Tag: comics

Marvel Crisis Protocol, Workbench

MCP: Shadowcat

My introduction to The Uncanny X-Men was Rom Spaceknight #18, a cover with the coolest looking characters I had ever seen, teamed up with a FREAKING SPACE KNIGHT, not yet knowing that the cover had been drawn by the legendary Frank Miller. I was eleven years old, and doomed to love the X-Men from that point forward.

One of the coolest aspects of comics browsing in the early ’80s was that just about every grocery store had a spinner rack or some shelves with their comics on display, and that meant whatever hadn’t sold was pretty much still there. So, even thought the issue was a couple of months older, I was able to pick X-Men 139 up with a fortunate donation of half a buck from my mom.

This was also my introduction to John Byrne, an absolute legend in his own right. But right there, front and center, was Kitty Pryde, freshly minted X-Men rookie. She wasn’t Bucky or Robin, mere sidekicks (at the time) to title characters. She was the real deal, just training to get there. She was also about my age (sure, 13, but what’s a few years?). She was my favorite character, and pretty soon, Fifty cents a month was being saved up to follow along.

Fast forward some decades, and I’m still an X-Men fan. I don’t pick up the first-run titles, since $5 a pop is just more that I can afford, especially with an already expensive miniature hobby and Marvel cranking out half a dozen X Books a month. But I still pick up the trades where I can, and I’m still hooked.

Marvel Crisis Protocol released Kitty a bit back, and the miniature is fantastic. I wasn’t a fan of the phasing effect always being “on” with the sculpt, but these little figs are a work of art and it just works for me now that she’s painted up.

I’m hoping against hope that her “Captain Kitty” costume makes an appearance, I loved the Krakoa storyline and would really like to see new costumes! Still, this is a home run from Atomic Mass Games.

Miniatures, Workbench

15mm Wargaming: Make Mine (Tiny) Marvel!

I’m still on this weird-ass quest to find the perfect scale, and I’m afraid it’s leading me to this whole new world of resizing existing STL files to smaller scales to see what scratches what itch the best.

Lately, that itch has been tiny super heroes, and that scale appears to be 15mm. I have been taking some regular 40mm files from C27 miniatures and printing them off at 15mm scale on my Saturn, and the results have been really fun.

And really frustrating. The figs not only get super tiny, they’re also super fiddly and really come off the supports alot, even though I’m painstakingly supporting the damned things. Oh well, live and learn. We’ll see how long I stick to it, but for now, the madness shall run its course!

First off the plates was this tiny Captain America:

I was pretty happy with the results, and really happy to see that Speed Paints and a quick highlight look FANTASTIC! Plus, this is a half hour to an hour of a paintjob, so wins all around!

Here’s Cyclops:

One down side is that my focus is getting freaked out by the penny, so I’ll probably start shooting without the scale comparison. Still, it’s fun to see how freaky tiny these guys are!

Time for some Southern charm:

And, finally, my absolute favorite character from Silver Age Marvel, MODOK. I am absolutely smitten with how this little maniac turned out!

Full transparency, I painted these before a medical emergency in November that pretty much knocked me on my ass and is still effecting me. My hand-eye coordination is pretty messed up, and I can’t hold a brush for very long, but physical therapy will help with that. I’m just trying to catch up with projects that I had been meaning to post about prior!

I’ll be trying to get more of these printed off soon, but I’m going to have to find someone to print them for me, since the doc says I can’t run resin anymore. Poo. Still, no use dwelling on that, I still have a mountain of gray plastic to tackle as I get back on my feet from surgery!

Workbench

Making a Splash

Water is hard. I don’t mean in the jump-from-too-high-go-splat sort of way, either. It’s hard to draw. Fluid, in general, doesn’t like to be constrained to two dimensions.

The latest pages from the Miller’s Daughters see the ultimate demise of poor Ophie, and that meant some water needed to find its way to paper. It turned out pretty nicely, and will be even better when I add shading later this week!

The second page shown is the Rake, sauntering off out of the woods, his murderous mischief quite managed.

