Below are some concept sketches for Pickle and also a test page trying out a really quick and rough style. I was also playing around with the idea of a simple color technique. I really do like that 2nd panel of the hallway. It’s always the simple stuff that is cool.
New month of voting at TWC. 2 clicks and you can send a vote my way and give me a little bump.
I’ve recently birthed an obsession for French comics. This is actually kind of a problem for me because I can’t speak or read French. So I have 4 French graphic novels that I can’t read and several others that I’ve barely restrained from buying. The 4 I have I got from Amazon.fr, so I had to use all my experience of Amazom.com purchases to decipher what I was doing.
If you want to share my addicition then turn your browser to http://soleilprod.com/ and be prepared to choke on all the inspirational storytelling.
I’ve actually started trying to learn French so I can try to decipher some of this awesomeness.
So here’s a few of my favorite artists I’ve stumbled upon so far.
Joseph Lacroix is actually working on an American comic via DC comics. It’s a comic adaption of Diablo. The writing is a little word heavy, but the art is amazing. He has a bit of Mignola flare to him. His French comic is called Pythons and those are the ones I really want.
Patrick Boutin-Gagné Oh man, this guy, just makes me sick. His panels glide from one to the next. It’s like a roller coaster for your eyeballs. He has two books, both of which I want really bad. Brogunn and La Bete Du Lac.
Pierre Alary was the man that made me buy my first French books. There is something kind of like early Disney in his art, not only the charm but amazing, spot on storytelling.
A big thank you to everyone who’s checked out my comic and supported me in my comic’s infancy. A big shout out to Rickard, creator of Two Guys and Guy, for all his help.
I’ll be at C2E2 this year. It’s the first time I’m attending this convention and also the first time I’ve flown to a convention. So trying to figure out what to bring or what not to bring is going to be fun. I don’t really need any more clothes then what I’m wearing and a can of body spray…right? Just stand down wind. Well, at least toothbrushes are small.
If you’re going to be there, come by and say hello. As an incentive, I should have a limited amount of ashcans of the first 11 pages of Shiver Bureau with me. So if you want to see the pages before I post them, here’s your chance.
The first actual update will be this Thursday.
And just because I like all posts to have images, here’s a b/w version of page 1. I draw traditionally doing an ink wash before I scan the pages and cover them with digital colors.
This was the first true image created to promote Shiver Bureau. It was drawn the night before I headed to MegaCon 2012.
One of the benefits to being able to make your own prints is your are able to handle rush delivery.
I did work on it pretty late into the night, but all things considered this came out pretty nice. About 1 month later, I launched the comic.
I feel like this comic has been a long time coming. When I finished my first graphic novel, Cubicles, I debated what my next project should be. This went one for a lot longer then I would have liked. I wanted to do the second volume of Cubicles, I wanted to go back to do a web strip, I wanted to work on my ‘epic’. But in the back of my brain, this cocky little guy with green hair kept popping up.
Pickle. He was one of my first characters I created when I was trying to learn all this comiking stuff. It started off as ‘Pickle and Todd’, two well dressed guys who were spectral detectives. No ghost they couldn’t force into the white light. Pickle was supposed be throw away character, just something to practice with. But the more I drew him, the more I fell in love with him.
But I wasn’t ready to tell his story. I needed more practice. So that is when I created Cubicles. A webstrip about two sides of my personality and the office day job. Cubicles was also supposed to be throw away practice, but I fell in love with Wally and Ost just as much as Pickle. How can you not love all your babies, right? Then Cubicles became a graphic novel and I think I got a little better at this comic stuff.
So now I was ready to tackle something new. So I would sketch out ideas and figure out what I wanted, but Pickle was always back there trying to get my attention. I would continually sketch him, evolving his look. One day I hit it perfectly and I knew this was the next story I was going to write.
You may be asking ‘what about Todd?’ Well he is still around, very much changed. You’ll get to see him eventually. But I realized I had no main female character. So Todd was replaced with Trish, which you will meet soon. She is pretty awesome and she gives me a chance to draw my favorite hairstyle.
Anyways, thanks for reading and I hope you have as much fun with Pickle as I do.
I’ll leave you with this evolution of a Pickle.
