Roc Con day 2 and last

I am so tired, and today I did a lot of networking with several of the artists present and also some of the writers. I got a lot of help that will be working out over the next few months and a very good idea of what goes into having a successful booth a the Con for next year and the cost to me (beyond renting the booth) in supplies can be minimal. There is some cost in making some prints but the nickle and dime sales are small "sketch cards" that are all done by hand and only measure 1" x 2" each - that I can cut out myself and make a good selection over the next year to get ready.

I did get one good bite from a local writer that wants me to create a graphic novel version of a story he has already written and published. Don't worry, I will go over with him a contract an costs, but it also mean 50% of all sales will be mine. I did one commission for this weekend that was strictly a preliminary pencil drawing That took me a couple of hours and since it did not go beyond that it too was not too much for the buyer, but it payed for the money spent this weekend.

 I also did a portrait of JG Hertzler from Star Trek - He was one of the guest actors that was supposed to be there this weekend but at the last minute he had to go home for a family emergency. UGH - I wanted him to autograph it. I did cause quite a stir at the Con, my drawing. So it may be something for me to look into for next year - that is portraits like these as prints for sale.

Anyway - it was fun all in all - met a lot of people - and a Harry Potter group from my home town of Ithaca. Here are some of the standout people I met there.

At Roc Con Day 1

End of a long day and I am exhausted. And mostly all I did was sit and draw. I am still working on a new fake comic book cover. Every conceivable comic and sci character came past me. Some I recognized, some good some bad, some downright scary and some a bit scandalous. But, that is a Comic Con for ya. For my part I mostly stuck to what I was drawing and talking to people as they passed by.

The hard part was last minute work to get ready for today. Had to wait till payday, yesterday, and till after work to pick up some supplies. so I did not get done till about 1 am. And to top it off I did not fall asleep till after 2. Then I got up at 7:30 am and was out by 8:45. One of the things I was waiting to get done were some cards to hand out that fit with the customers I would see here. I recently decided to start creating a series of Star Wars Starfighters.  They take me about a day and a half each to create. Now I need to get a hold of Disney to get copyright permission to "sell" them. So for the time being I make a small number at a time to use as giveaway's to garner some attention to my website and possible garner a commission out of them.

I started with the ARC-170 and the Naboo yellow fighter. Both have plenty of reference photos to work from and I know them well. I also saved images of each step to create a poster of the step by step procedure I use to create one.

First I start with a very rough sketch of the object to get it layed out. From there I go back over it all to draw it the details in pencil.


Once I have the pencil lines drawn I draw over them all with a 005 line pen. When that is all drawn over I erase the pencil.

From here I use a medium tip pen to on all the leading edges to make them bold and make the image pop.

Once that is done it is ready to be scanned into my computer. I load it for my graphics program (GIMP) and I Erase the entire background.





Now for some color, here is is quick and a bit messy but I want to get all the colors on where I want them.






At this point I go back in and clean up all the colors and lines as much as possible.

The final step for the drawing is to go back in and add the shadows, sometimes also highlights too, fade out anything behind glass (the cockpit) and generally go over the whole image once more to make sure it is complete.

Of course there is the background to consider. I create a separate layer for that and using the filters I create the affect I am looking for. I decide I want to put a white border around the ship, I don't want to do it on the same layer as the ship but on the background. So that you can see this, I made the top layer invisible so you can see it on the background. This makes it easy to create the white border without needing to be too careful with the artwork of the ship.

With the top layer visible again you can see the affect I was going for. All that was left to do was add some lettering.






And here it is.

I also made this one before the Con

Going to Roc Con

Well Tomorrow(Saturday) I will be going to the Roc Con and I have blitzed almost every hour since getting off of work today to get ready. New cards to hand out and some prints. I got a couple of projects started for me to finish while I am at the convention to give people something to see as to how I do my work.

Now the last comic book cover and trading card again played off of the Image I used yester day for Capt Rhino.  This time it is Iron Rhino.  I had the image for the trading card but had to make a cover from scratch. I did cheat a little in that the background is a scene from downtown Rochester that I had done for another project. I also wanted to make this cover specifically to commemorate the Roc Con itself. Any way here are the images.

I did have a little fun with the filters in my graphics program to create the flares you see in hand, chest and under foot

Going to the Roc Con

Not to long ago The movie Civil War came out produced by Marvel.  Were the Super heros all picked sides and fought it out over law and ethics. Back in the Spring time my friend asked me to coem up with a design for his summer T-shirt. He wanted to commemorate that movie so I create the image below that was a big hit.

 Well, when I came time to create the artwork for this  weekend I kind of cheated. I had already created a "Captain Rhino" comic cover before I had done the image above so that one went into the mix for this weekend.

And for the trading card I just too the T-shirt image and split it to what you see here. It was still a lot of fun to see the finished work.

Going to Roc Con

I have a guilty pleasure. And it is the "Walking Dead".  When I watch it Juli goes to the other room. She hates the sound of zombies .  Now my friend from Rhino Comics asked me to design a new design for his fall T-shirt and he wanted to have this subject. So I bounced around a few different ideas and I ran across this one on the one of the covers of the graphic novels. It was so simple and so strong a statement. So I played around with the same pose and came up with this one.

This is the original cover I used as inspiration

This is the cover I created

And this is the trading card

Going to the Roc Con

My Spidey senses are tingling. This next one I did for my friends older son since he is crazy about Spider Man.  What was hard was depicting a Rhino as a svelt, muscular guy. Lets face it Rhinos are fat. But, put a real rhino hanging from a spider thread and it will snap LOL. So I came up with this guy here.

Now, Spider Man has a special connection to Rochester. You see the last Spider Man movie was filmed in downtown Rochester. I still remember the delays trying to ride the buses while they were filming. One vacant lot had several dozen NYPD squad cars parked there and some of the signs were changed to NYC ones.

That is why, when you look at the background you see the Rochester Times Square building.

Now, for the trading card I cheated I used the same image and just erased out background and redid it to match the style of the other cards. I also simplified the color work since we are talking about little cards.

Going to the Roc Con

Well - I will be off to my first Sci Fi convention (as a contributor). Over the past couple of years I have made friends with a gentleman who owns a Comic Book store near my home called Rhino Comics and Collectables. His subject matter is up my alley so I would hang out and talk shop. Before too long I had created some artwork for him. My first endeavoure with him was my black Star Wars T-Shirt last Christmas. I had a few hiccups with that one since it was my very first T-Shirt design done through a professional T-Shirt company and I did learn a few things.

But over time I developed a bit of a comic style that would reproduce well in print and a slightly different one for T-Shirts. Now this convention was coming up and I felt it would be very good exposure for me and my business, but I could not afford the cost of the booth space at it. I stumbled across the idea that I could help out my friend by being part of his booth and setting up a "small" section for myself. We talked and he agreed. We took all the artwork I had created for him and made a few more to have printed up for sale at his booth. Since he is a Comic Book Store we went with the fake Comic Book covers and a matching trading card.

All this week I will post one cover and one trading card here so you can see what I have created for this weekend. During the weekend I will post news about the Roc Con and some of the artwork I have created for myself to advertise and sell myself to this clientelle.

For today, sticking with a theme, I will show you the first Comic Book cover and its trading card. A play off of "Star Wars" it is "Rhino Wars".  I took the famous poster from the first movie (episode 4) and turned it into a cover with Rhinos everywhere.

From here I took an adaption of my first T-Shirt design and redid it to match the Rhino theme of the fake cover.