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adamwarren

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FAILED-PROJECT FRIDAY: Kid superhero EMPOWERED GIRL & her upcoming appearance in EMPOWERED vol.12, pt.2!

[Here's a link to part 1 of this feature.]

About 10 years or so ago, I had the bright idea for an Empowered spinoff of a sort, working the tangential angle of, "What if Emp had found the supersuit as a confident youth?" The concept, believe it or not, was to do an essentially "all-ages" version of Empowered.

This would've bee...

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DISTRESSED DAMSELS: An old LILY UNDERCOVER double-page-spread sketch set, reworked twice!

So, from the late 90s through the early 2000s, I would occasionally knock off fairly loose Dirty Pair-based DiD sketch sets (for a generous friend who appreciated the art style) drawn mostly on the back of 11" X 17" photocopies of penciled original pages from Gen13 that happened to be kicking around my studio space. (Er, the photocopies, that is; the original, inked pages are filed away safely, if not in an organized fashion.)

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VINTAGE CON SKETCHES: Scissorhands, werecheetahs & leather-jacketed superheroes ahoy!

As I scramble to rebuild a Patreon buffer, I pawed through my dwindling binder of early-2000s con-sketch copies to find a few more that I prrrrrrrrobably haven't scanned before.

First up is ol' Edward Scisssorhands, one of very, very few Tim Burton-based commissions I've ever done:

Worked out okay, considering.

Next up is lycanthrope Brittany from Fred Perry's G...

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Life drawings from photoreference: high-res scans #170

Wellp, the time has finally arrived for single-set posts of life drawings from random photoreference, as my once seemingly endless supply of sets from near-daily work in 2017 has dwindled down to a sadly diminished number. 

In fact, as of this post, only 9 images are left in the ol' folder, meaning that in a few months I'll have to switch over to more recent digital-art sets; after those are used up, not sure what the heck I'm gonna do for this feature. 

An...

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WORK STAGES on a 2013(-ish) comic project, pt. 2!

So, following up on a post from last month, here are more of the complete Work Stages from a 2013 Scarlet Witch/ Domino story I wrote and drew for the Avengers/ X-Men team-up anthology A+X. (I'm a tad dubious about posting Marvel material here, so keep this stuff to yourselves, won't you?)

Anyhoo, this bygone project came to mind as I'm mulling formats and m...

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DESIGNS AHOY: Redesigning HUSHED HALF-ELF for her role in THE LAST PARTY!

So!

While the other three main characters of my in-development fantasy project The Last Party—the half-orc healer and the dwarf barbarian (both ported over from earlier project Party of Two) and the mage—boast clearly established character designs, that's not quite the case for the eponymous heroine from Hushed Half-Elf

As she's transitioned from a pointy-eared perpet...

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Coming up in January on this here Patreon!

So, here's what's on tap for January:

*I'm currently 6 pages of sketches into nailing down a final character design for the version of the Hushed Half-Elf who appears in the (hopefully) upcoming fantasy comic pitch The Last Party, so you'll be seeing that stuff in a Designs Ahoy post before too long.

On that front, I plan to put up a "coming up in 2023" post ere long discussing my intentions for the Patr...

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FAILED-PROJECT FRIDAY: Kid superhero EMPOWERED GIRL & her upcoming appearance in EMPOWERED vol.12, pt.1!

So!

About 10 years or so ago, I had the bright idea for an Empowered spinoff of a sort, working the tangential angle of, "What if Emp had found the supersuit as a confident youth?" The concept, believe it or not, was to do an essentially "all-ages" version of Empowered.

This would've been another Guest Artist project, dubbed Empowered Girl, which I planned to pitch to the great artist Jeffrey "Chamba" Cr...

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The many WORK STAGES of a recent(-ish) comic page!

Behold, dear Patrons, a sneak peek at the Work Stages for "Hyena Anxiety," an 8-page backup story I wrote and drew for an upcoming (March 2023) issue of DC's Harley Quinn. (Keep this stuff to yourselves, pls, as I'm more than a tad dubious about posting licensed work here.)

I'm running waaaay late this morning, so I've no time for detailed commentary; luckily, the Work Stages pretty much speak for the...

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DISTRESSED DAMSELS: SF heroine Lily as imperiled (star)flight attendant, pt. 3!

Cut 'n' paste time:

In the midst of the seemingly endless, Sisyphean nightmare of drawing a shockingly time-consuming Harley Quinn story last month (a task dragging on well into December), I managed to piece together some sketch sets of long-suffering Lily (from ongoing DP damsel spinoff dealie Rose & Lily) based loosely on this striking image I was sent a while back as part of an art request:

...

