Returning to mecha - preparing for RB

I haven't drawn too much for almost two years now, which is the duration between this update and the last one. I'm planning on putting my Remember Babylon comic into motion in the near future, so I decided that now is the time to see if I still got what it takes to draw sci-fi stuff.

When I was in high school me and my friends started watching Gundam, the extremely popular Japanese sci-fi franchise. Eventually we even started to design of our own robots based on that series and other mecha series such as Full Metal Panic! and Code Geass. Even though those years are quite far behind, I'm still a fan of giant robots and so, I decided to tread familiar paths for practicing a style suitable for Remember Babylon's post-apocalyptic story.

So, here's my 2017 Gundam-style mecha I came up with during the last few days.

Here are also some old designs from 2007-2008. (Damn, it's been a long time)

When life gives you snow

Last November, I used up all the snow that had fallen on to my parent's lot to conjure this mighty frozen beast near 8 m / 25 ft in length. For inspiration I tried to remember the appearance of the old 19th century depictions of dinosaurs after their initial discovery (image below).

Of course with my luck, the sculpture turned out to be too close to the road. The next morning, I got to witness the aftermath of, first of all, 10 cm / 4 inches of new snow, and secondly, the regards of the snowplow that came to clear the road from all that new snow. Bye bye, lizard. But for one magical night, the snow reptile was the pride of the neighborhood.

And hauling all that snow was a superb exercise and it took me 5-6 h to complete the task. It was like being a kid again. Now, I just need to have the same sort of snowfall here in Southwest Finland, so that I can maintain my "training program".

A lithograph of the famous Hawkins' dinosaurs built in the 1850's.

Remember Babylon Character Concepts

Here's a couple sketches I've been recently working on for Remember Babylon, a post-robot-wars story. Someone might recall the short comics I drew under the same title a couple of years ago. Those stories were just small "tests", and now I'm trying to create a full-fledged comic book.

So, the two main characters, Mad Mutt and One Shot, are quite the same from before. I'm really trying to finalize HOW I want them to look, so that I can start concentrating on the story. 

Mad Mutt has now a backpack instead of a battle harness, and two revolvers instead of one. I intend to make him a gunslinger type of a character, a real old school soldier. His right eye is swollen, 'cause he's a troublemaker. I also made him extra skinny with a little tummy. His more bark than bite. You might notice the text "The man from the past". We'll get to that another time.

I've had a hard time to figure out how much of cyborg One Shot is. I thought about going with an almost complete human appearance as in Ghost in the Shell or The Terminator, but it didn't look right. A completely mechanic look on the other hand makes it harder to show emotions. I think I'll go with this "everything-but-the-face"-appearance. I'm going to cover most of him with clothes anyway.

I've also taken a new approach towards One Shot's pet dinosaur, who I've renamed Pepe (if you get the reference, you're an awesome person). The new appearance is very much more Jurassic Park -raptor-like, though I increased the crests above the eyes and shortened the snout for a unique, birdlike look. Even though I'm not a fan of the new "feathered dinosaur" appearance of real dinosaurs, I've added a little bit of feathers on Pepe. I think their pretty cool in small quantities.

Sir is a whole new character that in the new story travels together with One Shot. Sir is a mysterious bounty hunter. I like the helmet, but otherwise the characters appearance need more work. I would like to give Sir a melee weapon to counter One Shot's sniper-profile. Here it's something resembling a staff.

As a bonus, I give you the very first drafts from 2012 that I contributed for the comic collection LTT, in case you want to see what I started with. I'd like to draw a camo-cloak on One Shot, but it's devastatingly time consuming.

 

I'll catch you again next time. If you have any feedback, I'll love to hear it! :)

The small things in life

As a person that gets easily fired up to fight against all the injustice in the world, I can find myself worrying about a great deal of problems that are simply overwhelming. Environmental, economic, political and social issues flood the news, social media and as I grow older, more and more of everyday conversations. The world is heading to ruin. It's as simple as that. And such great wheels are in motion, that a single human being such as I cannot affect them. What is there to do, when the power I withhold is little to nothing? Such cynical thoughts drown me, at least until I remember, that if I stop worrying about solving the large scale wrongdoings, I should just concentrate on my immediate surroundings, to enjoy what I have right here and attempting to make the space around me better. If every person would focus on thriving for good and make others around us repeat the gesture, the small streams would do the river thing, and we just might have a future. When you're happy, it spreads as long as it is given a chance. That's my theory, anyhow.

With the incident at Charlie Hebdo, I found myself pondering these thoughts yet again and inspired by those emotions, I drew this comic, the first for this year.

