Page four of my FutureQuake is now done, and I’ve finally remembered why I spent so much time modelling the heroine’s space ship using Google SketchUp. The ship features quite heavily in this page, and with such a complex design, constructing the last two panels in particular would have been very time consuming. With the model made, all I had to do was position the camera, print out the ship at the right size, then draw the heroine and her surroundings over the top. Once the sketch was scanned, it was very easy to drop the renders of the ship onto the sketch and mask out the unwanted sections. I think the end result is well worth the effort I invested in making the model (of course the experience I gained using SketchUp wouldn’t have been a waste – learning is good – but it’s nice to finally put the model to good use).

Page 4

I used a render taken from inside the ship to create the interior shot too; it was useful to get the perspective and overall shape set up before filling in the interior by hand. I wish I’d had time to model the interior too, but as it’s only seen properly in one panel, it would only have been useful as an intellectual exercise, and the finished panel will be dark and smoke filled enough to hide any wonkiness in my perspective.

This will probably be the last panel I post, as I don’t want to give away the end of the story until it has been seen in print (something I’m excessively excited about).

After taking the decision to redesign the principle character, it’s taken me a while to get this page finished, as I’d already drawn it using the original version of Psion. This page also features a revised version of her main protagonist; I thought his design was a bit weak too, so I’ve made him look a bit more useful. I’ve based his face on one of my favourite actors, but it’s only a passing likeness.

Page 3

I’m glad I decided to redesign Psion; I feel a lot more positive about this page now that I’ve updated her outfit. The only issue I have is with the sword strike in panel 4; I think I need to revisit this to add a bit more movement to the pose. She doesn’t look like she’s used much effort to make such a devastating cut.

I’ve found myself in something of a malaise whilst creating the pencils for my FutureQuake strip, and have felt distinctly lacklustre about the first two pages. At the end a fantastically unproductive Friday I realised what the problem was; I simply don’t like my original design of Psion (the main character). Specifically, I don’t like her outfit. The body armour looks heavy, clumsy and uncomfortable, and her sword (a key feature of the story) looks feeble and cheap too.

So, I decided to bite the bullet and spend a few hours this morning redesigning her costume. Rather than trying to create her costume “cold” (that is, entirely from my own imagination), I spent about half an hour downloading reference images of motocross body armour, motorbike gear (modern racing boots look like something off Star Trek; not like 15 years ago, when I was riding: back then, leather Wellington Boots were the order of the day), weapons and swimming costumes. Here is the result of mashing all that reference together:

Front View

Rear View

A lot more exposed skin, a lot less rigid-looking body armour, and a honking great “photon” sword. I think she looks at lot more lithe and flexible now and, dare I say it, a little sexier too (an important trait for any comic book heroine). I’m feeling much more positive about her look now, and raring to get the remaining pages finished. Of course, I have to redraw all the images of Psion I’ve done so far, but I can just trace over the existing poses and Photoshop the new appearance in to place before I start inking. I think it’s worth investing a little extra time to get it looking right, rather than feeling disappointed with the finished result.

What I haven’t done, of course, is succeed in making her any easier to draw. And I still can’t decide on one small detail: gloves, or bare hands?

Here is page two of my FutureQuake strip. Pencilling them is taking longer than I thought (I had hoped to do a page a day, not a page every two days), but I’m getting faster as I go along, so hopefully I can back on track. It’s a long time since I did any comic book illustration, but I’m slowly getting back into the groove.

Page 2

I’ve finally completed the pencil for the first page of my Furturequake comic book, written by Neil Merrett.

Page 1

I’m not sure about the close-up of the heroine’s eyes yet (they look too masculine, I think), but I’ll come back to that panel when I’ve completed the remaining 4 pages.

I have really been struggling to find time to work on my FutureQuake comic strip, but I think I’ve finally managed to make some headway. I’m currently still at the “design phase”, trying to solidify a look for the main character (Psion) and some of the hardware that features in Neil’s script.

