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.
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!
This week we’ll look at Victor Fries, another down on his luck resident of Gotham who has had several unfortunate run-ins with Bruce Wayne’s alter-ego.
Like Selina and Harvey before him, Victor has taken to hiding from the authorities in the slums of the city. Police are afraid to do more than cursory patrols of the area, and even the Vigilante sticks to the outer fringes of the slums to enact his “crusade”.
Dr. Victor Fries was a brilliant Cryogenics expert who had pioneered a life-saving procedure that could suspend a person in “deep freeze” until cures for their diseases could be found. Eager to start live trials on human subjects, Victor put his terminally ill wife Nora through the (ultimately successful) procedure.
Lucius Fox, CFO of Wayne Industries, found the cryonics pod that Nora had been suspended in. Using his discovery as leverage, Fox forced Victor to use his knowledge of super-cold elements to plunder riches from unbreakable safes around Gotham. During one of these heists, a chemical reaction caused an explosion that doused Fries in a volatile compound that dropped his body temperature to near arctic extremes.
Surprisingly, Victor Fries did not die. Unfortunately, though, his sanity was shattered. His extreme body temperature makes him fragile in typical Gotham weather, which has caused him to retrofit an old Soviet era diving suit into a walking cryogenics lab. Dubbing himself “Mister Freeze,” Victor haunts the streets and alleys of the Gotham slums, plotting his revenge against the man who destroyed his life.
Not in some theological “I really should have done that one thing instead of that other thing” sort of way. More like a “these are so freaking cool I am going to sell all my blood to buy them” sort of way. I’ll get back to that in a minute.
Look, I love monsters. Anyone who has checked out more than one post on this page knows that. Anyone who knows me personally really knows that. And by monster, I am an equal opportunity enthusiast of anything in the para-zoological sphere; give me your faeries, your kelpies, your poor huddled goblins.
So, when someone does something monstrously cool, I kind of fall for that project. Yesterday, I stumbled upon Mythic Articulations. Check this out:
That’s the skeleton of a wetland fairy. I can’t get over how cool this is! Could you imagine having one of these sitting on your desk, or under a glass dome? I’m thinking about getting one and using some acrylic glazes to give the bones a patina.
This little bundle of nightmare tonic is the Tooth Fairy skeleton, and seriously couldn’t be any cooler!
I was wandering around the site, checking out the cool skeleton art posters, skulls, and the other monster skeletons when I saw something that took the air right out of me. How freaking cool is this?
Yeah, that’s a Chupacabra skeleton in a can. It’s a model kit, kids. And because the folks at Mythic Articulations made the bones with ball-socket connectors, these kits are completely poseable.
Here’s a werewolf for those of you into more traditional horror tropes. I prefer the fairy skeletons, personally; I really want to fill my studio with little skeletons under glass!
The price range might seem a bit steep on the surface; most of the skeletons are over $60, but there are art prints and books available for less than $30. Compared to a lot of collectibles they are actually pretty affordable, and your money is supporting a small business that creates unique and imaginative art.
Mythic Articulations uses state of the art 3-D printing technology, and makes each monster to order. You can check out all of their monsters here, or purchase them directly from their Etsy shop.
Odin’s Day again? Time for another look at what’s on the workbench!
Work on Morbid Stories for Dreadful Children continues, with Volume One: The Miller’s Daughters about two-thirds finished. Here are the pencils for page 23:
I am laying in digital inks now, and will feature a time-lapse film of the finished art on Friday! For a look at the scripted breakdown of page 23, take a look here!
The next coloring book is underway as well, with pencil concepts making way for some background art. First up, a Nosferatu who has the unfortunate job of Sewer Inspector:
Here’s the finished inks for the sewer:
Rough concept for the Phantom of the Opera, who landed a terrible gig as a Karaoke DJ:
These will be featured in Grimmleigh’s Classic Monsters (with terrible jobs), which I am expecting to have available in late September!
And these two are super rough speed sketches that I put together while watching old Hammer Horror movies the other night. The tree scene will probably be used with a vampire or in one of the fairy tales, and the graveyard will be for a Slavic grave goblin:
I really am drawn to floating apparitions in the woods…
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Over the last year I have been working on a long-form graphic novel, which will eventually comprise a collection of original Fairy Tales and macabre morality plays. The first of which, the Miller’sDaughters, is about half way done.
The villain of the story, a wandering Rake, has embarked on a killing spree. As you can see, the story gets pretty grim:
Page 16 of the Miller’s Daughters
The hardest part of the story, frankly, has been that I am now at the point where the Rake is murdering the protagonists of the story. I really don’t like writing about kids getting killed, but it’s a ghost story… So I have to get through this part.
Here is the script for page 22, in which the Rake confronts Ophie Miller.
Page 23
Top Panel: The Rake is perched on a branch, several baby badgers are sitting around him, staring curiously. The Rake is clasping his hands together, looking up like a man at prayer.
Text Box:
The Rake, seeing his quarry treed in such an unfortunate manner, sat down to taunt his prey.
Panel Two: The Rake’s head and hand fill about 2/3rds of the panel. He is looking up, menacing. Little Faeries, stars, and flowers are flitting about his head.
Text Box:
“You, with your hair so dark, in that tree so high, remind me of the fairy stories, young miss,” said he.
“Of lost spirits in the wood, of sylphs, sidhe, and baine,” said he.
“Won’t you join your sister, dear?” he asked, as sincere as a jackal at an abattoir.
Panel Three, lower left hand corner: Ophie is incensed, in a defiant pose she is clutching one tree branch for support while gesturing at the Rake with her free hand. She is yelling.
Text Box:
Ophie replied only with a string of newly-catalogued curses, the depth and vivid imagery of which would have changed the nature of naval operations for centuries if they had been heard by any other ears.
Panel Four: The Rake looks shocked, eyes wide open…
Text Box:
Some so boldly vulgar as to give even this calloused Rake reason to blush.
Final Panel: Text:
Fancying up a new demise for so skillful a vulgarian, the Rake rummaged around in his rucksack until he found a decent sized package; all brown paper, grease stained and wrapped in twine.
Tomorrow, I’ll post the preliminary pencils for this page as part of the Workbench Wednesday update.
Grimmleigh's Lab 