Encryptions Decrypted III

Right before school starts every year, stores go into back-to-class mode. The night before Day 1, I'd always have folders made up with lots of loose leaf to take syllabus notes in every new class. So, freshmen year in high I had a yellow notebook I had no need for. Getting bored in class, I'd see all that white paper as a waste of space and start doodling. Doodle here, doodle there. Next thing I know, I'm hands deep every day in that folder making up characters, stories for said characters, weapons, and environments. This is my very first comic. To be honest though, it was intended to be a cartoon series based heavily on RPG and anime influences. Finding a project name for it was hard, but I settled on Frontier.

My main characters: it all started when I wanted to make characters based on my group of friends. Naturally, I started with me as the main, had to find the perfect name for him so I stuck with Leo Summers. He uses a sword, wears basically the same outfit I loved to wear, and looked sort of like me. Next was just a slew of characters who have changed tremendously over my time on the comic. Sakura Kennelly is the main girl character, love interest to Leo, and uses a swordwhip. Quiro Elana was the next guy I created, he has this badass one shoulder pauldron thing, uses 2 spears simultaneously, and did the Brock from Pokemon thing where he never opened his eyes. Hitomi Vega changed the most over all because she is a summoner that would change her costume based on the summon she performs. Storm is a master of controlling the wind, uses a large sword, and had cool long manly hair. May Tenshi is a martial artist who is shy when it comes to matters of the heart and courageous when it comes to battles of the body and soul. My favorite part of her was the martial arts gear she wore with the oversized sleeves. Last, but not least is Kai Onimoto a character I've kept using for all of time. He's a ninja samurai.

My main enemies: These are the so-called Element Masters. Each of them controlled a different element. Genesis Cook, a name I created and never stopped using either, is the main Sephiroth-like white haired villain. He controls darkness and is the best friend of Leo. Genesis summoned a black one-winged tiger named Ouroburos that allowed him utmost shadow capabilities. Jast is a surfer/ninja/mermaid with ridiculous eyebrows and sideburns. He used a large spear and controlled water. Also, in my comic, mermaids had horns. Alexis Chase is a martial arts classmate of May's and controls ice and her own ki. She is an ice queen and reserved herself for Genesis. Lavaho is a mechanic that controls fire and used armored arms to really do some work. Hitari Ayanami and Izis de Simone were both in the main team at separate times for separate reasons. Hitari, the lightning master, is a thief and joins the team under the pretenses that the lightning master the team looks for is a man, so she infiltrates their team. Leo and Hitari were to fall in love, Sakura was going to distance herself from the team because of Hitari, but everything gets alright in the end. Hitari has really cool tonfa blades. Izis is Leo's ex and controls earth and light. She joins later and helps the team out with her fencing abilities. The Element Master of wind is Storm. He would've quit the team in the wind master arc and faced them at the end. But it would be a misunderstanding. Storm was never recruited into the Element Masters. The EM spread rumors that the public opinion of Storm out to be one of them.

The Elementals: this is a team of element masters I created that were formed to be a copycat team tantamount to the seven Element Masters. Salazar--leader, uses claws, controls darkness. Awata--sister of Jast without fully formed mermaid horns, uses a staff, controls water. Linneri--archaeologist, controls earth, uses ancient weapons. Jet Wiles--controls wind, rides a boomerang. Dalton--knight, controls lightning, uses a lance. Blane Mitiara--punk rockstar, controls fire. Hyouga--kid magician, controls ice and magic, uses daggers.

LUNA: she's a character I've always wanted and always had. She's an acrobat, the greaseman on heist jobs, and would a mixture of dance fighting and capoeira. She's from a rewrite of Frontier I'd do at one point in my past that involved the main team being a group of thieves.

Here is something random I drew after wanting to try a new style after reading some wuxia I picked up in Chinatown. Most don't know what wuxia is like or what Chinese manwha look like. It's colorful, vibrant, fast, symbolic, and full of fighting. Wuxia is a type of Chinese story that was based in their history [mainly the Three Kingdoms era] that fantasizes the battles into kung fu legends. Great stuff.

Encryptions Decrypted II

Let me take this time to yell at you all about something that matters most to me, somewhat. That guy with the shirt that says "I'm a douchebag." His shirt is not some form of sarcasm. He is indeed a douchebag of the highest degree and knows it. Thank you. That is all.

Wait. Ok one more thing. I've renewed my love and adoration for Hailey Williams. Amazing singer, hair like fire, younger than me by a couple months. Ok. That's all I had to say really, haha

Have any of you he and she spies watched Top Chef or played Final Fantasy XII? Well, I've done both and been captivated by two beauties: Padma Lakshi from Top Chef and Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca-somethingorother from FF12. So, I used Padma as my real life model [probably because she is a real life model] and super imposed Ashe's clothes onto them. Worked out pretty fine with those brush pens I love so dearly.

