Daughter of the Blue Shield

Another concept character sketch for the book. Enjoy!

Now In Technicolor!

Here's a coloured version of Benjy I did for practice. Not bad.

Jam

A piece a did for a Jam on Millarworld. Came out pretty decent. I really need to work more on my inking. I think it definitely lost something from pencils to inks. Next time.

Well Whaddaya Know...

Things have been continuously crappy lately. Had food poisoning TWO WEEKS IN A ROW. That's gotta be some kinda record. Andy's been sick and now we both feels colds coming on. Not to mention a bunch of our coworkers finished their contracts and we're short handed resulting in us teaching 12 hour days for the last weeks. It's Andy's birthday this Wednesday but we don't finish till so late me may not be able to go out and do anything for it. On a good note I entered a Draw Off on Millarworld.net for a Flash costume redesign and I won! Whoohoo! First time entering and a win. There were only like 6 entires mind you but they were all really good and the voting was fairly close. Pretty cool. Gives me a nice needed ego boost.

-Gino

Gettin back on the wagon.

Back's been feeling a bit better lately. Still not amazing and back to normal but minimal pain and hopefully getting better. Here's a couple new drawings for the Knights comic. One I spent a fair bit of time on. I recently bought a book on drawing perspective for comics and gave some of the techniques a whirl. Came out okay. I can see myself improving which is always nice. Now that my back is getting better I hope I can post here fairly regularly again. Draw till my eyes bleed. Wicked.

Gino

Good news for a change.

So I had my MRI on Friday morning. Not an enjoyable experience. Giant round casket that sounds like a jackhammer and no one in the hospital spoke English. Strange procedure in another country where no one explain anything to you. Not the optimal conditions. Oh well. It's done now. Turns out I don't need surgery but I'm close. My lowest vertebrae is eroded a 1/3 of the way in and almost touched the nerves inside. If it was 1/2 than surgery is the only recourse. So I have to drop my weight an strengthen my lower back muscles taking the pressure off my spine and apparently it will heal. I say apparently because the doctor was speaking English as a second language and I have learned during my five years here in Korea that there is ALWAYS something lost in translation. Anyway, I'm trying to cut down my eating and pay more attention to what it is I do eat. This isn't too big of a deal as I was already on the way to doing this and living healthier when I got hurt. I was going to the gym constantly and changing my lifestyle when this happened. However, it gets kind of difficult to exercise and become active when I'm not aloud to move too quickly or lift anything or be very active in general. Oh well. I'll figure something out. There's talk of pilates but I don't know if my ego can handle it. In my mind pilates = hippy Hollywood nonsense so we'll see. Hopefully Something works out because I want this to be the last time I have to deal with this.

Cheers,
Gino

Craptastic Times

So in a matter of a week I got my first paid gig as a comic artist, paid off a 1 of 3 student loan and went to the gym constantly and losing 5 pounds . All this good stuff made me a little wary. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Then Blammo. I took a tumble while playing volleyball and re-injured my spine. Majorly. This is the first time I've been able to sit down to use my cpomputer in like 2 weeks and I haven't been able to put a pencil to paper which is murder. I've been on my back in bed every minute I'm not at work. I have to have an MRI tomorrow to find out exactly the problem is. There's a possibility I may need surgery. If I do need surgery it's 6 weeks of recovery which pretty much means I'm out of a job and Andy and my plans for next spring and driving across Canada are toast. No money and no job. It's looking fairly postive as my pain has reduced in the last few days and signs are good but I'm still nervous about the results from the MRI tomorrow. I'll throw up some if the concept stuff for the book I was working on before the tumble. Sorry to all the people who've Facebooked me or dropped me a message in the past while. It's been literally impossible for me to reply. I'll be doing my best to get back to everyone in the coming days. Be patient. I'm still limited to small times of sitting.

