Kody Okamoto

A lil Rubber Match update

I'm still plugging away at Rubber Match's pencils. I've fallen SO far behind where I thought I might be at this time because of my partner's surgery in the spring and then a string of NDA work I just couldn't turn down last month... thankfully my co-creator, wrier Elizabeth, is the most kind and understanding. :') 

Here's some pages I did recently that were both a struggle to get right, but an absolute joy once I finally did. I've started building scenery in SketchUp to use as the ...

June's FANART MASH-UP Poll

Last month's inaugural Fanart Mash-up was such a success, I'm so stoked to bring you the second. 

This month we have one wrestler suggestion (Despy!), and I'm always soliciting more from patrons! If you have characters or wrestlers you'd like to see in a future poll, leave them in the comments. Or if you have any visual style suggestions, I'd love to hear those, too!

So without further ado, here's this month's contenders!

Barbara Gordon (Oracle/Batgirl)

2021-06-04 19:15:47 +0000 UTC View Post

Pride Month: Covers Out This Month

Hey folks! A small update to announce my special Pride Month variant of Robert Kirkman & Chris Samnee's FIRE POWER #12's huge variant event made it to comic shops yesterday! 

We all know by now there's some other huge names who did variants for this event (...Frank Miller... Todd McFarlane.... Annie Wu...) but if you pick up my cover in stores, the proceeds of it are going to the 2021-06-03 17:46:25 +0000 UTC View Post

MAY'S FANART MASH-UP! Invincible, but 90s shoujo anime

Alright, you all have superior taste, and Invincible drawn in the style of a 90s shoujo anime was the winner of this month's Fanart Mash-up Poll. I had so much fun doing this one, and it would not exist without all of you.

I pulled a lot of inspiration from Sailor Moon, of c...

FIRE POWER #12 Cover

Oh gosh it's been such a whirlwind weekend, I nearly forgot to share this here! A week and a half ago, an editor over at Skybound emailed me and asked if I could fit in a cover for their Pride Month event, and what an ensued was a wild week as I tried to get this cover done as quickly as possible! (In the end, it was a four day turnaround from his first email to me turning in final files?)

But I can now say I have officially done a cover for a Robert Kirkman title, and it's absolutely a...

May's PATRON ONLY Fanart Mash-Up Poll

Alright!! Time for a new feature for you lovely patrons - a monthly fanart mash-up poll! 

The idea is you folks help me mash-up a character (or wrestler) with a visual style.

The first four poll choices will be of who you'd like to see the fanart to be of. The last two choices will then be for a visual style (like, 'Renaissance painting' or 'Mike Mignola inks'). Whichever character (or wrestler) and visual st...

Coming in with my tail between my legs...

...to admit to you all, I've been avoiding you! I've been feeling increasingly guilty these past few months about keeping this Patreon going when I've had such little time to work on doing neat Patreon exclusives. I quietly paused payment for April, so no one was charged. I am going to turn it back on for May, though, so if you'd like to continue sticking around, please know I am so, so grateful for your support.

I do, at last, finally have some news to share! Some of y...

Finn Balor Timelapse + Wallpaper

Hi folks. I feel like I'm coming to you all with my tail between my legs, because of how little time I've been able to devote to this Patreon these past few weeks. I sincerely thank all of you for sticking with me. Your continued support is invaluable, especially as my partner is scheduled for a big ol' life-saving surgery on Monday!

Anyway, I did have time to do a quick photo study! Here's the original that Finn Balor posted on 2021-02-20 19:05:19 +0000 UTC View Post

RUBBER MATCH pencil preview

Hoo boy, comics is kicking my butt. I didn't start using 3D assets or posers until maybe 12 pages of thumbnails in, so these first 11 pages have been ROUGH, because I did almost no groundwork for myself so it's been almost drawing them from scratch.

I'm still leaving a bunch of stuff up to my future self to deal with - mostly things that I'll tackle in colors, because it'll be way, way faster to just do it in paints. I'm still not totally sure how painter-ly I'll be doing the colors... ...

ANGELICO Timelapse + Wallpaper

I was looking up reference photos of kickpads yesterday while working on RUBBER MATCH - specifically, Jack Evans' kickpads, and during my image search came across this image of Angelico and I immediately stopped what I was doing to paint it, because the line of action in Angelico's body just ENAMORS ME. Like, I don't know, you ever just come across a photo that's so well composed and acted out that ...

Pentagon Study #2: timelapse & wallpaper

Another quick wrestler photo study!! I was really enamored by the way his fingers were in this screenshot. It's that sort of off-kilter, natural way of curving I'm not able to predict when I'm trying to drraw hands from imagination. Also, I just... like him... a lot....  :')

(VIDEO) How I arrange light layers

Hi folks! rebkadraws asked how I arrange my lighting layers, so I threw together this quick little video where I toggle the light layers off and on!

My process is the same for every painting. 9 times out of 10, all my form shadows and form lights are hand-painted as part of the subject itself. Then I toss a bunch of Color Dodge, Linear Dodge (Add), or Screen layers above it!!

COLOR TIPS

Hey friends! I got some great questions from a friend and patron recently that made me think of this old tip/tutorial thing I wrote up last year. I'm sharing it here because of the bits on color relativity!

Reading through this makes me want to do a newer, more thorough approach to what bits of color theory I frequently use/think about in my work now in December 2020, so I'll try to work on that over the next few weeks. For now, here's the very awkward write-up I did ba...

