Girl in black

Continuing the series of character designs started with the last post. Ink and Photoshop. I don't think she will mind me saying that all of these characters are based on descriptions by the gracious Barbara Canepa.

Characters

I noticed these images were saved as a draft I never got around to posting. I can't recall if I shared some of these in another post, so forgive me if there are some repeats in here. These are some character designs I was working on a while back. The project hasn't been realized, so I won't say too much about these drawings, other than they were drawn in pencil and colored in Painter.

Enjoy.

Joshua

Metamorphose

Here is an image I co-created with the lovely and talented Barbara Canepa to help promote the new "Metamorphose" imprint of Bande Dessinée (French "comic" books) for Soleil, a dynamic publisher in France. This image was used as a fold-out poster in a new Soleil catalog released for Angoulême, France's premier Bande Dessinée festival, which just occurred a week or so ago.

For those of you who may not know, Barbara Canepa is a talented artist and writer, and is behind the highly successful Sky Doll series (amongst several other things), which is soon to be published in the United States by Marvel Comics.

For this poster, I drew the basic layout and imagery based on Barbara's direction, and then handed it off to Barbara to finish. She tweaked the colors, re-arranged some of my drawn elements, and added the lettering to bring the whole thing together. The images in the ovals are from each of the three new series the poster is promoting. My part was drawn in pencil and colored in Photoshop.

As many of you must know, France is a world-leader in the production and appreciation of sophisticated, diverse, and beautifully executed sequential illustration. It would do most of the American comics audience a world of good to look beyond their fetishistic fascination with putridly colored men-in-tights to the wonders being drawn in France and around the globe.

Joshua

Supergirl

Here is a look at the first of a series of covers I am working on featuring DC Comics' heroines. I will post details on where and when they will be published when that information becomes available.

Along with the Photoshop-colored finish, I have posted a detail image to better show the line quality, something I am often asked about. I have also posted the art as it looks on the board, and finally the original thumbnail sketch I sent my editor for approval.

Supergirl's pose was inspired by a picture of a Japanese model kit/figurine I spotted while flipping through a magazine. I don't know anything about the figurine, but I sure wish I owned it. The Japanese are the best sculptors in the business. I was approached many years ago with the possibility of producing a statue based on the Psylocke cover I did for Marvel. My delight quickly turned to horror with the realization that the sculpting would be done by the same folks responsible for the many American superhero busts and action figure abominations out there. Thankfully, it was never produced. I still look forward to the day when I can be involved in the production of a high-quality figure with one of the good Japanese outfits. I'd love to see some figures based on Sky Between Branches characters gracing my shelf one day.

Speaking of Branches, some of you may notice the composition/theme of this Supergirl piece is very similar to a Sky Between Branches image I produced a while back. Let's all just pretend I am not completely out of ideas.

Thanks for stopping by.

Joshua