Another of Niki Fury looking tough and buff. She's the type of woman who'll take a kick to the teeth but rest assured will have your neck broken in return. She's the fire of desire. The female Nick Fury in my connected comic-verse of spies, thieves, assassins, and et cetera.

The first American comics I ever read were the Death of Superman. My dad said I could only read them once if I was very careful with each and every page of every issue. I didn't understand most of it with my adolescent mind, but very much enjoyed the fist to face action of Supes v. Doomsday. And when Kal-el died saving us all...I cried. Actual fluids escaped my tear ducts when I read that. Powerful stuff. Heavy, too. I was 6 or 7 when that happened. To be introduced to a great character only to have him martyred by story's end was a whole experience when you're that young. Oh, and I actually asked to wear that black armband once I knew of them.

Ever do that? Just sit in a field looking for some lucky four leaf clovers? I've never done it. Just wondering if you have. If Lady Luck looked this lascivious, I'd have asked her to blow on my dice too.

A sketch, a sketch, I do confess. Here's another character I love of mine. Her name's Phoenix and she's Chinese. She's immortal in a rather unconventional fashion and controls fire. The story here, in the best Geoff-Johns-sicko iteration I can muster, is:

"He doesn't deserve me. He doesn't deserve this. But I'll give it to him anyway. I'll show him the passionate flames that flicker in my heart-- whether he wants to see them or not. If only love and marriage were as simple as fire. I'd have no trouble with it then-- because I'd be the one in control."

Encryptions Decrypted I

Starting now till eternity I'll be showing my secret drawings for all you guy and girl spies out there. the first two images are, of course, just retools of older images I felt needed some color. After most images I'll let you into my thought processes on the images, a comedic tale of how I ended up drawing them, or just random thoughts. Always remember to enjoy.

Just an old image I pencilled on a trolley to Comic-Con and inked at a boring panel about Marvel's new animation line. It's Executive Assistant Iris. Thought the orange color was cool

Same drawing deal as the last. I didn't even know how to draw this position and ended up doing it anyway for a self-challenge. The best kind of challenge. Came out great but a little stiff. The blue gives the discs and nudity an eerie feel, alien almost.

The New Stuff. Half of this was spontaneous sword and shield fantasy creativity, half trying to impress a girl reading Return of the King on a trolley, haha. Never finished it because I had "class" immediately after doing this. And by class, I mean slipping into a university I'm not enrolled at, slipping into a lesson in the history building like I was a late transfer, and getting a freebie. Trust me. No one noticed.

Yayyyyy, this is my girlfriend, my love, Sarah. She was in a particularly spylike mood and so I drew her as a secret agent, complete with silenced pistol. Blue and orange are my favorite two colors, so that's why I chose it. Yeah

Oooooooohhh, I remember this one. This is me, with my newfound love of brush pens, doing a picture of Selina Kyle if she was in any crime fiction novel. I find that I never draw straight-on pictures anymore. Every time I draw, I'm drawing a scene from a comic that'll never happen. My make-believe Richard-Stark-like story here is as follows:

"Selina was made and wasn't having it. The briefcase was too important to give up. With it, Selina could purchase a ticket to somewhere new, a new pair of shoes, and a new life to match. But standing between her and that shiny luxury was a man dressed as a bat. The goddamn legend of Crime Alley-- Batman. He looked particularly hungry for a bullet. So, Selina fed him one."

I Spy a Spy

Here we are again. It's nice to blog once in a while. I'm not sure many keep up with this other than myself and MAYBE my friends, but it is tantamount to a personal journal for me than anything else. Though it's nice to have a site to quickly hand out so people can see what I've been up to lately. This is another installment of my favorite net pickatchas BUT following this is a slew of my own sketches over the last year or so. Study them fellow spies.

In my childhood, I fell in love with this cartoon. It was a formulaic after school special about a dog, a stoner, some other kids, and mysteries. I LOVE MYSTERIES. The slapstick comedy, the drug abuse undertones, the very human dog, the cheesy men in masks, the dollar-a-dozen mysteries. I love it all. I actually did a freshmen paper on all the drug undertones of Scooby-Doo. Scooby represented shrooms because without hallucinogens no dog would EVER talk like that. Shaggy represented ganja in his almost Reefer-Madness like existence. Daphne did designer drugs like coke, pills, and ecstasy-- always dancing, worrying about her appearance, and powdering her nose to solve the mysteries. Fred was roided out of his mind. Why else would he always be on the lookout for a mystery man's ass to kick? Then there's Velma. Oh, Velma. She was a square for not doing ANY drugs. Hello? She solved the mysteries like every other sober 12 year old watching this on friday afternoon.

