"Nekomusume" meaning "cat-girl" in Japanese, of course.
In a weird bit of synchronicity, the day's previous post featured an Empowered page with a supine Ninjette pose, and later on I stumbled across this 2018 San Diego Comic-Con sketch as a possible post, featuring a supine (if feline) Ninjette facing in the other direction. Why not, said I!
Very, very rare for my con sketches to have separate roughs, but this one does boast a first-draft sketch, as seen...
2019-05-08 21:35:10 +0000 UTC
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From my phone's camera roll circa 2014, above is a panel from Empowered vol. 9, along with a rough for the Ninjette figure. This shows the importance of working out a difficult pose fully as a separate rough before inserting it into a space where much of the figure will be obscured. (I call that "drawing through," but there's probably a better way to sum up the concept.)
Below is another example of this approach from the same page, this time with a Ninjette fig...
2019-05-08 11:40:35 +0000 UTC
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For a li'l something different, thought I might as well post the page from the upcoming Empowered vol. 11 that's excerpted in my Patreon's header. (More info on the book here.)
In fact, what's shown above is my "working jpeg" for reference purposes; below, I'll pop in a screencap from a PDF of what the final image might look like. ("Might look like" because ...
2019-05-07 19:12:59 +0000 UTC
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Hot (or at least lukewarm) off the drawing table, here's today's set of life drawings from random photoreference, available below as a raw. untweaked Photoshop scan at 600dpi. Also, jumping back to the December 2016 start of this ongoing sketching kick, here's the second set ever produced:
Compare and contrast, I guess? (Raw scan also attached below; pardon the wonky dates on the file, wh...
2019-05-07 15:38:49 +0000 UTC
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Above, a very recent con sketch of Freefall from Wildstorm/DC's teen superhero comic GEN13 (which I wrote and occasionally drew). Below, the oldest Roxy con sketch on my phone's camera roll, dating back to 2012—well before I adopted the two-color con sketch format seen above.
2019-05-07 02:50:34 +0000 UTC
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And now, the next set of Empowered story notes, from very early on in the series. (Well before publication, certainly.) Here's a guide for the annotations that follow:
1) Er, I think I meant "Mrs. Butterworth," not "Butterwolf." (Maybe.)
2) The half-baked idea, here, was that Emp's mom—and Dad!—would've been models for lurid, sweaty, damsel-in-distress-orient...
2019-05-06 16:00:03 +0000 UTC
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For the first time in the series, Empowered vol. 11 consists of a single sprawling, action-packed, seriously intense, ominously titled 205-page story, "You're Just Gonna Have to Kill Me," as Emp faces off against the nightmare threat of Mindf**k's monstrously telepathic brother. Thus, for once we have only one title page/ chapter break dealie for the volume, and here it is.
The book's solicitation copy:
Costumed crime fighter Empowered finds her...
2019-05-06 13:25:36 +0000 UTC
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Woo hoo! Logged in with the ol' laptop this time, where a whole 'nother bunch of comics-rant drafts are a-lurking. Here's one that I haven't yet bothered to posted on Twitter—a Patreon exclusive, for the time being!
Note that the old 140-character tweet format reads a bit awkwardly in this format, so I've tried to clump a few of the tweets into easier-to-read paragraphs. So, uh... enjoy?
Can’t quite recall the phrasing, but I dimly recall a comics creat...
2019-05-05 14:59:51 +0000 UTC
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From last month's Dallas Comic Show, my con sketch of artist Chiara Bautista's very cool Bunny Girl and Cosmic Wolf. More info on 'em here; I was quite taken with her pieces featuring the pair.
2019-05-05 00:45:15 +0000 UTC
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Welcome to a new Patreon category I've dubbed, "What's on Adam's phone?"
This time, I'm jumping way back to 2013 on my phone's camera roll for a Toronto con sketch from either TCAF or FanExpo. This is a reasonably decent B&W illo of a commissioner's fantasy OC, dating back to the era before I started doing two-color con sketches.
