Zulu Hotel

5 Dragon Daughter

2011-09-23T08:39:00.001-05:00

I was pumped when Matt Black asked me to contribute a painting to the next performance of 5 Dragon Daughter. I was also really nervous. The show, if you haven't seen it, is a huge multimedia production, live music breaking the story up into "chapters" while over 400 illustrations, dancers, puppets and during the intermission, paintings like the one below.

After two false starts (and one dead end in the middle of the process), I finished up about an hour before the deadline. I ultimately just had to pray for a vision because nothing I had was even remotely working. After I did, this started to expanded naturally onto the canvas. No preliminary drawings, nothing intentionally planned (the soliders/battlefield at the bottom was an 11th hour addition). I'm really thankful God gave me something for this weekend.

If you haven't seen 5 Dragon Daughter, I strongly encourage you to do so. Belcher Center in January, tonight at Crossroads Church, plus whatever shows they manage to squeeze in between then and now. It's incredibly humbling to see God move through so many people so mightily.

With Apologies to Joseph Mallord William Turner

2011-08-01T18:02:00.006-05:00

Here's a little (8x9.5 in) painting I did for a good friend of mine, saying "thanks" for letting me crash at his apartment in LA. I had just an amazing time with him and his wife. Acrylics with no real direction before the brush touched the canvas.

We played a lot of Warhammer in highschool.

Drawing Batman

2011-07-21T08:27:00.002-05:00

New sketchbook. New pen. Drawn while watching Batman Begins.

A One Page Comic

2011-04-25T12:15:00.002-05:00

Thursday night I spent 30-seconds-to-a-minute thumbnailing and went immediately to inks; this is what I got.

I dig this. If I can get my new scanner/printer to print blue-line pencil roughs (ala Sean Phillips), I'm gonna try doing a whole comic that way.

I need YOUR opinion

2011-03-24T20:47:00.006-05:00

Hey Guys,

Sooo, Brian Azzarello needs someone to draw his t-shirt and I want that to be me.

Let me backup.

Threadless is having a "Noir" competition. Design a NOIR t-shirt, get it picked, make money, comics and a chance to work with a writer who I really respect/admire (to design aNOTHER t-shirt).

I sketched out a bunch of rough designed and picked out the best three to show to you - I need YOU to pick your favorite (and if you're feeling generous, pick a 2nd favorite). If you want to get crazy with it and leave some feedback (different colors, change the placement, figure A doesn't read, etc. etc.), that'd be amazing too.

So comment here or on facebook or twitter (@ottobott), or use this handy dandy poll I set up (https://fnnl.it/wk ). Thanks for your time and feedback!

Without further adieu...

Design A - Smoking Gun
Pretty straight-forward. The detective guy's just fired his golem and int he smoke, we see the fat-cat ganster he punctured and the dame he was with. This was one of the first ideas I had outta the gate. It might be a bit too crowded though.

Design B - On the Waterfront
Probably my favorite of the three. City at night, lights reflecting on the water. In the fully-rendered version, the water is going to be the focal point, a twisty maze of water (really line-centric and heavily detailed - much more then the rough implies). The white-space body in a dead-man float is subtle, but really what makes it so appealing to me.

Design C - Three's a Crowd
We've got the singer, minding her own business. Thug is watching the dame (and getting angry). The detective (far back) is watching the thug and about to tackle (or shoot) the 2nd guy. I like this because it's every NOIR movie situation I've ever seen distilled to it's most basic elements. Guy wants girl. Girl's afraid of guy. Hero steps in to protect the girl.

3wc - Midget Sarcophagus Blanket

2011-03-18T00:03:00.006-05:00

I get to explain why this turned out like this, right?

So basically, my eyes got bigger then my stomach and the dialog I imagined working well on a line-by-line basis read all sorts of crazy when you put them together. I don't think anything is really clear about this, but the three main elements are present, so I think it'll pass as a 3wc.

