Well I ran into a lot of issues this week which resulted in delays. Not the best week in EWG history by any means. Alas it is complete. Also the Deviant Art 'Vote for your special' poll is complete. Will launch the sale Monday. Happy Easter and see you after the weekend!
Kinda excited to have finished this, a tribute to IGPX main character Takeshi Jin of Team Satomi. I always liked their colors and their logo. And really like the series. Probably best series to come out of Cartoon Network's studios previous to the current era of programming. Big fan, have the season 1 box set, never seen season 2 but its on my to do list for 'eventualy'. And love having an excuse to do up some proper fan art. This piece is posted on Facebook and DeviantArt as well as http://thecomicartalliance.blogspot.com site.
Anywho, was a good cooldown piece for lastnight and fun warmup to finish up this morning. Check out the original promo of the show below. Voiced by the legendary PETER CULLEN. This promo gives me tingles man. The show was awesome, CN should bring it back.
Characters and Logos are of course property of Cartoon Network and art is by EWG
Just a quick heads-er-upper that the EWG Order Status page has been updated. Will try to make sure its updated at least once or twice each week so clients know where their processes are at. And of course don't hesitate to email or message me so I can let you know that way. But can save us all some time in general and just check the status page.
This week's new schedule for Jumping Boy is complete. Tuesday and Thursday's additions to the ongoing series have been posted! Will be taking notes on traffic from Tuesday versus today, and comparing it to the previous posting format. But beyond the cold statistic, would be very much interested to hear real-human feedback on thoughts/ feelings about the previous once every Monday versus twice every Tuesday and Thursday. On some of the new website enhancements and more. Also anything regarding the story telling and approach is fine too. Let me know how I'm doing. Maybe somebody out there subscribes to a lot of webcomics and I'm not aware of something I'm not doing as well as I could be. Who knows? Comment here, or on any other site related to JumpingBoy or Eryck Webb. And thanks in advance!
Thats right, its Wednesday. And I sometimes refer to it, 'Watch EWG at WORK Wednesday'. Got a slew of character art commissions lined up for tonight.
All starts recording/broadcasting at 8pmEST tonight! Come listen to the tunes, watch the art, start heated debates with other comic art enthusiasts in the chat, whatever you like. And thanks in advance for coming out! Here's a direct link to the EWG Livestream page.
Or just click the button on the featured menu on the right side of this website!
Jumping Boy is the main protagonist in my ongoing webcomic story, published Tuesdays and Thursdays!
Go bookmark the series at the JUMPING BOY WEBSITE and come back each week for more!
Thanks for checking these out. They were illustrated with wacom intuos 2 and photoshop 6 with some topgear season 18 and a big mug o' coffee for the catalyst
New JUMPING BOY out today! Now Tues and Thurs feature a new installment of this ongoing webcomic series! I hope readers enjoy the more frequent updates to the series. I will enjoy getting more storytelling under my belt! The current process is fully penciling them over the weekend or ahead of time if I get my daily to-dos done and letter them as well at those times. Then every Tues and Thurs morning, I do my morning warmup by inking and gray shading that day's comic. Worked good this morning and I think it'll continue to.
So check out this comic every Tuesday Thursday as of today, as well as the tweaked site design to accomodate this change!
Then Mon/Wed/Fri etc probably do my normal warmup free-draw. After this two chapter story of how it all began, I get to JUMP head first into the awesome stuff. So stick around, and enjoy! And as always, critique, review and comment is always welcome! Anywhere on the jumping boy posts is fine. Let me know how I'm doing!
Well, did not expect a winter wonderland when I woke up this morning. But whatever, par for the course for living in Pennsylvania/Ohio I guess! Heres my basic breakdown update for EWG's goal this week.
Monday - working half day as its my wife's birthday.
Tuesday - The first post of the new Jumping Boy series move to Tues and Thurs. hitting up all those awesome character art and logo commissions need wrapped up
Wednesday - ungrounded all day, wrapping up the first 9 page story of the book, also at 8pmEST - a Watch EWG Live Wednesday event - several character commissions full color to get wrapped up!
Thursday - The second post of the new Jumping Boy series move to Tues and Thurs. Tshirt graphics and other commission jobs all day
Friday - Wrapping up the first 9 page story of Ungrounded all day
Alright, getting straight to it this morning, have a great week!
A 20 min warmup this morning inspired by the snowy landscape out the window that developed overnight. Dontcha know? Bumbles bounce. Also inspired by the fact that today is my wife, Kristina's birthday and shes a big fan o' the original Bumble from Rudolph Red Nose Reindeer. She loves the Bumbles! Bumbles Bounce!
Workin a bit today then spending time with my wifey for her birthday. Working till about noon and making a chinese food run and then give her her present later.
