Costumes are Not Consent at CONvergence 2013

I just got a nice shout-out from TheMarySue.com for the Costumes are Not Consent posters I made for this year’s CONvergence.

Here’s the complete set:

The characters are all mascot characters I created for CONvergence: Connie, the convention’s principle mascot, Professor Max, the scientist who invented her, and his misguided attempt to improve on perfection, the slightly-evil Connie Mark 2.

Creating a Cover: Young Justice #25

It’s time for another installment of my Creating a Cover series. As was often the case, this cover was being designed before I had seen the script for the issue in question, so I had to rely on a suggestion from series writer Greg Weisman for an idea of what would be appropriate subject matter for a cover. Greg suggestion was basically “Everybody versus Brainiac.” I hadn’t seen a script for our Brainiac (aka “The Collector of Worlds”) in action yet so I wasn’t sure what kind of offensive capabilities he was going to display. I figured I’d just have him in a “ready for action” pose and make it obvious that combat was imminent. The “everybody” he was going to be fighting included all the Young Justice Team members, plus members of the Justice League – everybody who had been seen up to this point on Brainiac’s ship or the ship belonging to our other villain Kylstar.

I asked if there was any one character who was the focus of the final showdown with Brainiac and I was told that there wasn’t. Because of that and the fact that this was going to be the final issue of our series, I didn’t want to emphasize one of the heroes over the others for the sake of a more dynamic layout, so the the challenge became how to include more than a dozen heroes fighting a single opponent, without giving any one of them the lion’s share of the focus.

As is often the case when trying to include this many characters on a cover, the way to organize them into a layout is a process of almost mathematical deduction. I knew what I wanted to do, but I felt the need to offer multiple options and present my reasoning.

Sketch A

Sketch B

Sketch C

I presented three sketches to indicate the three basic approaches I saw as our options:

Sketch A places Brainiac at the center background with everyone else rushing him. The disadvantage of this approach was that while it makes for a compelling image, it puts most of the heroes in a position with their backs to the viewer – something I especially wanted to avoid on the cover for our swansong issue.

Sketch B takes more of the lateral view – viewing the gang-rush of heroes more in profile, with Brainiac down in the corner to allow the heroes to be more spread out and coming at him from both ground-level and from the air!

I felt the strongest option was the one presented in Sketch C – with Brainiac in the foreground, cheated “towards the camera” so we get a better look at him, but his attention clearly on all the heroes converging on him from the background. This option has the heroes coming at us front on, and gives us lots of open space to spread them across the cover, still leaving room for the logo at the top.

Pencils

Inks

Happily for me, Sketch C was chosen so I proceeded to pencils and inks. This ended up being the only time I got to draw Lagoon Boy in his “puffed up” combat mode. This is also a great look at our version of Brainiac, who I was so happy to have gotten to design for Young Justice.

And finally, here’s the final version with color by Zac Atkinson complete with all the final logos and other trade dress.

I really enjoyed getting to draw so many of the covers for my run on Young Justice. I enjoy drawing covers overall, and I really enjoyed getting to contribute more fully to the total look and feel of the Young Justice issues I did, as opposed to The Batman Strikes were most of the covers were by other artists.

You can find my previous Creating a Cover installments here.

Creating a Cover: Young Justice #24

It’s time for another installment of my Creating a Cover series. As usual, this cover was being designed before I had seen the script for the issue in question, let alone had drawn it, so a suggestion from series writer Greg Weisman was key in figuring out a cover concept. Greg suggested Batgirl being grabbed by the throat by an arm belonging to the yet-to-be-revealed Match in his mutated “Bizarro” form. Behind them, would be Plastic Man, helpless to intervene behind the force-field barrier cutting off central Metropolis from the outside world.

Cover Sketch a

Cover Sketch b

We had wanted to hide Match’s identity/appearance on this cover, because while he was revealed in the previous issue, this cover would be made public as part of the solicitation for the issue before that had happened, so a shot from Match’s point of view seemed the most effective. My next priority was to get Plastic Man and Batgirl as large in the frame as possible, as we were more concerned with the characters and their expressions than the setting. The first sketch was well received, but Greg wanted Batgirl to look more aggressive and less victimized, so a second sketch with an angrier expression and a Batarang clutched in her hand as a weapon was added. I had to shrink the Batgirl figure down a bit to have room for her hand with the Batarang in the frame. I tweaked a few other things while I was redrawing, such as the pattern of lighting and shadows on Batgirl’s mask, and I realized that I hadn’t had Batgirl’s hair visible in the first version, so I rectified that as well.

Young Justice #24 cover pencils

Young Justice #24 cover inks

The layout drawing was tight enough that progressing to pencils and then inks was pretty simple. It’s always nice when penciling to know you’ll be inking your own work. While my pencils are still pretty tight, I don’t have to much thought to line weight or texture at this stage, since I’ll be making those choices myself rather than having to indicated it for another artist in the pencils.

Young Justice #24 cover colors

Young Justice #24 final cover

On the left is the first draft of color by Zac Atkinson. Zac did his usual great job, but we wanted Match’s arm to be a little more pale and chalky – not as completely bleached-white as a full-on Bizarro form, but far enough to be noticeably paler that Batgirl and to provide strong contrast with his original skin tone. On the right you can see the finished color as it appeared on the published cover, along with all the final logos and other trade dress.