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Life drawings from photoreference: high-res scans #169

Wellp, the time has finally arrived for single-set posts of life drawings from random photoreference, as my once seemingly endless supply of sets from near-daily work in 2017 has dwindled down to a sadly diminished number.  I'll probably wind up posting these single-image sets more often than the older double sets, and I'll likely make some effort at further commentary on each.

OTOH, this particular set features plenty of written commentary, so this time around I'll let the sk...

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EMPOWERED vol.12's "Crappy Xmas TV movie" scene!

UPDATE: Whoops, accidentally scheduled this post to go live at 9:00 PM today instead of 9:00 AM; alas, a power outage this morning (high winds in my neck of the woods) prevented me from noticing that error. Wellp, now that the power's back, here's the g-d post a tad belatedly, folks!

Behold, as my Christmas-season gift to you fine Patrons, all three pages of the wacky AF "Crappy Xmas TV-Movie" reboot from June 2023's Empowered View Post

DISTRESSED DAMSELS: Yet another set of largely unseen Bigger Spender art requests of yore!

Wellp, damsel-in-distress fans, once again I have a definite lack of finished-looking DiD content in the pipeline, as most of the material available for posting is of a literally if not figuratively "sketchy" bent. (No idea when the hell I'm gonna get around to working on those Rose & Lily: Flowers of Peril comic pages mentioned here previously.)

So, for a brief break from the DiD "sketchiness," I thought I'd delve back in time (and back in my PATREON STUFF...

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EXCLUSIVE: EMPOWERED vol.12's Patreon-censored panel DEATHTRAPMONGER scene uncensored, then changed again!

So!

A year or so ago (UPDATE: No, that was two years ago, ouch), I showed the fine folks of the $10 and $20 tiers an exclusive preview of pages from the upcoming Empowered vol.12's "Deathtrapmonger" scene. Wellp, here's the scene again, for all you other Patrons' perusal:

2022-12-19 15:14:26 +0000 UTC View Post

Life drawings from photoreference: high-res scans #168

Wellp, the time has finally arrived for single-set posts of life drawings from random photoreference, as my once seemingly endless supply of sets from near-daily work in 2017 has dwindled down to a sadly diminished number.  I'll probably wind up posting these single-image sets more often than the older double sets, and I'll likely make some effort at further commentary on each.

OTOH, this particular set features plenty of written commentary, so this time around I'll let the sk...

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WORK STAGES on a 2013(-ish) comic project, pt. 1!

So, here are the complete Work Stages on the opening pages of a 2013 Scarlet Witch/ Domino story I wrote for the Avengers/ X-Men team-up anthology A+X. (I'm a tad dubious about posting Marvel material here, so keep this stuff to yourselves, won't you?)

Anyhoo, this bygone project came to mind as I'm mulling formats and media for future projects, given that the workflow I used on this short story showed some degree of promise, ...

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WORK STAGES on 2006(-ish) PSM videogame swimsuit illo!

Behold, from the bygone, mid-2000s era when the Playstation magazine PSM was commissioning swimsuit illos of videogame characters(!) for a recurring summer feature, here are the few Work Stages I could dig up for a full-page piece I worked on depicting the badass heroine from the never-released Starcraft: Ghost. 

First,...

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DISTRESSED DAMSELS: SF heroine Lily as imperiled (star)flight attendant, pt. 2!

In the midst of the seemingly endless, Sisyphean nightmare of drawing a shockingly time-consuming Harley Quinn story last month (a task dragging on well into December), I managed to piece together some sketch sets of long-suffering Lily (from ongoing DP damsel spinoff dealie Rose & Lily) based loosely on this striking image I was sent a while back as part of an art request:

2022-12-09 14:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post

WORK STAGES on EMPOWERED vol.12's cover illo, part 2: THE COLORS!

Belatedly following up on a November post featuring the B&W Work Stages for the cover illo from June 2023's Empowered vol.12, here are the many, many color drafts of said image beautifully Photoshopped up by my buddy Ryan Kinnaird.

Before we proceed, lemme trot out the book's solicitation copy once more:

Costumed crimefighter Empowered discover...

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Life drawings from photoreference: high-res scans #167

Wellp, the time has finally arrived for single-set posts of life drawings from random photoreference, as my once seemingly endless supply of sets from near-daily work in 2017 has dwindled down to a sadly diminished number.  I'll probably wind up posting these single-image sets more often than the older double sets, and I'll likely make some effort at further commentary on each.