- "Every so often, one can really

feel useless and insignificant."

- "The environment is being destroyed,

people hate each other,

money is all that counts."

- "Oh well, it's a new year. If I'd just

enjoy things a bit."

For Charlie.

The massacre of Charlie Hebdo leaves me shocked, infuriated and speechless. I feel ashamed that even in these modern days, the regrettably uncivilized nature of humanity arises to execute such murderous deeds. As a fellow comic artist, I also want to contribute my most sincere respects for the memory of Charlie Hebdo's loss. 

Je suis Charlie.

Xmas Cards of the Third Kind

Through out the Ages, I've enjoyed making Christmas cards for my friends and relatives. Due to my interest in drawing, I'm also the one who takes on the task to save our family's dignity in remembering relatives and friends with Christmas cards. Unfortunately, taking care of things on the last minute is a bad family trait and it is a great fortune to receive a card from us, an outright miracle if on time.

As long as I can remember I've made cards that deviate from the norm of cute and traditional motifs. Instead, I attempt to create entertaining and unique cards that have a pun more or less easy to understand. My early works had easy ones such as Santa crashing into a house through a wall, getting stuck in a chimney or evading vigilant children with ninja-like maneuvers. (Even though, here in Finland Santa comes to see families and children in person on Christmas night. However, our FIN-US-family exercise the US style of an invisible Santa that stops by when kids are sleeping. The American version was usually depicted in my cards. Only as a teenager did I finally understand that our family was the odd one.)

My early cards were scarcely copied, so if you own one of those rarities, hang on to them well. They might be worth something eventually (I know I have a few left somewhere, but unfortunately I couldn't find them from my stacks of paper for you to see here). The older I got, the more far-fetched my puns became. The funny thing is that so far these very unorthodox cards are the only ones I've ever put on sale for the general public to purchase. And guess what, they were a great success! In fact that year I barely had enough left to send to my friends and relatives. However, for the last three years, I couldn't organize time for making more, which saddens me much. Last year, I did sketch a black-and-white dinosaur-themed card and sent a few photocopies of it to my closest friends, but I still count last year a cardless one.

This year, I finally mustered my willpower and motivated myself to complete the task by promising a whole lot of people that I'm going to send them a card. Since such promises must not be broken, or hence may my soul be ever forsaken, I had but one option: finish the bloody job. However, I underestimated the time that my style of perfectionist illustrating consumes and I lost the chance to print a batch at a proper printing press. So, I just printed a set with an ordinary copy machine on ordinary copy paper and cut-and-pasted the images on ordinary cardboard. I planned on having three different cards, including last year's dino-card, which I now completed with colors. Yet, coloring just the two and preparing them for dispatch took me over a week and, alas, I ran out of time. Thus, now I have one outlined black-and-white image waiting for next year.

I wish all you delightful holidays and a marvelous New Year! Hurrah!

2014 

My greatest Christmas card so far, inspired by Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, which I happened to see in late November. The idea seemed perfect from the very beginning. The longer I thought about the theme, the more hilariously appropriate it felt. For example, the color red, you can wish someone "a shining Christmas", the line "all work, no play", and of course Jack Nicholson. Santa Claus is after all also called Saint Nick. Thus the name of this card is "Saint Nicholson". And I could keep on going...

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"Merry Monsters". For completing my 2013 dinosaur-card I wanted to go wild with colors. I used them to define the three different characters. The Triceratops was to be beautiful and vivid in the manner of a peacock. The T-Rex a bit more Jurassic Parkish so that it would seem more out-of-place and yet in all its fearfulness utterly adorable. For the Raptor I had only little time to spare, so I opted for green and blue, a color scheme not yet used and somewhat similar to a common lizard. The bright colors also helped with enhancing the jester-like characteristic.  

 2013

"Merry Monsters (B&W)". The incomplete version which I started to draw way, way, way, way too late. I ran out of time completely. I think I printed only six of these (using the uni library's comp). After drawing weird Christmas cards, I wanted to do just a nice, good-willing, cute card which is still very much me. So as a huge dino-fan (when I was a kid, I could recite over a hundred different dino-species) this idea hit me instantly. The beauty would be in the idea of the two most iconic dinosaur enemies the Triceratops and the T-Rex being buddy-buddy (maybe even a Romeo-Juliet-thing). The Raptor came in for a comical effect (and to fill some empty space). Even though the idea is that dinos are trading presents and wearing xmas hats, I still wanted to go for a realistic appearance, which in my opinion makes it even more adorable than a comical appearance. It also satisfies my desire to not go too cute and cuddly.  

