Arcagen, winner of best webcomic in Premios Pepo 2021, is coming back on May 19th. It will be available on Tapas and Webtoon, so sub there if you like. If you like scifi, post apocalyptic settings and adventure, give this comic a chance.
I recently published a summary episode to put everyone up to speed. Read it on Tapas or Webtoon
A comic I made some years ago, where I mixed Gurren Lagann with Super Mario! Crazy right? And I was always proud of the result God damn! You can read it for free on Tapas and Webtoon searching for "Star Road Crusaders"
You can also visit my Gumroad and buy the digital version of this comic. Music Mash up by Shoopfex https://youtu.be/UWgNW-LUCq4 #mar10day #gurrenlagann #liljon #mariorpg #supermario #marioday2022 #mariocomics #manga #digitalcomics #mashupsong #tengentoppagurrenlagann
Illarion is an original Transformers character. She belongs to Scottshe1, from the TF MUX community. This is the time lapse video where I create this illustration from start to finish. I hope you can learn something useful from it. I wish you the best!
This was an illustration reward for our Flatline: Cry Havoc Kickstarter campaign, where just one backer had the opportunity of being drawn in the style of the comic, with their own robot to pilot! Kickstarter Campaign
It has been some time since I wrote an entry on this journal, but believe me, the development of the project has been steady. The adventures of Paloma keep advancing, and soon I’ll have the first chapter ready. Did I mention I’m working with an editor? His name is Sebastián Castillo, chief of Pezarboreo, a small comic publisher here at Chile. He seems to firmly believe in my work, and I’m grateful for the support he has been showing on this story. We are preparing a surprise for a local con called FIC (Feria Internacional del Comic) and he asked me to prepare a cover for…well that’s still a surprise.
On this blog, I want to show the creation process for this cover.
Step 1: Stealing like an Artist
Picasso once said “Good artist copy, great artists steal” (quote not confirmed). I might have an idea on how this cover might look like, but in order to be efficient, it’s a good idea to see the work of others for guidance. So I look over my image collection over Pinterest, Artstation or personal folders for inspiration, and then I choose those who look similar to that initial idea on my head. This could be related to mood, composition, color or a combination of those three. Finally, I deposit them all over PureRef (a great free reference software). Below you will find the canvas I created with the references I gathered.
Step 2: Thumbnailing
My editor likes to see some proposals for the cover, to see which would work better from a creative and marketing perspective. So, I take my references, and start painting using simple brushes with blend properties. This is a really fun process, where I play with tonal value and composition and create fast thumbnails which gives us a preview on how the final cover might look like. For this cover, I did four proposals, all of them done in less than an hour. My editor ended liking option 4 above the rest.
*Bonus Step: Studies.
If I find the task in hand difficult, I might do some studies before hitting the challenge directly. On this opportunity, I wasn’t sure what palette I’d be using so I decided to look over a couple of these images, and paint copies on them. These studies can be a good warmup exercise, and also used to analyze the thought process and logic behind these pieces.
Step 3: Roughs and Palette
You know that I like line art on my illustrations. Maybe this is a remnant of my liking for comics, who knows. That is why I take the chosen thumbnail, increase its size, and start sketching above it. I use these rough lines to define the overall shapes and some details I consider important. When these rough lines are finished, I usually start playing with some gradient maps to define the overall mood of the piece (while value gives structure, color gives emotion)
Step 4: Drawing
Now I know the overall structure and mood of my piece. Time to start drawing. On the rough lines, I stablished the gesture and overall shapes of the forms. Now, I define the drawing a bit more with one or two passes (each on a different layer), sketching some of the most important details like expressions, clothes, limbs, etc.
Step 5: Inking...and so on (this was added on 2021)
I'll let the following video give away the rest of the steps :)
Remember you can already read the comic on Webtoon and Tapas. Now that chapter 2 is complete, the team will be taking a couple of months until we have enough pages to start publishing once more. Please follow my Blog, Newsletter, or Patreon for the latest updates on this grand project. Linktree
Learning digital art? Looking for art tutorials or inspiration without the noise of social media? Then consider joining my newsletter, where you will receive curated art tutorials, articles and tools directly to your email. Join now to receive a free art pack.
¿Estudias arte digital? ¿Buscas tutoriales o inspiración sin el ruido de redes sociales? Entonces considera suscribirte a mi newsletter, donde recibirás tutoriales, artículos y herramientas seleccionadas directamente por email. Únete hoy y recibe un art pack gratuito
During these last months I've been receiving excellent fanart from readers. I will be sharing these at Tapas and Webtoon. I also did a #drawthisinyourstyle challenge last month and received some nice versions of Paloma. Feel free to join the challenge!
I know I haven’t been around much lately. Even when the development of Arcagen keeps advancing at a steady pace, I’ve had some setbacks during the last two weeks. First, my desktop computer has been failing continuously, being a defective RAM stick the primary reason. Thank to my younger brother, I could replace this component, and reinstalled Windows 7 just in case. The second setback was that some muscles in my face started twitching by themselves. This never happened before, so I reserved an hour to a general doctor as soon as I could. The doctor told me this was common among many people, and most of the cases occur due to stress. I chose to take a couple of days off just to fully recover. From now on I’ll have to change some habits if I want to keep a good health. For example, I’ll make an effort to sleep 8 hours daily instead of 6, and cut the amount of caffeine I consume by half.
As you might imagine, these events affected my productivity, including the writing of new blogs. I hope next week I can start writing these entries once again. I’m currently listening to the audiobook “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. Hopefully I’ll get new ideas on how to be even more productive..
For now, I’ll leave you with another preview of Arcagen. This is the third page of the comic. Enjoy!
Remember you can already read the comic on Webtoon and Tapas. Now that chapter 2 is complete, the team will be taking a couple of months until we have enough pages to start publishing once more. Please follow my Blog, Newsletter, or Patreon for the latest updates on this grand project. Linktree
I want to extend my gratitude to my patrons on Patreon for helping us along the way.