Gun Baby concept imagery

Twotimingpete · Post by **Twotimingpete** » Sun Aug 27, 2006 8:30 am

Without giving too much away, it's an epic set in an alternate earth. In the story are biomechanical giant birds, cats, and WW2-era style tanks and planes. There's action, adventure, and political intrigue.

Here's some art from the work in progress! Thoughts are welcome.

834n · Post by **834n** » Sun Aug 27, 2006 10:46 am

Hot damn! That looks beautiful

Dr_Destruction · Post by **Dr_Destruction** » Sun Aug 27, 2006 10:52 am

Ok, I see it now. looks good.

Pengy · Post by **Pengy** » Sun Aug 27, 2006 12:07 pm

Looks pretty but the basic plot sounds alot like alpha shade to me

That guy · Post by **That guy** » Sun Aug 27, 2006 1:10 pm

I like the writing in Tarlickers a lot - keep a little of the sense of humor and I think you'd catch my interest much more than Alpha Shade. You might want to check it out, anyway, just so you know what others are doing in the same genre.

As for art...
You have an excellent eye for landscapes, machinery, and clothing - the only negative comments I have are human aspects:
1) The legs in the 2nd character-sketch thin out a lot at the bottom. Much nicer in the 3rd pic (more of a bell-bottom, looks good). Keep the anatomy (and clothing) consistent.
2) Your feet need a little work.
3) The biggest beef I have is that your faces don't live up to the grandeur of the rest of your drawings.
...The top picture could be straight out of a top-grossing anime or disney film, but then the face (especially in pic 2, again) looks like it was given a few seconds, max. She lacks cheek and jawbone definition and the lips are huge. It may be purely that these are quick costume sketches and the face didn't matter as much - but if I recall, you said you're working on people after having done beasties for so long... So I suspect it's at least a symptom of that.

The fact is, you're GOOD. Very good. Spend a few solid hours looking at reference pics and drawing FEET and FACES, and figure out how they look in your style. Do that for yourself, and Gun Baby's easily gonna be the next big thing on the comics scene, chum.

Twotimingpete · Post by **Twotimingpete** » Sun Aug 27, 2006 4:59 pm

thanks! you're right that those are "sketchy" costume pieces, but you're also right that my faces need work. I have been looking at disney animated feature references for the most part in trying to get them right, and I'm getting there, but I still have more to do.

feet are one of those things that I am just no good at, as you've noticed. I can usually make them look ok if I spend a ton of time on them, but if it's just a sketch, I usually don't because I hate drawing them.

the feet on the left drawing are off panel because that piece is actually taken from a real panel of the comic as I'm working on it.

there are admittedly a few similarities to alpha-shade. what can I say -- alpha shade is a great comic. it influenced me more in terms of what is possible in comic storytelling than any story specifics, though. I have had a thing about ww2 era military stuff for a long time, and if you look at tarlickers, you'll notice I've also had a thing for cybernetically altered beasts for a long time (the collector, my favorite character, was a part robot dinosaur-like creature).

it'd be flattering to eventually be compared to alpha shade, as I'm sure will happen, simply becaues we have older military vehicles and giant beasts. I don't, however, feel that it's a knock off or that I'm shamelessly copying anything.

Twotimingpete · Post by **Twotimingpete** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 6:39 am

It took a lot of tinkering to get trees how I want them. For a while I was afraid I couldn't do it.

you guys think this image is too dark? my problem is it looks sorta darker than I intended on the CRT monitor downstairs, but looks as intended on the LCD.

Robin Pierce · Post by **Robin Pierce** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 6:46 am

that's not at all too dark. and it's absolutely LOVELY. do you do animation by any chance?

Twotimingpete · Post by **Twotimingpete** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 6:49 am

thanks... I obsess over every panel, that's why it's taking me so long to get this comic off the ground.

I don't know much about animation, no. I've attempted animation before but never gotten anywhere with it. If your question is do I do it professionally -- that's a hard no. I'm definitely not qualified either.

