Stryker

I forgot to add Stryker to the list of images that I did for the Cyberforce whatever.

Wanna Cyber?

Cyber? is that still a term for having internet sex? I don't know anymore. I'm sure that chatting via the internet is still as popular as ever though I haven't uses any of those applications in a long time.

This post isn't going to be about the sex on the internet, Cyber is a concept that is not so unique in the comic book world, but it is what makes these characters interesting. Cyberforce.

This series of images were done more than a year ago as a jump start to a real career in comics. I thought that Image, more importantly Top Cow would be the place for me stylistically. I also thought that I might inspire a relaunch of the Cyberforce title if they saw what I could do with the characters. How's that for Pompous!?! But this, like so many other ideas, fell short of completion and now I have nothing to show for it. But that's OK there are a couple o compelling images here that I think have their own merit.

The first of which was perhaps my favorite of the group, Ripclaw.

Ripclaw popularity stems from his overwhelming Wolverine flavor with the mix of that bad boy attitude and the threat of slice & dice, he has managed to maintain his appeal despite his blatant "inspiration". This drawing takes an intimidating but subdued look at the character. I couldn't come to terms with the background on this drawing either thus the image feel just short of completion.

Much the same happened to the following drawings as I moved through an uninspired schedule to get the entire roster down in my own style.

I had this posted at the Top Cow message board for the longest time with infrequent updates featuring the rest of these images. After time and neglect, the thread was purged and the great comments from the community were lost.

There is a lot going wrong with so many of these drawings that I don't know where to start. So I won't. But what is ironic is that for every flaw there is something redeeming about all of these images. I could always go back to the drawings fix the issues and complete the images but what would that accomplish!?!
. . .Everything that wasn't accomplished before.

Core Oblivion

Here's the background image that makes this Blog so damn hard to read. I can't remember where or why I made this drawing, I assume that I was hanging out and had some down time.

Featured here are the core characters of the Oblivion Univers, minus Idal, who is the folcal point for all the mystic mayhem that would occur if this were a thryving comic book company as I hoped that it would be.

Top Left: Champion & Marshal Silver. Top Right:Exacution & the Undertaker (my First Comic Character)Middle: Victory. Bottom Right: Warden. Bottom Left: the Snake (my only published character).

Why do I like this drawing? Not Sure. I think that it's the only group image of the best of my characters. These are the core players that would never see the dark of cancelation if I were a comic publisher with the considerable longevity that DC and Marvel have endured. These are the chatacters that I would merchandise and turn into Multimedia. These are the Heart & Soul of Oblivion, the movers and the shackers. (And boy do I love it when the females Shake!). I hope to have more on some of these characters and perhaps one day I will post the Snake Comic to show all just how much potential I have thrown away over the years.

As usaul, let me know what you think.
EJ

Rated X

Here’s an oldie but a goodie!

This one is an old drawing that I did at the request of one of the Board members of the Tyler Kirkham message board. Not that I am taking requests or that I was taking requests but the suggestion was Wolverine and he being one of my favorite all time characters, I just had to oblige.

This was done during a time when I thought that I would really revisit my ambition to get into the comic industry.

This drawing was intended to stop at just Wolverine, but there was so much room left on the page that I had to keep the momentum going. So I added Sabretooth to the mix and then later, there was environment or the intention there of. At this same time, X23 was really creating a buzz in the X Books so I thought that I would make this a Weapon X family Christmas featuring all of these great characters.

This drawing made it to the DW boards of course ad at the time, the Press Oblivion site had just finished a revamp complete with gallery & message board software. Were those good times? Hard to say.

Needless to say, that there are a million things wrong with this drawing, and I talked about them at length with the folks over at DW, everywhere else I placed this image, there was a lot of ass kissing. I hate that.

Issues like thinking through before committing to rendering to composition over rendering. BLABLABLABLABLA. . . . .. Despite my analytical dissection of this drawing, it has to be one of my favorites still. I feel that this drawing really creates a little story around the scene leaving the viewer to contemplate the events that led to the outcome depicted.

