HANA PART 1: Eleventh Heaven

Here's the page... which you've seen.

I've used all my creativity and energy coming up with a crap title that doesn't mean anything.

Lemme actually write a post tomorrow when I feel human.

Ok, went to bed at 430pm yesterday, slept til 7am. Not a bad innings. Thanks to everyone for all the tips and well-wishing. Let's try this again.

The main thing I had to contend with on this page was justifying how 5 no-name guards could creep up on "super-soldier/spy" Hana. I guess she has a history of getting caught while on missions. =)

Anyway, I decided to play the first panel from the guard's point of view and really emphasize Hana's contemplation of the rocket. The second panel is just a cut from the second page, the recurring image that Aron asked for in the script.

The final panel was a lot of fun. I think it's a decent likeness of Hana. It's quite a comprehensive panel given how simple it was to draw.

One of the things that I'm a huge pedant of is making sure that people of different races and backgrounds look like they should. While I'm half asian myself I've mainly drawn white people. So a small amount of research was required to find some asian gentlemen who could be my Chinese soldiers.

COMPETITION: Geoff has now foreited his coveted second prize, and it now falls to ACIDBURN133. Acid, would you like to submit two suggestions as to who you would like, please? Email me at grael23@yahoo.com. Soon as I have Acidburn's entry I will get started on these.

HANA PART 1: Page 10

No witty pun-inspired title. I'm too sick.

This page was a lot of fun. It was one of those where I had such a bold vision of what I wanted. The problem with drawing on a computer is that you get caught up in the details and you lose sight of the big picture. If you look really closely, that gantry is kinda insane. I just got drawing and just kept drawing. I think I tranced out and went into some kinda meditative drawing state.

I did end up running over time, and I had to cobble together a photo of the "jaws" for the launching pad. I like to think, that of all the photo merging jobs that I've done in my art, this one is one of the best. It's almost seamless where the drawing ends and the photo begins.

The figure reference is from a client of mine. I just couldn't get it to work. So after I finished a class with one of my clients, I explained to them the predicament I was in. She thankfully helped me out with this shot, and the one of Hana with her hands up on the next page.

The best special effect came from Nicola (Lee's wife) and in my Art Team. She suggested that having everything in focus actually visually detracted from the piece. She wasn't sure what to look at. In an act of (what I consider to be) incredible artistic bravery on my part, I blurred Hana (and the leaves) out to create a strong difference between the foreground and the background. Why's it so brave? Cos I did all this work and subtle rendering, only to have it blurred out. But it had to be done.

HANA PART 1: 9 lives

I've decided not to blog on weekends. Too much to do, and so much more to draw. A cousin's wedding and ridiculous over-training killed me. The incredible disapointment of David Fincher's (my favourite director) ZODIAC killed the end of my weekend. Onto the art:

This was an incredibly fun page to draw, just because every panel was just so different. My main aim here was to make the lighting as different as possible between each of the scenes.

The idea behind panel one was to capture a sense of working late into the night. The yellow desklamp. The non-sensical blueprints. I wanted blueprints as complicated as possible to give us an insight into the level of complexity that Hana's brain works at.

Panel 2 was about transitions. I normally don't like moving characters right to left (the natural flow of the eye is left to right), but I felt this was needed as the eye starts on the right side (from Hana's hand in panel 1) of the panel, and then works its way over the panel to the left. I wanted to make the aeroplane journey as subtle as possible. I wanted her also to look very different. Her hair down, and in a beautiful top designed by Curlymarie. You can just make out the clouds reflected in the window. I wanted the lighting to speak of later afternoons.

Panel 3 is actually set in Hong Kong. I like to think I captured the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong quite well for the little amount of time I spent here. I felt all the drama is in the lighting and the billboards. I wanted a harsh artificial light that speaks of the decay of over-crowded hyper-urbanised cities. On the layout it's the only one I deviated from. Instead of emphasizing harsh shadows (a tool to cut time) I actually wanted to draw the reader into the detail of the scene, if only for a second to contrast it against the softer beauty of panel 4.

Panel 4 is meant to break the visual flow. I wanted serenity like a watercolour painting. Misty mountains and endless rice patties. If you look carefully there are HUNDREDS of blades of grass there that fly by unnoticed. My hand got pretty sore. The far left aligned panel is to indicate the huge amount of time and distance she has yet to go. Her body language is that of the continual travel and is meant to indicate the distance she has come. Despite the beauty behind her, all she can think of is the journey ahead.

Lastly, this is one of my favourite pictures of Hana. It's strong, stylistic lighting works well witgh the likeness. The strong blacks (always a challenge) look soft here and define her face and add to her beauty rather than detract from her femininity.

COMPETITION: I'm waiting to hear back from geoff schweiegert. If I haven't heard from him by Thursday (my time) Acidburn133 becomes the default second prize winner. Meanwhile Pngau has suggested a beautiful piece. I'm waiting to see what geoff suggests before I commit to what kara and ryan have asked for.

WHAT'S UP NEXT: I'm fixing up the first issue of Zero G. I've laid out the first 10 pages of issue 2. Done some designs also. I'm also finishing off the EMPEROR story (you can find it elsewhere here). I'm really loathing going back to my old drawing style. The stuff I designed on Hana looks so much better and is SO much faster.

HANA PART 1: I eight Hana

I think it was Curlymarie in the last comments that mentioned the transitions from one panel to the next. This is an aspect to comics that I really love. I get to create incredible visual effects without having to know all about lenses. My camera's focal depth is infinite and hell, it's a lot faster too.

