Daily Animal Sketch – Cutie Ponies

I drew this little guy on a trip to South Carolina last year. I had just finished reading the Unico manga, and wanted to draw some cutie ponies of my own. :3 He’s part zebra, part donkey, part horse.

Thunder Wolf

I did this little wolf illustration for a tutorial about tips for drawing cute creatures in the May 2013 issue of ImagineFX's Fantasy and Sci-Fi Digital Art magazine. You can also find him in IFX's 2013 Digital Artist's Survival Guide. :3

Unico: Friendship is Magic

Osamu Tezuka's cutie unicorn, Unico, drawn in a MLP style.

Speaking of Unico, Tezuka fans, take note! Digital Manga Press's currently running a Kickstarter for Osamu Tezuka’s UNICO manga to be printed in full color. So excited for this that I just had to do a little bit of Unico art! ^o^

Under the Influence of Manga

Comics editor Tim Beedle discusses on his blog whether or not it's necessary for manga-influenced Western artists to change their style in order to find work.

I chimed in with my experience as a professional manga-influenced comic artist. My full reply is below, but you should also go read Tim's post and the proceeding comments. The whole discussion is very interesting.

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As a creator who was part of the OEL movement, this topic hits close to home. For me, manga had a heavy influence on my artwork during my formative teen years. My manga-influenced art style wasn't something I quickly adopted as a moneymaking scheme to dupe the manga-reading public, as some naysayers of the OEL movement believe, but simply a part of me, a natural expression of the material I grew up reading. An art style that was natural to me, intuitively picked up from years of reading manga, mixed with other influences, and personal touches.

For a while, it looked like the possibilities for manga-influenced artists were on the rise, until the manga market/economy collapsed. Then Tokyopop stopped taking chances on creator-owned properties, other companies followed suit, and the movement more or less died (save for the small handful of licensed properties -- good opportunities, but nowhere near enough to support all of the talented manga-influenced creators out there).

Following the completion of Peach Fuzz in 2007, I went from being a successful creator with a growing career, back down to the ground level, scraping around for jobs, painfully discovering that outside of the Tokyopop bubble, there are very few opportunities for comic artists heavily influenced by manga.

The year or two following Peach Fuzz, I received my fair share of rejections: art agents telling me that while my art is professional and solid, it's unmarketable due to a lack of jobs calling for a "manga" look; publishers and literary agents enjoying a story premise, but turning it down due to, again, the "manga" look. Eventually the message started to sink in: adapt or die.

The last couple of years, I've been working to tone down the manga influences in my artwork, but it's been a painful process. Some good has come from pushing myself in a new direction - I've definitely grown a lot as an artist because of it. For example, I've developed a new approach to comic pages that I'm very happy with (see Last of the Polar Bears). But it's also depressing to look back at Peach Fuzz, and the art style that came very naturally to me, that I've had to sweep under the rug and hide.

The thing that gets me the most, is that even though mainstream publishers are apprehensive about comics with a heavy manga influence, the kids and teens adore it. The amount of times I've had kids come up to me at conventions to tell me that they loved Peach Fuzz, or even that it was the first "manga" they ever read (!!) are too numerous to count. The kids don't have any innate prejudices against the material--all they want is fun, appealing stories to read. Give that to them, and they're happy--who cares whether your artistic influences are eastern, western, or both?

Given enough time, I'm sure more publishers will open themselves to manga-influenced  comics again... In the meantime, should creators have to alter their style to make a living? Sorry to say, but at least for this creator, it was either that or find a new career path.

365 Days of Manga

Here I am in front of my manga bookshelf, holding five new additions to the collection, courtesy of Jason Thompson (writer of the excellent Manga: The Complete Guide, and upcoming graphic novel, King of RPGs) and his 365 Days of Manga contest. The contest is still ongoing over at suvudu.com, so be sure to check it out. All you have to do is fill in your name and address on the left side box, and you're entered to win five books from Jason's extensive manga collection.

Jason sent me Gon, Kiichi and the Magic Books, and Chikyu Misaki v1-3. The artwork in Chikyu Misaki, by Iwahara Yuji, is adorable -- very cute characters in a unique sketchy inked style. I think the stand-out book in the pile, though, is Gon, which I can only describe as mix of mascot character cuteness with over-the-top hard-boiled action in the vein of Battle Royale. Strange, I know. Gon is this tough little dinosaur (set in a time after all the other dinosaurs have gone extinct), who is not above beating up other animals to get what he wants. There's no dialogue in the book--the story is told through actions alone. It's so well drawn that it's still very easy to follow. It's masterfully done. Very inspiring.

Thanks, Jason!

2009 Art Year in Review

In January and February, I was finishing up my how-to draw book, Draw Furries - How to Create Anthropomorphic and Fantasy Animals (more info). I started experimenting with coloring over pencil lines (as opposed to inked) in Draw Furries. I thought it wouldn't work because I'd tried it in the past and it looked sloppy (for example, pencil illo from 2006), but as it turns out, that's just because the pencil lines were sloppy. My line art is much cleaner and refined now, so adding colors works fine (and suits me because I enjoy penciling a lot more than inking).

In March, I began working on my children's illustration portfolio, which I continued to work on till August.

In April through June, I worked on two chapters of Domo: The Manga for Tokyopop. With it came an opportunity to try my hand at color comics, something I had been thinking about doing for a while. I really like the results. I still love black-and-white comics, but I don't think one should limit themselves to black-and-white if color makes sense for the project.

I started doing 1-hour speed paints in June, around the time I started the Boy and Gator illustration series, when I realized that I didn't have a good technique for painting trees, and as a result the background in this image was taking me much longer than it should. Since then, I've tried to do that daily speed paints, when time allows, and have practiced everything from water reflections to realistic portraits of dogs.

In July, not pictured here, I did some Sonic the Hedgehog "Off Panel" comic strips for Archie. That was a blast from the past for me, as I spent a lot of my teenage years with my cousin making little Sonic fan comics. I think the strips are currently running in the back of the Sonic the Hedgehog comics, up through issue 208.

In September through November, I turned my focus onto a new comic project, and started doing a lot of research and development for it. Writing, sketching, character designs, etc. Because of this, the only color work I did was in the form of 1-hour speed paintings. November's speed paint is a Christmas gift for my aunt.

Finally, in December, I finished my promotional poster illustration for The Last of the Polar Bears - the new graphic novel I'd been developing the last three months, and will be continuing to work on in 2010.

Here's links to the illustrations featured in the 2009 Summary of Art:

January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December

Blank 2009 Art Summary MEME comes from: http://audreydutroux.deviantart.com/art/MEME-2009-Summary-blank-147170285

Domo!

Info about the no-longer-secret-comic-project. Over the last two months, Jared and I have been hard at work on the Domo manga, a full color graphic novel for publisher Tokyopop involving that lovable brown monster guy with the big mouth!

These are the first sketches I did of Domo-kun and friends to practice drawing them "on model".

Two chapters in the book were done by me and Jared (lineart and lettering = Lindsay, colors = Jared). According to Amazon, the Domo book should be coming out mid-September, so keep an eye out for it!