Tag Archive for western

Cross-Draw Kid Digital Art Commentary

November 6, 2011 Blog

I’m currently working on a new series of digital art pieces focusing on a golden age comic called “Western Adventures”, specifically featuring the character Cross-Draw Kid. I thought it would be cool to give some thoughts about my process. I wish I had stage-by-stage saved files to better demonstrate the process, but perhaps that’ll be something I do for a future blog! For now, I’ll keep it simple and treat it more like plain-ol’ commentary.

 
I wanted to show a before and after shot of the page I used for the first piece. I started with a full-page opposed to only one panel which is usually the case. The particular challenge to using a full-page “base” for the digital manipulations is finding a way to modify what’s already there in order to add design elements that are unique to me. When starting with a panel, for example, there’s more opportunity to personalize it because it tends to leave a lot of negative space to play with.

Showing the side-by-side images below you can see that I zoomed in to crop out the title and covered most of the bottom scroll-text with two panels from later in the story. The reasons I do things are both intuitive and intentional.

The intuitive  part of the process exists at the start when I start layering things, cropping things, adding filters, using the airbrush tool, masking things, adding text, etc. For the most part during this stage, I trust gut feelings to stumble upon “happy accidents” that guide me to a path I want to take.

The intentional part is when I start applying basic elements and principles of art to re-affirm the aspects of the piece I want to highlight. I use colour to unify the piece and guide the eye around. I use patterns to both flatten layered elements on the same plane (the grunge artifacts) as well as add texture (the comic dots and shirt). I added two simple things to this piece to help frame the Cross-Draw Kid better (the dead tree and birds). I cropped and repeated the title “Cross-Draw Justice” and placed it on a highlight coming from the sun in order to re-enforce the vertical framing created with the lower scroll and panels and the original “Cross-Draw Kid” title bar.

The best thing about making these is discovering things as I go. Layers are my friend. Textures are my friend. Filters are my friend. Moving layers around, or changing filters, or duplicating elements after I get something I like sometimes create whole new opportunities for the piece. Some examples are below.

 
If there are those out there who’ve always wanted to create digital art, I say go for it! There’s no better way to get better than to just create, create, create. Get comfortable with the tools and software you want to use slowly, then add new things to the process, experiment with it, and then create some more. The advice I’ll always stand by is: Don’t give up, don’t feel defeated, don’t stop creating. Enjoy!

Lone Stranger Pitch: Page 8 of 8

April 20, 2011 Blog, Comic Stuff, Lone Stranger

You know what they say: If you here it from the horse’s mouth (or mind), then the horse is probably right. Or you’re crazy to have heard a horse speak in the first place. Which makes you right even when you’re wrong anyways.

… and no… I actually don’t know if “that’s what they say” either.

That Sheriff doing the shooting was likely described as the one from the public domain comic. Emmanuel may even have done a concept sketch. It never got really used here, but as you can tell by the script, the Claytons’ older brother Ike “won’t be happy” about what’s transpired. If I’m correct (and it’s been a while, so I may not be), Ike is actually the only Clayton brother that really gets page time in “The Last Stand” since he’s basically the money mastermind behind the runnings of Dry Water Gulch. Come to think of it, since I mentioned Deadwood already, he’s basically “Sheridan”. (woooow… it’s all somehow connected… in the universal consciousness…)

So that’s it! That’s my LONE STRANGER pitch all out in the open!

I hope you enjoyed the mini-story, and I hope you enjoyed my own “commentary” about the process, the thoughts, the motivations, etc I experienced along the way. I hope in some form or another they help somebody out there in some way! If you’re a publisher… contact me, lets talk. Seriously. Do it. The Lone Stranger in lonely. And bored.

Enjoy what you do; do what you enjoy!

Thanks again goes out to Emmanuel Xerx Javier whom I could collaborate with forever; he’s the artist master behind the Beholder monthly for Blueprint Magazine as well as Raven Nevermore!

Also, thanks to Thomas Mauer, who’s work I first saw in Bad Dog and then in Killer of Demons (Image Comics) without knowing it was him that I contacted via the internet a Google search later for “letterer”. Oh, he also worked on the Outlaw Territory Anthology for Image Comics. Great book of western shorts, go buy it!

AND Thank all you visitors and readers once again!

Lone Stranger Pitch: Page 7 of 8

April 18, 2011 Blog, Comic Stuff, Lone Stranger

Here’s a reference to “Old Rock”, a town south of Dry Water Gulch. Now, I’m not 100% sure anymore, but this may be another easter egg, possibly from the same Western Adventures #3 story–for example, it might have been said in passing and non-significant to the actual story being told (so I made a note of it anyways)… OR… it’s from some other golden age western story involving another tale that I wanted to integrate into the “bigger picture” of the world of Lone Stranger existing with these public domain elements woven into the continuity.