You can find my previous Creating a Cover installments here.

Character Design – Young Justice #14 – ATLANTIS!

So the last time I did an installment of my Character Design series, it was what was meant to be the first of two parts on our Atlantis storyline from Young Justice #14/15. And… I’m just getting to it now. Wait, when did I start inking Young Justice interiors in addition to penciling them and penciling and inking the covers? Oh, that’s right, issue #14. It’s like that made me busy or something. So, at long last, here we go!

For anyone who would like to read more about these characters both as they appeared in Young Justice and their counterparts in DC Comics comic book continuity, I’ve provided links to the relevant pages on the always useful Young Justice Wiki!

First off, Aqualad’s parents. His mother Sha’Lain’a was described as age 34, blonde with GOLDEN skin (not Caucasian), prominent gills – more-so than Aqualad – and webbed fingers and toes. And we know from Aqualad’s description that she was VERY beautiful (granted, through a son’s eyes, but still…). I originally drew her with shorter hair to better show of the gills, but Greg wanted longer hair so that changed in the actual comic. And then as it turned out you never get the best look at her in the comic anyway. She appears on one page with several panels on it and there are always many speaking characters in each panel, so there was never an opportunity for a good close up. Oh, well.

Aqualad’s father, Calvin “Cal” Durham, was described in the script as age 40, African-American, gills, webbed fingers and toes. Shaved head. Atlantean garb. That was pretty straightforward, and I tried to design an outfit for him in keeping with what we’d seen of Atlantean fashion on the show.

ShaLaina

Calvin Durham

Next up were Aqualad’s friends, many of which had already been designed for the show (like Lori Lemaris, Topo, La’gaan, Garth and Tula), but some had not. Some of them were anthropomorphized mer-people, which were the most interesting design-wise.

I’d seen versions of Aqualad’s whale-buddy Blubber that were closer to human with a whale head, but I wanted something closer to whale. But my first attempt didn’t go far enough and I did a second version that was even less human. In addition losing the legs and the teeth, I added more detail to version 2 to make it seem less”cartoony.” I was determined to keep clothes on him as it’s a pet peeve of mine with intelligent aliens or other non-human creatures in comics that humans seem to be the only ones who feel the need to wear clothes.

Blubber – Version 1

Blubber – Version 2

Nanue Shark was a younger version of the King Shark character. This was another one that required two passes. The biggest challenge was that Greg was very concerned about the character appearing too cartoony, but it’s hard to get a look that is anything other than cartoony when it’s a shark head on a guy’s body. It doesn’t help that my character designs tend to be cartoonier than my finished page art, as I’m trying to design in broad, simple strokes that can be fleshed out with texture in a finished drawing. The revisions here are largely limited to losing the chin, making the teeth more irregular and like those of a real shark, and making the eyes a little smaller.

Nanue Shark – Version 1

Nanue Shark – Version 2

Then we had the humans of the group, who turn out to be part of a group of “purists” who are being manipulated by Ocean Master (do I need to post spoilier-warnings for a comic that came out a year ago in my blog entry about designs for that comic?). Here we see Ronal, Wyynde, and M’Chiste, all of whom are very loosely based on existing comic book characters. Loosely in the sense that it’s not much more than the name and perhaps a slight visual nod in the design.

Ronal

Wyynde

M’Chiste

And rounding out the group we have Chian and Danuuth.

Chian

Danuuth

The last character to be designed had to do with a land-based sub-plot involving T.O. Morrow and his robotic creations, specifically Jim Lockhart aka Red Torpedo. We’d seen an image of Jim Lockhart in his prime, but here was supposed to be an elderly man of 91. The trick was that while his human disguise was supposed to look older, his robot form underneath was unchanged so I couldn’t have him stooped over or do anything else to suggest a frail, elderly frame. I was stuck with a barrel-chested robust frame.

Jim Lockhart

Whew! That’s it! Finally we have completed our look at my original character designs for issues #14 & #15 of Young Justice. I promise we’ll get to the next story arc much, much sooner.

You can find my previous Character Design installments here.

Happy Colorist Appreciation Day

Young Justice #11 – Cover Inks

Young Justice #11 – Cover Color

It’s one of those things that makes you ask “Who DECIDES this stuff?” In response to colorist Jordie Bellaire’s tumblr post this morning, today has been deemed Colorist Appreciation Day on Twitter. Or, since it’s on Twitter, #coloristappreciationday.

I color most of my work outside of comics myself, but most of my work in the comics field is drawn by me but colored by another artist. And make no mistake, coloring can make or break a piece of art. I’ve benefited from good coloring and suffered terrible coloring.

As an example of how good coloring can *benefit* artwork, I direct your attention to my gallery of Young Justice covers featuring the colors of Zac Atkinson. You can see his work as well as my uncolored line art for each cover. You can find Zac on Twitter at @zacatkinson, and his website is www.evilby.me.

So thanks to Zac and the other great colorists I’ve gotten to work with over the years! Appreciate colorists today!