Impactor

And so cometh the end of our Eclectic Wrecks week...and slightly later than I would have liked! Sorry chaps, but YOU try getting rid of Declan Shalvey from your house...

Anyway, here's the once and former leader of The Wreckers, Impactor. Pointy.

Guys, BIG thanks to every Mick one of you for raising the quality to a stratospheric level this week. Not a dud one amongst you, which is probably why mine looks a little cobbled together. plus, I have the rest of the miniseries to finish. But I think the week was a great success; we got attention from a few other websites and I believe our stats nudged up a bit too. Hopefully all the Wrecktums that stopped by to check in on us will stick around. And I have no doubt that this little exercise helped shift a few copies and helped the book sell out in a couple of spots, not least Forbidden Planet Dublin. So congrats, Mick-holes.

And to everyone else who's bought and enjoyed Last Stand of the Wreckers, I send a rare sincere wodge of love your way. The reaction's been phenomenally positive, and that's rare in comics, and especially in robo-circles. Stick with us over the next four issues: The set-ups and pay-offs are many and awesome.

Mick 'n' Rule!

Transformers! Go go new mighty morphin' pow..oh.

Anyhue... Nick didn't send me reference til right late in the day, which is why, compared to the other drawings on this blog, this looks a little half arsed (also: I've forgotten his name. Let's call him Tinie). I hate you all.

Have a crappy weekend.
(Why yes, I AM having artist block - how could you tell?)

Guzzle

I think I got the best one to draw, you can't go wrong with a big gun. I originally just drew a corny full on frontal pose but it didn't sell the cannon so I went with a mid transform. Colours were slapped together but I'd like to give them another go.

Pyro

These things are torture to draw, my hat's off to Nick and all the other artists who work on Transformers on a regular basis. I couldn't get that blocky body into an interesting pose so I gave up and opted for a mildly dynamic angle instead. If you're a resident of Ireland or Britain today's the day that Nick's first issue of 'Last Stand of the Wreckers' is on the shelves. Go and buy, it is your solemn duty.

ROTORSTORM

Why are you reading this when you could be right here

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=preview&id=4311&disp=table

reading a preview for the Wreckers book. Great premise, great art, go forth and buy. Unless you're in Europe. In that case, get it tomorrow. Fair play to ya Nick, I'd love to one day write and draw my own book.

KUP

Greetings Trans-fans... that's what they're called, right?

Jesus this was tough. To re-iterate what Mooney said yesterday, these Transformer contraptions are very difficult yokes to draw. Nick assigned me Kup to draw for this week; a little pressure as i know Nick is a big Kup fan and even wrote a spotlight issue all about him a couple of years back. For a change, i thought i'd add a bit of halftone and a flat colour, just to make the overall drawing more interesting.

I actually found it difficult to draw his mouth. I mean, i changed parts overall while trying to keep the overall design but i have a hard time specifically when it comes to the Transformer's mouths. Nick draws cartoony mouths and i just can't get it right in my head. Nick makes it work but it feels stupid when i draw it, so i tried to build a mouth for him. Hardcore Transformer fans will probably cry for my blood, but that's what i had to do to make it work i'm afraid.

Hope you like it Nick .....and everyone else too....

Dec.

[EDIT] A preview of Nick Roche's Last Stand of the Wreckers just went online here!

Springer

So this week each of us is tackling a character from Nick's new transformers book, 'Wrecktum Warriors', or some such. Once again, I gotta take my hat off to the Roche. These guys are a bitch to draw. I spent half the time just figuring out the logistics of where his body parts should go once I'd gotten the pose down, I don't know how Nick manages to draw hundreds of these guys in each book on any semblance of a deadline.
Good fun though! Springer was one of my favourites back in the day...

"I've got better things to do tonight than die."

PS- Pick up the first spankin' issue of 'Last Stand of The Wreckers' by Nickleback Crotch in all good comic book stores this week!

Has It Come To This...?

So yeah, dodgy photo of an even dodgier sketch of the dodgiest of characters, Ghost Rider. Did this at the Micks' signing in Forbidden Planet in November...

Hmm. Forbidden Planet, you say...?

THIS WEEK: Last Stand of The Wreckers finally breaks free of it's moorings, and to celebrate, Forbidden Planet Dublin are offering YOU a chance to obtain an original sketch of Springer, leader of The Wreckers, done by ME! All you have to do is...buy #1 of Last Stand of The Wreckers, and you will be automatically entered into a raffle to snag the drawing (details of which coming up on the almost-forgotten nickroche.blogspot.com in the next 24 hours)and be the envy of literally some Transformers fans!

That's not all! Listen to top Oirish comics podcast The Comic Cast (http://thecomiccast.com/) this Tuesday for an audio adventure with myself that you can whittle through for hints and titbits about the upcoming series.

