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Description
Here's a collection of the various process Layers that were built as I drew this illustration for the monthly P.U.M.M.E.L. League competition over at Penciljack. Hit Download to see it in more detail.

The topic was "Spider-Man". As with everything, I started off on a couple thumbnail drawings. I like to put in a little of the cheescake when I can, so I knew I'd need a sexy lady. I like dynamic perspective and motion, so I'd use that as well. From there I started out doodling.

The idea itself spread out organically, answering the various questions that came up as I drew... Who's the sexy lady? MJ always works there. How do we get a dynamic, active perspective? Maybe everyone's tumbling in mid-air. fighting a bad-guy up high. Which bad guy? Might as well go with a classic, Doc Ock is easily recognizable and his tentacles could be fun to draw. This goes on until I have enough sketched out that I could break it all back down and rebuild it with some semblance of good draftsmanship (or at least my version thereof), which I then try to do.

The tentacles ended up being an unexpected pain... it was hard to pull off the long, smooth curves without going into some involved tools that I wasn't familiar with. It'd be easier in Photoshop, but I was drawing in Manga Studio EX.

In addition to the dangerous curves, I got the clever idea of putting a little dip in the segmentation lines that implied an angular cross-section to the tentacle. The effect was nice, but it made drawing all those segments a little more painstaking and that ran out the clock some as well. I expect this would have been a problem even drawing with tangible analogues, I mean you can do a lot with a french curve but at the end of the day long loopy lines and repeating patterns are a bitch, and that's just the way the jello jiggles.

So that sucked up some time, and by the point that I began working on the BG, I was having difficulty with tangents and depth indicators and scale, and I realized that I wasn't going to have enough time before the deadline to finish it to the degree that I wanted to, so I set it aside and focused on polishing the character linework to a degree that it might better stand on its own. The final version is in color, and here on DA I've posted a two-tone variant . But without a background, it's remains essentially unfinished.

I wanted to do something that also functioned as a bit of comics practice, so I set out to treat this like a cover, but I screwed up at the beginning by not treating it as a job, and taking it too slowly. It's not like I didn't do responsible things during the time that I might have been working on this, but given that there's a whole month to do each piece, I could start sooner and get better results by being more responsible.

Mmmm, life lessons. Lemony.

Description
Here's a collection of the various process Layers that were built as I drew this illustration for the monthly P.U.M.M.E.L. League competition over at Penciljack. Hit Download to see it in more detail.

The topic was "Spider-Man". As with everything, I started off on a couple thumbnail drawings. I like to put in a little of the cheescake when I can, so I knew I'd need a sexy lady. I like dynamic perspective and motion, so I'd use that as well. From there I started out doodling.

The idea itself spread out organically, answering the various questions that came up as I drew... Who's the sexy lady? MJ always works there. How do we get a dynamic, active perspective? Maybe everyone's tumbling in mid-air. fighting a bad-guy up high. Which bad guy? Might as well go with a classic, Doc Ock is easily recognizable and his tentacles could be fun to draw. This goes on until I have enough sketched out that I could break it all back down and rebuild it with some semblance of good draftsmanship (or at least my version thereof), which I then try to do.

The tentacles ended up being an unexpected pain... it was hard to pull off the long, smooth curves without going into some involved tools that I wasn't familiar with. It'd be easier in Photoshop, but I was drawing in Manga Studio EX.

In addition to the dangerous curves, I got the clever idea of putting a little dip in the segmentation lines that implied an angular cross-section to the tentacle. The effect was nice, but it made drawing all those segments a little more painstaking and that ran out the clock some as well. I expect this would have been a problem even drawing with tangible analogues, I mean you can do a lot with a french curve but at the end of the day long loopy lines and repeating patterns are a bitch, and that's just the way the jello jiggles.

So that sucked up some time, and by the point that I began working on the BG, I was having difficulty with tangents and depth indicators and scale, and I realized that I wasn't going to have enough time before the deadline to finish it to the degree that I wanted to, so I set it aside and focused on polishing the character linework to a degree that it might better stand on its own. The final version is in color, and here on DA I've posted a two-tone variant . But without a background, it's remains essentially unfinished.

I wanted to do something that also functioned as a bit of comics practice, so I set out to treat this like a cover, but I screwed up at the beginning by not treating it as a job, and taking it too slowly. It's not like I didn't do responsible things during the time that I might have been working on this, but given that there's a whole month to do each piece, I could start sooner and get better results by being more responsible.

Mmmm, life lessons. Lemony.