Cheers,
Gino

So last week I posted the picture of the magic cop (see previous post) on Millarworldforums and a few days later the creator (John Knox) asks me if I want to do some pages for a project based on the character! After my initial panic attack I quickly said yes and am now getting paid for comic book work. I haven't stopped smiling in about 4 days. So in honour of the occasion I bought myself a new oversized sketchbook. Heres the first piece from my new sketchbook and my first try at the character of my new project! :D

Magic Cop

Here's another character sketch from Millarworld forums. Came out okay. Did it on my 10 minute breaks between classes. This whole job thing really gets in the way of your drawing comic books. :P

Man of Steel

Anybody who knows me is aware of my love of Superman. Because pf this I am always hesitant to draw him. Afraid I'll never do him justice. This is probably the first Superman I've drawn in about 5 years. Still not what I wanted but a little closer.

More stuff from Millarworld

Here's another character from the Millarworld Forums. Enjoy!

Once again with feeling...or ink

Same image but inked.

Busy Up

Tired to make the piece a bit busier so I added some new people and a bit of life.

Perspective Practice

Here's a piece I was doing about my fantasy characters that a friend and I came up with. I got the idea a few weeks ago and decided to do it for a DRAW OFF at Millarworld forums. I decided to experiment with Google Sketch Up to lay out the piece. I'm really starting to enjoy that program for layouts and scenes. This came out a lot better than my last attempt at a pirate ship a couple years ago. Ew. I'm gonna try to ink this (even though I freakin hate inking) and post the inked here is a few days.

Flame On!

Here's one of Johnny to keep the FF theme going. I may do the other two. See where my doodlin' takes me.

Ups, downs and men made of orange rock.

I attempted a page of sequentials for a Batman thread at the Millarworld forums. Disappointing would be the kindest word, I suppose. The contest ended today and it wasn't near ready to be put up but I may throw it up here at some point after I redraw and rework it. Fought with myself for awhile but whatever. The more I work the better it'll get. So I'm gonna keep drawing and posting and working my ass off. Moped around today and reread my Mike Wieringo Fantastic 4 and Spider-Man book. I could stare at his work all day and never stop smiling. Ringo just made everything look so easy and beautiful. Flawlees and pristine. Made me jump back on the drawing wagon and give Ol Blue Eyes a shot. Came out okay but drawing all that rock? Not as fun as you'd think. :P

Another Character from Millarworld.com

Here's another character I did up from the forums at Millarworld. You ever happy with something when you do it and then not so much 5 seconds after you finish? This is one of those.

Coloured Cowboys

Figured I'd colour up the Steampunk Cowboy just for fun.

Sleeping Beauty

This is a scene or image from a game/comic book series my friends and I are doing. Fairly happy with the drawing but I still think the light and colouring needs a little work. Grayden Brighthammer in the foreground and Whisper in the glass coffin.



Here's another character from the same series. Ethan Drysdale half-elf thief and all around scoundrel.

Cowboy Steampunk

Idea from a theme going on over at the Millarworld Forums. Came out pretty good. I love steampunk. :)

New Sketches

Here's a few new sketches for the tofu comic. My wife, my buddy Will, and a few action shots. Enjoy!

Tofu Page

Quick page I put together for my Tofu bit. Trying an animated look to see how it works.

I hate Tofu. hate it. It's evil and vile and tastes like sponge. Tasteless icky sponge. So I did what any aspiring comic artist would do while living in a country that cooks tofu in everything. I started to work on a comic about it. Here's some of the character sketches.

Tofu grrrr

Me

First Try

OK, this is my first time at something like this. I read my friend Shawn's blog intermittently and though I enjoyed reading a blog I was never sure I had anything to say. However Shawn recently showed me a link to Living Between Wednesdays. If you haven' read this blog and enjoy reading comic books I highly recommend it. The fact the blogger is an East Coaster is a nice added bonus. It's good to see this stuff going on while I'm whittling my time away in Korea "teaching" and working on my art. So I figure I'll start give this whole blog thing a shot. I figure I'll talk about the weeks comics or ones I've read recently or things going on the industry that ecxite me or piss me off. Also I'll throw some of my drawings or things I'm working on for people to have a look at. I'll probably throw some personal stuff in for good measure, too.

See you soon.
Gino