Number Of The Beast #4

Beastly super-villains from NOTB #4 in pencil form(okay, some of them are downright goofy, like Stinkbug, but I think Ragamuffin and The Skeleton Crew are kind of creepy)

The latest issue of Number Of The Beast, issue #4, is out! Four more character bios w/designs in the back of the book again--and even I learned something this time: winged super-heroines The Thrush and Falconette are mother and daughter! Scott Beatty and I had never talked about this, but it works! 

--C

Number Of The Beast #3

Anti-superhero propaganda poster from NOTB #3

NOTB issue #3 is out today! Features four more character bios w/designs in the back of the book.
--C

Number Of The Beast #2

The Cover of NOTB #2

The second issue is on the stands today! Four of the character designs along with biographical text pieces by Scott Beatty can be found in the back of the book.

--C

Number Of The Beast Is Finally Here!

With a cover like this, you just know Karl and I are going to Hell...

Issue #1 is on sale NOW at a comic shop near you. Go buy it! Feel free to buy one of the ones with the alternate cover as well! Issue #2 will hit the stands in two weeks--yes, two weeks! Better get back to work...

--C

The Kids In The Hall
Sunday Xan and I had a very rare(these days, anyway, thanks to my schedule) night out. We saw The Kids In The Hall at OSU here in Columbus. They did all new material, yet many skits/bits featured old favorite characters such as Buddy Cole, Gavin, the Chicken Lady and the Head Crusher(the last two are my personal faves from the TV series). The night wasn't completely funnybook-free, as we ran into friends Dave Aiken and Andy Bennett in the lobby after the show and talked comics and illustration for a while. After saying goodbye to Dave and Andy, we were able to meet the five Kids In The Hall, snap some photos and get some autographs! Below is a pic of my favorite girl Xan with my favorite Kid, Mark McKinney(creator of the aforementioned Chicken Lady and Head Crusher). Check out Xan's MySpace page for more photos from that night.

--C

Xan & Mark McKinney from The Kids In The Hall

One Week Until NOTB!

Another pencilled page from NOTB #1

Six days, actually...This will just be a quick post since I'm incredibly busy and frazzled right now. Anyway, DC Comics/Wildstorm and Newsarama have a few little promotional things going on leading up to the release of Number Of The Beast #1 on April 9th that I wanted to point out for readers of this blog. First, Newsarama.com has been posting character designs with brief commentary from writer Scott Beatty and myself all week. Click HERE to see the latest, Falconette--you can jump to the other designs from that page. Next, the Wildstorm website has a multi-page full-color preview of NOTB #2 you can see by clicking HERE.

I'll be back to post a final segment on the making of the spread from NOTB #1 later in the week when I have more time!

--C

Greetings blog readers!  I'm sure everyone reading is checking out the Number of the Beast artwork and thinking "How super cool, I can't wait for the summer when this is released!"  Rest assured, it is very cool.  I'm personally impatient for the Engine Joe action figure.  I don't know if there are plans for one, but I'd love it.

And perhaps some of you may be thinking "Wait a second, doesn't Chris have a wife?  Surely she's been up to something equally as cool, right?"  Well, yes and no.  Chris does have a wife, but she's not really up to anything as cool as Number of the Beast.  But, she is back to taking guitar lessons.  Since she is me, I'll talk in the first person now.

Hey everyone, Xan here.  Chris has been taking over much of the blogging responsibilities lately, and for good reason.  If you haven't checked out the artwork he has been posting for NOTB, you should.  I'm so excited to see this book in print.  Other than this, it's been a pretty status quo winter into spring for us.  But we enjoy our status quo, so I consider this a good thing.  It's a quiet life of reading, beading, cult tv and whatever else we can work into the day.