It's not incredibly evident here on this page as this is more of a "vignette" page - a series of loosely related scenes. But I'm going to talk about it more on the pages where it's really relevant. The only logistical story to this page is that I lost the original 300dpi artwork. What you see is a recovered 150dpi version. Basically, while I've redrawn chunks it's lost about 20% of its quality. =(

The notorious page 8. Notorious for so many reasons.

First up, after scouring the 9th Wonders boards I became aware of a wave of dissention about the "classic" way that comic book artists portray sexy women. Huge boobs, tiny waists and inflated lips that would make Angelina Jolie jealous and clothes that resemble nothing more than two band-aids and a cork. I constantly try and ground the comics in the same world as HEROES and I wanted Hana to dress right. But I'm a guy, therefore I have no sense of fashion. So I ran a competition asking the 9th Wonders forum members to nominate dresses and outfits after I loosely described the scene.

Vanessa's original sleek design won the day and the competition: to dress Hana herself.

This page is rife with "easter eggs" and injokes so let's get into them.

PANEL 1: As I've mentioned before, Ryan Gibson Stewart has tirelessly supported my quest for the perfect details. His research on this project was thorough and unbelievably helpful. I asked him to find me a Nathan Petrelli ad. He listed every episode featuring Nathan's political campaign, a bunch of websites and eventually the grail: the Nathan Petrelli For Congress tv ad. The ad you see on the cab is a screen cap from that. I also wanted to add another injoke and Ryan directed me to the Corinthian website where I put together a billboard ad. As thanks I mentioned to him that I would put an "easter egg" into the comic for him. He jokingly asked if it could be green with blue stripes. So I named the nightclub after him, "RGS" and it has green and blue stripes. =)

PANEL 2: As mentioned in a previous post, thie panel features the winning dress as well as all the runners up. I didn't want to just highlight the winner. So many people had put so much effort in.

PANEL 3 & 4: So the script says Hana is drinking with some guys. In the next panel she kisses one of those guys. I was going to run a competition for the guys on the 9th Wonders getting them to compete to kiss Hana. Then I thought, "Bugger that! I'm winning that!" Hell, it's the most action I've seen all year. Later this year I'm heading to New York with two mates of mine. I figured if she's drinking with me, chances are that she's going to be drinking with the guys too. So the big guy on the left is Mitch and the guy pulling the "face" is Simbo (also model for Sonny from Zero G).

HEROES SIGIL: I almost forgot. It's funny how you guys all loved the HEROES symbol on Hana's earrings and ring. The note I received from NBC asked me to remove the earrings. The page I've uploaded here shows the page with the new earrings. For some reason I kept the ring. For some reason they used the old page. I hope no one got into trouble over this.

The last thing I've done is shown you my tonal layer. As you can see, it's not just tracing photos. Skilled Potatoshoppers out there will be able to overlay the art over the tonal layer and see what I colour over.

Lastly: People on the 9th Wonders forums have mentioned Greg Grunberg's tireless work for Pediatric Epilepsy. If anyone can put me in touch with him, I would be happy to donate the artwork for the final page of part 2 for his cause if he can clear the legal issues.

COMPETITION WINNERS!

By the way, there's an actual post below this. Go check it out.

Ok, here we go!

THIRD PRIZE: devin was close being the first to mention Nathan grabbing Peter and flying him up. But Devin suggested that Nathan flies him to Nebraska - which I'm pretty sure is wrong. Sorry Devin. I was looking for more detail and found a good enough from DrDX. But he was then trumped by Karathephantom who supplied a chillingly accurate prediction of all the other details. WINNER: Karathephantom RUNNER UP: DrDX then Devin

SECOND PRIZE: So Acidburn133 hit the feudal Japan thing first. But then Ryan came in with the perfect details, but I gotta say buddy - only one guess per person and you'd already guessed! (but you still get automatic 4th place). But I think it was Geoff Schweiegert who mentioned the Japanese army - which is close enough. so... WINNER: geoff schweiegert RUNNER UP: Acidburn 133 then Ryan Gibson Stewart

I gotta ask: theBaldBob - how the hell did you know? Did you see a copy of the pinup?

FIRST PRIZE: While the ghost in the machine thing was first mentioned by rayne, the exact circumstances of her death was a little way off. pngau scored for their terrifyingly accurate prediction! Vox also was pretty damn good, but it was Pngau who had a terrifyingly accurate prediction. WINNER: pngau, RUNNER UP: Vox.

Here's what I'd like from the winners...

Email me with your handle at: grael23@yahoo.com within a week. If I don't get an email from you, the runner up wins your place instead.

Select a MAIN character (I'm not drawing Mr Muggles or Mohinder's buddies in India) and include a description of what you'd like to see them do. An example might be, "Sylar levitating all the broken glass before he stabs Peter telekinetically." or "Niki looking into the mirror and seeing Jessica pointing a gun at her." The more conservative you keep it, the closer the final picture will be. I reserve the right to say "no" to any picture. I will also not draw any nudity or pron. Let's keep this a family show, ok?

FIRST PRIZE: Pngau - pick one character.

SECOND PRIZE: geoff schweiegert - pick two characters (in case pngau picks one of them)

THIRD PRIZE: Karathephantom- pick three characters (in case pngau and geoff pick two of them)

FOURTH PRIZE: Ryan (for all his help!) pick four characters in case the others pick three of them.

INCLUDE: A mailing address in your email. I'd like to mail you an A3 print of the image signed by moi!

Thank you everyone for entering! I tell ya, I'm blown away by how good some of you are. I'm disturbed by some of you, and amused all round. =)

ps and no Lee... you can't enter. =)