Basic Things Color

Here's basic color laid in on the Things piece. I sampled some photo reference of Louisiana swamps and I made the effort of making sure that all three Things each have a different color palette.

Enjoy,
Mk

Things inked

Finally. It took a bit because of the detail and coverage, and I'm very happy with how it turned out. I also designed a quick logo and threw it on. Now it's time to color, however I've three more ideas kicking around in my head so maybe I'll start coloring and then break off to do some coloring.

Muck!
Mk

Pencils finished...inks await!

To quote JScott from the HellBoy Forum, "you might be sacrificing a few nibs for that one."
I'll be in inking Hell tonight.

Cheers

Muck Monster Progress

A little more progress on the THINGS piece.

Enjoy

Pencilling under way

Here are the beginning pencils for THINGS. I light boxed my photo reference for the skull and then used the light box again to layout in non-photo blue lines based on my marker sketch that I scanned and enlarged to size.

Cheers

Things

There's nothing I like more than zombies than muck encrusted swamp monsters. I've been a fan of Swamp Thing since the first series created by Len Wein And Berni Wrightson, then afterwards the revival of the character by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, John Totleben and later Rick Veitch. Man-Thing appeared shortly after Swamp-Thing. The creature whose touch burns! I wasn't a big fan at the time, but I grew to like the creature, even though magical aspect of the later stories weren't my cup of tea. The Heap, being the one of the original swamp monsters, along with Theodore Sturgeons IT! were also top of my list. The Heap has a great backstory involving Baron von Emmelman, a World War I German flying ace who was shot down in 1918 over a Polish swamp. He arose from the muck decades later as The Heap and met the Allied ace Skywolf. Another much monster would appear later on TV as part of the Night Stalker series, The Spanish Moss Murders. The Louisiana based Paramafait", a legendary boogeyman would send chills through my young mind when this series first premiered in the 1970's. I've been pulling together images for this new piece that I've finally put down on paper. I have immense respect for the talents of Berni Wrightson, Frank Brunner, Mike Ploog, Steve Bissette, Rick Veitch and John Totleben so I want this piece to shine. Stay tuned for THINGS.

Cheers

Jack Kirby's The Demon, Etrigan

Growing up in the mid-sixties exposed me to the revival of comics led by Stan Lee and Jack (The King) Kirby. Now I wasn't an FF or Spidey fan. No, I was more of a monster/sci-fi fan and the one comic that I latched onto was in the early 70's was Jack Kirby's solo effort, The Demon published by DC Comics starting in 1972. Jack's story and pencils and Mike Royers inks drew me to this book. The over-the-top drawing style and big and bold story made this one of my favorites! Here's my take on Etrigan and Jason Blood. Pencilled, inked and digitally colored.

Yarva Daemonicus Etrigan

Ectoplasmic Color!!!

Here's our pal Johann Kraus in all of his gorgeous color.

Enjoy,
Mk

How to spend your Saturday evening

Here in the North country we spend it with family and good friends. G. Mike Dobbs has released his second book of the year, this one, a pictography of Springfield, MA utilizing his vast postcard collection of the area. It's a beautiful book with some amazing images. My favorite of course was the postcard depicting the monkey that burned down Springfield's City Hall. It's a true story, it's actually been published so of course it's real. Mike and his lovely wife Mary invited us over for a hearty cookout which also included Mike's mother Sue, Mary's sister Jo and family and also the likes of our Northern bretheren Mark (not the race car driver) Martin and Steve Bissette. They were accompanied by their wives Marge and Jeannie. The evening was filled with laughter, odd stories and wild accusations about Thomas Kincaid, Painter of Light ™. A good time was had by all, including Lucky the Wonder Bischon.

Woof!
Mk

Pencils awaiting ink

Here's one of the first pieces I did to get used to The Thing and Ulik. I'm not happy with the Troll Princess. I think she should be a little more Troll like but still come across as femine, but the writer wanted be to beautify her. I worked on another piece that you can see below with HellBoy and a different troll where I made the Troll Princess a little more attractive.

You decide!
Mk

Ben Grimm is tough to draw

That's all I've got to say about it. I worked up a third piece based on Bob Smith's Thing/Ulik proposal and I like how it turned out. I'll probably ink it over the next day or so. Tonight I'm off to see The Dark Knight (finally).



Enjoy,
Mk

Ecto and Sunny in Ink

Finished up inking the SunLord piece and I cruised through inking the Ectoplasmic Man piece. I love both of them and they are both good examples of my design style and how I approach different characters with a different style.




Cheers!

The Ectoplasmic Man goes to China

We've all read the history of Johann Kraus and how he became the Ectoplasmic Man, but what now? Well in my rambling brain I thought 'what if he went back to Chengdou?' So I've done my rendition of the cover of that adventure. I hope you like the pencils. The inks won't be far behind. Next up is a new piece for Bob Smith's Soldiers proposal. You might have seen earlier posts concerning this proposal. This time I'm going to go back and focus on the Ben Grimm/Ulik story line and see where it takes me.



Cheers

Beware the Lobsters Claw

Finished inking this piece a few days ago, got side-tracked by some digital coloring work for my buddy Mr. Jabberous, so it's time to post it and see what you all think?

Beware!

Etrigan in B&W

Here is the inked version of the Etrigan piece. Earlier I had posted the pencils, so for comparison check them out and see how faithful I was to my own pencils.

Cheers,
Mk

And they call him SunLord!!!

Here are pencils for a cover piece featuring my creator-owned character SunLord and his entourage. This is a character I started 7+ years ago, completed a few color pieces, had a great story line and then did nothing with. You can find older SunLord pieces over at www.masztal.com, but for now, check out the new and approved SL and let me know what you think.



And yes those are frog commandoes with big guns.

Mk

A Great Holiday!

We had a wonderful 4th of July weekend. My daughter came for a visit to celebrate her 12th birthday so we took a few extra days off, had some fun, some good BBQ (in the rain!), my daughter got real good on a new videogame called WarBlades and I actually got some time to draw something Oh, and we saw WALL•E. My wife and daughter loved it. They had a fun time with the characters and the wonderful animation.



Cheers

Shake it up

Take one proposal, shake it up a bit and you can then approach 2 different companies. Here's a HellBoy version of the Soldiers proposal. Change Ulik to Rulik, make some minor background changes and TaaDaaaa!

Ragnarrok!

The Thing

So not the easiest character to draw. You have to pay attention to the shape of his body and also shape the rock plates to help with some kind of modeling. This is a piece from James Smith's proposal Soldiers. It teams Ben Grimm with Ulik, a rock troll created by Jack Kirby. The short is full of grand imagery, intense emotion and wonderful character development. Stay tuned, maybe we'll sell this sucker to Marvel and we can finally see it in print.


Clobberin' Time!

Wall•E Did Not Disappoint

Well I was very happy with what the magicians at PIXAR turned out this weekend. Wall•E was a fun time, giving us laughs, heart felt imagery and a message...that if we keep screwing up our planet, we're not going to be able to live here anymore. The detailing and texture of this movie is as realistic as can be imagined. I can't say enough about this film...GO SEE IT!