PLUS: This week, the Micks Transform into Eclectic Wrecks! See your favourite Hibernian pencil-pusher sully themselves by drawing a robot, who may or may not be in disguise! WOW!

And lastly: BUY MY COMIC!

Ta!

Woo Hoo

Johnny Woo. Woo was a character introduced in the first Dredd strip I did, I've since drawn one long adventure with him in it for 2000AD and I'm embarking on another. This is a test rendering - don't get too comfortable with it, though, turned out to be too fiddly to scan (plus - as much as I like the scratchy style here, it just didn't gel with the requirements of this script.)

Anyhue, hope woo like it. (Woo - did you see what I did there?)

Have a great weekend!

Sketchbook

Hewwo! Some doodles from my new sketchbook, same one I'm just drawing sloppy comics into

Sinestro

Old space Hitler himself. Okay now I'm off to try and figure out how the hell to draw a Transformer...

THOR

Couple of reasons why I wanted to draw this. The first is that I just finished reading the second trade which is just great. Both story and art. The second being that I wanted to try and match the magic colours of Laura Martin. This is the first time I've tried colour using brushes rather than gradients. I think I'd like to mix the two to get a nicer result. Those clouds need more work too they're brutal.

RED CROW

I've been catching up on SCALPED this week. Damn good book from Vertigo. The above character is Red Crow, the big bad crime boss/ fallen hero/ community leader of the book. That might seem like a contradictory statement, but all the characters are difficult to narrow down to a simple stereotype.

Speaking of Vertigo, friend-of-the-blog Sean Murphy has a new book out from Vertigo called JOE THE BARBARIAN out this week. It looks phenomenal. Do buy.

Also, i'm cheating on this blog with another. It's called Comic Twart and there's some great talent on it. And me. A character is picked each week and the group each try their hand at drawing them. Check it out.

Right, i'm off... I've a Transformer to draw for next week...

Dec.

Blammo

Just a quickie this week, have insane deadlines over my head for the new A-Team book I'm drawing.
This is just a random hench-dude I sketched to figure out the pose for a panel.
Head over to the Moonblog to see some preview pages and a cover from the upcoming book.

Scrawl-Crawler

Some quick scribbly type efforts this week. Anything to get me away from those *&%$ing robots...

Which reminds me: LAST STAND OF THE WRECKERS, writted and drew by my is out on the 27th/28th of January! And as of next Monday, the Blog Transforms into ECLECTIC WRECKS with each Mick depicting a robot in disguise of my choosing. I send out the assignments today, so stay tuned as I trivialise the careers of my fellows while legitimising my own. Wreck n' Rule!

Iron Man

penciled, inked and coloured in Manga Studio. Built up using three tones, rather than full colour.

I find the modern outfit of iron man to be a beast of many facets, on the one hand, the rigid, manga man-suit looks pretty damn awesome, on the other it's not nearly as much fun to draw as just, you know, letting lose and drawing some bloke in some crazy anatomy hugging armour.

I pencilled this iron man as a 70s/80s costume version and then built the armour on top, not entirely accurately (for those keeping score).

Anyhue, hope you like!

Have a good weekend.

-pj

Near Death

I think this is my fourth time drawing Thompson now. This spazzy doodle was inspired by his very bold and cosmopolitan move to write his forthcoming opus Near Death in a Starbucks on a Mac. He then beat traffic on his Segway.

I wuzz nicked part 2 on Spazzmoid

Dead Man Walking

Liam Geraghty commissioned me to do a zombification of his friend and co-host of The Comic Cast, Craig O' Conner. I don't think I could ever get tired of drawing zombies, I should really try and get a job on a zombie book at some point. There's enough of them around at this point, zombies have almost become comics second official genre after superheroes.

Oh, and don't forget to visit my new blog, Near Death, where I'm documenting the creation of my very own graphic novel.

Wonderous Wolverine Wednesdays

Ah drawing, Im getting right back into the thick of it now after my xmas break and its feeling really good. There are a few things I want to push through and improve. The first being how I render muscles. I've started using a new process lately where I build up the drawing an aweful lot more. This drawing here had 4 layers.

The first was a very quick loose sketch, chosen from one of many and drawn quite small. The second was done over a blown up version of the first sketch to give it more form and volume. The Third built up a lot of the muscles and put in most of the facial details. The final one then was the pencil rendering. The first three are obviously done quite quickly and I like how they can be maniplulated very quickly on the computer.