Morning warm up to get things moving today, featuring EWG Dewd riding for glory upon the mighty vessel WACOM! (Drawn while listening to Running Wild - Riding The Storm)
"...Face in the wind, we're riding the storm
We'll stay our course whatever will come
Wandering souls in the sea of the damned
Death or glory, oh, oh we're riding the storm
Cracks in the planks, the rigging moves upwards and
Staggering masts, the pounding splash of the prow
The wind in our sails, our flag flies high on the top
This mornings warmup. Sorta same cyberpunk style as the B-29 Bass piece but something more in the sensual/ sexy direction. A beautiful naked woman with a big head of wavy hair. But with massive mechanical 'lingerie' on lol. About a 30 minute warmup. 8.5x5.5 300dpi with brush tool and opacity set to stylus. Started sketching in white and then did the lineart in black overtop and then filled with black and white back and forth till got it where i wanted.
A quick message to all clients currently with orders in the spool! Thanks so much for your patience. I just have a lotta juggling going on right now. I'm hoping to get a lot of smaller projects out of the way so all I'm doing is the two or three comic jobs I'm committed to right now.
Will officially start taking less commissions except for occasional spots I might be able to make available in a given week. My ideal right now is to wrap up a bunch of orders so I can put my best work into the two or three comic jobs I got going now and knock those out of the park.
But till then, I will be making the comic jobs priority each week, and working on everything else around it. Not that they're less important, just nature of time requirements. Comic pages are production hogs. Very labor intensive. The whole idea behind my business is labor intensive anyways but comic jobs probably take up the most time and resources. The other ones are actually more freestyle and relaxing comparatively.
So that's the word. Please be patient, I'm getting as many done each week as I can!
Wanted to share this page I finished up this week. But as I don't want to spoil any of the awesomeness in Ungrounded, just showing this panel that I thought had a lotta impact and energy to it (yuk yuk).
1. So at bottom is the gesture i really wanted to get the pose/ angle on this shot right so i tried a couple different gesture sketches and loved this one. I worked loose on a larger canvas so as to really come up with something fluid.
2. The digital pencils refined over it enough to ink over. I pretty much kept the background and lightning effects loose/ and fleshed those out in the inking step
3. The inks, all inked up line art and black fills plus some extra hatching and details and breaking up black spaces with white hatching
4. The finished colors. Flats and effects, figuring out how to handle the shadows based on the electricity. Fun stuff!
Wednesday 3/20-8pmEST - Rugby Rhino and Masquerade CommissionsDemonstrating Digital Inks and Colors - Two Full Color Character Commissions Created Live!
Wednesday 3/27-8pmEST- 4 Fighting Game Character Commissions At Once! Demonstrating Digital Inks and Colors - Four Full Color Character Commissions Created Live!
Wednesday 4/3, 4/4 and 4/5-TimeEST TBD- Chemo/Hospital Fundraiser Event Open Commissions Event - $15 and $30 options. Will draw in real time upon ordering (only accepting orders for this event during event times!)
I invite any art enthusiasts, EWG fans, any students o' the form and peers to come out hang, chat and talk comics, OCs, purple dragons or whatever during any of these events. As I am seeing a lot more comic work that is production heavy during the day, I will be attempting to schedule character art for Wednesday nights as I am hoping to keep Wednesday nights a regular Live-stream night.
Hope people come out and hope this is eventually something fans/ customers can look forward to every Wednesday!
Just finished this warm up that went from about 930 to 1015 so about 45 or less. Just sat down and drew whatever I thought would be fun. I came up with this, wanted to do a cyberpunk type girl with massive sci-fi headgear and the like and have fun with the overall design. I see this as some WWII-esque B29 future DJ 'B29 Bass' - her collar is a mp3player her headset is wireless and her chin strap is a microphone and her shoulder openings are speakers or something. Dunno! Just had fun with it. Alright, but I think 30 min in I officially started feeling that 'groove' so I say I'm warmed up and ready to tackle today's Ungrounded work. Going to try to do one page a day see how that goes and everything else around it.
Also thinking about eventually collecting up all my gray toned sketches styled like this into a book and releasing it this year and call it something like 'The Gray Area' or something. We'll see... alright have a great Tuesday!
Heres the final design (pending final approval from client)
Started with three layout ideas
I started going ahead with this, but it was too far back, too 'ok cool, so theres the form'
This one had way more 'punch' to it as this shirt was meant to be aggressive
Inks done in inkscape for final art. From this point it was transfered into photoshop, and all the type and background and other graphical effects were added. Del even stopped in to give his blessing while I was working on it tonight on livestream :) So from this point you end up with the final art above. Next step, Tshirt printing!
Warmup after some dinner tonight and getting back to work. A sketch of jumping boy and I ended up liking how it looked with the lines layer dropped out so here it is. Some lineless black and white and gray. Jumping Boy shooting the stratosphere. Thanks to all who have enjoyed reading Jumping Boy so far, and have stuck by through the current chapter or two. Trust me when I say chapter 3 isn't ending without Jumping Boy back to Jumping as you want and love! But in the meantime follow along as he stumbles into the adventure that awaits head first!
