Drawing by night

First off, welcome!

Most readers stopping by here probably know me, but for those who don’t…

I’m a 26 year old Concept Artist from Montreal. I’ve been doing everything from graphic design for print and multimedia to user experience design more recently, without mentioning storyboarding, commissioned portraits, animation, you name it! This leaves me to work on my own projects in the little spare time that’s left.

Hence, I’ve been drawing by night for the last couple of years.

Recently, I’ve been working on a comic book project, and it has been a great learning experience. Over the last year, as friends and various people have caught glimpses of my work, I’ve shared tips and techniques, gotten useful feedback and a fair share of interest and requests for more material and information.

This is where this blog comes in.

I’ll be maintaining it with artwork from my project as it becomes available, tips and tools, behind the scenes material (such as pages that didn’t make the cut, pencils, sketches, storyboards), and news comic and art related.

So whether you’re a new comer or someone I’ve already had the chance to meet and discuss with since the beginning of this project, welcome!

I look forward to engaging with all of you fellow comic & art enthusiasts, artists, and anyone who takes the time to stop by here.

The Trigger Project is what Marc-André Legault and I have dubbed our latest comic boook project.

It’s a tentative name, that we’re going to have to replace soon, now that the first issue is well under way.

In the meantime, here’s the latest page I finished in color, the majority of the first issue being pencilled and inked…

As you can see from the artwork, it’s a western! Took us some time to realize thi is what we should have been doing for a while! Of course its mixed with video game influences and a healthy dose of hip-hop culture…

For kicks, here’s the pencilled page.

For more artwork, you can always swing by my comicspace for 4 additionnal colored pages.

Lebrecord, a lebanese art & design webmag published an article and samples of my work back in May 2007.

View the full interview here .

In the spirit of letting you readers in on the creative process, here is a first piece of concept art for one of The Trigger project’s villains.

The Duke needed to give off an aura of power, luxury, and arrogance.

He totes some serious weaponry, and has a very flamboyant style.

Often going to great lenghts to show off his power in front of his lackies, you have to make sure you don’t rub The Duke the wrong way, or hog the spotlight… otherwise, you might wind up being part of his next show.

Went over to DC comics website today, and found out about Zuda comics, DC comics’ new project.

I find the idea interesting, but I cannot look at Zuda without remembering Marvel’s “Epic”. Does anyone remember Epic?

Epic promised to take submissions from new talent and then pick the best and give them publishing contracts. To observers, such as me, in retrospect, it seems to have been a marketing ploy, setup to draw attention and boost initial sales as Marvel tried to crank out spin-offs and new titles for lesser known properties.

But Zuda is from DC comics, it has a social web application premise, and I like their idea of the mail-in comics jam.

Maybe we’ll put together an 8 page comic side-story of The Trigger for Zuda, or a whole different comic book.

One thing is for sure, I’ll be watching. As I’m sure many other aspiring comic artists and fans will be as well.

Hey! I’ve been taking some flak for not posting about the comic lately, and I admit, I would have liked to be more present!

Anyhow, things have calmed down a bit and tomorrow I should be dedicated to coloring in one additional comic book page. So with any luck, check back monday for a new page.

In the meantime, here’s a picture of a figurine I made to help me draw Will from different angles!

Just kidding, this is just what happens when you spend time with kids and you’ve got your project in the back of your mind Though if there were an old school console game for the comic, this is probably what Will would look like in it!

Back to some serious comic bok stuff by Monday, promise!

Sunday is drawing to an end and a new comic book page is colored and up!

So here’s the latest page completed for the Trigger project comic. This one has a couple of things I’m less satisified with, but it has come together nicely with the coloring, in my opinion.

Promise made, promise kept!

A good part of my Sunday! I did take some time to handle a few things in the house and catch up with my xbox 360! All in all, a successful day

Next up, I’ll be attacking the first fighting scene in the comic, and for these scenes, I’m developping a different approach to the coloring.

I’ll ahve to organise all the pages I’ve shown in one easly to browse gallery at some point. probably over at comicspace.

Stay tuned, and your feedback is always appreciated!

Went to the first “Dr. Sketchy” held in Montreal over the week-end.

I had a blast! Held at the “Chez Baptiste” pub, we were able to enjoy a few beers while drawing away!

Dr. Sketchy is a live model drawing event, held once a month, with “cabaret” style models.
Last week-end we had the marvelous Miss Mae Montreal as our model.

It was great to do some observational drawing again! I haven’t done any since college!

I’ll post some of the least worst sketches soon!

In the meantime, check out the official page!

Not much work was done on the comic this week, sadly.

I had  a busniess trip to Calagary and a pretty full week otherwise!

BUT! I did finally select a font for the lettering and have started some tests. I’ll be using Blambot Casual from Blambot.com

AS for the SFX, the plan is to draw them by hand or under Illustrator…

More news next week!

Right, after being away for a while, busy with work and life, nad what not, I’ve taken a week off to work on the comic, so come back often this week as I try and dish out as much stuff as possible!