[PS] Die Hard year one issue 4 is out today

THOR

I was saying to someone online recently that there were some characters i probably shouldn't draw as i've no huge interest in them. The Fantastic Four was one. Iron Man was another. And Thor. So, screw it, i thought i'd try prove myself wrong and see if i could do a good job on one of those characters. I've done 'okay' sketches of the others before, but when i've been asked to do Thor i think i've always done a terrible job. With the advantage of some net research and finding out what the costume ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE, i think i did a decent job this time. May try my hand at the others, just to see if i can prove myself wrong again. Well, that's if ye think i managed to do it this time...

Dec.

Aquamaniac!

Just finished an A-Team cover, and I knocked up this little fella for the top-corner company logo box, ala the old-skool marvel books(I used to love that teeny bit of extra artwork). He's Col. Hannibal Smith's schlocky alter-ego, The Aquamaniac!

SEXY UPDATE- Wishing a happy birthday to our own Colonel Deckard too, who turns 28(i think?) today.

Baby, It's cold outside...

Also, stay tuned to this here Bloghole for our upcoming theme week, the self-serving Eclectic Wrecks! Timed to coincide with the launch of Last Stand of The Wreckers - a Transformers miniseries co-written by myself and James Roberts and drawn with one of my hands - each Mick has been generous enough to agree to bring their own brand o' stank to a member of the Wreckers. The book hits on the 28th of January in the civilised world, and the 27th in the colonies, so check back here on the 25th to see the blog transformed for seven days!

Yeah, I went there.

Nick

Judge Vine

On Tuesday I'll be heading to Glasgow to take part in the TV quiz show EGGHEADS. Should be a lot of fun - no idea when it'll be broadcast (but SPOILERS! Our team is unlikely to win!).

The production company have asked our team (made up as it is of people who make comics) if we can come up with a comic related item we can present the presenter with - so we're doing a 2000AD/Eggheads mashup - and this is part of it...

Have a nice weekend!

Orko vs Snarf

Inspired by Thompson's pic yesterday. I prefer Snarf to be honest. Next week: Deputy Fuzz versus that little dude out of Rainbrow Brite.

I wuz nicked on Spazzmoid

Lion-O

Today's post is a little late due to bad weather. I have a distinct memory of running home from school to catch the first episode of Thundercats on The Den. They'd been hyping it like mad for ages and I was soooo worried that I'd miss it, thus ruining my life. The intro animation has to be one of the best bits of 80's action cartoon goodness ever.

GHOST

Well, I missed a day. And that fella above is to blame for it. In fairness tho, I pretty much decided to take a well deserved break from drawing over the holidays. I had a lot of friends back in Cork for a few weeks and I definately over indulged in Modern Warfare online, getting up to about level 48. Thankfully I've hidden the xbox from myself so now I can get back to drawing full days without the occasional two hour team deathmatch breaks.
As for the New Year. 2009 was feckin great. Made me totally love Cork again. This year though, ill be packing my bags and leaving for New York shortly. Hopefully for six months, along with that Dec fella, who i predict will either melt in the sun or else he'll totally adopt the abercrombie and fitch look!

MYSTERIUS

Hello there. This week i'm using my sketch to plug something by someone i know.

Again.

This time it's the trade paperback of MYSTERIUS THE UNFATHOMABLE, the best mini-series of last year that you may not have heard about. Published by Wildstorm, Mysterius follows the adventures of the wizened magician as he breaks-in his new assistant Ella. It's written by Marvel mainstay Jeff Parker and illustrated by Canada's secret weapon Tom Fowler (not forgetting some great colours by Dave McCaig). It's a great, funny read but it's also one of the best drawn stories of 2009; a damn fine showcase for the great cartooning Tom is renowned for. I can not stress enough how good this book is. If you're curious about the art, check out Tom's fantastic work on his blog.

The collection isn't out until 3rd/4th of March, but if you order the book through here then you can get it at discount with a FREE print signed by both writer and artist.

You came here for art and you're leaving with a good deal. What more could you ask for? Order now!

I feel like an info-mercial. Dirty.

Dec.

Punisher v Deadpool

Just had a hankering to draw these guys.

Waddle I Draw?

Miring myself in some Paul Dini Batbastard collections over the Nickmas, and was re-introduced to the lovely artwork of Dustin Nguyen. This fact has very little to do with this drawing, but my Bat-immersion spurred me into a rare drawing of a Bat-villain. So here's maybe my second ever drawing of The Penguin.

God, I want to draw Batman.

Nick

You Dummy

b&w cover for one of the UK small press fanzines. MUCH nicer in b&w than the colouring job I attempted. That'll learn me. Sorry I missed last week, and happy new year!

Twisted tales megamix

It's the 1st of 2010 and there's no way I can draw today. But I will be doing a bunch of Micks specific things when I go back to work. Here are some randomish panels.


Good comic on Spazzmoid today though