Calvin and Hobbes. Another of my kickbacks in middle school. I used to buy the anthologies with allowance and read them in class. There was a time we had quiet reading in certain classes and I would always embarrass myself by breaking that solemn quiet with my boisterous laughter. Hey, come on middle schoolers, those Calvin and Suzie scenes were hysterical. My favorites were the ones where Calvin and Hobbes would be going to sleep and the monster under the bed would alarm them of his presence.

Kiki by Weno. I used to be sooooo annoyed by my sister. She'd rewatch Kiki's Delivery Service with her girlfriends every time it was on. Seriously. Miyazaki and Ghibli really did a great job animating that movie though.

I was watching a stream of West Coast Warzone this year and I saw the sneak preview of this game. It looks like an addicting fighting game as a man who loves fighting games. The character designs are so well made, the fighting dynamics look interesting and well balanced, and it's not even done yet. This is Skullgirls by Alex Ahad and Mike Z. These two are Cerebella [with the arms for hair thing] and Squigly [with the snake thing]. My favorite character is Valentine, the nurse ninja. Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait...

Remember that time I told you all about Greg Tocchini and his AMAZING pencils, but crap inking? Well, here are his pencils to a Countdown to Final Crisis tie-in he did. It's pretty badass, sorta. A monitor, Donna Troy, Jason Todd, and Kyle Rayner search for Ray Palmer on alternate DC earths and they just HAVE to visit Gotham by Gaslight. These pencils show only a modicum of Tocchini's abilities and pencil tightness.

Supplementary Spy Packet

To the cadence of a children's song:

Here are some more of my favorite things...

Favorite things...favorite things...

Lalalalalala...lah

One of the ONLY pictures I've had in my databanks FOREVER because I love it so much. So simple, so complex, so self-contradicting. Actually, this is Greg Tocchini's piece and I love every moment of it. Tocchini's problem is that he's better when he draws, inks, and colors his own comics, but he takes forever to do it all by his lonesome, so he rushes, and fucks up. My only dream is to draw something as badass as this picture.

One of my favorite moments of the game: The Sending. I wish Square Enix wouldn't have tried to appeal to the horny male audience with X-2. She may've been hot in those spank shorts, but classic Yuna can fuck X-2 Yuna up with just a glance. Though Rikku does look better in sluttier skimpier clothes...but that's Rikku. Yuna is classy. Rikku is cute and risque. Don't even get me started on Lulu and Paine. I mean, if X-2 were realistic, Lulu would've bitched out and shunned Yuna and Rikku for hanging out with this OBVIOUS Lulu knockoff. Fuck that. Pregnant Lulu could still beat ass better than emo-cut-myself-for-pleasure girl, Paine. Lulu for life, dude.

Also, did NOT know Jo Chen was a girl. Doesn't really matter, but to find one of my favorite cover artists to be a chick is kinda weird, like when you find out that person your friend has been dating with the ambiguous name is actually of the same gender as your friend and you had no idea he/she was into that sort of thing

Hiro Mashima turned up the heat with this page, panel 8-- the one where Lucy is moving forward on the cart. That one panel is the BEST panel I've EVER seen in his manga and he's had a lot of awe-inspiring panels over the years. With so much energy and tone in one panel, it's hard not to fall in love.

Side note: if you're not reading Fairy Tail, do so immediately. Then read Rave Master. No scratch that. Read Rave Master first, then Fairy Tail, immediately. If you see this and don't read either Mashima books, then shame on you for living without reading Japanamanga at its awesomest. If you've been reading Fairy Tail AND Rave Master, then congrats you're now an SSS rank spy [All three S's stand for sexy].

Bill Otomo. I wish I could go back to that lovable blaxploitation era and be black and beat ass and call everyone my brother and smack around drug dealers and use the forbidden word, "jiveturkey," and swoon women for being so many and blaxploited. Actually, I do interchange the word, dude, for the word, cat every now and then

Corey Lewis needs to animate some Morrison-era Batman and Robin so I can watch Jerkman dog some fools with his grappling hook of ass whoopery and wee Damian go ape-shit on villains for calling him wee like he was Edward Elric-- hahaha, that shrimpy midget alchemist is lucky he's fictional. He'd be soooo pissed if he went online and found this smack talk.

What's that noise? Did someone just clap their hands? Seriously. What the fuck was that sound? OH SHIT, IT'S THE FULLMETAL ALCHE----------

This is Edward Elric here. Anyone else want to call me a pint of tiny in short supply because of shorter demand? Then, get ready to receive a pike through your chest, assholes. E. E. OUT.

I need an Assassin to assassinate an asinine Art Tool

So.

