Page Two is FIRST

Well it appears that I'm keeping my promise [at least to myself if no one else! Yay me!] with a actual page of SPACE STATION ORBITER: CLOUD 99 before the close of 08. Actually, I'm working on four pages right now with the pages in various degrees of completion. I never seem to work quite in order...sorry.

Anyhoo, what's shown is page 2 in the interim of being digitally inked and cleaned up. I'm still going back and forth on whether I should traditionally ink it as opposed to doing so digitally. My preference is to break out the rapidographs and get to work, but working digital does seem to save some time... ahhh well, decisions, decisions.

Power Pack !

Well I'm still hard at work on the initial Orbiter pages, but I thought I'd leave you guys with the LAST non-Orbiter '08 artwork. It's Power Pack! Or at least Power pack re-imagined as teenagers from across the globe: Palestinian, Japanese, African American and Puerto Rican.

Tiger Shark Pilot Designs

Geeez... it's been FOREVER since I updated this thing and I feel bad. But the good news is I have been working. Probably not as hard as I should be working...but working nonetheless. PAGES are forthcoming! But you guys [all five of you!] want to see artwork nooooowwww! All right awwreedy! Enclosed is a illo I did a few years ago. Me and my friend Derek [ inker of Batman Detective Comics ] wanted to pitch something to Wildstorm around the turn of the century. He had cultivated a good relationship with them and wanted to branch out and write/ink something for them. He asked me to help...now for the life of me I can't remember the particulars. It had something to with I.O./Stormwatch or some such nonsense. Oh wait, now I remember, it was a story about the Black Razors. Needless to say it didn't go anywhere, but we had fun thinking stuff up and became good friends. He was and remains one of my staunchest supporters.

Anyhoo, Derek asked me to re-imagine the Razors and this is what I came up with. So what's this have to with Orbiter? Well I'm not one to let a half-way decent illo go to waste. When I created a squadron of fighter pilots to help protect the space station ,I called them Tiger Sharks. Think Black Tigers from Star Blazers or the fighter pilots from Battlestar Galactica and you've got a good idea for the "feel" I was going for. So no more Razor design but yes to Tiger Shark pilot uniforms. The design on the extreme left will be the one that gets used...

Deepest condolences

What I like most about my blog, is the fact that it's ok to go off topic once in awhile. This is one of those times. My good friend [and more times than I can count, collaborator] Sky Owens lost his father recently. My deepest heartfelt condolences goes out to him and his family. It goes without saying that Sky has been a awesome friend and teacher to me over the years. Without him teaching me basic photoshop [including coloring and lettering] , this little experiment of doing a comic all by your lonesome wouldn't be possible. Thank you Sky.

Above is my take on one of MANY Sky characters: Kemette!

Humans

Well it's obvious that Human beings will play a important part in my little drama. So here's the senior staff officers of Cloud 99, New Mars' experimental space station. The initial sketch was done in ballpoint pin at work. I then used tracing paper to refine the sketch and inked the line work with a fine Micron pen directly on the tracing paper. I then scanned the tracing paper and spent waaay too much time further cleaning up the illo and adding blacks.

THE HUMAN RACE: Relative newcomers to the Arcadian Trade Alliance, nevertheless have proven to be assets to the trade federation exploiting their adopted home’s resources for the greater good. Quick learners, humans have embraced alien technology and made improvements unheard of to their Arcadian Alliance counterparts.

Aliens 4

Yup, I know. It's been a minute. But I'm baaaack. Yet another alien species character sheet. This time I tried to emulate the classic big head, big eyes aliens. And then I remixed it.

THE VA’-N’LL VOX: Another race caught up within the thousand year war with the Xerus. Initially conquered by the Xerus, the Va’-N’LL Vox regained it’s independence thru bloody warfare. The Vox are a highly intuitive and spiritual race. They are also extremely diplomatic.