EricZ

X-Men FCBD

X-Men FCBD

X-Men FCBD

X-Men FCBD

These are some Marvel samples I did back in April from Mike Carey’s “Free Comic Book Day X-Men” script, which showcases the fairly new character, Pixie. I’m fairly proud of them overall, but the N’Garai demons need a little work. While working on these pages, I learned a lot about the balance between visually appealing work and perfect storytelling. I find that this is an issue with a lot of sequential artists. There are always going to be situations where you can draw a scene in the most beautiful way that comes to mind at the cost of clear storytelling. On the flip side, there are many artists out there who always find a way to make the storytelling as clear as possible, but the page just has nothing interesting to look at. If I were to assess my work overall, I think I suffer from the latter problem. A good artist can always find a balance between the two.

Generally, I think these pages feel a little naked without any sort of inking or colour, but I think they turned out fairly well.

Apocalyptic Vancouver

Here’s a full page done with the Cintiq. Certain elements of the composition didn’t come out exactly as I’d hoped (like the movement of the robot at the end), but I’m fairly proud of the colouring, which is something that’s still new to me.

I loved working on this page with the Cintiq because I was able to easily alter the page after most of the pencil work was done. For instance, the last panel originally had a straight horizon line parallell to the panel borders, but I found it was more effective in conveying the movement of the robot by rotating it quite a bit to the left. The diagonal aspect of the horizon allows the eye to read the character as moving faster because the eye is already traveling in a similar path as it moves from panel 6 to 7. I was also able to flip a panel I originally penciled out in full and add a new panel after most of the page work was already done. Overall, creating the page digitally is much more beneficial because it allows me to more effectively improve upon work already half completed.