Creepy Cat Comics

Ju-on Sketch!

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:47:00 +0000

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I always seem to forget to post on here. I tend to be posting a lot more on Tumblr: http://tumblr.com/ZQTJQxAaxnVJ

Ju-on (The Grudge) sketch!

J-Horror still gives me the heebie jeebies.

Done in Photoshop :)

Elsa Lanchester-The Bride of Frankenstein

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:17:00 +0000

Warm up sketch! Didn’t really have a chance to time it but finished it pretty quick. I’m thinking it took me around 20 minutes.

GRAVE updated roster image!

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 20:12:00 +0000

First stages of Grave’s new roster image for the Nightmare Pro Wrestling website. Still not sure about his face, gonna try out some other expressions before I digitally ink it.

Grave heads!

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 21:50:00 +0000

Drawing the roster Image for my NPW main character, Grave, I noticed he wasn’t very expressive. So I decided to sketch out some expressions for him and really push those expressions while still having him look like a skeleton.

Did a little research by looking at old “Silly Symphonies” cartoons.

Added eyebrow lines to him which really helped with the expressions a lot.

Also experimented with the shape and direction of the lines on his mouth, which was very interesting how different he looks when his mouth’s lines curve a certain way.

Also, I now have an inventory of expressions I could use when I’m in a jam!

Harry Potter Sketches.

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 14:08:00 +0000

Being doing some digital warm up sketches, all week, of Harry Potter characters.

ICKY VAN HELLION!

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 13:49:00 +0000

So I have 13 issues planned for my webcomic Nightmare Pro Wrestling. The story is pretty much all planned out. The first story arc ends at The HALLOWEEN HELLRAISER! The Wrestlemania of the NPW Universe. Like every Wrestlemania I needed a celebrity involved. I also needed something for Mr. Hyde to do. So I created Icky, the biggest rockstar in the NPW universe, to face Mr. Hyde at the Halloween Hellraiser, in a special celebrity attraction match.

Heres the start of a poster style ad, for future NPW printed comics, featuring Icky Van Hellion.

Icky characteristics: Big jerk. Cares more about fame, fortune, and fashion, than fans. Always in a fowl mood.

BATTLE KOI

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Wed, 04 May 2011 20:15:00 +0000

Another monster for the NPW DOOMSDAY RUMBLE!

I'm gonna start coloring all my character designs in Artrage after I get a color palette that I like. I plan on putting them in the Roster section of the website at some point anyway, so I might as well have the colors at the finished stage.

The idea for this wrestler came from my sister in law. She said that I should have more sea monster looking wrestlers and suggested a Ninja Fish. Thus, Battle Koi was born.

Dr. Pyewacket Digital Pencils and Inks.

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Mon, 02 May 2011 20:52:00 +0000

Digital pencils and inks for a "Dr. Pyewacke and Vladdy" ad.

Morning Warm up Sketch

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 17:26:00 +0000

Here is a quick warm up sketch I did this morning. Gave myself thirty minutes to complete it.
I based the character on Eli from "Let the Right One In", so I guess my Tweet about it not involving monsters wasn't entirely true.
Who is she? She's a character that's part of a story I've had for a while now. Never really did any designs for it yet, just sketched out some ideas here and there. The suit is used to contain her powers. I'll get into that and into more of the story when I have some more things to show.
I'm finally going to be working on it and it will be another side project.

The style and suit aren't final yet. The style isn't fun enough, don't want it to be too realistic but I do want it to look different from the projects I'm working on now. The suit looks a little too much like Johann Kraus, from "Hellboy," so I'm gonna try a few other designs until I'm happy with the outcome.

Later!

Doomsday Rumble: Monster 2

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 14:36:00 +0000

The 2nd Doomsday Rumble Monster is: PSYCHO CYCLOPS!

If you're familiar with Ray Harryhausen then this monster doesn't need much of an explanation. If you don't know who Harryhausen is, here's a site to check out: http://www.rayharryhausen.com/index.php.

I based this design on Harryhausen's Cyclops from the movie Sinbad. Just added some stylization and some wrestling attire. Even gave him a tattoo with the initials "H H" for a not so obvious reference to Harryhausen. Maybe I should make it more obvious and change it to "R H"??

Cheers!