2010 

"Action!". 2010 was the year for my weirdest cards. I just wanted to do things... differently. This one generates from my love for movies and especially making movies. I had some years earlier drawn a card with Rudolph threatening to eat a present if Santa doesn't stop for a break. When I thought about a cinematic scene I could depict, it seemed perfect. I also thought it'd be cool to show people a different perspective into movie making. This "monitor perspective" is based on one seen in a clip from the making of documentaries of Peter Jackson's King Kong. I even wrote a small portion of the screenplay for the scene on the backside of the card. Initially, it felt like a good idea but afterwards I noticed that there remained only little space to write any greetings.

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"Divine Substitute". The very basic idea is simple. Santa's sick and needs a substitute. The harder pun to get is that asking Ares for red clothes refers to his position as the God of War and the possibility that he probably has clothes drenched in blood. Zeus does not think of this, so he'd use the red clothes with out realizing that the color comes from blood. Dark, dark humor, people. The elements in the front of the picture are drawn by hand and colored with pencils. The background is painted in photoshop. I'm really proud of the colors, especially since I knew only a little color theory.

The Finnish version.

2009

"Steampunk Santa". It's not hard to spot the obvious references to Hayao Miyazaki's animations in this card, especially Porco Rosso. Flying and airplanes are very close to my heart, so I transformed Rudolph into an airplane of my own design and combined some sci-fi appearances with old school plane designs for a steampunk-feeling. It's industrial and a bit cold (just like Christmas is these days), but also exciting and surprising. I also wanted a real sense of speed, so I made Santa fly through a snow storm. This is probably my favorite card right after the Nicholson one.The vehicle is drawn by hand and colored with pencils. The background, lights and the shadowing of the trailer are done in photoshop.

The Finnish version. The greeting works much better in this language than in English.

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"Rudolph, the abominable reindeer". Another monster-themed card, which criticizes modern life and its emphasizing on numbers, neglecting everything else. This one is drawn by hand and colored with pencils. Only text is added in photoshop. I should have modified the colors stronger a bit, since compared to all my other images, this one feel awfully flat.

The same in Finnish, which once again works a little better.

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As for last is probably my most un-Christmasy Christmas card. Technically the only thing that refers to the season is the mistletoe. Also DreamWorks will probably sue me for using a character similar to theirs. Anyway, it's a comical take on the Titanic-disaster (which happened in April, I know) in which the iceberg and ship are turned into anthropomorphic characters. Naturally, the ship is a lady. The iceberg is a man literally cool as ice. The collision is not an evil thing, it's just the kiss between two lovers who cannot have each other than for one short but sensational moment. So tragic (there's the love story you should have done, James Cameron!). Once again most of the image is hand-drawn and colored with pencils. The ship was originally black like the real Titanic, but I re-colored it in photoshop to a light blue, because it would have disappeared into the background and made it hard to spot the facial details. The ship also seems more joyful and appealing like this than in pitch-black paint. 

Death or Glory (academic)

Being in the midst of finishing my studies, my master's thesis looms over me continuously and ominously like the final boss in a challenging adventure game. It's not hard to imagine that to complete the thesis, things will eventually lead into taking drastic measures on the last night prior to the deadline. To overcome this ominous, academic monstrosity one must muster a raging, relentless spirit and just finish the thing in one final swift strike, no matter the outcome. Either you conquer it, or it conquers you. Death or glory.

FIN

ENG

Octoberian turnoff

Behold, the new comic strip which came out in yesterday's Lapin kansa- newspaper. It's in both Finnish and English. Enjoy! :)

FIN

ENG

Fan art moment #2 with thoughts about drawing action in comics

Sheik, the "ninja" from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Continuing with fan art, this is a depiction of the ninja-like Sheik from the Legend of Zelda -game series that I drew for a friend. For online I added speedlines and the Zelda logo into the background to give it some spunk. The appearance of Sheik is somewhat a combination of the original Ocarina of Time and recent Super Smash Bros. versions, but with also some of my own slight alterations.

This image is by far my best character drawing to date. It has a strong sense of movement and action, the pose perfectly depicts the agility and determination of the character and both the perspective and body relations are pretty much correct. The image on the back is the only thing that I should have fixed into a proper angle, but I only noticed the fault after inking. So too late to change that. Also the backhand wielding the knife turned out to be exceptionally troublesome. Otherwise, I'm feeling quite proud. Next time I might even use some colors. Seriously, I might.