Ah, but here's the fun part: The artist who commissioned the sketch wound up digitally coloring the piece, as seen below:
2019-05-04 15:46:12 +0000 UTC
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Behold, a new Patreon category!
Here, we're seeing a set of my scribbled story notes circa the end of Empowered vol. 1, IIRC. This stuff is my roughest of rough drafts for ideas that might or might not wind up in the series. The babbling is intended for my eyes only, hence the presence of too many cryptic references to bother explaining; the idea is to get my latest ideas down on paper before I forget 'em. And now, some quick annotations:
2019-05-03 18:23:14 +0000 UTC
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For a brief while, looked like a few recent, butt-centric sketch sets were slipping by Instagram's notoriously inscrutable algorithm and actually being released to my IG followers. Alas, as of yesterday, the latest sets are clearly not making it past the algorithmic filters. Oh, well.
Anyhoo, attached below is the raw scan for the sketches, in all its 600dpi Photoshop glory.
Next up in this series, I'll post a few of the early, December 2016 sets from the first days of th...
2019-05-03 16:01:01 +0000 UTC
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Behold, my thumbnails for the rest of issue #1 of 2018's Empowered and Sistah Spooky's High School Hell, a six-part miniseries written by me, drawn by Carla Speed McNeil, and colored by Jenn Manley Lee. More info on the project here.
With...
2019-05-03 13:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Behold, a pair of sketches from the previous two Emerald City Comic Cons, both coincidentally featuring a soapy (or at least damp) Emp. The illo above was definitely photoreferenced, judging by the shading; alas, I only have a smartphone pic of it, hence the mediocre quality of the image.
While it's canonical that Ninjette often bathes in the presence of the Caged Demonwolf, Emp doing so as wel...
2019-05-02 21:36:27 +0000 UTC
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Behold, an illo that I did for an Icon motorcycle helmet design, featuring inks by me and colors by my buddy Ryan Kinnaird. The ultra-stylized face with "MNI" (minimal nasal indication) hints to me that the image dates back to the early 2000s.
I churned out a bunch of different roughs for so-called "cute anime chicks" to go on the side of the helmet, including a proto-Ninjette character (with a notably more pronounced chest, of course)...
2019-05-02 16:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Behold, another photo from the '96 leather-jacket shoot. (Speaking from a life drawing perspective, gotta love those noon-ish cast shadows on the legs.) I used the pic as photoref for an image of Gabrielle from my Titans: Scissors, Paper, Stone one-shot which appeared on the back cover of my 1996 doujinshi "SKETCHBOOK" dealie.
Note that the colors on the illo were done...
2019-05-02 13:00:02 +0000 UTC
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While I'm mainly focusing on posting new-to-most-of-you material on this here Patreon, it's occurred to me that I could also occasionally work in some artwork that has appeared elsewhere on social media.
I should ask, though: How d'you folks feel about me posting work that might've been posted earlier on Twitter, Instagram, or deviantART? Or do you want strictly the new(-to-you) freshness?
On that tip, here's a "Devil Kei/ Angel Yuri" Dirty Pair pic I dr...
2019-05-01 21:45:16 +0000 UTC
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Behold, my thumbnails for the first half of issue #1 of last year's Empowered and Sistah Spooky's High School Hell, a six-part miniseries written by me, drawn by Carla Speed McNeil, and colored by Jenn Manley Lee. More info on the project here.
2019-05-01 18:51:13 +0000 UTC
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So, yeah.
Back circa '96, I was growing increasingly weary of my lame and repetitive attempts at drawing clothing from imagination, especially leather jackets. (This after the leather-prominent outfit worn by "Bad Yuri" in 1995's miniseries The Dirty Pair: Fatal But Not Serious, by the way.) So, when I noticed that a friend of mine had recently bought a really in...
2019-05-01 15:04:48 +0000 UTC
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So.
Once upon a time, I used to rattle off lengthy rants about various comics-related topics on Twitter. Wellp, figured I might as well collect some of those rants as Patreon text posts. Here's a rather old diatribe, dealing with an aspect of action storytelling that remains a perennial problem in comics. In short: STOP SMIRKING.
