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This las page would have not been possible without the help of Jonathan Russell. As a matter a fact a good deal of the book was black spotted by him. Spotting and filling in big areas of black saved me hours of work but this last page was a special deal. You see because of the nature of the art I did a very lose pencil drawing with little to no lighting. Jonny then inked the character and I filled in the area around it in black then threw in a white Phothoshop outline around his line work. It did the trick.

As you can see this is a horror tale, but from the point of view of the monster. It’s sad actually. Reminds me of those test monkeys they hook wires to for research. Monstrosity was a dream project but I feel I barely scratched the surface of the theme. Perhaps one day I will make a sequel although Hops and Coyote are still waiting on theirs. So much to draw, so little time.

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Last week was the NY Comic Con. Boy it keeps getting bigger and bigger. This year it was great to just talk to the smaller editors about their projects and to some talented artist about their process. It really gets the wheels turning as well as humble you with just the sheer concentration of talent. The level to which the gaming industry is involved really fuels my concern the the shadow of a gaming bubble about to burst.

Back on topic. By now you figured out this is not turning well for our alien explorer. Violence in monster movies tends to be very idealistic and fantastic but hardly ever simple and direct. Perhaps because rubber suits did not make for good realistic combat other than shoves and firecracker explosions. The violent outcome of this page is more akin to Willis O’brien stop motion work in King Kong 1933. Truth is that violence it’s not necessarily pretty, and all ends and deaths are not necessarily grand.  I wanted to make sue this was not resolved by space weapons, or super powers.

I’ll close just saying I would have like to have more time to develop this “alien” (which is in fact human) lettering style.

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Awakened is a funny title for this story. At times I call it awakening. Truth is there had been some kind of awakening working on this story. For one it is drawn in the standard large 11×14 paper size (more or less), which is something that I had not done since 1999. The other bit is that I actually worked some old processes into the creation such as tracing over scaled up versions of detailed thumbnails. Last I got to use the old tooth brush to spray white ink on the second and third panels (although I did that back in Territorial).

This story is drawing to a close. Our hero comes face to face well.. with fate. My hope is that I can get back to making new stuff mighty soon for you folks and maybe add some amusement to your day. Wish me luck at NY Comicon 2010.

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You have to be a bit careful putting in captions. Panel 1 caption 2 is a little hidden. I was lucky enough to get a little feedback from some artist a year ago. Among other things they reminded me that when you do building windows do more horizontal lights than vertical. That way it looks less like a crossword puzzle.

Story wise I thought that the monster could be throwing up inside his helmet in panel two. Just some of the strange things that pop in your mind when you’re inking for several hours. I find myself really getting into the type of moment to moment sequences in the bottom row. Stuff like that is just fun to do but it really slows ones ability to keep the story moving.

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I find myself returning to the smoke and dust clouds when I look at these pages. It is in fact somehting that can grow quite large in scale but yet one must remember to take care of it’s delicate etherial surface. Here on page 10 the first panel shows a far wall of  a dust in the a far distance across the excavation pit. I notice that in the effort of providing volume and shadow to these shapes I came to make their outline look think and heavy. This goes against a general inking principle that dictates that one must use thicker lines in foreground and thiner lines in the background. The same rule is broken to some extent in the center access road which connects the street level with the lower excavation level. The cast shadow of this sloped road also makes it look to much like an outline and thus brings it forward in space.

Notice pannel two’s dust cloud is more successful. The last panel has a hidden secret in it. Inside the dark space in the top center. Looks like some little white dots in the darkness. What could that be?