I’ve been focusing on the script and thumbnails, but sometimes I just have to take a page further and get a glimpse of what it’s all gonna look like… to keep my morale up.

I’m very excited to be going to MOCCAfest this Sunday. In addition to hopefully seeing lots of folks I know and probably spending too much money, I will be showing around the beginnings of what hopefully will be my first graphic novel. It’s called WHATZIT and its going to be funny, gross, disturbing, and hopefully lots of fun. There will be lots more posts about this as I proceed, but I’m starting off with just a little teaser of the logo. More to come soon….

In looking back at the illustrations for the previous books I felt that I had a tendency to create claustrophobic spaces. I think I’ve always had this inclination, in all the various styles and applications of my artwork, to both fill up all the space with stuff and also to not vary the tonal range as much as I could, resulting in a flattening of space despite my best attempts at dynamic perspective in my compositions. I really had to force myself to keep the background of this image as light as it ended up. The compulsion to darken the outlines was nearly impossible to resist but I’m really glad I did. Can I do this more often in the future? I hope so.

Elliot enters a cave to find that all the underworld creatures have been frozen…

The challenge with this one was to create multiple levels of space for depth and also to have all the creatures appear frozen without the poses and composition looking stiff. I fussed with the lighting and the opacity of the linework on the various layers endlessly.

In the final installment of the Underworld Trilogy by Jennifer Nielsen, Elliot joins forces with all the underworld creatures to battle Kovol the demon once and for all. I’m working on the interiors now, but the cover is done…and here it is:

The conclusion of the trilogy! Battle royale! Elliot and his adversaries from the first two books unite in final confrontation with Kovol the demon. Since Kovol was prominently featured on the cover of book 2 I didn’t want to show him again here. I also wanted to convey the epic, cast-of-many aspect of this book and to show a slightly more mature and confident Elliot. To avoid the final piece being too busy I will use the light of the glowing broom (hard to explain, you’ll have to read the book!) to keep focus on the main character. I intend to show the progress of this illustration as it comes together over the next couple weeks…P.S.: please ignore the highly suspect anatomy in this sketch. I’ll be sure to work on that…

I posted the sketches for this months ago. Thanks to Dan and Brett for being patient with me. I’m proud to say that they are both also in my band, The Ditty Committee.

Here is the second sneak at the second book in  Jennifer Nielsen’s Elliot series. This one features the same demon that features prominently on the cover. For this picture I took some inspiration from some of my favorite old sci-fi and sword & sorcery illustrators and cartoonists, such as Frazetta and Wally Wood.  I lost some of the motion and drama that was in my first sketch (which I’ll post tomorrow), but it still looks pretty good I think.