Let me know what you think!
EJ

Just Jen

This one was done shortly after the Hulk Family/Wonder Woman drawing with intentions of going to eBay. But like so many of my other works, it never saw that light of finish and her tits are lobsided or maybe it's just that one is larger than the other.
I can see here that I need to work on Kids a little bit. I thought that it would be cute to see if a could show the kind hearted, playful nature of Jen as the little ones use her like a jungle gym. She has sort of a goofy grin but I think that I was really feeling the hair on this one. can You feel the hair? I can feel the hair! Hair is really important for being in hot chick mode, don't you think?

Think! Think! Let me Know what you think. And Feel free to rate the images at imageshack as well! Did you know that you can do that!??! You do now! Go! Rate! Hate! It's all that I ask.
EJ

Red Monika

This is a study of a character created by one of the most dynamic illustrators in the comic industry today of the last decade, Joe Maduriera.

Red Monika, of Battle Chasers comic fame, is a character that never really got a chance to get off the ground as far as I am concerned. Perhaps I am a little biased by the character’s ample attributes as soooo many of my own characters have similar features. I’m also a sucker for a redhead.

Others may not agree with me, but I bought Battle Chasers because I wanted to catch another glimpse of her latest endeavor or another tidbit into her relationship with Garrison or something greater about her past. Though I thought that the comic was great, the art fantastic, the characters interesting, the anime influence appealing, I bought the book for one thing in mind, buoyant boobs, sassy attitude and the indomitable will that is Red Monika!

Despite her porn star attributes, I found her strength, confidence and sex appeal to be great ingredients for an action character and these are all qualities that I like to utilize in my own character creation and development. The book and the character were all too short lived as Joltin Joe decided to leave his comic roots behind for greater things in California.

I think that California proved to be a success but the thirst of Marvel Comics to sell more comics eventually brought Joe from his California career back into the comics fold. This Drawing was done in honor of his return to comics and was posted on the DW boards for comic fans, Joe fans and Red Monika Fans, to view.

The First drawing met with awes and criticism regarding the overstated abundance of breast tissue. So I gave her a little reduction and posted that as well. Still there were arguments in favor of even more surgery but I stood strong and made that the final redraw.

Later I did a little coloring just for kicks; I never finished the color rendition.

So here’s to hoping that one day Battle Chaser’s is revived and that Joe has the god sense to spin Red off into her own comic.

Let me know what you think
EJ.

Warden Design Sketches

By request, here is another Warden Image that I did last year. I have a whole slew of characters with half ass designs, no real back story and a ton of potential. I think that Warden is a chracter with a ton of potential.

In this drawing I wanted to play with a couple of ideas that I had for the character including the purpose of the (barely there) armor. Feeling that this design is pretty solid I thought that I would throw in a couple of comic book cliche elements to add a cool factor to the over all look. I never really know that I succeed at anything that I really want to do with my characters, they all seem like good ideas at the time but when I reflect on what I have done, is it really any good?

Let me know what you think.
EJ

A Greater Victory

I have to apologize for the lengthy typos that have been appearing here lately. I’m just now getting into this whole web-log thing and really appreciating the freeness of all these great features on the web. I’ll be sure to write everything in a word editor before I post here. It should help some, don’t you think?

I just wanted to add a splash of color to the thread with this color rendition of the Victory drawing that was posted here earlier this year. After having colored her for only the second time since her incarnation, I feel now that I have to do a redesign to make her a little more appealing and original.

For those who don’t know, Victory was based on Wonder Woman, from the mystical origin to the bulletproof bracelets; just altered enough to fit into my “Comic Book Universe” and skirt Copyright infringement. Hence the wacky color scheme, which was WW’s Colors flipped, later the blue was made purple. It’s horrible.

So for the next few posts, I think that I will break down her design and see what can be done to get a new face on an old idea.

