Wednesday, April 16, 2008

MOONLIGHT SERENADE: Page 3

I hope you all like the new look of the blog. It was actually inspired by Paul Caggegi's blog (Of 3HEROES podcast fame), THE PROCESS DIARY (a digital sketchbook of his creative process, which is well worth checking out.) I saw how good his blog looked and realised that I really should get my own act together. Another thing he does which I really should do myself is podcasts as blog entries. I'm getting less and less time to write these huge posts (they can take up to two hours - which is why I'm not posting every day). A podcast would save lots of time and get more people to check out my work. Hell, I love speaking about my work (260 odd posts would probably indicate that), so I should really get into that action.

But the new look of the blog was put together in about half an hour. The real work is in the new navigation interface. I figure newcomers don't want to read every post. You only want to read what's relevant to you. So I first designed a navigation system and then went through and tagged ALL the posts (which took half a day) and added the instructions under the navigation menu. Now you can find anything you want. If you want to see all my black and white line art, click LINE ART. If you want all my pictures of Sylar, click SYLAR. It's that easy and I'm glad I did it.




Ok, onto this page.

I am a huge fan of Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary's work on THE ULTIMATES. I love their layouts and the street scenes that they draw. I used this page to tackle their style. This page also contained the majority of my research on 1967. Clothes, hairstyles, police uniforms, cars, buildings, buses. One of the few changes to my layouts is in the first panel where her pose is different. Once I decided that she would look sexier in a skirt, I knew I couldn't have her with her legs up like that. That would be beyond fan service.




Technically it's one of the best pages I've drawn. I'm so proud of my attention to detail and really got to draw the hell out of all the scenes. Panels 3, 4 and 5 really show what I can do. I also like how the mess of detail contrasts with Linda's solid black figure. Again, I avoided drawing her feet to give her an ethereal, floating feeling. She's not grounded in this story. She floats though it like some sort of unwordly spirit.

Special note has to go to Annette here for juggling all my excessive detail as well as the auras. I believe this was Annette's hardest page to colour because of all the auras. You see, a good colourist creates a limited and distinctive palette for each scene. By each person having a different aura Annette was forced to throw in many more colours than she normally would. This became a tough and delicate juggling act.

The real visual fun came from R.D.Hall who suggested the tie-died aura on the hippie. It's hokey, but it works so damn well.

9 comments:

DeletedSeen said...

I love your new look blog, it looks really smooth! And it's really nice to navigate around, lots of art gems to visit easily now.
I know I must have already said this elsewhere but yes, wow, you can really see you drew yourself into oblivion on Moonlight, it's absolutely incredible - were the pencils (if you use them?) smoking afterwards?!! It's really good to see the line art for this too because obviously there is a lot going on with the goooorgeous colour job (still can't figure out how both of you turn out such a work of art in such a short time).
Your work is so exciting and ace and out of this world, but you probably knew that...

Anonymous said...

(at ds) He uses a Wacom tablet, and draws digitally.

Jason, Nice new blog! Very professional.

Great art too!

CurlyMarie said...

This new blog style will take a bit of getting used to, but it does look more professional. It's much clearer what you're about. And it's distinctive, so it's clear that you've spent some time on developing the page. So the work was worth it.

Still, it's disconcerting at first! I hadn't realized how fully I had come to associate the Blogger Orange color with you! Jason=orange in my head. (My head is kind of a strange place to live, sometimes.)

:)
CurlyMarie

Anonymous said...

LOVE the new blog look! Really slick and shows off yer stuff.

Lurved reading your latest stuff, and the "tie dye" aura is fantastic! Thank Annette for us all -- you guys are the Dynamic Duo!

And check your email. :)

CurlyMarie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
CurlyMarie said...

I forgot to say how much I loved the tie-dyed aura. I did a double-take when I reached that panel. ("Did that guy have a tie-dyed aura??! Yes! OH! He's a hippie!!")

Great composition work here. The fact that Linda's whole body is never in the frame at once reinforces the idea that she's really separated from the world around her.

Anonymous said...

Hey Jas! Thanks heaps for the shoutout and link. This page caught my eye this week - WOW as usual. And the new blog layout look really is inspiring. Love the banner!

Hope to chat again, soon.

Anonymous said...

PS: Get in touch with me when you want to go ahead and try your hand at podcasting. Only too happy to help.

DeletedSeen said...

(at sacvalleydweller) True, Wacom = happiness, to my mind at least :D It was more a question about whether the initial sketch (not the layout but the initial linework)is done in pencil? Some folks do, some don't... Whichever way, the end result is beautiful!