Aside from trying to get caught up on Doctor Who and Torchwood episodes, I started guitar lessons again this year.  For those of you who don't know the sordid background, I took guitar lessons in 2005 until the fall, when I was in the process of changing jobs and Chris and I were moving into our current apartment.  I stopped going to my lessons around this time because my teacher asked me to not come anymore.  He told me I wasn't focused enough, and was therefore wasting his and my time.  Evidently, guitar lessons come before finding and moving into a new apartment, and any job searches should be put on the back burner for scales.  Maybe I'm bitter (I am, actually), and maybe I am making excuses.  He told me that I was welcome to return when things were settled and I could focus, but this evidently wasn't the case, since my emails to him which said basically "Settled into the new job and the new place, ready to play again!" went unanswered.

I kept playing a bit on my own, but really wanted a teacher again.  I always benefit from the experience of others, and considering my near criminal neglect of the piano, I needed to get back into learning about theory and not just looking up tab online.  So in a moment of pure serendipity, aka Marcie and Kade's New Years Eve party, I found a new teacher.  Greg is a friend I met through Marcie, and he is a guitar teacher and was willing to take on new students in the new year.  So I jumped and now have been taking lessons again since January.  Greg is a great teacher, and was a bit appalled at my being kicked out of lessons, so I feel more on the same page with him.  And he seems to be patient with my difficulty getting used to a pick, which is good.

The picture is a photo of my guitar, Jane.  She's an Ibanez AW40-NT, and I love her.  I didn't know much about Ibanez acoustic guitars.  The electric guitars were all I knew about as they have a reputation as being metal guitars.  But this one is great.  I saw a 12 string Ibanez at Sam Ash the other day, and it was about all I could do to walk out of there without it.

While it feels good to be taking lessons and learning music again, I feel guilty about the fact that the piano is out of tune.  I really need to get back to all of my instruments.  I found it difficult to find time to play as an adult.  Everyone knows I've never been the best with managing time.  I should also take one of those free workshops at the Apple Store, and get the most out of my GarageBand.

Ad hoc, ad loc and quid pro quo.  So little time, so much to know!

And oddly enough, Greg taught me "Yellow Submarine" this week.  Maybe I should learn "Nowhere Man" next...

Yet Another Interruption...

Click HERE to see a little animated trailer for Number Of The Beast over at the DC/Wildstorm website. Goofy but fun.
--C

Another Short Interruption
I thought it would be a good idea to butt into the series on the making of a page from Number Of The Beast in order to let interested people know that the most current Wildstorm comics (cover dated April 08) contain a NOTB preview! The preview is seven pages long and features the cover and six fully finished pages from the first issue.

The pencil artwork for page 9 of Number Of The Beast #1,
just one of the pages featured in the preview
--C

Creating a Comic Book Page for
Number of the Beast - Part 4: Inks

Inks by Karl Story for Number Of The Beast #1 pages 6 & 7; click on the image to see an
extra large version

In the last few posts, I've described my part of the process of creating a comic book page, specifically a two-page spread from Number Of The Beast #1. Beginning now, I'll attempt to explain what happens once I'm finished with the pencil drawing.

As I mentioned in the last installment, I box up the pencilled pages and FedEX them to Karl Story in Atlanta, GA. Karl and I have worked together off and on since 1992 when we were teamed up by editor Michael Eury on the DC Comics series Legionnaires. Karl is one of the founding members of Gaijin Studios, whose website can be found HERE, and he's one of the best inkers currently working in the industry(if not THE best). As an inker, it's his job to go over my pencil lines and shading with black India ink using various brushes and pens. He does more than trace the lines and fill in areas of solid black, though: he cleans up and finalizes anything sketchy, adds depth to the drawing using various line weights(traditionally, thicker lines on closer objects, thinner on background objects), and creates texture where none was present or merely hinted at in the pencils(compare what Karl did with the chrome on Engine Joe's belt/bumper or the little pieces of rubble around Joe's feet to my pencils to see what I mean). Some comic artists ink their own pencil artwork, but the standard practice is to split the pencilling and inking into two separate jobs done by two different people in order to save time. This works out well for me, since I am barely competent at inking, and Karl brings a level of polish and finish to my work that I could never achieve. I have repeatedly thanked him for making a turkey of a page look good, but he also makes pages I'm happy with look spectacular! Judge for yourself with the image above!