The next image is Champion! What a great guy! This drawing was done at a bar one night while I was waiting for my buddy to finish up his night with the dart league. I’m not one for the bar scene, nor am I one to start up a conversation with a stranger so I made sure that I was armed with some drawing utensils to get me through a few hours by myself time. This was the outcome.

I think that I had that JSA classified #1 on my mind as I am still left speechless every time I look at it. My attempt is no where near as compelling as the work done by Adam Hughes on that cover but I really do think that it’s a fine drawing of the Superman that would be Oblivious.

I really like this pose, it’s easy to do and I think that the Champ looks pretty regal here, defiant, resilient & indomitable, someone that you really want on your side when the world is in trouble. The clouds suck, the air vehicle sucks, the cape is flowing agaist the grain of the clouds, yet I'm really happy with this drawing.

Let me know what you think.
EJ

Females! Yay!

I mentioned to a someone, through e-mail, the other day that I feel as though I hadn't really found my artistic style after all these years, after it was suggested that I try working in another art style to help get back in the groove of things. I find the work of other artists to be great inspiration but at the same time I am very influenced by the style of the minute. I really appreciate the skill of others and if there is something truly compelling, I like to incorporate that into the work that I do.

This is a little bit of a double edge sword becuase on one hand you are learning something new that will have an impact on the way you draw for the future. On the other hand, you may be labled a hack or a "clone" if your recipe is to close to the artist that you are trying to emulate.

That said, I feel that I have not hit my own stride yet but I really feel that I am in the "hot babe" zone. One of my most recent influences in comic book illustration is Doug Mahnke. He is everything that I aspire to be as an Illustrator, a great anatomist, a dymanic story teller, he draws rock solid males with outstanding heroic proportions and is an absolute phenom when it comes to drawing the female form. I wish the dude had a website or something like this blog to get in touch with his fans. When it comes to T&A, his work is the forst thing that I will reference. I just hope that I'm not considered to be a clone of his because though I would love to make his style my own, I really want people to look at the work that I do and associate it to my name.

Onto the drawing: I did this drawing last year as in hopes of starting a lucrative side career on ebay, selling orignal images of everyones favorite characters. Here, the theme was "cousins". Who better than two of my favorite females and two of may favorite characters all onthe same page? I thought that it was a fun idea.

This drawing seems to suffer from the same things that all of my work does and that's when the figures are finished, so is the drawing. I wanted to have some sort of environment in the picture to show the destruction brought on by the battling Superman & Hulk, while the more level headed cousins let the boys be boys, at the same time giving the viewer a little cheese cake.

I really love this drawing, I think the the chicks are hot & buff while the characters in the background add a little comic releif, a prime example of my "hot babe"zone-age. You can't really see it in the online image, but She-Hulk is looking at the viewer along with Power Girl, it was misconstrued that Jen was eyeballing Kara's cleavage when I posted this last on the DW boards. Though female on female interest is a favorite topic of mine, I can say that it was not my intention to bring that to this drawing.

So do you think that this one has the chops to score me a big sale on ebay or should I leave the dreams of copyright infringement here on the blog where it can rest in peace?

Trying to keep motivated

Looks like May is a good month for me to get the blogging in motion, this is the thord one in two days! Blasphemy! Anyway I'm looking for motivation. As it stands now, I have not drawn anything in months (the last originale drawing was the Champion & Victory piece a couple of posts down.) but I really want to get back into the swing of things so I'm going through some of my drawings, past & current to help get into the mood as well as checking out some of the links to the right.

I think that I have stated this before, that I find the work of others to be inspiring it builds a little bit of competitive juice to want to do something better than the last guy but can't be topped by the next. I know that's a snide statement but it's something that I actually strive for. I want to be the best, who doesn't, even though I know that "the best" is something that I will never be but it doesn't hurt to try. (Try? When have I ever done that?)

