The Journey Continues

An illuminated panel from The Last of the Polar Bears pg 54.

Daily Animal Sketch – Polar Bear Warm ups

Sketching polar bears to warm up for drawing Last of the Polar Bears comic pages! Color pages were done in Clip Studio Paint, the rest in my sketchbook with 0.5mm mechanical pencil.

Polar Puffs

Stella and Nanook, reinterpreted in a MLP style.

Rough sketch.

Speedpaints - Polar Bear Cubs, Mountains, and Snow

 Some recent arctic-themed speedpaints (30mins) reffed from photos.

Nanook

Crestfallen cub. An illuminated panel from The Last of the Polar Bears pg 42.

Daily Animal Sketch – Arctic Fox and Polar Bears

Studies of Arctic foxes and polar bears. Plus some sketches of Nanook with various expressions, and a sparkly-eyed shoujo bear.

Kirby and Grizzo

 2012 is Kirby's 20th anniversary, so here's some art of the pink creampuff.

How to Draw a Polar Bear

Polar bears are large, muscular animals with short legs and powerful forelimbs. The polar bear’s body is streamlined for navigating ice, water, and land. Their elongated torso and tapered head and neck are perfect for long distance swimming, while large feet give them better traction on the ice. Thick fur protects them from the cold. Try to bring out these traits in your drawing.

The key to drawing anything is to break it down into basic shapes. If you can draw circles and ovals, you can draw a polar bear.  Don’t be discouraged if your first attempt doesn’t turn out exactly like the picture. Practice makes perfect, so let’s begin!

Click the image below to view the step-by-step polar bear drawing tutorial.

Don’t give up if your first drawings aren’t perfect. Art is not something that can be learned overnight. Drawing is a skill that must be practiced and supplemented through observation, so keep a sketchbook, and take it with you everywhere. Look around you, draw what you see.  Visit the zoo and sketch animals. Sketch people at the mall. The more you draw, the better you’ll get. Good luck!

Here's another article written by me with more animal sketching tips and resources.

Just for fun, let’s draw cute animals

Drawing a Bear in 4 steps:

From Illustration School: Let's Draw Cute Animals by Sachiko Umoto. Part of an adorable series of drawing books. I just adore Sachiko Umoto's charming illustrations and whimsical approach to making cute animals that's simple enough for anyone to follow. Reminds me of the Ed Emberley drawing books I loved so much as a kid.

Honey Bear

Honey is a bear-butterfly-lion (a Bearflyon?). My favorite part is her heart-shaped nose. :)
Pencil + coloring in Photoshop CS3.

Illustration Friday: "Winter"

For Illustration Friday's theme, Winter. Stella the polar bear discovers the joy of leaving pawprints in the snow. An illuminated panel from my comic, The Last of the Polar Bears.

Last of the Polar Bears - now a webcomic

Hi everyone,

I wanted to let all of you know that I've started posting pages of The Last of the Polar Bears online as a web comic. I plan to post a new double-page spread every week, on Mondays, as well as write about the process of making comics as time allows. You can read The Last of the Polar Bears comic here: www.lastpolarbears.com.

Why the webcomic format?

I started working on The Last of the Polar Bears a year ago, researching, plotting the story from beginning to end, designing the characters, and working on the sequential art. After storyboarding the first chapter, I determined the complete story would be around 500 pages--meaning it could take years before the book would be ready for publication.I strongly believe in The Last of the Polar Bears and its message, so rather than keeping the project hidden for the next several years while I continue to work on it, I've decided to make the pages available to readers as they are created. I'd love to hear your feedback. :)

P.S. If you know anyone who might also enjoy the comic, please pass along the link to them! Thanks and enjoy! :)

Last of the Polar Bears - pages 1-3

It's been a while since I last posted any tidbits about The Last of the Polar Bears graphic novel am working on, so here's a quick update. The proposal is currently making its rounds with agents. In the meantime, I'm continuing to work on more comic pages. I wanted to share the first few pages with all of you. A sweet little scene showing Nanook and Stella as itty-bitty baby polar bears!

Enjoy!

(Something fun to note is that all of the panel borders on these pages are "hand-drawn", that is, without the benefit of rulers. I wanted them to have a very organic, rough quality to them. That's why they have little squiggles and imperfections. Requiring a very steady hand, they take a lot longer to do, but I love the effect.)

Last of the Polar Bears - Unveiling the Characters

During the last 6 months of development on Last of the Polar Bears, Jared and I have worked hard to dig deep and really get to know the characters. Now, as the story moves towards production, we're ready to share these characters and a glimpse of their story. I hope that you find the cast as interesting and lively as we do, and look forward to leaning more about them. :)

 

Stella

The stronger of Ursula’s twin polar bear cubs, Stella is energetic and brash. She uncritically adopts her mother’s philosophy that strength and determination can overcome any obstacle. Though she loves her smaller sibling, Nanook, her teasing and rough competitive play drive a wedge between them. When he finds another friend, Stella is left to struggle alone with her growing concerns over survival.

  

Nanook

The smaller and weaker of Ursula’s twin polar bear cubs. Nanook is an exceptionally curious and contemplative cub, eager to explore and learn about the world. However, Nanook tires quickly during play and is unusually susceptible to the cold, requiring special attention from his mom. Along their journey, Nanook befriends Frostbite, an arctic fox, much to his family's disapproval.

 

Ursula

Ursula is a firm, but loving mother polar bear. Protecting Stella and Nanook, her first litter of cubs, is her top priority. Following in the paw prints of her mother, she takes great pride in preparing her cubs for adulthood. However, she's finding that strength, the core value of her teachings, is no longer enough to survive the changing Arctic landscape.