Morbid Tales

The Angel

As I was proofing earlier pages of the Miller’s Daughters, I realized I had made a pretty big mistake. I had missed an introduction of the Miller himself, and went from a nice scenery page to a page detailing the family dynamic of the Miller and his children. Oops. Over the weekend I put together a new page to introduce the poor old chap, and thought I would share. Here are the finished inks for the page, followed by the same art with shading.

death

img_0201

I’ll be adding text to the bottom of the page, and amending the text that was on the original second page of the story!

Morbid Tales

Sweets

I’ve been trying to get a page a week finished on the Miller’s Daughters, but it’s not going quite as assertively as I would like. No bother, really, progress is still progress. Here is the newest page:

md-page-24-tapastic

The whole series can be found here… There are still some edits that need to be done to the long-form story, but it’s still a pretty entertaining read!

 

Uncategorized, Workbench

Monsters and Luchadores! Monsters! AND! LUCHADORES!

I get these horrific creative blocks from time to time, and nothing that I am working on has the power to move my pen. When times like these come up, I draw monsters. This week, though, luchadores worked themselves into the mix, because, well, luchadores.

Luckily for me, these little drawings got me fired up about the Night Circus, so I designed the background monsters for the circus:

img_0194-edited
the Night Circus artwork ©2016 L. G. Kade

I got lucky this week, too. The next page for the Miller’s Daughters decided to stop being such a brat, and I was able to get the inks done for that one, too. I should have the fully finished page up tomorrow!

img_0197

I have a few friends that extol the virtues of warming up with “meaningless” doodles before a drawing session, and I am really beginning to understand why. That practice not only loosens up your wrist and fingers, it also loosens up the creative faculties in your mind, making you a better conduit to express your thoughts!

Morbid Tales

Breakdown: the Miller’s Daughters, page 24

Page 24 and 25 and probably the hardest for me, because I really held out hope that I would change my mind on the outcome. On the other hand, I already wrote the ending of the story back in November of 2015, and the outcome of these two pages are crucial to the story’s resolution.

Several different drafts of the page breakdown have come and gone, with the conclusion that the long-form, single panel page works best for this part of the story. Here is the script for page 24:

PAGE 24

Full page panel: A waterfall takes up most of the page, with little Ophie perched in her tree on the left. Foam and spray from the river below take up the bottom of the page. Text takes up the middle portion of the page.

The Rake slowly, reverently unwrapped the package, he took extra care not to spill the small cakes and pastry (he had an infamous sweet-tooth, and cavities to match) that had been wrapped up within. He licked his lips, gathered his sling, and began to fling the sugary treats at the poor girl in the tree. Being as he was an excellent shot, the branches surrounding our poor, doomed child were quite liberally spattered with sweets.

The Rake opened his pack and prodded the excitable badgers within to action. The poor little creatures had been left in an intentional state of constant hunger, and smelling sweets nearby, the badgers furiously scrambled up into the tree, climbing in a most chaotic fashion towards the increasingly panicked girl above.

Ophie lost her nerves, and began to shuffle slowly away from the safety of her perch. She lost her footing on a patch of sugar-coated bark, and tumbled out of the tree.

He really is a despicable character; I have omitted several pages of his backstory just because he is so rotten… but I might bring them back in, those pages would be a lot of fun to draw!

Here is the original concept art for the Rake, from late 2015:

Rake Concept Art

Time Lapse Theater

Video: The Miller’s Daughters, page 23

The other big project around the labs has been Morbid Tales for Dreadful Children, which has been nearly a year in the making. The most recent page finds the Rake taunting little Ophie Miller; breakdowns of the pencils for this page, as well as the script, were posted earlier this week.

Once I have my pencils done for a page, I scan the image in and do the inks and shades on the iPad Pro. With this page in particular, I took the time to add some atmosphere to the shading. I really want to add a sense of beauty to the setting, even though it is full of mayhem and murder.

MDpage23Thumb

Here’s a time-lapse video of the process, I hope you enjoy it! Just a word of caution, though: I uploaded the video in HD, so it might take a moment or two to load!

Comments and questions are more than welcome!