I decided to go back to old school to hurry up, I noticed how much slower I am trying to do anything digital.

paint work ups.
i can't paint oh well

getting more frustrated

Frustration

Reworking panels, frustrated from not being able to nail the mood or the look right last night, I spent way to long on this and countless revisions only to come out with a small sketch that still isn't good enough.

A little Painter fun

I thought I would spend some time working all in painter today and testing somethings out.
Here I started out with some pencil sketches in painter xi, after the pencils I slapped down some sloppy inks
then went straight for the kill. At the end, I reopened the file in photoshop for some texturing and some
color adjustments.













I just noticed I forgot to add a bandade.
Opps

Found the brushes i like finally

I found the brushes I want to use in painter and I am happy!

end of the night

I was penciling this up tonight in painter, ruffing more items out hit some key stroke and lost the layer..
No undo and I didn't save for a while.. I guess that means it is the end of the night.

wow how easy i forget

I forgot I did this as a prelim or mockup for Villains redux

others

revisions

I am always revising things since I can't stand what I do. I couldn't draw a helicopter to save my life, so I probably drew about 10 of these things and decided to keep moving and layout the rest of the blocks for the page. I am also including a panel that I scrapped on the original page one. Since the money shot comes on the next page.

working workin working

trying to nail these for a panel
yeap interesting. the first one is the first concept
the second is me reducing the page size and moving boltaction around
so i could add more members in the background

Charater sheet

Trying to get back in it and work on some character sheets.
One I did tonight playing in painter.Trying to stay loose and open.

Creator Profiles - Round 1!

It's time to meet the creative team of Villains: The Big Beat Down. Returning creators Adam, Ryan and Charlie are joined by some super-talented fellas and I'll be posting these whenever I get a chance.
____________________________________________________________________

Name: Ryan Cody

Location: Phoenix, AZ

Contribution to Villains Volume 2: Co-Creator, Co-Plotter, Cover Artist, Pencils + Inks for the main story, "The Big Beat Down", Back-Up Feature Colors

Past Work: Villains Vol.1 (Viper Comics), Legends of the Middleman WW2 Short Story, Middleman Vol.2 (Viper Comics), Expendable One Vol.2, Chapter 2 (Viper Comics), Ultimate Spider-Man #100 Sketch Cover Artist (HERO Initiative, Marvel Comics), Writer/Artist HOLLOW #1 (Super75press), Hulk #1 Sketch Cover Artist (HERO Initiative, Marvel Comics, Upcoming), The Hurricane Kids (Upcoming)

Tools of the trade: Dell Laptop + Photoshop + 4x6 Pen Tablet for Pencils, Pentel brush pens + assorted markers for Inks, Photoshop for Colors, Illustrator for Lettering.

Website: www.super75press.com

Digital pencils by Ryan Cody

Inks by Ryan Cody

_________________________________________________________________

Name: Anthony Nixon

Location: Hippie-ville USA, AKA Eugene, OR

Contribution to Villains Volume 2: Colorist for "The Big Beatdown", Monkey wrangler.

Past Work: Nothing professional, this is my first actual published work.. so be gentle.. it's my first time.

Tools of the trade: Photoshop, Wacom PL-500 tablet (precursor to the Cintiq), Mountain Dew.

Website: http://spydormonkey.deviantart.com/

__________________________________________________________________

Name: Grant Alter

Location: St Louis, Missouri

Contribution to Villains Volume 2: Bolt Action's Badassssss Song

Past Work: The Hurricane Kids, Stolen, Popgun vol 2

Tools of the trade: A computer and/or pen and paper. And dare I say, a little...imagination.

Website: www.strugglingcomicwriter.blogspot.com

Update

The entire creative team is in place, and I'll list everyone here sometime soon, for now, here is a sketch of the "modern day" Bolt Action that I did back when we were still doing Volume 1, so you can see that we always had an idea to do several VILLAINS books. I also included a panel from page 3 for Volume 2, we're still in the infancy stages, but it's already very exciting.

Process of Evil

Some people, often other artists who might just be starting out, sometimes wonder what an artist's process is when it comes to drawing. When I illustrated Volume 1 (with heavy reliance on color god Russ Lowery), I went through several different processes involving several different paper sizes, inking tools, you name it. For volume 2 I plan to stick to 1 process the whole way through, unless it becomes detrimental. So here is how the process goes from script to art.

1. Adam and I discuss the plot and the storylines we want to tell.
2. Adam writes the script.
3. I review and give him any notes I may have and then I receive the final script.
4. Using the 90% finalized script (dialog changes can be made all the way up until lettering), I "pencil" the pages. For this project, I am penciling digitally using my pen tablet and photoshop. I've created an 8x12 blueline template (2/3 ratio) for this purpose. After pencils I send a copy to Adam for approval, then I make any edits we decide on.
5. Finally I print the blueline "pencils" out on 8.5x14 legal paper at about 60% for inking. Since there is no demand for original art sales from my pages, I save money and time by just inking on normal paper. Using markers instead of ink to fill my blacks, I avoid the wrinkling you often get when inking on plain paper. To ink I use all sorts of tools but my main tool is either the classic #2 brush or a pentel brush pen.
6. With no pencil lines to erase, I scan the page into photoshop and using the hues/saturation setting I can wipe out all the blue line, leaving only the inks. I then use the threshold setting to darken everything up and make it a true black and white drawing.
7. Now I send the page to the colorist and wait for him to do his magic.




* if you notice, I forgot to draw his headset in, so I'll add that in Photoshop before the colorist adds the colors.

Charlie Clark preliminary sketches

Here are some prelim sketches by Charles Clark, the back up artist in volume 1, who will be returning for a short story in volume 2 focusing on one of our favorite villains from the first book, Bolt Action.

THE BIG BEAT DOWN!!

Villains Volume 2: The Big Beat Down will be released in fall 2008 from Viper Comics. Volume 2 will follow up the events in the first Villains series and continues to focus on the dynamic relationship between Nick Cogan, the new, villainous Hardliner, and Charlie Cobb, the original Hardliner. Tossed into the mix are some new and returning characters as we go all out action for THE BIG BEAT DOWN! Over the next several months we will posting pre-production art, sketches and more in preparation for the release this fall. Comments are highly encouraged and we hope you all will get as excited as we are for this new volume.

To start the year off, here is a promo poster and some character sketches of Nick in Hardliner armor, Bolt Action, Calico and Flying Ace.