I do everything on my wacom tablet in photoshop (so far). I've been curious about trying a vector program but never gotten around to it yet.

Robin Pierce · Post by **Robin Pierce** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 6:55 am

I asked because your panels look somewhat like frames of an animation :3

Twotimingpete · Post by **Twotimingpete** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 6:59 am

I'm very flattered, I'll take it as a compliment.

what quality do you think it is that makes them appear that way? the black lines on top and bottom make you think of letterboxes?

Robin Pierce · Post by **Robin Pierce** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 7:16 am

No, it's the colouring. It's very consistant. On top of that, it's detailed but in a clean way. I can't put a finger on it

Warofwinds · Post by **Warofwinds** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 7:37 am

I think it's the distance effect you've got down, that, and the lack (good thing!) of lines in the background. It puts it more into a 3D environment, something I'm looking forward to seeing more and more on the web. You're ahead of the game, Pete! Ahead of the evolutionary curve! Soon enough, your comic will be terrorizing and eating ours, devouring our children, and---! Uhh, shouldn't try typing coherently after watching Jurassic Park.

Awesome panel!

RemusShepherd · Post by **RemusShepherd** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 7:43 am

I think it's the layers and composition. Animation cells are done in layers, so you can animate parallax differently for foreground trees, mid-ground objects and the background. Often animators put thin fog in between the layers to separate, and usually all but one of the layers are slightly out of focus to make it look like a still from a camera.

His pictures are similar -- foreground, thin fog, mid-ground, thin fog, background, with all but one layer blurred. I can picture how the photoshop layers are put together.

That doesn't mean I could do it, as Pete's skills are far beyond mine.

Did you actually paint each leaf of those trees? I can't detect a brush pattern in them.

Twotimingpete · Post by **Twotimingpete** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 8:15 am

thanks for the compliment.

I'll explain how I drew this picture, sure. the leaves were a challenge! I wanted to make them look good and not have an overly recognizable pattern, but I also didn't want to shoot myself. those were the criteria going in!

I began by drawing basic trunk shapes with a few larger branches. not a lot of smaller ones. Just the basic shape of the trunk. I drew some highlights on it with the paintbrush, using one of the brushes from the wacom set.

I then took out the ordinary brush again and took my dark green color and drew a cluster of leaves that sorta covered most of the tree, but didn't really fill it out. Just a cluster of leaves. I then colored them in and everything.

Then I copied the entire cluster of leaves and started pasting them over the tree trunks to get them all filled out. I would do adjustments to each cluster like rotation or flipping to make the pattern not obvious.

Some of the clusters I altered the hue or lightness of for variation.

Then, once the leaves were all in place, I went to a layer below all of the leaves and drew in some more branches to logically connect them so it seems more premeditated and connected.

Obviously I seperated some of the layers with fog to get some depth.

The tower -- not much to say there. I just freehanded it with an ordinary brush and did all of the color patterns with the ordinary brush.

for the sky I used some gradients and played around with the airbrush until I got the basic colors how I wanted them then I took out a soft brush with the brush's opacity turned down some and layed down some white, some black (for shadows), and some pinkish color and into the basic shape of clouds. the opacity is low on the brush so I can keep stroking it on and get some nice variation in the cloud pattern. this is important that some of it is sorta transparent.

I then took the finger tool with about a 40 strength and just smeared things around until I got an acceptable cloud. There's no real science to this that I can think of, I just keep smearing in circles and pushing things around and messing with it until it looked good.

I draw in a very fragmented, chaotic, impulsive way and usually end up with tons and tons and tons of layers. In this case I had over 60 layers by the end.

Afterwards, as I often do, I took the entire picture and remastered the colors. I do this by flattenening the image then pasting a copy of itself over itself. Then I start adjusting the hue/saturation/contrast/stuff like that and seeing if these adjustments bring out anything I like. If it does, I'll take a big soft eraser and take out the parts of the top version that I don't need and leave in the parts that I do. Then I flatted it down again and copy and paste again then try adjusting more. It's a very comfortable way to bring out as many possibilities as you can in your final image to make it just a little bit better.