Psion’s ship features quite heavily, and I created a design which I liked, but which would have been an absolute sod to draw repeatedly. As we’ve recently started experimenting with using Google SketchUp for creating rough 3D mockups of environment concepts at work, I thought creating Psion’s ship would be an interesting learning experience. It has the added advantage of allowing me to pose the 3D model for each frame of the comic strip, so that I can quickly trace over it to create the complete panel layout. This should save time in the long run, as the ship has a complex geometric shape, and it would have been time consuming and difficult to get the perspective right each time. SketchUp has the further advantage that it can create quick and accurate shadows, which should improve the look of the finished artwork too.

However, as is always the way, creating the model took longer than I had hoped. I’ve done very little 3D modelling (read: almost none), and SketchUp is quite different in concept and execution to the only other package I’ve used (Autodesk Maya PLE 2008), so there were a few false starts, and quite a few bad words uttered. Once I started to understand the principles though, it was very rewarding to work on, and I’ve ended up adding much more detail than I originally intended. Still, I’m very pleased with the results, and the time and effort invested in creating this model should add to the quality of the finished strip. It’s also taught me some useful SketchUp tricks that should make my next foray into 3D modelling quicker and less sweary.

Below as some 2D exports of the model. I haven’t bothered colouring or texturing it; I’ll be overpainting the renders, so there is no point. I have added a quick SketchUp style to the model to make it look a bit swankier though.

Flight Mode

Hopefully it’s evident that I designed the ship to resemble a terrapin. It’s not as flat or wide as I originally envisaged, but once I started constructing it in SketchUp, it looked a bit too much like a Pop Tart, so I steepened the angles of the fuselage.

Low Altitude Flight

The outboard engines function as manoeuvring and landing thrusters, as well as landing gear. The design mimics the legs and toes of a terrapin (hopefully).

On the Ground

Once on the ground, the flaps that help direct the thrust from the manoeuvring motors form the “toes” of the terrapin, and help to give it quite an aggressive, taut appearance. I’ve also added vents that open to cool the engines.

There are lots of details I’d like to add if I have time; the ramp that forms the door under the chin of the ship could be fleshed out so that I can show it open, and the inside of the cooling vents needs some work (fins, mechanical gubbins, that sort of thing). But now that the model is finished enough to pose, I need to crack on with getting the panels started. I’ve added these images, and a few more views of the Terrapin from different angles, to my Comic Book portfolio page.

After all that work though, I just hope that Neil likes it.

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be commissioned to illustrate a story for the next issue of Futurequake. I’ve been given a great script, written by Neil Merrett, and I’ve recently set about designing the main character, Psion. In his script, Neil describes her as follows:

A heavily armed woman with long auburn hair is seen standing with her back to the reader. She should be covered in weapons that include grenades, tools and guns. Most visible though is a serrated sword positioned in a sheath or holster on her back with a [REDACTED] as a handle.

Here is my first completed sketch:

Although I’m quite happy with the image (I have no idea yet if it fits Neil’s idea of the character), what I’ve realised creating this image is that I’ll have to tone down the complexity of the design considerably if I want to be able to reproduce it in several comic book panels. It’s not that I can’t draw something this complex over and over, it’s just that I simply don’t have time to keep reproducing it.

As I expected, moving back into comic book illustration is a bit of a gear change from videogame concept art, and it’s going to take me a little while to adjust to the demands of a different genre. It’s fun though. So far I’m really enjoying myself.

I did an art test for NCsoft a few years ago; I’ve just added those sketches to my new portfolio pages. The art test required me to match the character designs and art style for a unpublished game that was under development at the time.

I’ve just added a set of spaceship concept sketches to my portfolio. These were done for an MMO space combat game that is currently being developed by a small independent studio.

I am pleased to announce that the ImageEngine Project Page is now live. On there you will find examples, instructions and sample files for installing ImageEngine 4 on your own site.