Doomsday Rumble: Monster 1

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 14:14:00 +0000

Here's the first monster design for the Nightmare Pro Wrestling DOOMSDAY RUMBLE!
What is the Doomsday Rumble? It's the NPW version of the Royal Rumble. Here's a link if you don't know what that is: Royal Rumble.

Meet: LORD SWAMPGUT, KING OF THE SWAMPS!
This guy was inspired by Eric Orchard. He creates awesome monster designs and some of those monsters have these really cool looking, humpy backs. I'd describe his work as very atmospheric and magical, with some spookiness thrown in for good measure. You can check out his work at his site: http://ericorchard.blogspot.com.

Stay tuned for more Doomsday Rumble monster designs!

Updated size chart

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 12:58:00 +0000

Here's an updated sized chart that's helped me a lot when drawing NPW characters who are next to or fighting each other. Devastator Dragon is still the tallest, and always will be...for now ;)

I went ahead and made Grave and Lobo a little taller, they were too short in the earlier size chart. Looking at it again I'm actually thinking that I might make them even a little taller. Maybe.

I've been starting some designs for the monsters that are going to be part of the Doomsday Rumble (think Royal Rumble but with monsters). I'm planning on having thirty.....THIRTY, monsters compete in that event. I'll be posting up the first few I have designed soon.

Later.

Mr. Hyde redesign!

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 13:48:00 +0000

When I first started designing Mr. Hyde, I never would have thought that he would become one of my favorite characters to draw. Especially drawing expressions on his face, those are always a blast.

I had always aimed to design him as a big, really ugly, Muppet. I feel like the newer design is just a better representation of that. My friend Ron Scott (of The Strange Kids Club), always pointed out how ugly and gross his nose was--so in the newer design I made sure to not only make it bigger and uglier, but give it a different color, so it draws your attention.

Like the rest of the redesigns for Nightmare Pro Wrestling, his new color scheme is a lot cooler (cooler as in the opposite of warm shades, but you could say the new scheme is more awesome as well) than the original. This really adds to the atmosphere of the book that I had originally intended, but at the time I was unsure of how to accomplish it.

I'll be posting up some more soon!

Cheers!

Victor Monstor redesign!

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 15:35:00 +0000

I've been drawing a lot of The Horde in the last few pages of the Nightmare Pro Wrestling web comic and thought I would go ahead and post up the more recent model sheets I've done of the characters along with the original ones I did two years ago.

First up is Victor Monstor. I've been studying a lot of old Disney and Warner brothers cartoons, for my Dr. Pyewacket and Vladdy comic, and I've noticed that some of that style is creeping into my NPW pages, which I really like.

The newer style is just so much more fun and expressive. Even the colors feel more cohesive than the old ones. However, I think the old Victor Monstor pose is hilarious and just might use it when I design the new roster images. Still no new design for Lil Fraken. I gotta get to that.

Cheers!

Adventures at STAPLE!

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 14:15:00 +0000

So my wife (Nicole), my brother, my two sisters, and myself went to Staple, the independent media expo, this past weekend. It was exciting to see what other artists are doing and chat with them about their work.

The first artist who really caught my eye was a fellow named David DeGrand. He had a lot of great looking prints and a cool comic called "Heeby Jeeby Comix." The comic was an anthology of comics done by David and fellow artists Chris Houghton, Bob Flynn, and Dan Moynihan. The stories included great character designs, monsters, and fun situations. I picked up the comic and thinking about it now, I'm wishing I had picked up one of his prints. David was a cool guy and he even did a quick sketch for me on the end page of the comic. You can check out more of his work over at his site: http://degrandland.com

We also ran into a friend of Nicole's named Ximena who had a table with a couple of friends. They had some great stuff and my eyes quickly moved to a mini comic they had called "Cobra Commander Comics" and I was sold on the cover alone. Even just flipping through it I knew it was Awesomely hilarious! It was about Bill a beaver, Eric a superhero(?)looking guy, and their new roommate Cobra Commander. GREAT STUFF! Best $1 ever spent and we also had to get a cute pin that Ximena had designed. You can check out their website at: http://mascotwedding.com

Moving down the aisle, we came across Chet Phillips's table and wow! Nicole and I were in awe. He had a bunch of fun stuff. We picked up a trading card set called "World War Monkey" a Portrait of Military Monkeys. Which was just that, Portraits of Monkeys in military uniforms. We also came across a handbound book, bound by his wife, called "Wrestle Pets." Of course I HAD to get that one. Inside the book had fun drawings of cats and dogs in Lucha Libre outfits along with fun wrestling stats. Chet was really cool and you can check out more of his Amazing work at his site: http://chetart.com

We all left feeling inspired and extremely happy with our experience at Staple. Hopefully me and Nicole will be putting in an appearance of our own at a table there next year.

