The Guard

[rolandb]

This is some of the art for the online comic book "The Guard". Writing and overall concepts are by Rob McLellan, and all artwork is by me.
I am just posting some of the raw artwork, sometimes an entire page, sometimes just a few panels, for those people who want to see a slightly higher resolution version of the art. If you want to read the actual story, head over to the website. It's free!
http://theguard.underwatersamurai.com/

[rolandb]

first page. Pencil, ink, and Photoshop

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page two.
pencil, ink, Photoshop, 3D studio Max

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panel from page 3. pencil, ink, and photoshop

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page 4. Pencil, pen and ink, photoshop, 3D studio Max

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part of page 5. Pen and ink, Photoshop, 3D studio Max

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part of page 6. Pencil, brush and ink, Photoshop

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page 7. brush and ink, pen and ink, Photoshop

[Eric Lofgren]

Wow! Very nice. I love the Corben style homage. And very ambitious for a comic.

[rolandb]

Yeah, if I can someday get myself to having 10 percent of Richard Corben's abilities, I will consider myself an accomplished artist.

I am finding that when I render lights, shadows, and masses with colors instead of inks, my process speeds up a lot. Instead of scribbling my ink brush back and forth hundreds of times, I can just make one or two dabs with a giant Photoshop brush and render the same form in one tenth of the time. The sense of "hand drawn gesture" disappears, but I end up saving a lot of time. And in comics, time is of the essence.

[Bonzulac]

Yeah, if I can someday get myself to having 10 percent of Richard Corben's abilities, I will consider myself an accomplished artist.

I am finding that when I render lights, shadows, and masses with colors instead of inks, my process speeds up a lot. Instead of scribbling my ink brush back and forth hundreds of times, I can just make one or two dabs with a giant Photoshop brush and render the same form in one tenth of the time. The sense of "hand drawn gesture" disappears, but I end up saving a lot of time. And in comics, time is of the essence.

It seems like most artists who begin working in a combination of traditional and digital almost always go all digital eventually. Once you get used to the tools and the workflow, you just run out of reasons not to.

Great stuff! Now for that authentic Corben sensibility, though, it's going to need some enormous sexual organs....

[rolandb]

half of page 8. Brush and ink and Photoshop

[Danny_K]

the idea is good and there is concept behind it, now you should work on your basics of color and light some more, in some areas the colors are really doll some variety will help, also playing with saturation could make things pop better for you.
overall there is potential in here for sure.

[rolandb]

more of page 8

[rolandb]

panel from page 9

[whisper_wm]

Nice work! Went over to the website to see more. Really enjoyed reading it. I love the facial expressions on page 8.

Would love to see another update!

[rolandb]

Thanks for the kind comments, Whisper_wm. The website updates at a rate of one page per week. That's about as fast as I can produce the artwork. Right now, I'm still spending a lot of extra hours settling on a style that I like. I'm really straddling the fence between traditional brush and ink and digital techniques, and sometimes I swing more into one camp than the other.

[rolandb]

part of page 10. brush and ink, Photoshop, and 3Dstudio Max

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here's a panel from page 11

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panel from page 12

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also from page 12

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Page 13. Brush and ink, Photoshop. 3D studio Max. It's showing a computer overlaying the schematics of a spaceship over an image of the real one in real-time.

[Quigleyer]

The eyeless thing keeps getting me, everytime. I guess it's right (?) but it looks so wrong (!). Haha. Nice work man. LOVE the sci-fi stuff.

Here's an article I found a while ago by a guy with some decent skill interested in Corben's (corbin's?) work. I can't really catch sarcasm on the internet, but I'm pretty sure it gets pretty silly towards the end.

[rolandb]

Yeah, I read Matthias Snygg's blog about Corben a while ago. It's pretty hilarious. He keeps swinging back and forth between awe and contempt.
"The Guard" doesn't have any humans in the story, only mutated humanoid species. So, it's fun to create distortions on the basic visual cues that define humanity, and see how far I can take them but still remain within the bounds of credibility.

[rolandb]

some of page 14

[whisper_wm]

Nice updates! Just hopped over to the website, and was happy to read the new pages! Very good work!

[rolandb]

Thanks, Whisper_wm.

this is part of page 15

[rolandb]

another panel from page 15

[ceddo]

Your style is strangely unique and fresh, I'm quite fascinated by it! It must be the differences in rendering/detail of some elements in relation to others e.g. the spaceships vs the main character in page 2. That kind of creates a dissonance but it definitely works! I love the energy and gesture in the characters as well. I'd love to see more of this. Keep it up!

[rolandb]

Thanks for the comment. I'm glad to hear the style isn't too incoherent. I was worried about combining major 3D entities and hand-drawn stuff. I think that the combining approach is OK when the hand drawn elements are rendered photorealistically, but it can start to fall apart if the hand drawn style becomes too gestural. I'm still fine-tuning the style for this comic. Rendering eveything photrealistically is the closest to my vision, but it's very time-consuming. I will probably end up evolving to a more traditional line-based style due to time and schedule constraints.