Frostbite

A rebellious young arctic fox that craves adventure and independence, but is ill-prepared for life away from home. Once carefree, Frostbite is learning that the Arctic is a lonely place filled with hardship, and scarce on food. When a hunt-gone-awry brings her face-to-face with Nanook, Frostbite quickly forms a bond with the cub. Chatty and sociable, she takes solace in their budding friendship...but also has other reasons for tagging along with the polar bear family.

Making a Graphic Novel (Part 1)

My Creative Process

I've finished scanning and compiling the roughs for the first chapter of The Last of the Polar Bears! 67 pages total. The full story consists of seven dense chapters chronicling a polar bear family's journey and struggle to survive in the changing Arctic. I'm working from a detailed 40-page synopsis of the story Jared Hodges and I wrote together. So far the breakdown is working out to about 10 pages of comic pages per 1 page of synopsis, so I estimate that the complete story will end up being around 400-500 pages.

Because I am both the writer and the artist, I decided to bypass the step of writing a traditional script for The Last of the Polar Bears, and work straight from synopsis to rough thumbnail pages. This allows me to be very flexible with my roughs. I read over my synopsis, then visualize the look of the pages as thumbnail drawings while I'm breaking down the actions panel-by-panel. In this way, I can quickly discover whether scenes that are easily described in text work visually, and make necessary corrections.

Here's page 17 and 18 from synopsis to rough thumbnails, in which the twin polar bear cubs Stella and Nanook experience the outside of the den for the first time:

Synopsis:

Stella asks Nanook what's up there. The next panel is his point of view. Endless white snow, and arctic twilight. Frostbite (an arctic fox) is also in the shot, but she is well camouflaged. Her tail is wrapped around her face so that she looks unremarkable, like a lump of snow. "Nothing. Everything's white!" A cold breeze sets his teeth chattering. "It's cold up here!" Shivering, brother cub tumbles back into the den, and falls on top of Stella. Stella protests and goes into battle mode, but he just huddles against her for warmth. It's no fun to play with an unwilling partner, so she gives up and calls him a wimp . She asks him if he saw "it". He shakes his head no. "Just lots of snow."

I breakdown this description into a list of panels, each with a short description of what I want to bring to the attention of the reader. My thumbnail page layout (template here) measures 4"x6" on an 8.5".x11" page and contains pertinent information such as trim and bleed so that I can plan out the overall look of the page along with composition, actions, and word balloon placement.

Sometimes the pages come together in a very straightforward fashion. Sometimes I'll end up trying multiple panel configurations. On page 17, you can see that I've come up with alternate takes for panels 1, 3, and 5.

Once the thumbnails are drawn, I scan them into the computer and assemble the pieces. Here's how 17 and 18 currently look.

These thumbnails are my roadmap for the next step: penciling the pages at full size. With composition and content of the panels figured out, I'll be able to turn my focus to drawing the characters tighter, cleaner, on model, and anatomically correct (to name just a few of many things I'll be keeping in mind as I work through the pages).

I'll continue to delve further into aspects of my comic creation process (with more Last of the Polar Bear sneak peeks!) in upcoming blog posts, so stay tuned for more.

Polar Bear Postcard

Here is the second illustration I've done for The Last of the Polar Bears, a new graphic novel I've been working on. You can read a little bit more about it and see the first illustration here.

This illustration was created for the back of my new winter promo postcard to celebrate the new year. If you'd like a copy of the new postcard, sign up here to receive it (yes, it's free, so don't be shy!).

The Last of the Polar Bears - promo poster

This is the promotional poster for The Last of the Polar Bears.

The Last of the Polar Bears is what will hopefully become my next graphic novel. I've spent the last year thinking about it and the last couple months writing and developing the groundwork for it. I just finished plotting out the story in detail from beginning to end, so now I'm ready to move forward with the creation of the comic itself!

This promo illustration, portraying an iconic scene from the first chapter of the story, had a pack a lot of punch with a minimalist execution. With so little detail, it wasn't difficult to draw, but every aspect of it needed to be just right.

I find it very helpful to create a number of tiny thumbnail sketches, to quickly try out different takes on an idea. Working with a general idea of a polar bear cub poking his head out of the den for the first time, finding himself surrounded by an unending sea of white snow, I created a couple of concept sketches:
In these examples, note how composition, placement, and size of the cub play a big role in mood and feel.

#1 is a strong close up on the cub's face, grinning as he takes a peek at the outside world - cute, but completely at odds with the title of the book.

#3 is closer in feel - the landscape is vast, the cub is small--there's a real sense of loneliness going on, but it's so far pulled out from the character that scene no longer feels intimate.

#2 is almost right on target. The cub is cute and awestruck without looking too giddy. But the centered figure is boring and predictable.

#4 takes the aspects of #2 that I liked, but moves the cub into the lower corner. The title is placed in the upper right corner to balance the piece.

Once I had the composition figured out, I set about drawing the character.

He went through several drafts (including some slight variations with him smiling, not shown here) before I finally hit upon a version that worked for the poster.
And here you have it, the finished line art of the cub seen in the poster (flipped in the illustration):

Stay tuned for lots more. I look forward to introducing you to this little guy and the rest of his family. :)

Domo: The Manga - out in stores tomorrow!

The Domo: The Manga book I worked on is coming out tomorrow. It should be available in bookstores nationwide in the manga/graphic novel section! It's a full-color graphic novel published by Tokyopop involving that lovable brown monster guy with the big mouth! All the stories are lighthearted and fun, perfect for kids and great for fans of Domo and/or funny animal stories.

Two chapters in the book were done by me and Jared Hodges (pencils = me, Jared = colors).