Later.

Vampires! No Glitter!

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 14:11:00 +0000

Dr. Pyewacket and Vladdy will eventually run into some vampires and here are their designs.

When they're not being evil, they'll look very bored. The boredom of living for centuries will play a role into how the Doctor and Vladdy run into them, should be fun. These guys won't show up till a little later though. I'm still working on the werewolf story.

Next week I'll be posting my designs for the Frankenstein Monster!

Cheers!

The Werewolf!

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 21:52:00 +0000

Here's my first post for the monster designs of the Dr. Pyewacket and Vladdy comic. I posted on Twitter a while back that I was drawing a fat werewolf, well here he is.

The Werewolf is going to be the first monster Dr. Pyewacket and Vladdy have to deal with in a classic cartoon sorta way. Think of the early Chuck Jones Daffy Duck and Porky Pig cartoons.

His human form, down in the bottom left corner, was based on Lon Chaney jr. Unfortunately, the more of Chaney's features I tried to incorporate the more the character didn't look like he belonged in the same world as the other characters. So I tried to keep the design as simple as possible. I'm still not one-hundred percent sure about it. Nicole suggested I just design my own guy...I might end up going in that direction.

Well hope you enjoy the Werewolf, I'll be posting up some more designs up soon.

Cheers!

The Adventures of Dr. Pyewacket and Vladdy!

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 14:09:00 +0000

TA-DAA!!! Finally I'm showing some images of the "SECRET" project I've been doing on the side, while working on NPW. Introducing the adventures of DR. PYEWACKET AND VLADDY! The story will be about Dr. Pyewacket (the cat) and his little vampire protege, Vladdy who are Supernatural adventures/hunters that will be thrown into fun situations with familiar looking monsters. The design and atmosphere of the comic is inspired by the old Disney and Looney tunes cartoons, especially the spooky ones.

I also went with a very limited color palette. Recycling the same five colors where needed. Why? Well, one reason is that it'll save time, which is preferable due to this being a side project, but also to have fun and explore what I can do with a limited color palette.

Each story will be around twelve pages long and be posted, two pages at a time, weekly, on the Strange Kids Club website. At least that's the plan for now anyway. The first pages will be going up around mid-march, so stay tuned for updates.

I'll be posting up some of the Monster designs next week!

Cheers!

Strange Kids Club Anthology Mini Comic

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 17:48:00 +0000

Here's a sneak peek of the 6 page mini comic I did for my buddy Ron Scott for the Strange Kids Club Anthology. Yes, it involves Wrestling...and monsters. It was really fun exploring a new style and way of building the pages. The style is influenced by old Disney and Looney Tunes cartoons, which I began exploring for my "SECRET" project, which I will debut later this week! Keep an eye out for that...maybe both eyes.

Any-who, The Strange Kids Club anthology should be out around mid-March and will be chock-full of great art by great artists. Check out some more AWESOME sneak peeks over at the Strange Kids Club, and tell them Jon sent ya.

Cheers!

New Character Designs

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 15:48:00 +0000

Things have been really busy lately, not just with work but with preparing Nightmare Pro Wrestling for the year 2011. We have a lot of things planned, a new NPW website, doing some merchandise and getting ready to jump into doing comic book conventions and similar shows.

Outside of the realm of NPW, Nicole is still working on her book, refining it and coming up with new and fun ideas for stories. You can take a look at her stuff over at her blog The Minted Mouse.

I've been working on a couple of comic book side projects that are going to be mini comics, I'll be posting things up once I have more to share.

After going through some of the older work for NPW, I want to share a comparison of the old character designs with the new ones. In a lot of ways the 1st and 2nd Issues of NPW were experiments with figuring out how to do inks, lighting, backgrounds, paneling, etc. So with the start of Issue 3, I wanted to update all the character designs to reflect more of a sense of each characters personality. I also tried to make them look more fun and interesting with design and color.