I wanted the nick name “Pale Faced Bandit” to the only description the town got before he skedaddled outta there! The idea is that if a crime goes down around him, he’s likely the target to get the blame due to his “bein’ different” an all.

I made sure in this short pitch to indicate that even in a time of great stress and flight-panic, the Lone Stranger is a morally guided individual. He not only takes the time to pay for the drink he never finished, but even the broken furniture he was forced to defend himself with.

There was also likely way too much coin in that purse of his. I guess the Silver Moon Saloon can give it to charity.

Lone Stranger Pitch: Page 6 of 8

April 15, 2011 Blog, Comic Stuff, Lone Stranger

Aaannnd here’s the full page splash with a BANG BANG!

I didn’t want anything convoluted here. Primarily, I didn’t have the pages for it. Secondly, these guys are just basic yee-haw hooligans and not a match for the extra-terrestrial reflexes of out pale-faced hero!

My idea behind his power set when it comes to gun play was this: What if an individual could see the “math” to possibilities very rapidly and break down a sequence of cause-and-effect patterns to then choose the best options? Luckily for me I now have a movie reference for this (and, no, not the Matrix with bullet-time… although…) The movie I’m referring to is Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr. When I watched the movie in the theatre I didn’t really know that was the basic framework of how the modern update of the character was going to be presented. I was in love with it immediately and was like: Holy crap, this… THIS is how Stranger would think!

That said, Lone Stranger is NOT a Sherlock Holmes. He wasn’t so much intuitive (an innate skill necessary for picking up clues) as he was “logically deductive”. More like Deep Blue, the computer that beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. This would come up in later tales in more detail. The basic notion being that Stranger may look like the “monster” or “inferior biological hombre” to people of that time, but to all us of the in-the-know-future, gray aliens are soooo much more advanced then we simple humans are.

Stranger is just very modest about it all.

Actually, something else just occurred to me about why I wanted this one page scene. Strangely enough fo a guy “who was never into westerns” is concerned, some of the very first (if not first first ever first) comics I ever read were the Franco-Belgian series by cartoonist “Morris” called “Lucky Luke”, a cowboy who could “shoot faster than his shadow.” Even more strange is the fact that the whole series I read was a collection my great-uncle owns translated into Portuguese, printed in the ’70s and ’80s. If it wasn’t the whole run, it was damn well close. I read them when I was 10 or so one summer when I stayed in Portugal for 3 months. I was sad that there was no such book to be found in English in Canada.

PS: Cinebook Ltd has been publishing Lucky Luck in collections every two months since 2006!!! WOO!

Lone Stranger Pitch: Page 5 of 8

April 13, 2011 Blog, Comic Stuff, Lone Stranger

The Claytons don’t know how do make friends. You know what they say: It’s harder to make friends than it is to make enemies… actually I also have no idea if “that’s what they say”, but I’d like to imagine it’s true if they don’t. Whoever “they” are.

I’m pretty sure somewhere while working on Lone Stranger notes and such I picked up Deadwood Season 1. I lost a week of doing anything productive after that, including writing. I watched all the extras, all the commentary, I devoured it all and was still hungry. That experience locked down that comfy feeling a writer kind of needs in order to confidently tackle a new genres and subjects they are unfamiliar with.

Deadwood is brilliant and I recommend it for lovers of westerns and NON-lovers of westerns… probably because it’s not really about cowboys and indians (although there was that one episode…), it’s about the formation of a town during the gold rush and the dynamics the developed between the people in that town who had money to spend, and business to run, and no government getting in the way of how the power figures wanted to run things.

The way the series was put together on a writing level was a great inspiration to me and my personal writing tendencies. You can watch the extras and listen to the commentary for all three seasons and learn how David Milch (creator) would dynamically alter scenes even during production and filming. He let the character goals dictate the scene even if it wasn’t scripted at first, then he and his team would work to incorporate the changes for the next set of days filming. It was mad genius, it required guts, and it required confidence in your characters (and actors who portrayed them, of course).

The inspiration and knowledge gleaned from watching and listening to Milch during all three seasons ensured me that it’s ok to let go of plot points for the greater good. Let the characters guide the story, don’t force the story onto the characters. Character development can tell a story all by itself!

I do wish sometimes, during writing and re-writing Raven Nevermore issues 1-8, that I had a team of writers to bounce ideas off of about continuity and structure much faster and more efficiently…

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