Project: Rooftop Wolverine Sketches

Wolverine: Look Sharp Inspiration Board

So it's Project Rooftop time again. This time the challenge is Wolverine. Yeah no sweat. Design a costume for a character who has several iconic costumes and looks best when wearing plain clothes. The mind boggles.

My first step in these redesign contests is to hit Google search and see where my mind wanders. As new ideas develop more and more images are gathered through design and coincidence. After I've cast my net wide I refine the images down to a tight group of images and they are put in there own folder. This becomes the "Inspiration Folder" for the design and from there I get to drawing. I love this research process. I liken it to dipping your brush in an inkwell. Without absorbing the ink you cant begin drawing.

This Inspiration Board below is my collection of images for this project:

Annotations from Top Left to Bottom Right

1. Alex Ross' unused redesign is close to perfect. Why it's never been used is beyond me. It's X motif use is key.

2. Hugh Jackman's jacket is iconic enough to get it's own scene in that shitty shitty movie. (Pa Kent gave it to Logan, apparently). The Great Majority think "leather jacket" when they think "Wolverine", so it would be silly to ignore that fact in any subsequent design.

3. See Grant and Frank understand.

4. The Hooded Man. Logan from the far future. The Hood is a fantastic way to integrate head-gear without the mask shaped like his fucking hair, and it would allow the character to make steps toward his "future self". 

5. Brown and Yellow-Orange. His best colorway. See: leather jacket.  Also: Wolverine's classic silhouette is a sleeveless unitard. Every comic book costume he's had has been this way. So how do I make his costume sleeveless and feature the leather jacket. Hmmm. . .

6. . . Voila! This is Mountain Research's Jacket with removable hood and sleeves. Now we have an innovation that the costume can be hung around: A multitude of styles out of a single garment.

7. Stirrups on the pants look tough and keep your pant leg straight.

8. Russell Crowe as Robin Hood. Check out that removable hood and the cool silhouette it creates. Badass.

9. Sam Elliot = Biker Sexiness.

10. A hooded leather vest with attachable sleeves by S2VS. Check out how cool it looks open with the gloves.

11. Ordinary clothes works best. So this design has to look like ordinary clothing assembled into a uniform.

12. The genuine articles. Key to the look: jeans and denim vest with patches of leather. But blue jeans are too informal for a superhero costume. And it doesn't fit the chosen color palette.

13. But heavy duty Duxback Cotton does. That Carhartt Yellow Orange implies working class, lumberjack, hard work, durability. It's perfect, and the reinforced panels will be done in the chosen brown leather. 

14. THE SOURCE: Let's get drawing!

Phonogram: Diamanda Galas Process:

So Kieron Gillen says he has something for me to draw. Well now I'm excited. When he says it's for Phonogram my excitement is doubled and Jenn is jumping up and down. As I've said before Kieron writes the coolest shit for me to draw:

1.1

Single Image.

It's an impressionistic take of Diamanda Galas in concert – we have a stage centre. Towards the right, we have the shape of Kohl, with his back to us watching. There's no-one else visible – it's as if they've been blasted out of existence, or at least, they no longer matter.

Diamanda is a black shape on stage, in front of a piano. Emerging from her – not just mouth, but all over – are warped black shapes – all coils and sharp edges and intrinsic body-horror shudder stuff. Like brambles, with wicked looking thorns growing out of her, forming a towering tree spreading out of her. In the thorns we should have the shape of her face, but larger, or perhaps her eyes in it – bits of her, sprung up and played with. The stage and everything else apart from her and the things that emerge from her are impressionistic, soft edges, not quite there.

A light glows out of them – a blue, violet sort of light, as if black could shine. It spreads out in all directions, and sprays across from Kohl.

It's a little as if this is the climax of a Cthullu story, and something evil and monstrous and majestic has just entered reality. Kohl and everyone else is clearly doomed.

Yeah, I'll tighten up what I want here, but the mood of the thing is most important.

CAPTION: The Night:

CAPTION: Diamanda Galas opens her mouth.

See now how cool is that. I turned around this sketch as soon as I got the script. No it doesn't usually happen that quick but I was very inspired.

From there I was onto refining the drawing of the Thorn demon. Using a small photo of Diamanda Galas as reference I went to work. I composited that little drawing with the piano reference I had and printed up a faint outline of the face and piano. I drew over that with MY FAVORITE pencil in the world: Prismacolor Col-Erase Blue Pencil.

Result:

We'll pick this up again tomorrow with more process. Yay.

Click to read more ...

Phonogram v2.2 in Stores

     

The much anticipated second issue of Phonogram v2.2, featuring a two page B-Side story illustrated by me, is available at all fine comic book stores right now.

All of you buy two copies. It has one of the coolest things I've ever drawn in it.

And I'm not the only one who thinks so:

The two-pager, meanwhile, is a Kohl story (although… well, come on, it’s just Kieron, isn’t it?) which showcases an absolutely stunning full-page piece of expressionistic art from Daniel Heard - one which I can’t even begin to conceive the mechanics of scripting - followed by a nice little coda.

You also get gorgeous B-sides with art by Emma Vieceli and Daniel Heard, shout-outs to Kate Bush and Diamanda Galas, respectively, two women who’d eat you alive if you tried to make manic pixie girls out of them.

They also say a lot of really nice things about the main issue, which is amazing. Kieron and Jamie, are annoyingly better with each issue.

I'll update this post with art soon, in the mean time: GO! BUY!

White Dove Music Video Concept Art