Legionnaires!

Nightwind © DC Comics

Rond Vidar & Universo @ DC Comics

Here are two of five Legion pieces I am doing for the ever patient Michael. The top is Nightwind. That character was fan created and presented in Amazing World of DC Comics, a in-house fanzine DC created in the 1970s. She has gone through many incarnations but the basic character has remained pretty much the same.

The next is Rond Vidar. He is the son of the Legion villain, Universo. Rond is also the inventor of the Time Cube, a device used to send someone through time without the need of a Legion Time Bubble. Twice Rond helped the Legion defeat his fathers plans. The second time was a great two part story of the Outlawed Legionnaires in Adventure Comics #359 and #360 by Jim Shooter and Curt Swan. For his help, the Legion made Rond an Honorary Legionnaire. 

Thanks Michael. Doing these pieces made me go back and reread some old stories and visit some old friends.

Both pieces were done in ink on 11"x 17" Strathmore Bristol Board.

This is Post #1950

Catwoman!

Catwoman © DC Comics

Artwork © 2013 Gene Gonzales

More playing with working in a digital medium. This was done completely in Photoshop on my Cintiq 24HD.

No worries about me still working in traditional mediums. Perils On Planet X is being done the good old fashion way: Pencil and ink on board. :) And don't forget to check out this weeks page tomorrow!

Work has been extremely busy lately. Commercial work has started stacking up. That's a good thing. But it has put me behind on a few inked commissions. And they are Legion requests, so you know for me not to get to them is killing me. With any luck I will get a few things under control in the next week or so. Then it will be POPX and commissions for a while.

This was done entirely in Photoshop CS5.

This is Post #1949

AYA - Green Lantern Animated Series

Aya © Warner Bros/DC Comics

Art © 2013 Gene Gonzales

This is one of those "happy accidents". I have just started catching up on the Green Lantern Animated Series and love the show. I had worked on some of the package art for the so-far non-existant toy line so I knew some of the characters. But I didn't know of the a.i. character of Aya. I love the character and her design. So I had to take a shot at drawing her. Avoiding details and storyline spoilers, I thought "love" would be a good theme. And Valentine's Day just happened to fall on posting day. See, happy accident.

This was done entirely in Photoshop CS5.

This is Post #1948

The Pirate Queen - Perils on Planet X

Perils on Planet X © Christopher Mills & Gene Gonzales

Artwork © 2013 Gene Gonzales

I didn't mean for this blog to be so Planet X-centric but it has lately. Sorry about that. Next week I will shoot for something different. :)

I had a fun morning creating this piece. I had finished some commercial work and sent it for revisions/approval and had some time to kill. Not as much time as I put into this piece though. The Pirate Queen in POPX is a lot of fun to draw and I had this idea in my head that I had to put down on paper pixels. This was completely done in Photoshop, from rough idea to finished piece, on my Cintiq. Fun stuff!

Please join us tomorrow for a new page of Perils on Planet X. And tell your friends! Thanks!

This is Post #1947

Perils On Planet X - Chapter One Panel Process

I feel like today is Christmas Eve! And there is a great big present under the tree. The present isn't for me, it's for all of you and I hope you like it. And I hope it fits! :)

PERILS ON PLANET X (POPX), the webcomic begins tomorrow. Chris and I have been promoting it as much as humanly possible. I hope all of you will carry that torch for us and let others know about it. This has been a labor of love, sweat, and tears. I cannot express how excited we are about releasing it. And it's free!

Perils on Planet X © 2013 Christopher Mills & Gene Gonzales

Artwork © 2008, 2013 Gene Gonzales

On the eve of the launch I thought I would share another bit of the process. Originally POPX was going to be in black and white. There was no money for color at the time. So I started playing with grays and textures. Above is a panel featuring our Pirate Queen. The first panel is my original rough done in pencil on Bristol Board. After I inked the panel, I erased all my construction lines and then went back and shaded the panel with a 4B pencil. I didn't smooth it out because I wanted the texture to show through for the second part of adding gray tones in Photoshop. By putting a light source right across her eyes, I was going for that old school Hollywood lighting on her to make her more seductive in this panel. Later a search for a colorist introduced us to Ian Sokoliwski and he colored the entire first issue.

I hope you join us tomorrow for some fun and adventure on Planet X.

This is Post #1946

Fun with a (digital) Pencil

Art © 2013 Gene Gonzales

Last weeks post about the cover process for the Perils on Planet X cover got me thinking. The process I used to paint years ago involved doing full pencils drawings. Developing the values with the pencil, blocking in color with an airbrush and then defining with color pencils and paint. So for a warmup today I wanted to try and mimic drawing with a pencil digitally.

I had a photo on one screen and was using it as a reference while I drew on my Cintiq. I had to play with the brush/pencil settings a bit before I got to a line quality I liked. Color of the pencil was another factor. Finding that right shade of graphite was tricky. The other interesting thing was not changing the pencil size to cover big areas. Something I could do digitally but certainly couldn't using a real pencil. Over all I think this worked for a quickie.

Digital drawing in Photoshop CS5

This is Post #1946

PERILS ON PLANET X - Chapter 1 Cover Process

Hopefully everyone who visits this blog knows that Christopher Mills and I are releasing the first chapter of PERILS ON PLANET X as a webcomic. If not, you do now. Each Friday beginning February 1st we will release a new page in the exciting adventures of Terran Donovan Hawke on the mysterious planet of Xylos. You can find out more about it here: PerilsOnPlanetX.com.

I thought I would share the roughs and comps that helped developed the first chapter cover. I can't tell you the exact thought process that went through it all because it was several years ago. And frankly I had completely forgotten about the comps I did. But they will still be fun to look at. I hope.

Below is the first rough. I started with pencils and the sketch is only about 4 inches tall, if that. The idea was to introduce our main characters and some elements of the first chapter. I took the movie poster approach here. 

The next step was to do a basic color comp. I didn't get that far really. I just blocked in what I thought would be a nice warm contrast to the logo. We quickly moved from there.

Rough #2 was a bit more dynamic. And at some point we decided to make the image a wraparound cover. It was all the rage back then. Our hero Hawke in an action pose with the other characters around him. I gave our "bad girl" the lions share of the back cover strangely enough. Funny that at the time I had thought of her with long red hair, both in the first rough and this one. The color comp followed.

Below we have the beginnings of what would be the final idea. Still a wraparound cover. The publisher at the time had agreed to it. Some elements of the first and second roughs have come back in a slightly different form. While it still retains a movie poster look, it has also taken on the look of sci-fi/fantasy novel cover. Something I know I was shooting for in the end. During all these stages Chris was providing feedback and constructive critiques, making this a true collaborative effort.

At this point in my career I was using a different painting process. I would do complete finished art in pencil (see below) and seal that with a fix-a-tif spray so it wouldn't smear. I would then block in the color with an airbrush, not using any stencils so as to avoid hard, cut edges. When that was completely dry, I would go back and define everything with paint brush and color pencils. Since moving to Florida I never replaced my air tank for airbrush work and have since moved on to other processes. But I still like this process quite a bit.

Below is the digital color comp I used for creating the final image.

And then the final image.

Perils On Planet X © Christopher Mills and Gene Gonzales

Artwork © Gene Gonzales

If there is a continued interest in this type of post, I will share some other behind the scenes art and design for the series in the future.

Be well.

This is Post #1945