Yeesh...it's almost a little painful to look at the old designs but at least I can say I've learned a lot since starting. I'm excited to see how much more the characters will change as I continue to working on NPW and growing as an artist.

Portraits of Gomez Addams and Julie Newmar

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 17:38:00 +0000

So my wife and I recently moved in to a new apartment and we decided to spruce the place up with a few cool vintage pictures to give it more of an artsy kinda feel. Then I thought, why not do my own pictures and paint them in ArtRage? :D I quickly collected some reference photos and began. Here are the first two I have done so far.

Gomez Addams: I love the Addams Family. The TV series and the movies. When it came to decide which one I would paint, I had to go with the John Astin Gomez. I do like the Raul Julia version but I feel the original is more iconic and fun. I mean come on, look at the crazy face.

I couldn't find any one picture I was really happy with, so I based the painting on two pictures.

I love the crazy face he makes in the first episode and in the opening credits of the TV series, so I went with that face and the body of a pic I found online of him holding a cigar.

I had a lot of fun painting him in my own style while trying to stay true to the images. One problem I did have was the greys I was working with tended to sometimes mix into a light blue. This problem was easily remedied by just importing the painting in to Photoshop and bringing the saturation to 0.

Speaking of Photoshop, I did cheat a little at times, importing the painting into Photoshop and adjusting things I couldn't seem to correct in ArtRage. For example his nose was really a pain to get right. I took the painting into PS and messed with it using the "smudge" tool. Then I took it back into ArtRage and touched it up. If things didn't look right, I just switched back and forth from Photoshop to ArtRage until I liked the way it looked.

However this might have caused some problems because after a while, ArtRage claimed that the file was "corrupted or didn't exist." Luckily all I had to do was "save as" one of the Photoshop files, and then ArtRage was able to recognize it. WHEW! Freaked out a couple of times when that happened.

And for the 2nd painting...

Julie Newmar as Catwoman: I ran across a few vintage pics of Julie Newmar as Catwoman and I had to paint one.

I love the picture I decided to use but I wanted to make a little bit more vintage looking, so I added a red tone in Photoshop and ended up with the pic below.

Then I just picked up the colors with the "eyedropper" tool and started in ArtRage.

This painting was a lot harder than the first. Julie Newmar has very sharp, distinct features and when I couldn't get them even close, she ended up looking very very strange.

Her forehead was another problem I had. Each time I painted and tried to fix it, her forehead always seemed way too large. So I just took into Photoshop and re-sized it.

Her hair is something else that came out way too large. I had intentionally exaggerated it to capture the hairstyle as a focal point. But I had made it way too big. So I, again, imported it into Photoshop, selected it with the "lasso" tool, copied and pasted, and shrunk it down a bit.

I did try to create the sparkles on her suit by actually creating tiny dots...yeah, that didn't work. I just went over them with the "Palette knife" tool in ArtRage" and smoothed them out.

The one thing I would change in my process is doing the backgrounds on separate layers. The texture transferred over to the main images and kind of hid the cool paint textures I made on those.

It was a lot of fun doing these paintings and I even used them as a warm up before starting the day on other projects. I'm really looking forward to doing more, so be on the look out for some updates.

Cheers!

Nightmare Pro Wrestling Issue 2 Page 32 Pencils & Inks!!

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 20:11:00 +0000

Finally a new blog post. A lot of things have been going on and I've been keeping myself really busy with working on new character designs for all the Nightmare Pro Wrestling characters. My style has changed a lot since I first started drawing NPW about a year and a half ago so I want the characters to reflect those changes.

I've also been working on some new images for the new NPW website my wonderful wife Nicole is putting together. Speaking of my Wonder wife, she too is working on a project of here own. Check it out on her blog: The Minted Mouse.

So here are the Pencils and Inks for Issue 2 Page 32. Lately I've been trying to be a little more creative with the panels of my pages. After reading a blog about advanced panel layouts, I thought I'd give it a try. I don't think I'm there yet but I do like that my thought process for paneling has incorporated some of the concepts I'd read.