To spell out the "world" I attempted to create with this challenge, my basic concept was that I've always found Hellboy's villians as being just as interesting as the title character. So much so that I've always been sad to see Mignola kill them off so quickly. That's where I came up with Toht (named after the balding, spectacled Nazi from Raiders of the Lost Arc), who was an evil warrior-king reincarnated a midget. He had been searching the world around for his warrior-queen's remains who he planned to reanimate and then take over the modern world like they had thousands of years ago. The only guy in their way is the cocky American super-spy/hero. I hadn't fleshed much out about him besides he had this Substitution-Harness that switches his body out with whatever was wearing a secondary, linked harness on the point of death. That's why he can't die. The juxtaposition of the hero with decidedly cowardly traits amused me. Again, not at all explained well in the comic.

All in all, kind of a misfire, but I really like some of the ideas demonstrated here. Hopefully I can reuse them more effectively in the near future.

3wc Teaser

2011-03-04T17:00:00.004-06:00

I finished up inking my new 3wc entry last night and I'm pretty pleased with the results; it really scratched that itch I had of just needing something I could have fun with and experiment on. Here are the first three panels in an entry that ended up being 3 pages long. Lots of fun to draw, I'm hoping I can get it lettered and colored this weekend (maybe).

Past 3 Word Challenges -> http://the3wc.wordpress.com/

First Few Tests...

2011-02-10T16:48:00.004-06:00

I "finished" the pencils of the first issue of my big comic project, "Small Town Devil." For those of you who don't know, it's a project I've been writing/developing for a little while now and can basically be summed up as The 'Burbs meets The Last Picture Show with some Motörhead thrown in for good measure.

Anyway, when I started penciling the project, I was really inspired by the work I was seeing from Jerome Opena and Travel Foreman. They've been going straight from pencils to colors with really stellar results. As I trucked along in the project, my pencils got looser and looser (with the intention to tighten when I ink), but nothing has been quite as satisfying as those first 10 pages I drew.

Here's a test scan of some of those first pencils, with some loose colors thrown over them. Thoughts?

Life sketching some live music

2010-12-18T21:59:00.002-06:00

Really pleasant evening at Bridge 281 tonight. Excellent tunes and good coffee.

Friday Sketch Dump

2010-12-03T10:21:00.005-06:00

A week before finals and I've been sketching a lot in class. I can take only so many notes before I decide I'll just google it later for the test. I've also been gearing up since I'm going to complete the first issue of Small Town Devil over the break.

V & Evie

2010-11-05T15:44:00.004-05:00

Do I look like the sort of guy who has a plan?

No method to this sketch, really. Just doodling and inking. I wanted it to be something with a Vendetta theme and I'd never drawn V before.

My kingdom for an eraser.

A non-update

2010-10-29T12:38:00.004-05:00

I have had no time for proper art-ing these last two weeks. This semester has kept a fevered pitch for three weeks, with 5 to go! The closest I get to any sort of release is doodling in class.

heh heh...doodle.

Crossbones and Kris Kalenov

Geology notes.

A Creeping Rabbit-Pig

2010-10-13T14:21:00.004-05:00

Interrupted silence with something I doodled last night. I felt like drawing a monster and this is what it turned into.

Character Study part trois

2010-07-26T14:28:00.004-05:00

A WIP scan, playing with an all-graphite approach to this project - I don't know if my pencil lines are clean or pretty enough to warrant the approach though. Still, after looking at recent work by Frank Quietly, Travel Foreman and Jerome Opena, I'm in the mood and it's worth a shot. I'll be doing a full illustration of another character beside him, this time in inks, to compare and contrast each approach.

Maybe I'll put it to a vote?

Busy Weekend..

2010-07-19T12:18:00.011-05:00

...but I was still able to fit some character and plot development...

Batman

2010-07-06T11:18:00.001-05:00

I've always really dug when Batman had a practical, riot-office vibe.

Iron Fist

2010-07-06T11:09:00.000-05:00

Some sketching over the 4th of July weekend...

Pencils

2010-07-05T15:46:00.000-05:00

Early test pages for Restless. I'm trying to simplify the art a bit to accomdate a monthly schedule and my general inexperience with inks/finishing.

Then...

2010-07-04T15:46:00.001-05:00

Continuing to work towards something that looks "finished" on my own. Only when you try to do everything, from start to finish, does comics-by-committee make a whole lot of sense.

...

2008-06-15T22:15:00.000-05:00

One of these days, I swear, I'm going to get around to documenting my process and progress.

Until then...

-z