In order to do the diagrams for Mandate of Heaven’s kung fu dictionary I needed to create some characters. For projects that require multiple drawings of the same figure it helps me if that figure is an individual, if only to me. Otherwise I get bored and if I’m bored, drawing is no fun. Stories engage me. Individuals have stories. So I invented a couple of characters to demonstrate the different actions that would be in the dictionary. This was the male figure.
Author Archives: skook
More Lizard, Random Sketches
Actually, the title says it all.
Plant Soldier
I enjoy redesigning the monsters featured in old b-movies. I try to keep the creature’s basic design and add only what makes sense based on the story. In this case I was playing around with the featured thing in The Thing From Another World. It was a plant man that lived on blood. That’s an odd sort of biology. What sort of culture did it come from? What sort of environment?
A finished version of this creature can be found here.
One Punch, Two Punch
Here are a couple of practice drawings for the Mandate of Heaven kung fu dictionary.
KOMO Blogger Meet-up
Last night KOMO-TV hosted a meet-up for Seattle area bloggers. Somehow I got invited. I wish I had it in me to write about the event but, as usual, I’m word deprived. Chris Pirillo, who apparently was a force in putting the event together, is not so handicapped.
I did have fun, met some folks whose names I’ve forgotten, handed out some business cards and got some in return. Thanks to the folks I did talk to (who had cards available) – Paul Pearson, Shadow Myth, JCO, Tammie Springs and Steve Zemke – hopefully we’ll meet again at future events.
(And apologies to those I talked to that didn’t have cards. If you got one of my cards and want to send me your site address I can update this post.)
More Lizard Sketches
As the title says, more Lizard sketches. The human face belongs to Curt Connors, the Lizard’s human alter ego.
Lizard and Son
The second series idea was Lizard and Son. The Lizard is one of Spider-Man’s earliest villains. He’s a scientist who turns into a giant talking lizard whenever it’s least convenient. The idea was to have a miniseries in which Curt Connors (the Lizard) and Billy Connors (his teenage son) are trying to live quietly in the Pacific Northwest but their lives keep getting interrupted by various superheroes, supervillains and secret organizations. It would have been a basically light hearted series. In real life it would probably suck to have a father who regularly turns into a supervillain with a desire to destroy the human race. As much as I enjoy reading serious stories in which horrible things happen to the protagonists I’m not that driven to write such stories myself.
There are a number of sketches of the Lizard on the pages to follow. That’s because I kept failing to draw a version I liked. I still haven’t done one that I’m satisfied with.
Dragon Girl/Man
Back in 2003 Marvel Comics proposed a line of fan created comics – sort of (see Epic Returns).
There aren’t that many corporately owned comic characters that I’m interested in playing with but a couple of ideas for miniseries came to me. The first was Lizard and Son. I’ll go in to that some more tomorrow.
The second was Dragon Girl. The story was to revolve around a crippled girl and her dragon. The girl was the niece of the Mad Thinker. The dragon was the android Dragon Man. After the girl’s body was severly mangled in an accident the Mad Thinker figured out a way to store her mind in Dragon Man while her body was healed. Wackiness (and destruction and punching) ensued.
No, I never got around to doing a proposal.
The Horse
One of the features of Mandate of Heaven was to be a “kung fu dictionary”, a collection of diagrams showing most of the basic moves that a kung fu practitioner would know. I believe this position is called the Horse. It’s a base position used for establishing balance and gaining strength. Try holding it for five or ten minutes.
Inking Test
This is all freehand ink drawing with a new Faber Castell brush pen. I generally prefer to do my basic inks, the grounding lines with a brush. Detail can be filled in with a pen or pencil but I like the feel of a brush on the main lines. Unfortunately it’s not easy to carry around ink and brush without risking spilling the ink or ruining the brush. Fortunately there are now brush pen that approximate the old school tools. I still prefer to use my have-to-wash-them-after-I’m-done-or-they’re-toast brushes but the brush pens allow me to ink in the field when the need arises.