I also recently noticed that I've started to be able to draw my characters more expressively. Not that I'm saying 'My drawing ability is amazing, PRAISE ME, PRAISE ME!' I'm just saying that it's nice to be able to look back on my older pages and see that there's a big change. I hope I can keep growing as an artist and cartoonist/storyteller.

Issue 2 Page 25 Pencils and Inks

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 18:02:00 +0000

Page 25 of Issue 2!!! WOW! I never thought I'd be saying that. Finally on the last pages of NPW Issue 2. The big showdown between Nightmare Pro Wrestling Champion, Grim and Mr. Hyde. At this point, I'm still at Grim's intro. I wanted it to be so epic so you know how important he is in this world and to the NPW fans.

I pictured Grim with a bit of a Triple H kinda entrance, as this intimidating force with a cool ring entrance. I've actually had this page in my head for a while -- fire breath and all. It's nice to finally see it on paper/computer.

I'm really happy with the way the inks came out on this page. I was a little worried about how the pyro on the last panel was gonna come out but I think it looks good. I think all of that will look a lot better once its colored though.

I changed the fire coming out of Grim's mouth so it looked more like a controlled burst. The original sketch in pencils was a lot smaller and less intense. I want there to be the idea that if Grim wants to breath fire on you he can control its severity.

I also took off a lot of the motion lines from his arms. I think it was too much. It almost made the original drawing look like he was going to clap his fists together (or in Nicole's opinion, made him look hairy) which I didn't want. I'm also not sure if I need the "BOOM" sound effect. I think the images creates the sound all in itself, but I'll test it out and see how it looks.

Alright, hope the pencils and inks got you excited to see the colored page. Check it out on Monday at NightmareProWrestling.com

Later.

Issue 2 Page 24 Pencils and Inks

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 00:59:00 +0000

Here are the Inks for page 24 of Nightmare Pro Wrestling. Something that I've started doing on the pages is creating the backgrounds and characters differently. For the characters I sketch them out on paper then scan them in but for the backgrounds I've usually been drawing them directly on the computer. It's been saving some time and allowing me to still get the perspective I want.

Page 24 is pretty much the beginning of Grim's entrance into the arena. I really wanted to get the mood right on this page. What I wanted the reader to feel was the the excitement of and anticipation of Grim's entrance, along with the knowledge of how popular he is with the fans. When a big star comes into the ring his entrance music gets the fans cheering and then the star pumps up the crowd and the fans get louder. Then the star's music stops and then suddenly the bigger star's music plays. And the crowd goes WILD.

I hope I can get this moment across to wrestling and non-wrestling fans alike.

I plan on putting in some cheering for Mr. Hyde in panel 1 in a big font. Panel 3 is the moment I imagine Grim's music starting. I'm going to use a bigger font for his cheers to establish that the crowd really loves this guy.

In this page I'm also playing around with a special insert panel for the announcers. I like the idea of a smaller panel with the announcers in it to remind you where the commentary in the caption boxes are coming from. I'll test out throwing these panels in every other page during a match.

The last panel is the one that took me the longest but it's also the one that I had the most fun with. The biggest obstacle was drawing each monster in a way that has them doing something without covering up the other monsters too much.

What I ended up doing was separately drawing all the main monsters first, scan them in, cobble them together in Photoshop. Then just filled the spaces with other random monsters. I had a lot of fun designing the monsters and it was great to finally have the Nightmare Night Creatures in a crowd shot. If you look closely you can also see a few celebrity monsters in there, including the Strange Kids Club puppet. I'm not really sure what to put on there signs yet. I'll think of something.

Now to do paints....ugh...that last panel is going to take a while.

Later.

Page 22 Pencils & Inks

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Guerra) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:34:00 +0000

Here are the pencils and inks for Page 22 of Nightmare Pro Wrestling. With this page I wanted to get across that Grim doesn't play well with others. He's a more action, less talk sorta monster. I also wanted to show that Grave thinks Grim is a cool guy and tries to be his friend. And I wanted too include what Grave's dad is like...all in one page!?

Yeah I wasn't really sure how I was gonna work it out but Nicole and I sat down and talked the whole page through. I think we accomplished making the points we wanted without slowing the pace or making things feel too rushed. Let me know if it works.

Alright, well you can check out the finished page on the site NightmareProWrestling.com.

Later.