Sketchbook Madness

Some play from my sketchbook.

It's Always The Quiet Ones...

My first crack at Jason Voorhees, while I was getting warmed up for a Friday the 13th book at WildStorm.

I went "comicbooky" and buff for this one. He's obviously "compensating" for something...

Ideation 5 - Trajectory

I liked this chick. In the script, one of the women was called "Lumina", so initially, I envisioned her as this beautiful, multi-racial, light, flowery, tree-hugging, earth mother with a "celt" hairstyle and henna or woad on her face/body and some kind of light-based powers. Some where in the process, "Lumina" became Natasha and this woman became "Trajectory", an Asian-American speedster with this sort of tracer-effect streaming off the beads in her hair. Also included here, one of my scribbles for a possible color scheme of the costumes, once I was told they were to be Luthor's colors -- purple and green. I originally had them in different colors. Sticking with the purple and green thing, I pictured them maybe in deep, purple and green leather or something.

Ideation 4 - Herakles and Omnivore

More sketches of Luthor's team.

Ideation 3 - Reaver

More from the sketchbook. This guy was supposed to be sort of a Batman/Wolverine-type.

Ideation 2 - Ultimate Man

More sketches. This was the Superman-type guy.

Ideation - Natasha

Digging around and found some stuff from my sketchbook where I was working up some ideas for Luthor's team, appearing in DC Comics' "52" #9. All of this stuff pretty much went out the window, in the end, as wires were crossed and we didn't realize Keith had a fairly specific design in mind for their costumes, which is reflected in the later sketches with the "L" motif and pretty much what was seen finally in the actual book. Here are some of my sketches for Natasha. As mentioned in an earlier post, I was operating under the mistaken assumption that Natasha had aged since I'd last seen her in print. Also, since she was now to be powered-up by some nefarious Luthor experiment, I went with the idea that she was going to be a buff, She-Hulk/Wonder Woman-type. I also wanted to reflect that she was sort of "power mad" with this newfound strength and was feeling rebellious.
As always, click for larger view, if you so wish.

Marvel Team-Up

Cap and Spidey for my pal Hauser over at The Total Recall. 'Nuff said!

Muscle Shark

Shirt artwork for UFC Lightweight Champion Sean Sherk.
These were originally supposed to be two different versions of his "mascot" but Sean couldn't decide, so he used them both.
Inks over my pencils on the first shark courtesy of Doug Mahnke.
Typography courtesy of my lovely wife.

Face The Face

Another sketch of Leatherface for WildStorm to show New Line Cinema. New Line didn't seem real hip to my Leatherface, but they did like my Jason Voorhees, so I got to do a couple issues of FRIDAY the 13th.
Good, old-fashioned 80's horror!

A Little Before-And-After

Kinda fun DPS from DC Comics' 52 #9.

The biggest challenge for me with 52 was having to work within somebody else's layouts. Still, it was pretty darn cool to get to work on a book like this.

This page reminds me... It had been years since I'd read about Natasha (somewhere back in some MAN OF STEEL books, I guess), so I kept thinking she had aged. At some point, after I finished drawing the book, I saw her somewhere else and I realized I'd drawn her looking too old. Whoops!

Breakdowns by the Main Man, Keith Giffen. Juicy inks by my homeboy, Tom Nguyen.