Once Karl finishes his inking, he scans the pages at high resolution into his computer and sends them digitally to the Wildstorm offices in San Diego, where the final two steps in the process, lettering and coloring, are completed. I'll cover those steps in the next two posts.

--C

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Blog...
Just wanted to post a couple of links to some recent interviews over at Newsarama.com, one is an interview with me that's kind of a career overview, and the others are separate interviews with me, writer Scott Beatty and editor Ben Abernathy covering Number Of The Beast.

- Click HERE for the general interview with me

- Click HERE for an interview with NOTB editor Ben Abernathy

- Click HERE for an interview with NOTB writer Scott Beatty

- Click HERE for a NOTB Q&A with me

--C

Creating a Comic Book Page for
Number of the Beast - Part 3: Pencils

Pencil art for Number Of The Beast #1 pages 6 & 7; click on the image to see an
extra large version

Once the prep work is done(the thumbnails and layouts, covered in the last two posts), it's time for the fun stuff(at least for me), the pencil art, commonly called "the pencils" within the industry. All of the basic problems have been solved and all of the forms and guidelines are there in the finished layouts, and in this step I take that rough draft and turn it into (hopefully) clean rendering and good drawing.

I began the double-page spread above by taping two 11X17 pieces of company supplied Bristol Board paper together. Then I placed it directly on top of the layouts on the lightbox I have on my drafting table. This allowed me to "trace" over the layouts which were visible through the Bristol Board with the lightbox on. Below is a photo that shows what this looks like(although it's not the spread above, but a model sheet for the NOTB character Seafarer instead):

Looking through the pencils at the layout underneath on my lightbox

As you can see, the layout is clearly visible through the Bristol Board, but not terribly intrusive--I can see it just enough to use it as a guide(it's clearer in person than in this photo. but you get the idea). You can also see that in the Seafarer drawing I didn't strictly trace the layout--as I draw the finished pencils, I constantly change and tweak elements, adding final details shading and any lighting effects, sometimes changing entire figures and even entire panels. If you compare the spread at the top of this post with the layout version in the last post, you'll notice that the final panel with the flying saucers is completely different in the pencils.
Anyway, using the blue layouts as a guide, I rendered everything very tightly and as clearly as I could, finalizing all the elements in black lead. I used straight-edges for the buildings and ellipse templates for the saucers, but everything else was pretty much free-hand drawing. Not much else to describe process-wise, but I can say that this step was a pure joy to do--this two-page sequence turned out so much better than I had hoped. If I have the wall-space in a future studio, this one's going up in a big frame--that's how much I like it(and anyone who's ever heard me talk about my own work knows I don't say that very often)!

This is also the last step where I have any hands-on involvement. I box up my finished pencilled pages and FedEX them to Gaijin Studios in Atlanta , GA where inker Karl Story makes them look really good! I'll tell you as much as I can about that when I cover The Inks next time.

Tools/materials used in this step:
- 11"X17" 2-ply Bristol Board
- PaperMate PRO-Touch II mechanical pencil w/Pentel 0.5mm black lead
- PaperMate PRO-Touch II mechanical pencil w/Pentel 0.7mm H black lead

--C

NOTE: I forgot to mention all of the little "X"'s all over the pencil art above, and people outside of the business always ask about those. In order to save time and prevent carpal tunnel syndrome, most comic artists, myself included, label areas on the artwork that are supposed to be solid black with a little "X" or a bunch of "X"'s. I don't know how this practice started or who originated it, but it's pretty much standard. It also keeps the smudging and fingerprints to a minimum--if all the areas with "X"'s were filled in with black graphite, sheesh--smudge city by the time I'm done with it, let alone after an inker works on it! This will make more sense when you compare Karl's inked version of the spread(which I'll be posting next time) to the pencil version. One other note, I replaced the old smaller images of the layouts and pencils with extra-large versions today, so now you can see any details you may have missed in the initial jpegs.