(Er, hope you'll pardon the Twitter ALL CAPS emphasis, which I suppose I could've swapped out for italics in this format. Ehh...
2019-05-01 02:35:45 +0000 UTC
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Today's set of life drawings from photoref has proved unusually popular on Instagram, presumably due to the prominent first figure at left. (Ahem.) Anyhoo, attached below is the raw grayscale scan of the pencil art, which is rather different from the higher contrast, Photoshop-tweaked jpeg above.
I might have to go for lower-resolution PSDs on future ones, as my flaky, intermittent DSL and Patreon's rather finicky uploading process aren't playing nice with each other. Still, I think you...
2019-05-01 01:55:39 +0000 UTC
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Behold, a Patreon early peek at an image I'll be flogging hither and yon on social media fairly soon! It's my take on the now-familiar #faceyourart dealie, but using only Emp faces from Empowered vol. 11. Gotta say, this was kinda fun; might try it again with a whole 'nother set of Emp faces, or go back to the original scans to make a higher-resolution version of this montage.
2019-04-30 18:27:04 +0000 UTC
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Behold, a preview of a mock-up version of the notably ominous title spread from Empowered vol. 11. The "mock-up" bit is because I slapped the title and credits from the opening spread of Empowered vol. 2 onto the artwork for vol. 11's opener, just to see if the text would fit without overlapping any art elements. (Hence the "vol. 2" numbering and inaccurate credits.)
Unlike the typically fun and cheerful title-spread illustration...
2019-04-30 14:40:23 +0000 UTC
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Fresh and piping-hot off the scanner, here's today's morning set of life drawings from photoreference! And below is attached a 25-meg Photoshop PSD featuring the 660dpi raw grayscale scan of the pencils, for those who wanna see the original piece. (I tweaked the graphite a fair bit with a Levels adjustment to produce the higher-contrast, cropped jpeg above.)
Note that my crappy, oft-flaking DSL does not care much for uploading such large files. Perils of living out in the booni...
2019-04-29 14:47:26 +0000 UTC
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Here's a little sneak preview for the (as yet nonexistent) Patrons, featuring the back cover of Empowered vol. 11—with the book's spine tossed in, as a bonus! Here's more info on this long-awaited installment, which hits the shelves of North American comics stores on Sept.18, 2019, and bookstores (and 2019-04-29 14:36:36 +0000 UTC
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I had loose plans to do a monthly piece of artwork featuring characters chosen by Patrons but, as yet, I don't have any Patrons. (This isn't quite as pathetic as it might seem, as I haven't yet announced this Patreon's existence.)
So instead, here's a con sketch I owed to my bud Zack Davisson, ace translator of many different manga but, specifically, of
2019-04-28 15:55:28 +0000 UTC
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So.
Honestly not sure how much interest might exist for this particular reward tier, but here we go!
Above is one of my 310-odd sets of life drawings from random photoreference, a sketching kick I've been on (well off and on) since December 2016; specifically, we're looking at the example I pasted into this Patreon's About section. Howeva, what you see above is a cropped and, more importantly, Photoshop-tweaked jpeg, adjusted in Levels to be a fair bit cleaner and higher-contrast ...
2019-04-28 03:59:46 +0000 UTC
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Ah, a tragic tale indeed, folks!
This is my never-to-be-used variant cover from a now-defunct EMP side project, a miniseries which would've been titled Empowered and the Mask City Meltdown. Without getting into the gory details, at various points over the last few years this singularly ill-fated story was slated to be drawn by not one, not two, but three(!) different guest artists. (One of the potential artists being me, before I came to my senses.) Each ...
2019-04-28 03:25:06 +0000 UTC
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Kicking things off on the ol' Patreon with an open-to-the-public post featuring the cover artwork to the upcoming Empowered vol.11, which hits the shelves of your Local (North American) Comics Store on Sept. 18, 2019, and conventional bookstores (and Amazon) on October 1. More info here!
Line art by me and color art by the great Arist Deyn, who did a fantast...
2019-04-28 02:34:13 +0000 UTC
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