To the rescue.

Just when you thought I was down for the count, here I am again, stronger than ever.  These words are brought to you by the following superhero, who I worked-up from a rejected commission sketch recently:

It’s been a busy month, relocating myself and business to Oklahoma City.  I haven’t lived in this part of the country for 20 years, and it’s been a little readjustment.  I don’t mean that sarcastically, it’s only taken a small amount of effort to be comfortable here.  It helps when there’s family nearby (I was born and raised not too from from here) and when the culture is a familiar and welcoming one.  This area seems to be exploding right now, but it’s still incredibly affordable and roomy compared to the cities I’ve lived in on the West Coast.

All that aside, the freelance work has really picked up and I’ve had to hurry to keep pace.  When combined with a new day job, I’m all-of-a-sudden out of the free time I’ve been enjoying for the past 8 or 9 months.  So, enjoy this little piece I did last night, while a bout of insomnia had hold of me.  I’ll post more as they sneak their way out.

Maybe when robots fly…

Yeah, I know that background is fairly lacking, but I set out on this one just to play around with some new markers, mostly.  FR doesn’t usually sport no jetpack, but what the hell, this pose was a lot of fun.

Years ago I remember reading one of Mignola’s Hellboy stories where all the investigating agents dropped to the scenes of paranormal activity on jetpacks.  Mignola’s fantastic and graphic way of visualizing things has stuck with me, and I always strive to try and bring a little of the magic that I see in his work to my own.  While my success at that is debatable, I felt inspired by the jet wash he drew in that story.  I swear it streamed out from below and behind those characters’ jetpacks, even when they were landing. However, a fellow artist-friend of mine pointed out that the jet wash/exhaust would actually be hitting the ground while landing and blowing up all kinds of dust.  I may go look up Mignola’s pages and try and duplicate more of what I remember from them later, but for now here’s a quick work-up of our hero in (uncommon, for him) action.

The robot was done by hand, vectorized, and then colored by hand with Copic markers.  The jet wash and dust (and shitty backdrop) were done digitally in good ol’ Photoshop.