A Taste of Summer in Midwinter

Something I did for practice a couple of years ago. You've likely seen a smaller version on my website on NCF for the last couple of years, right under the sidebar menu column.

And if you live in Ottawa, you may recognize it as one of the landmarks of Confederation Park's northern side, abutting the Mackenzie King Bridge...

The First Commission

For Jamie Coville, this one's for you. Expect it in the mail within the next business tenday or so, barring any absolute disasters on Canada Post's end of things. You mentioned being a fan of this guy...

Given the fun that Warren and Stuart have had with him this past year(and hopefully will have more of the same or better next year), I'm imagining the following dialogue:

"Who retro-conned me? Why can't I see straight right now? I know I didn't have any beer last night!"

Everyone else: you too can have a Williams original! See the previous posting for details.

Another set of sketches and an offer

Today I'm including some practice sketches of Elijah, one of the supporting cast of Local Hero. You might have seen glimpses of him earlier here, and at my Gallery site.

Also, an offer:

If you've got a favourite character you'd like a sketch of, so long as nothing worse than PG-ratings is involved re: that character, I'm available for commissions. Contact me at williams.dwight@gmail.com and we can discuss details of which character, how to deliver the sketch, and whatnot. Consider it an opportunity to wrap up a surprise gift for that special comics fan in your life, whoever it may be.

One term is non-negotiable: I reserve the right to save a hi-res scan of whatever I draw for you and post it here, or any other blog of my choosing.

Comicspace

Quick update time: I've set up a branch presence on Comicspace.

More news and stuff to follow...

Apologies

I haven't exactly been showering the blog with new works and I want to apologize for that. I've been busy getting Local Hero # 1 ready to go to press, as well as several other projects in the pipeline and looking for more and more varied work. Some of that's been detailed at my other blog, of course.

Anyway: more stuff soon. Promise.

Font Experimentation

I am nothing if not either prolific or a wannabe polymath.

Specifically, a font inspired by pre-1985 "Kryptonese"One of the side projects I've mentioned over at my Other Blog has been experimental font design, inspired by the comics of years gone by. as compiled by E. Nelson Bridwell, with the notes passed along to Al Turniansky by the late Rich Morrissey.

I'm about ¾ of the way to completion on the letter-glyphs, fully done on the numerals and punctuation. The letter-glyphs are one of the tough parts, numbering 118 in all. Check this site if you have any doubts. It's what I've been using as reference for this project.

The other potential headache is this: the rules of "Bridwellian" punctuation dictate that the "open parentheses" equivalent must be directly over the first character inside the parentheses. "Close parentheses" symbology is placed under the last character in the parentheses-equivalents. Underlining-equivalent has its own symbol, as a quick referral to the chart on the other end of the above link will show. Not being a professional typographic designer, I must admit to being somewhat stumped by this issue.

If you want to try out what I've got in place so far, here's the font. Right-click to save the font, and please scan the guts out of it with whatever security software you're using before you install it. Just because I've been careful doesn't mean you shouldn't as well, right?

I'll upload a chart to show what goes where and which symbols represents which sounds ASAP.

Urban SF Humour - X-Files and the Ottawa Streets

You might think this was a joke. But it ain't. The city of Ottawa really did this.

Straw Poll: Comics Characters or Fonts?

Looking for opinions on what I should post on next here on the Artblog.

I'm considering posting some more character designs for Local Hero.

I've also got a font project or two that I've been fiddling with for a while in the background.

So call this a straw poll, completely unscientific in nature and structure.

Local Hero News

The preview at Wellbound Productions begins in earnest.

More news to follow...

A brief study of one actor.

One who's been a particular favourite of mine to watch the last few years, as you might've gathered from my comments on my other blog re: Bon Cop, Bad Cop...

Page 17 in Progress...

...and I thought one panel might be an interesting sampler to whet the appetites...

A gift to a friend

Leah Adezio is someone I've known from online fandom and past attempts to make the Professional Break happen a long while. I was recently told -- or reminded -- that today is her birthday. One of the things I remember well is her interest in Aquaman going back a very long ways before we met either online or in person.

I thought she deserves a gift, just because.

So.






Back to normal promotional stuff here soon. I promise.

Local Hero: Urban Design

Official disclaimer time: I'm not an architect. Never been one. Fantasized about it on occasion, though. And when you see the design work by the likes of Anton Furst going into Gotham City for either the first Burton-directed Bat-movie or the comic books, or Tony Harris' work on Opal City in the second Starman series, you might begin to understand why I'd feel that way.

So, when Ian Gould sent me the initial scripts and background material for what's now Local Hero, you might understand another of the lures that got me on board as his artist of record.

I wanted to get right into it, complete with maps. I figured that between assorted graphic design and CAD packages in my collection, I could do a reasonably competent job of it. Not in Rick Sternbach or Eliot Brown's league, obviously, but still competent.

I wish I could recall a particular path of evolution in terms of how the place comes together, but there's no real path at all.

So for the time being I'm going to leave you with a sampling of artwork culled from my sketchbooks. Some of it's going to show up as parts of Shuster, others...for different places, I expect, as Local Hero continues beyond its first arc.

Enjoy.

Local Hero - A first sampling in Character Design

We've all seen them in print and online over the years: pieces of how a character evolves from first sketch to the finished pages.

Ian and I talked it over, and for today's edition, we'll cover Gator Jones, one of the keys of the first Local Hero arc. Gator's one of those guys who always seem to get the short end of the genetic stick in the genre as we know it. If the nickname wasn't a giveaway on that score, well...

Now this first drawing was the earliest design sketch I could find or remember for Gator, dating back to late 2002.

No, I'm not kidding about that. All good things take their appointed time, after all.

Anyway: I took the "Gator" nickname quite literally, of course, and this had to be remedied somewhat...

And of course, further refinements followed:

Now we move onto some rough layouts for his first appearance on-panel...


And I think I'll refrain from showing the finished page. For now, at least.


One thing that kept bugging me from the first redesign onward is the fact that we've seen guys with Gator's particular luck of the genetic draw before in other fictons, in comic books and out. I've wanted to evolve him into someone distinct from anyone else we're already familiar with. I hope I succeed in that. It'll be for you to judge, though...

So...what to do?

I'm considering using this for posting artwork from upcoming projects, given the picture file storage space available with this account.

Suggestions?

This is a backup position

My regular blog is serving me just fine. But here I am anyway...

More to follow.