As I've mentioned before, the Japanese cartoonist Masamune Shirow is my greatest role-model with his highly detailed illustrations and dynamic depiction of action. With this image, I once again feel I'm getting much closer to that. And as a matter of fact, I have a great example of what I mean right here. :)

Breaking down "The knife fight" in Masamune Shirow's Appleseed

The article above is an in-depth deconstruction of one of his best action scenes, which shows wonderfully his mastery in composing complicated fight sequences into a perfect set of still images. Drawing a fight is one of the hardest things to do in comics. What is the correct size and shape of a frame, the direction of movement within and between frames, the window of time between each frame, the positions of character and items, etc.? When it comes to depict action, all these questions and many more are more important than ever. You don't want the fight to be too long nor too short, so that the story keeps going forward but the reader doesn't get lost. The imagery has to be dynamic, not stale. The eye of the viewer needs to be guided so that it moves fluently through the images. If you're interested in drawing comics with elaborate fight scenes, I truly recommend checking this article out.

Fan art moment!

I haven't done Dragon Ball Z fan art (or any type fan art really) since I was a teen, but I had a sudden urge to draw some last night. Here's a depiction of my favorite character from the series, Piccolo, giving "the eye" after getting badly beaten up. The result is quite nice for a quick sketch, even though he looks younger than what I attempted at.

Piccolo mad

Have a nice summer!

I was asked to draw a summer themed cover image for Vasa's facebook -page, and after 8 hours, something like this appeared on my drawing board. Even though, Finnish weather at the moment is all but the type depicted in the illustration, it's the spirit that counts. Also, after a very long time I'm using color pencils again and I must admit that I'm particularly proud of the result in coloring the girl. With this I wish you all a relaxed and awesome Summer and an enjoyable Midsummer's day aka Juhannus!

Remember Babylon Chapter 2: Human Necessities Part 1

Wow, that turned out to be a long title. Anyway, the University of Lapland's student comic publication LTT3 is finally out there. With the contribution of a total 15 artists (including me of course lol), it's another spectacular feat of our students. 

So cool!

Unfortunately, at the moment it can be obtained only from the university shop itself or the art gallery at Valsa. Eventually, it might go online, but as people wait for that to happen, I offer you as a special treat my story from the book. Well, the part that I got finished. The second half is planned for next fall.

There it is! On paper! So ...real.

You can find the previous chapter from the beginning of this blog, but storywise it's not a must to read before this one. ENJOY!

It's a wrap!

After a month's worth of waiting, the first part of chapter 2 for Remember Babylon is finally done. Pages 1-16 took a massive 100 + hours of work and was completed just a day short of two weeks behind the original deadline. Hurrah.... So as always, "a small and easy" project got bloated into Cyclopean proportions and with me also working on programs for the annual student radio Säteily, staying on schedule turned out to be impossible. In fact my "nicely calculated" spring plan got screwed because I ended up giving this comic more than a week more than I had calculated. But what is done is done, and hopefully I can use this as a "demo", even though the story gets cut short. I've actually played with the idea of trying to sell the story to a publisher. They might even get interested. But here're more production images and as a bonus, the first page of the comic! LTT 3 will hopefully come out in two weeks so stay tuned to see the entire thing and all the great comics by our University's students.

1. Okay, so this is my new profile picture for the introduction page of LTT3. I'm a monkey, tehehehee.

2. Here's the whole thingy, 16 pages, done with a 0,7 and 0,5 mm technical pencils onto basic copy paper. Why the holes you ask? Because this paper was on sale. I counted it took me 3-4 working hours per page. Then begins the inking.

  

3. The inking phase took about the same time as the preliminary penciling even though "I only needed to re-draw the same lines", which of course isn't true. During the penciling phase I leave a lot of details out, because "I'll take care of them during inking". As you can see from the image below, the pencil drawn rocky area is much plainer than the inked one.

4. After inking, there's digitalization and applying the finishing touch in Photoshop. This includes removing mistakes, adding frame borders, dialogue and sound effects and, as in this image, adding shadows to large areas. I'm not sure how pleased I'm with the end results though. We'll see how well the digi-black fits together with the rest of the image when the final print arrives.   

5. Here we have page 1. You can compare my draft from the very beginning

 to the final results. Each page was drafted in the similar fashion so that I could see how the layout works. For this opening page, I first thought to repeat the same sequence as with Chapter 1 (the three growing frames), but it just wouldn't work. Also to give more space for the "evasion frame", I decided to remove one image from "the lizard and the bug"-scene. I'm pretty sure the build up for the evasion is okay even with one image less.

PS. The next time I'll put this much time and effort into a comic, I'll expect something in return. Like a statue. That would be awesome. Or a Lego-set.