Creating a Comic Book Page for
Number of the Beast - Part 2: Layouts

Layouts for Number of the Beast #1, pages 6 & 7; click on the image to see an
extra large version

Last time I described how I create a thumbnail sketch for a typical comic book page and how I arrived at the final design for what became pages 6 & 7 of Number of the Beast #1. This time I'll be concentrating on the next step, the layouts. The layouts are the most difficult and work-intensive part of the entire process, at least for me. The layouts are where I work out the anatomical structure of all of the figures and hash out all the backgrounds.

For these two pages, I began by roughing out Engine Joe in the large panel running across the top of the spread using a blue pencil. Then I drew a perspective grid for the background behind Joe, which--among other things--allowed me to accurately place everything else in the panel. For example, since Joe is about ten feet tall, maybe higher, I knew that any doors in the background would be shorter than his shoulders, and that if I drew a fireplug or something in the foreground it would only come up to a certain height somewhere around his shins or his knees. Once the perspective grid was down on paper, I tightened up Engine Joe's figure, getting all of the details in the correct places and the parts in the correct proportions. I usually bear down pretty hard when I draw, so the linework gets dark fairly quickly, and that makes it hard to see the lines I've put down in some places. Since there were still parts of Joe's figure that needed fussing over, I went in with black lead and did some more finalizing, which you can see most clearly on his right arm in the image above. Once Joe was in good shape, I moved on and used the same process on The Aeronaut, the flying hero above Engine Joe, and then on to the homeless man in the foreground. Next, I worked on the background buildings, but as usual, I left the backgrounds fairly loose since I've drawn hundreds of street scenes and was confident I could do most of the work in the next step(the finished pencils). If the script had called for a more complicated background, a recognizable building or something I've never drawn before, I would have been more precise here in the layouts. Once this large panel was done, I went through the entire process again for each of the remaining panels. As soon as I finished the layouts I knew this spread was going to work well. I couldn't wait to get to work on the finished pencils...which is part 3, and I'll cover that next time!

Tools/materials used in this step:
- 11"X17" copy/office paper
- PaperMate PRO-Touch II mechanical pencil w/Pentel 0.9mm blue lead
- Alvin Draftmatic mechanical pencil w/Pentel 0.9mm red lead
- PaperMate PRO-Touch II mechanical pencil w/Pentel 0.7mm H black lead

--C

Creating a Comic Book Page for
Number of the Beast - Part 1: Thumbnails
Actually the first part of creating a comic book page is the script, created by a writer in pretty much the same form as the script for a play or a movie. The script contains descriptions(sometimes brief, sometimes very detailed) of the characters, action and setting for every panel of every page of the story, along with the dialogue the characters will be speaking and any captions needed. In the case of Number of the Beast, the writer of the script is Scott Beatty. Unfortunately, I won't be showing any of Scott's actual script for the pages I'll be discussing on this blog because they give too much away about later plot developments we'd prefer to keep under wraps. What I'm going to begin with instead of the script are the thumbnail sketches. Thumbnails allow me to very quickly(by virtue of their size) work out the panel sizes, placement of figures and general flow of the story--and that's it. I don't worry about facial features, good perspective or precise rendering at this stage; that all starts in the next step, the layouts. In case anyone's wondering, they're called thumbnail sketches because they're traditionally drawn very small, about the size of a human thumbnail. The ones I do are in fact about the size of my entire hand--that's small enough for my purposes.

Below you'll find my initial thumbnail sketches for page 6 from Number of the Beast #1, the page where we finally get to really see our main characters for the first time. This page, as initially scripted by Scott, was supposed to be one large panel (this type of page is called a "splash page") showing four superheroes running down a city street at night. This page was also supposed to be the title page for the book, so it needed to have room not only for the drawings and dialogue balloons, but for titles and credits as well. The right part of the sketch below shows how the page was intended to look, with Engine Joe et al racing away from the reader deeper into the city-at-night setting. As soon as I drew it I knew it would never do--there was very little room for dialogue, titles, or credits, and it basically just lacked the dramatic "oomph" I felt the introduction of these larger-than-life characters called for. On the left side of the image below, you can see that I started playing around with showing the characters in profile, but this too left no room for any text and was still pretty dramatically boring.