Working late tonight, so am turning on livestream broadcast, come say hi, tell me how you like the new site and shoot the breeze. Will be doing a martial arts shirt first and for most and if time/ (and energy) some other commissions.
Did this warmup this afternoon, was meant to be a tooned up version of Jason Statham's 'Chev Chelios' from the crank serires. But came out more... middle eastern thug or something haha.
Ah well, also gave me a chance to post something new up! And give a shout out to check out the new EWG website design. More content, better arranged and also my personal fav, a very VERY functional search bar option :) Paruse the articles, leave comments and feedback, or check out the various sections of the site, now categorized as 'artwork' for all personal and work related posts as well as related events 'news' for the notebook updates on thoughts and ideas and releases for announcements and 'inhouse' for stuff related to the inner workings.
Looks like not much work will be getting done till after St Patties! The dwarf bots usually are a big help around the studio but at least one seems adamant about celebrating this year!
Thought I would cap off the week with this interesting article I found about professional comic artist and how many pages they produce a year/ month/ week. As I was wondering if my five a week goal was too ambitious. I think if it was aboslutely all I was doing at this moment in time it would be fine but its definitly a little harder. Crazy to think 75% of comic artists produce 3 pages a week? 2 months to produce one book. Not too bad I guess. But I'm trying to be that 3% :) Bryan hitch is a beast with tons o' detail so I can imagine on Ultimates he did 2-3 pagse a week look at the work it speeks for itself.
Heres the article, thoughts/ comments questions are welcome and encouraged! What are your thoughts on this?
Have a great weekend, see you next week to start all over again. have a safe St Patties and so forth!
Thanks to those who stopped by tonights Livestream event! Hope you enjoyed the demonstration of two different EWG commission types and rockin out with me to the tunes. Had a fuzz-rock playlist for the first one, and a featured deadmau5 concert for the second. Good stuff! Check my gallery for the pieces (Aquaria and Pinky Pie)
Will hold another livestream event in April! Stay tuned to EWG Twitter and Facebook for impromtpu live broadcasts while working but other than that, nothing official or planned till April. And yes there is definitly a Livestream event planned for early April - stay tuned for the release.
The above ad says it all! Hope to see a great turnout tonight! As this will be the last demonstration of EWG work till at least April! Only othertime I might have livestream on is when I'm working late and its nice to have people come in and chat a bit to help keep me goin. But other than that, this is the last official scheduled event where you can see the recording happen live start to finish for at least a month.
Click the 'EWG LIVESTREAM' button on the left of this website, or just click this link
Slept in an extra hour this morning. Woke up to some gorgeous sunny blue skies. Both the wife and her mom are sleeping well so not to disturb them I snuck around, got a cinnamon roll a big mug o coffee and getting to work! Laa tee daaa... will have to take the dog outside for a walk in a bit.
Lots to do today, going to try and get some other orders like a 2 page comic commish, a martial arts shirt and other such materials sout the door today. Will tackle more ungrounded tomorrow all day.
Don't forget theres a 8pm Livestream of DWald's sexy female heroine from a MMO he hhplays. Will be doing her up in full color commish style to night at 8pmEST, come out ask questions, take notes see it go from start to finish yada yada. When I HAVE to work late to meet production goals I turn on livestream and invite people to come in, keep me company and enjoy the show but if tonight doesn't see a very big response I'll probably not be doing another scheduled live event for at least a month or so. But honestly, if nobodies coming out then why bother. My thanks of course to the two or three regulars out there but...
Thought it was cool that during drawing this scene for Ungrounded, the net radio station I was listening to suddenly started playing 'Hero' by Chad Kroeger ... thought it was MOST appropriate. A man wants to be the hero the world needs, and remains adamant despite the mocking of the audience. Great stuff.
Hopefully Patrick won't mind me posting this, just thought it and the YouTube clip of the song below went well together... and really sets the tone for the whole comic. This'll probably the last thing I blatantly share without prior permission but. Yeah... get ready. This stuffs going to be great.
The Egyptian god THOTH, a character design I wanted to do a test drawing of after a design sketch I did this morning. Egyptian but whose to say he cant be bigger more glorious than Egyptians usually depict him? And instead of a bird head I made his mask sort of mimic that. With his symbol for his helmet and also goes on his staff. My own original design but taking notes from Jack Kirby for sure! He designed the most intimidating regal and mighty looking god-folk ever. The crane that represents THOTH is symbolized on his chest emblem, and then I use the half shut eye on his helmet and his collar and belt. Think there's definitely some metaphor behind having the half shut eye on him. He may have ended up more Aztec looking but still I think there's a divinity to how hes presented that translates to many of those types of cultures.