There's this thing that's been bugging me. It's called a bamboo tablet and I have one. Silly thing is I have less control over the medium on the tablet than I do on good ol' paper and I gotta say, the old ink and paper method, the Joe Kubert tried and true style, is where I'm best at-- I'm just old school like that. That being said, I do want to give tablets another try when I can muster enough chump change to purchase a Cintiq, which in my opinion, is as close to digital ink and paper as you can get. I think I'll still ink my pages by hand, but maybe I'll try to sketch out the roughs on a Cintiq before then print to proceed.

Now then.

Shown here are some of my recent/unpublished tablet craptasterpieces I had laying around with a full reasoning of why and how. I'll start posting my old sketchy favorites that no one but I have seen after this.

This is a character I've had since forever. She's a work of art, but this is not. NEVER try to do a spontaneous 1am tablet poster when you haven't drawn the character in months. I actually FORGOT she had an eyepatch and fingerless gloves when I did this. Then I added the eyepatch. Not the gloves though. This is a realistic version of why I hate that damn tablet. The tablet itself is just a black board that you draw on, but when you use it you have to get accustomed to drawing not where you're looking. Thankfully, when I get that Cintiq, it has a screen that you actually draw ON, much unlike this bamboo shit

I wanted to draw something random as hell with just an eraser and a base color. No idea why I drew a gator who turned into a samurai. Maybe it was the cereal I was eating at the time or maybe it was an amalgamation of dream-like warriors I had forgotten and ended up creating. Hmmm...actually I may've just stumbled upon a great story: Gator Samurai, Savior of the Swamp. Hahaha

After reading a whole bunch of noir tales, working on my graphic novella, and spending oodles of time with my girlfriend, I decided to draw one of my favorite creations, Fantine, in a particularly shadowy setting. I was fucked around with the dodge tool on this and screwed up her hair. She'd beat me if she was real. The only thing I really like about this picture is that name plate I drew at the top. Been reading too much Brandon Graham shit

So this is a super-late night attempt at a comic on the tablet with no idea where the story was going and no idea what I was drawing other than drawing what I wanted to. It was supposed to be part one of a Valentine's day gift comic, hence all the love and heart themes, but my loved one came over too quickly and I had no time to finish it. This one's for you, pie of cute

Drawn for my facebook during a particularly Pokemon week for me. I was experimenting with layers, little to no solid black lines, and cool, manga effects-- came off rather how I hoped it would with a few exceptions. The pokeball turned into an evergrowing disaster the more I worked on it. My throw hand looks like crap. For a cheshire ghost, Gengar sure is stiff. Also, I wanted to give Gengar a nickname but didn't think anyone would get his name out of context. My Gengar's name is Gengarvitis-- could never spell that shit in the game because it was one letter too long

Standard Spy Secrets

To the attention of: any venerable spy lord.

Lately, I've been thinking up fun creative comic exercises for myself but I thought up too many too fast...so now I have much more to do than I originally planned. You'll see said comic exercises when I find time to scan them, haha.

Anyone know who Shirow Masamune is? Good. He's the guy that did Ghost in the Shell way back in the 80s and he's a fucking genius. Recently, I finished an Appleseed gn and I was intrigued more by the designs for the mecha, vehicles, and cities than his actual comic. Masamune is a madman for the detail. He has the science, engineering, and physics logistics all worked out. Really amazing stuff. So if you don't know Shirow Masamune, don't you think it's past time you do?

If the internet was an ocean, I'd surf it in the mornings with a web to catch treasures I pass by. Below are the treasures I have caught in my net.

I only wish painting would be so cool in the future. It'll probably be the same though. Hopefully I find someway to beam the images in my mind onto canvas with some new form of future tech. I do my best drawing it but it would be so much easier to beam it up

Folklore, from any country, has always been my forte. I like the concepts bored villagers would come up with to scare their kids in the olden days. Tengu has got to be one of my favorite legends because I don't know, haha. To see hip Tengu gangsters ninja an unsuspecting car in the hills is BAD-to-the-ASS. Literally, I imagine anyone who can fly, control the wind, and stand on those one-panel sandals would also be able to fuck you up big time.

Alright, so I had this dream once where I was in an amalgamation of theme parks. I forgot who I was with, but I know that I was being followed by 40 clowns shoved into a small mech suit like some nightmarish cyberpunk perversion of the old clown gag. When I saw this [besides dropping my jaw at how well done it is] I remember that shit and voted for an amendment to the Constitution that states that a clown may never own or operate a mech in this or the next life.

Been playing FF13 A LOT lately and when I say "A LOT," I mean in between meals, showers, pisses, eating, snuggle time, comics, and work. This here is something the assistants from Love Hina drew up. If only life had more blue lion bodyguards

Oh, and I'm obsessed with Street Fighter. Saw this on some French anime forum and it found its place in my heart [as well as in my computer's memory]. I imagine Ryu would actually be that socially retarded in person

Seeya' later, spies, and remember: good spy boys and girls know when to hide from the cops and when to play it cool.