Number of the Beast #1 page 6 thumbnail, take one
I took another try at the thumbnail, which you can see below, but this time I thought I could add some of that missing "oomph" by making page 6 part of a two-page spread with page 7. This attempt produced a slightly more dramatic page 6, and the sheer largeness of the two pages presented as one large image would add some impact, but it still wasn't quite working for me. I left it alone for a few hours and when I sat down to take another pass at the thumbnail, something clicked in my head and I saw the solution immediately. If you look closely at the top left of the image below(above the red writing), you'll see a thumbnail within a thumbnail, where I changed the entire layout of the two-page spread so that the top half would be a "widescreen" version of what was supposed to be page 6, with all of the little panels that were intended to make up page 7 spread from left to right on the bottom half of the spread. That was all I needed to go on to the next step, the above-mentioned "layouts," which is where the real drawing, as well as the hard work, begins...but that's going to have to wait until the next installment...


Number of the Beast #1, pages 6 & 7 thumbnails, take two(and take three at top left)

Tools/materials used in this step:
- 8.5"X11" copy/office paper
- PaperMate PRO-Touch II mechanical pencil w/Pentel 0.9mm blue lead
- Alvin Draftmatic mechanical pencil w/Pentel 0.9mm red lead

--C

NOTB Sketchbook Gallery 3
Next time I'll begin a step-by-step look at the creation of a page from Number of the Beast from thumbnail stage through to the finished lettered/colored product. For now, though, while I gather the materials for that post together and get more work done, here are two more NOTB character sketches...

--C

NOTB Sketch Gallery 2
Here are some more sketchbook pieces...

--C

Apparently more people are reading this blog than I realized... ...including someone at DC Comics who has asked that I stop posting artwork from Number of the Beast until after it's been seen publicly elsewhere. So, to play it completely safe and until or unless I hear otherwise, when I post NOTB artwork I'll only be posting sketchbook material which will never be published in the series or anywhere else. I'm sure someone will let me know if this is a problem as well. For now, here are some of my earliest Number of the Beast sketches from last summer...I hope they'll make up for the missing three character designs which will probably turn up someday on Newsarama before finally being published as bonus material in the backs of the individual issues(that's the plan, anyway).


--C

Finally!

Double page spread from Number of the Beast #1, introducing the superhero characters
Engine Joe, The Aeronaut, The Thrush, and Falconette

As a few of you have already noticed, Wildstorm finally broke the news about the series I've been working on. Click HERE to see that story on Newsarama.com, which includes four fully finished color pages from the first issue of the Number of the Beast series. Starting later tonight(probably) I'll begin posting daily or semi-daily images, either pencilled pages or some of the 26 or so new character designs I've done so far. Right now, however, I need to get back to work--this book has to ship on time(we're on schedule and half-way through the series, so it's looking good...)!
--C

The Cat's Almost Out Of The Bag...

Newsarama.com has posted an interview with comic writers Christos Gage and Scott Beatty and way down at the bottom is the first mention of the new project I've been working on for the last several months--the first mention that reveals any details, anyway. More will be revealed soon, and I hope to start showing some art here on this blog any day now. Click HERE to read the interview.

This is obviously one of those posts that will be of no interest to non-comics fans, but at least there's a cute photo above of Jess-Belle and her new Christmas present that everyone can enjoy!

Hope everyone had a good holiday!
--C

Lazy Day

We haven't posted a picture of the little girl lately, so here's one now!
On a cold cloudy day like today it's hard to resist just curling up
with this little furball and napping the hours away.

I'm taking a day off from drawing today just to get a few non-work related things done for a change. I've been working so much lately that even Christmas shopping and the post office are going to feel like pleasant diversions!

Speaking of things that aren't work, my sister Megan and her son Aaron moved to Columbus this Fall, and we've been babysitting occasionally. We've had Aaron over for a few marathon video game sessions, and I took him to see Bee Movie a couple of weeks ago. Last night we went out for dinner to celebrate Megan's birthday.

Other than that, we've pretty much just been preparing for the holiday or battling Winter colds (as well as the winter cold).

My next post will probably be after Christmas, so Happy Holidays everyone!
--C