With DC Comics, the amount of comps you get from your work depends on how many pages you worked on and how many creators are involved.  The most I've every gotten for comps are twenty five copies.  Here's a picture of the comics.

Originally, Scott Hanna was supposed to ink this issue but he came down with the flu.  I was called in to ink a few pages.  One thing lead to another and I was asked if I would be interested in inking the whole issue over Claude St. Aubin's pencils.  And here we are today.  The following page may look familiar because I posted some of it to a Daily Desktop a while back.

With this project, I was asked to mimic another inker along with doing a lot of stippling with the inks.  If you look closely through these black & white images, you'll see a lot of dots that form lines.  Those dots are stipples.  Stippling takes a while to finish, but it was fun to do.

This issue also introduces two new Green Lanterns.  Here they are below in panel two.  The green lantern logos isn't in the orb on their chest yet.  Which alarmed me thinking Claude, the penciller, forgot to draw them in.  But there's a reason it's not there.  You'll have to get to book to find out more.    

The whole issue, I inked on Blue Line printouts over high resolution pencil scans.  Below is one of the pages with Starfire in it.  First the long legs in panel one, then followed by panel two.  Sexy!  You can see a preview of this issue by clicking here. 

The regular inker for this series, Scott Hanna, contacted me after he saw the issue to say I did a good job and that he was glad DC found a good inker to replace for the issue.  Nice compliment especially coming from Scott.

 REBELS #16 is in stores now.  More info by clicking here.

TITANS: VILLAINS FOR HIRE SPECIAL

As the cover reads, Brightest Day Titans Villians for Hire Special.  A book I worked on which I just got comp copies of.  My inks over Sergio Arino's pencils.  Inked on blue line printouts from high res files e-mailed to me from the artist located in Spain.  Here's a picture of the comics.

One of the pages with Deathstroke the Terminator.  *RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT*  except in the comic, there was no special effect like that in the first panel.

Another page below where they're in a car.  One of the things about inking over blue line printouts is sometimes, you loose some of the pencil details on the faces because the blue printouts are so light.  I usually print out a black and white copy of the same page and have that next to the blue line page to reference.  

Other times, I will have the high res file opened on my computer screen and I'll zoom in to reference the faces on the blue line boards I'm inking on.  I'll just look back and forth from my monitor to bristol board to make sure all the lines I'm inking are not missed.  When it comes to faces, I like to make that extra effort to not loose any details when inking on blue line printouts.

Finally, I was also sent variant covers for this same issue.  

This comic is in stores now and you can click here for more info.

PULSE OF POWER

A while back, I posted a cover I've inked over Brett Booth's pencils for a book called Pulse of Power.  You can read that here.  That was over six months ago.  Today, I finally heard more about it.  Looks like it'll be published under Dynamic Entertainment instead of Dable Brother Publishing like I originally had thought.  Here's the cover all nicely colored up with title and logos from the publisher.

My inks before the colors.

Not sure when it'll be published.  There's a write up about the book over at Newsarama and you can read more about it by clicking here.

Black Widow commission piece over Arthur Adams

Another inking commission over Arthur Adams' blue pencil drawings.  This time, of Black Widow.  Here's the before...

And after I slapped inks over it.  I must say, I'm really enjoying these blue pencil drawings.  There's a sense of freedom to where I get to decide where a line is inked and a form of consistency where I do my best to ink like Arthur.  I'm really happy with how this piece turned out.

PREDATOR PREY TO THE HEAVENS

Just got comp copies of Predator: Prey to the Heavens from Dark Horse Comics.  Nice compilation to the comic book series that I've done some work on.

They're available and in stores now.

Comp copies from Marvel

Recently got a bunch of comp copies of comics I've worked on from Marvel.   I blogged about these issue when it was first released.  Comp copies has made it's way to me now.  

Here are some MARVEL ZOMBIES: EVIL EVOLUTION. 

DARK REIGN: YOUNG AVENGERS #4.

Followed by DARK REIGN: YOUNG AVENGERS #5

Then we have X-MEN LEGACY #231

And last, but not least, DARK REIGN: THE SINISTER SPIDER-MAN #4

Interesting thing about both the Dark Reign: Young Avengers and Dark Reign Sinister Spider-Man titles.  Marvel sent me trade paperback comps for both a while back.  I would think the individual comic would come before the trade compilations.  Well.. better late then never.