Zeus

A pinup of Zeus as he appears in Father of the Gods that I drew up the other day.

A page from Zeus, Father of the Gods, sans borders and in black and white.

Ball-Peen sketches-- the final installment

Here we have pictured the already introduced Exley tending to young Horlick. Horlick, the final of the four main characters of Ball-Peen Hammer, is a feral child growing up in the ruins of the city whom Exey tries to take under her protective wing. In the script he's described as being thirteen, and this first sketch is my attempt at drawing that awkward age.




Drawing children convincingly in comics is a tricky proposition. SO much of the impression of a child comes from their boundless energy-- I find that a lot of artists, particularly those who use a lot of photo reference-- tend to draw strange, deadened little creatures rather than kids. I attempted to rectify this problem by "cartoonizing" (my own word) Horlick a little. Sure, he's a caricature, but then, what kid isn't?

More Ball-Peen sketches- Underjohn

Here's some early sketches of Underjohn, the character from Ball-Peen Hammer who is possibly the most idealistic. He has willingly subjected himself to the horrors of Ball-Peen's world in order to write about it, in the hopes to help prevent anything like it from happening again.

Of all the principle characters, he's the one who underwent the most changes from these early drawings. Here he's a lot more handsome than he ended up being-- I wish, though, that I had kept his broken glasses look intact.

More Ball-Peen sketches

My favorite character to draw in Ball-Peen Hammer was definitely Exley, the love interest of Welton and the most genuinely "good" character in the whole story. She arrived in my sketchbooks much as she would eventually appear in the final book. These are some of the first sketches I did of her, around January of 2007, believe it or not. She's a bit slighter here than she ended up, but mostly she's completely recognizable as the same character,

New Years resolution-- Love my blog

It's been an age and a day since I last updated this blog-- let's rectify that!

Ball-Peen Hammer, my new graphic novel written by Adam Rapp, goes to press this week-- to celebrate, here's some preparatory sketches I made way back in 2007 when I first became attached to this project. These are among the sketches I submitted to the publisher fro inclusion as back-matter, so they may or may not have made the cut for the final book. These are some of my early sketches for Welton, one of the main characters. More to follow in days to come...