The Rocketpig Studio

Daredevil, yellow

rocketpig — Fri, 18 May 2012 10:00:42 +0000

Here’s another piece I tossed together in an hour or two for my upcoming appearance at SpringCon. It’s Daredevil, in his classic yellow costume. I still don’t understand why this costume only lasted a handful of issues in the comic. It’s my favorite. That’s not a knock on the red costume, but I’d like to see DD in this outfit a little more often.

It’s Thor’s Day, Thor’s Day, gott– (slaps self)

rocketpig — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:27:48 +0000

With SpringCon this weekend and The Avengers movie breaking records left and right, I figured I should have at least one or two pieces featuring the crew in my portfolio. I had drawn a pic of the Hulk last week so he was off the table. I did a quick Cap painting earlier in the week so that was old hat. I’ve drawn Iron Man quite a bit lately. That left Thor and the Black Widow. I butchered a Widow piece and decided to give Thor a whirl.

Then I realized that I hadn’t drawn Thor in well over 20 years. I’m not a Thor fan, never have been. The old Walt Simonson Thor stuff was great but that was kinda before my time and I’ve only read bits and pieces of it. I now realize that Thor is kind of a pain in the ass to draw. He has a lot of stuff going on. Lots of circles, armor, cape, and hair flowing all over the place. Now I know and knowing is half the battle. Or at least that’s what was drilled into my head by several badly animated characters during my formative years in the 80s.

Nightcrawler, the best (dead) X-Man

rocketpig — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:00:53 +0000

As I prepare for SpringCon this weekend, I need to get warmed up to drawing mainstream superheroes and I need to draw them quickly. So here is one of the better examples I’ve done in the past few days. It’s a Nightcrawler drawing that took close to 90 minutes to finish. Nightcrawler has always been one of my favorite comic characters and is definitely my favorite X-Man. The piece was inked with Copic Multiliners and colored with Prismacolors.

Doom and Reed playing chess

rocketpig — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:21:14 +0000

After I did the Spider-Man and Gwen Stacy piece a month or two ago, I said I wanted to turn it into a set of drawings. Despite me recently seeing The Avengers and naturally wanting to do something with The Hulk in it, I decided that I should finish this piece first because I find the concept amusing. For those of you who aren’t comic fans, Reed and Doom are two of the smartest men on the planet. They also happen to be life-long rivals. It only makes sense that at some point, they sat down and played chess against one another.

One does not simply…

rocketpig — Wed, 02 May 2012 12:29:07 +0000

I came up with this idea awhile back and it went through some revisions before I decided to draw it. I first came up with the idea after reading the meme “One does not simply walk into Mordor” about 20,000 times before realizing that it’d be kind of funny to couple it with Rene Magritte’s The Treachery of Images. Initially, the writing was going to be in French until my girlfriend nixed the idea, saying the joke became a little too obscure at that point. It was a fun little piece that didn’t take too long and odds are that it will end up on a t-shirt for yours truly.

Hey, look! A superhero!

rocketpig — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 12:00:50 +0000

But this one is of my own creation. Convention season is coming and I’m going to spend a good portion of the summer promoting my comic, Variables (along with promoting my art in general). One of the steps of that process is creating promotional materials and, more specifically in this case, banners for my booth/table. The guy you see here is one of the main characters of the Variables universe, but… he has yet to appear. If I want to use this banner for more than one summer, he should really be on the banner. The only drawings I had of the character were not of high enough quality to put on a banner so I spent a day putting this together. It’s a simple portrait and took me five-ish hours to finish. I drew it large (I’m starting to really enjoy the leeway of working on a huge piece of bristol with a brush), brushed most of the inks, and then colored it in teh Photoshops. I’m very happy with the results.

Gwen & Peter

rocketpig — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:00:10 +0000

This is my favorite piece in quite some time. With the new Amazing Spider-Man movie coming this summer, Gwen Stacy is going to be all the rage in the Spidey community. Gwen was killed in the comic book some time in the early 70s, I think. I didn’t know much about her until I was older and read some of the Spidey trade paperbacks that featured her death at the hands of the Green Goblin. Unlike the contemporary Mary Jane Watson, Gwen fascinated me because of her classic ties to Spidey, her always great 60s and 70s fashions (and hair), and because she died and never came back. That just doesn’t happen in comic books anymore and I think it’s been so long that any modern Spidey creator is too terrified to try to bring back such an iconic character.

But I’m sure the movie will change all of that as younger readers are exposed to the not-yet-trampled-to-death character of Gwen. This was done on 9×12″ bristol with Copic Multiliner markers and then colored (and aged) digitally. I may even like this one well enough to make it into a print.

The Punisher

rocketpig — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:00:14 +0000

One of the things I’ve been practicing lately is loosening up my drawing style. I’ve been playing around with really loose large format ink pieces and this is the first that I’ve liked well enough to post. It’s of Frank Castle (the Punisher), one of my least favorite “superheroes” but one that’s pretty popular with the comics crowd. For a moody piece with a brush, I thought he’d be a great choice to give it a whirl. This piece is big, much bigger than it appears on screen. It was done with just one flat brush on 14×17″ bristol board. Not surprisingly, it took less than an hour to complete. Expect to see more of these coming in future weeks. Laying down big inks on this thing was a lot of fun. I’m tempted to try my hand at a Dr. Doom piece next.

The Doctor, Amy, and Rory

rocketpig — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:00:32 +0000

Doctor Who is all the rage nowadays so I thought I’d take the time to give the latest trio a whirl. I’m playing around with different styles to find a few that I can rotate in and out of using whenever needed and this was a good opportunity to try a more cartoonish version of the regular comic book style I so often use in drawings of this sort. I like a lot of what is happening here but there’s definitely room for improvement, particularly in the mens’ faces. This piece also gave me the opportunity to use markers for coloring, a skill I still need to practice a lot before I will consider myself “good”. I’m building a portfolio for the upcoming con season so the more pieces I have in different styles, the better I’ll be able to sell commission work. So, expect to see more of these popping up before Memorial Day (roughly the weekend of my first convention).

I couldn’t resist putting a word bubble above Amy’s head because, frankly, she’s the most useless companion since the series restarted in 2005. She’s adorable but lacks the personality of Rose, the ass-kickingness (and smarts) of Martha, and the morality of Donna. She’s kind of a ditzy, empty vessel to up the show’s cute factor.

This was done on 9×12″ bristol board using Copic Multiliner inking pens and Copic/Prismacolor markers for color.

Time for a new icon

rocketpig — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 12:00:23 +0000

I first bought the Rocketpig.net domain in late 2001 and shortly thereafter, I drew the Rocketpig icon you see on the left. It was meant to be used as a forum icon, advertising, and general promotional work I’ve created over the years. It has served me well but it’s old and doesn’t represent the work I’m doing today. Hell, it hasn’t represented my work for at least half a decade but every time I tried to re-create a new icon, it failed. I’m still not sure this is the answer for the long-term but it’s much better than sticking with the old icon for one day longer. If nothing else, it’s a fun comparison to see what I was doing in 2002 versus what I created today.