Definat 35

Defiant 35 was probably my least favourite cover I've done for pendant. But this time everything, including the script was better. I was even thinking of giving up doing covers from them because I just wasn't inspired anymore. It's hard to make Star Trek exciting and not make it look like a bunch of stuck up sci-fi geeks standing around in spandex, they don't have the muscles to make them look cool like super heroes so they just look like regular people in extra ordinary outfits. This last episode had the crew disguised as the Breen, which despite having a helmet directly swiped from Boush from Star Wars is pretty damn cool. I was looking at this book of fleer star wars trading cards I had lost as a kid and recently was given as a gift - anyway its got lots of pieces by lots of famous artists I now know, but didn't at the time and this one particularly caught my eye. I quickly saw it was Mignolla and was just blown away at how powerful his stuff always is despite being simple and he uses so many techniques that are his trademark.

Anyway, So I scanned it and swiped the colors and was really hooked on the yellows I think I was channeling Dune or something, but eventually I just wasn't sold on the whole "yellow snow"-thing, call me weird, or just a boy. So i eventually but a blue layer over the top and set the layer to hue. I had tried messing with the colors and adding more blue and sucking out the red to make it feel colder but it still didn't sell the idea of "cold" like blues and purples.


Another fun thing was that I knew I would need texture for the snow but it would also need to be coloured white so instead of drawing it out and then having to color the snow white in photoshop I just drew some scratchy textural things seperate in black, inverted them in photoshop and added them as a layer above the line art after i set the layer type to cut out all the black - the same process I used for the Kryton logo and any white on black text I do in comics. So anyway, it worked, it was fun, and it looks frign' sweet.

I did fight with the size of the Defiant cover, as I usually do. With the text on top (unlike comic books) and the title centered at the bottom) and the whole cover being closer to magazine format than comic book, by the time you get done you really are working with a safe area that is more of a horizontal rectangle than a verticle one, so i swiped and clone tooled my way out of it but as always it catches me off guard as I am used to working in comic book format. The composition was inspired by a splash page Tim Sale did of Batman in a riot outfit, in The Long Halloween.

Star Trek: Defiant, Ep. 36 by ~xaqBazit on deviantART

winter break 08

*warning this link and paper contain what could be considered mature content*

this is a paper my friend, james whynot wrote on one of my pieces. if you'd like to see his artwork you can view it here
or the piece to which he is referring here.
other than that, its break. odd term though because i have to do 5 pages for phils comic book, pencil, ink and letter. write issue 3 of maelstom with james, ink my pages from issue 2 and pencil my pages from issue 1. write a script for superhero class next quarter, do my star trek covers as well as finish redesigning the logo for capricious alchemy. guess how many of those jobs pay... 1. however its all work, hopefully portfolio work. and i know im going to kick ass at editors day this year so here's to that.
i also intend to post on the da forums for commissions, hopefully that will up my viewers and income, not to mention artwork output. wahoo, break - my ass, this will be catching up on everything i put off time.

everybody started somewhere

heres my ideas and tight roughs for covers for the comic ive been working on.

this is a pic i quickly colored for class.

yes i did tighten up pg one before i inked it. my final pages can be found in my deviantart gallery.

this was a cheesy comic i found laying around in noris and then i realized the artist on the cover was one of my (now) idols, mike deodato jr. who has recently worked on tigra, thunderbolts, hulk, spiderman, moonknight. he has come a long way since this piece in 1996, but it just took this piece to make me see him as a person, lower him off his god like pedistol and say if he can change that much and be where he is now, who says i cant. i later put the text on it and hing this up in my room as inspiration.

and last this is my inks for the new startrek cover, the colored version of which can be found on pendant audio's website or my deviant page. i was actually quite pleased with it despite inking it right after i woke up and the size only being 7x6" max. i added the hatching and feathering as lightly a i could at the last minute and really loved how it came out, i had been looking at a lot of bryan hytch lately, though it doesn't show too much.
alternately ive been trying to research a japanese artist named leiji matsumoto whos been doing and manga since the 70's such as gun frontier, galaxy express 999, and captain harlock. but i can barley find anything on him let alone images of his work for some reason. i also got robin hooked on x-men by reading chris bachello and humburto ramos' "supernovas" graphic.

Character Designs and Star Trek Sketch

alright so first here is my skecth for a classy looking star trek cover for next week. i still have to ink and color it, hoping for an adam hughes vibe for inking with a thick outline and thin hatching inside, cant find my inking brushges though now that ive moved.

this was my origional and still my favourite sketch for teh cast of terra novus, it has my notes on it, but it was just to keep them straight in my head. now its almost all i have to design from.


there were my new designs trying to make them retro and fun and homage-like but they ended up just looking phony and stupid. its hard to make things like tights and a wrestling belt look cool when you add in the word sci-fi. but me and a few other guys are working on it, i did like aurora's new look though with the pancho and cloak, and then the short rogue gloves and high boots. heavily inspired by some designs i used to have in my star wars concept art book. the idea here being that it should be baggy enough and indistinct enough that others dont notice she is pregnant.

here's my layout thumbs for the covers i described on the group page.


these are some sketches for a metal band that commissioned me to do a cover for them called capricious alchemy, we have been trying to brainstorm on ideas for the subject and he had mentioned that most their songs revolve around anti-materialism and anti-narcissism me and my other friend had been talking about how greedy alchemists turn metal into gold for personal gain. in these images i was trying to have a similar alchemist doing something like that and then have a hero/knights break in to stop him. the second one looks more fun now where he would be covered in jewelery like xerxes and be coveting the book, this way we'd get a look at his now-lavish pad, maybe even some gold diggers or prostitutes running from the shaddowed hero who has come to put an end to his treachery.