Onto the drawing: This is a character that I call Warden. This is yet another unoriginal character with root design based on Power Girl but overwhelmed by Witchblade trimming.

This sketch was done, like most have been of late, during down time at a local Duncan Donuts. I really spent a lot of time working on her look to combine that with slutty sexappeal and a subtle, flowing, elegance. I'm not sure that I really captured the elegance thing but I have to say that if I saw her saving my city, I would salute her from the middle like only a man can.
Anyway, let me know what you think.
EJ

The Moron has arrived

Hi,
So I'm a moron. I am not ashamed to admit it. You see all this time, I thought that no one was coming here or that no one was giving me any feedback on the work that I have been posting, it was me all along. I had place the comment setting on "Moderate" some time ago to see if I could intercept some of the spam posts before they got out of control.

I guess that I had forgotten about this alteration without realizing that the blog was storing all of the posts in a seprate potion of the controll panel, a place I never paid enough attention to, to even know that it existed. Thus, all of your comments and the spam have been sitting all these months waiting for my approval. I should really learn how to use the thing before I set it lose on the world.

I would like to thank all of you for your comments and support. I haven't been the happiest of campers of late and I'm really glad that all of you stuck with me through all of this. So as a small thank you to all "thousands" of you (Mr. Shhh says that you're out there) here's a small something that I had posted at the Image Comics forums, to honor Mario Gully's creation, Ant. Mario was kind enough to tell me that he liked the drawing. I also did an alternate version to more apropriately liken the drawing to the orginal character. After his kind approval I entered this in a thread Mario had made with the promise that posted images that were deemed good enough would be printed in the Ant comic. Unfortunately, mine was not chosen though I think I piad great homage to DAT ASS!! Anyway it's great to be recognized by professionals and it was an honor to have Mario's Comment on my drawing of his character.

And thanks again to all of you for your support. . . . And Fett, I'm glad that you took the time to sign up to leave a comment, I really do appreciate that. So you know, I have restet the comments to allown anyone to post here, you just have to put in the word verification to enter your comment. So you'll never have to log in again.

Still Learning-E.J.

Complacent

After my last entry I really thought that, that I would be doing more “new work” to be posted here. Oh well, I know that the drawing bug is going to hit me at some point again and I think that the fever is starting to rise as I was looking at some of the work that I did last year for the Archie Superheroes and a lot of that stuff, though unfinished was really solid! And for those of you that know me, I’m not one to give anything that I do a positive word.

I heard rumor that Archie is or has made an announcement about their characters and I think that they have a really strong roster to really compete with the other publishers. Only time will tell I guess.

The images above are from an old, and now defunct, thread at the digital webbing site. I started that thread to showcase some of my favorite villains in the Marvel universe but I had asked a bunch of the contributors there to add their favorite characters to the mix as well and there were really great responses to that call. I wish that I had saved those images so that we could still have them to view here, though nothing really beats the message board community structure there.

The first image is Scorpion, a long time Spider-Man villain that never really lived up to the potential that I have for him in my mind. I would love to get a hold of him and really give Spider-Man the nightclub parking lot beating he deserves. Strong, Agile and dynamic, I always felt that Scorpion could be the kind of adversary to Spider-Man that Sabretooth is to Wolverine, or that Venom is to Spider-Man presently.

Rhino has always been a favorite of mine as well and I think that it’s just because of the power that he wields. I like all of the really big guys with Hulking Power and indomitable resilience. This drawing garnered a lot of praise from the folks at the DW forums; I believe that it was a majority favorite. I like it because I think that I really captured the character well, really displaying all of his power in that attitude without having to show his form or his ability.

The rest were just sketches to keep the thread moving I guess but were done during nights out at the bars when there was serious down time. The Leader is a character with greater Marvel Universe disrupting potential who should be placed among the elite of the Villainy set alongside Doom, Magneto, Red Skull and others.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy, If you like what you see please say so. If not, please say so, though I have to warn you that I am very sensitive a prone to blubbering like a pussy.