Pentagon Jr + Wallpaper Download

Here's the painting from today's wrestler photo study featuring PENTAGON JUNIOR who is the current king of my heart. If you wanna have the full-size for wallpaper or whatever reasons, you can grab it in the attachments of this post! (I also posted the timelapse of it in a separate post!)

PENTAGON TIMELAPSE

So Clip Studio Paint added a timelapse feature to today's update, so I took it for a test run with a photo study of my current obsession, Pentagon Jr. Here's the full timelapse that's too long to post anywhere else, so only you folks here on Patreon get to see it!

RUBBER MATCH COVER + Process Gif

I have been tortured over whether or not to share this here early, but at this point I have no idea when I'll be able to share it publicly and I've been sitting on it for like three weeks now so YOU KNOW WHAT, YOU FOLKS GET TO SEE IT.

I am so thrilled with how it turned out. You can see my original sketch I sent to my comic tag team partner, Elizabeth. (It was Elizabeth's idea to do a collar-and-elbow lockup for the cover!)

I'm not sure when I'll be able to share the cover publicl...

Rubber Match Thumbnails

Hey folks! Sorry for the increasingly infrequent updates. I pretty much spend all my art time working on these thumbnails (I'm so slow!! I need so much reference!! ), so I haven't had time to work on any art outside of this.

Although I DID finish the Rubber Match cover this month, and I'm just waiting on our letterer and designer to turn it into a real cover before I can share it! I'm so excited!

For now, here's a glimpse at some of my favorite pages, featuring Rubber Match's main...

RUBBER MATCH Thumbnail Update

PHEW, I know I've been quiet lately but it's because I've just been chugging along with thumbnailing out the Rubber Match script. By the time I reached the script page 22, we were already 39 thumbnails in (a lot of the wrestling match scenes were expanded across extra pages!), but I'm so excited because the matches are turning out GREAT, with each one really unique but in a way that it still feels like our main characters, Ty and Scorpion Butch are the same wrestlers from match to match -- we...

Zagreus

ALSO here's a 'fast' Zagreus experiment (because I may or may not have clocked in 80-some hours in Hades in the past few weeks....). 

I tried combining Supergiant's cel-shading art direction with my normal approach to paints, and landed on something kind of fun! I used it as an experiment to how I might approach coloring Rubber Match, but I think I still have to workshop i...

YOUNG OFFENDERS! Print

I was hired by my friend and comic writer, Mark O. Stack to produce a full-color pin up to be used as a print for his newest endeavor, Young Offenders!, a super-teen team-up comic with Mike Becker on art, and 2020-10-18 19:26:37 +0000 UTC View Post

RUBBER MATCH Thumbnail Preview for Patrons!

TIME TO CATCH MY BREATH. Drawing a comic is kicking my ass. I've done more sketching and drafting in the past 5 days than I have in the past.... I dunno, oh, two years? (You folks know me. I BARELY sketch when I'm doing a painting. I try to dash straight to paints every time.) Here's a little preview of some thumbnails I just turned in!!

I probably won't have time to do a wallpaper painting for you all this month, because my thumbnail deadline is creeping up, and I've got some other pay...

RUBBER MATCH: Saved the best for last

One last tag team for RUBBER MATCH. I was so excited to draw these girls. The snake-gimmick stable, The Medusas, is led by the always-hungry-for-blood Diamondback Emma Leroy, who is accidentally my favorite character in Rubber Match.

I'm gonna have to learn a shorthand for braids real quick with these two, though. I kept experimenting, so no braid is  quite drawn the same way in any of these, so please do not inspect them too closely, hahaha!!

RUBBER MATCH: Here come the rudos

The RUBBER MATCH character design work continues! Here's our story's heels, a luchador tag team that I adore.

BLUE DEVIL clocks in as the smallest of all the wrestlers in Rubber Match, but the biggest jerk. His tag team partner, GOLEM, is accidentally my favorite design so far. (I'll let you guess Golem's real life inspiration. Think LUCHA UNDERGROUND). Golem's design hasn't been approved yet, so he might change, but I love this iteration of him!

I was recently turned on to 2020-08-29 19:48:32 +0000 UTC View Post

RUBBER MATCH ANNOUNCEMENT: I'm drawin' my first comic!!!!

AHHH IT'S OFFICIAL! I'm drawing my first comic, RUBBER MATCH, a gay pro-wrestling romance written by the amazing Elizabeth Brei (SWEET LITTLE RESISTANCE, editor of a TON of IDW titles). 

Elizabeth wasn't the first person to approach me for comics interiors, but up until her script, I was totally convinced I had no interest in drawing sequentials/interiors. I was fully content t...

BIG NEWS COMING SOON....

Sorry, I thought about combining this with the last post for sketches but this news is so huge it gets it's own post. Tomorrow (?? the day after?? WE'LL SEE), I get to share some HUGE NEWS with you all..... I am so excited.... Please stay tuned and thanks for your support!!!

AUGUST SKETCHES

1) Some lil storyboard-esque sketches inspired by a Red Hood-related thing by The Coolest Writer on the Planet. I read Framed Ink recently and was heavily inspired by that. Done in CSP with Jess Lackey's AMAZING vis dev/composition sketch brushes that are everything I want in concept art brushes!! They're the one type of brush I thought was missing from CSP. I thought I'd be cursed to usin...

THE O.Z. Thumbnails and Progress Shots

Here's all four thumbnails I originally sent to David, including the three that weren't picked! There's also a few progress shots! 

As you can see, the final shot went through a lot of changes to get there, including changing up Dorothy's arms, at one point trying out a different layout, and entirely different colors!