OTOH, this particular set features plenty of written commentary, so this time around I'll let the sk...

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VINTAGE CON SKETCHES: Bubble-helmeted spacegirls & spicy OCs from the cons of 2001-02 yore!

As I desperately scramble to rebuild a Patreon buffer after the post-intensive close of November and the grinding finale of work on that maddening Harley Quinn story, pawed through my dwindling binder of early-2000s con-sketch copies to find a few more that I prrrrrrrrobably haven't scanned before.

First up, drawn on the linen-finish cardstock of the era, is a commissioner's original character (OC) "Bounce," presumably a superheroine with a very View Post

Coming up in December on this here Patreon!

So, here's what's on tap for December:

*The fruit of November's grinding labors on that shockingly time-consuming Harley Quinn 8-page story will previewed here ere long, at least in the form of roughs (two drafts' worth) and pencils, as I've not yet corrected and scanned the inks.

*Never got around to posting the many, many drafts of the colors on the cover art for Empowered vol.12, after posting the illo's B&W Wo...

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DISTRESSED DAMSELS: Miscellaneous sketch sets ahoy!

In the midst of my ongoing Harley Quinn inking nightmare—I'm finally on the last page, folks!—I did, in fact, sketch up more of the "Flight Attendant Lily in Peril" story seen last week (as a brief distraction from the HQ ordeal), but didn't quite have enough material yet for a Distressed Damsels post. (I do ...

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Life drawings from photoreference: high-res scans #166

Wellp, the time has finally arrived for single-set posts of life drawings from random photoreference, as my once seemingly endless supply of sets from near-daily work in 2017 has dwindled down to a sadly diminished number.  I'll probably wind up posting these single-image sets more often than the older double sets,and I'll likely make some effort at further commentary on each.

OTOH, this particular set features plenty of written commentary, so this time around I'll let the ske...

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DISTRESSED DAMSELS: SF heroine Lily as imperiled (star)flight attendant!

In the midst of the seemingly endless, Sisyphean nightmare of drawing a shockingly time-consuming Harley Quinn story this month, managed to piece together some sketch sets of long-suffering Lily (from ongoing DP damsel spinoff dealie Rose & Lily) based loosely on this striking image I was sent a while back as part of an art request:

2022-11-25 14:27:31 +0000 UTC View Post

UPDATE: EMPOWERED vol.12 release date announced (June 2023, alas)!

Wellp, Dark Horse just announced Empowered vol. 12 yesterday, so the cat is outta the bag, folks! The publication date's been bumped back to June 2023 from March, alas.

The book's solicitation copy, again: 

Costumed crimefighter Empowered is trapped in a surreal nightmare scenario as her universe begins spontaneously rebooting...

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Text piece on comic-creating PRODUCTION SPEED (or the illusion thereof)!

So! 

The following text piece is a collection of speculative blithering that I wrote for the  Empowered webcomic's commentaries back when vol. 8's serialization was wrapping up. I've cleaned up this pseudo-essay a bit, but no doubt the transplantation from the commentaries has left the resulting text a tad scrambled in...

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WORK STAGES on a 2013 cover illo that I actually like!

Behold, the Work Stages on a 2013 variant cover I drew for an issue of Marvel's X-Factor. Line art by me, colors by the fine lads of coloring studio Guru eFX; worked out decently, IMHO. Pretty self-explanatory, though I should note that the three color jpegs above show a series of slight tweaks to the illo's coloring, ending with a shift of Gambit's hues to reflect the glowing "cards" he's holding.

Hey, wait, I vaguely recall a Patron ...

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Life drawings from photoreference: high-res scans #165

Wellp, the time has finally arrived for single-set posts of life drawings from random photoreference, as my once seemingly endless supply of sets from near-daily work in 2017 has dwindled down to a sadly diminished number.  I'll probably wind up posting these single-image sets more often than the older double sets,and I'll likely make some effort at further commentary on each.

OTOH, this particular set features plenty of written commentary, so this time around I'll let the ske...

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VINTAGE CON SKETCHES: A themed set from 2000-2001's days of yore!

Currently getting my butt kicked by a shockingly time-consuming Harley Quinn story I'm writing, drawing and (ughh) inking for DC, so no time for commentary today, other than to say one thing about this piece:

I might be wrong, but I vaguely recall that this particular take on the Joker grated on Bruce Timm to no end; then again, this version kinda grates on me, too. Li...

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