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