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Sonic 224 pencils -part 3-

Ben Bates — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 09:11:38 +0000

Back to 224. Wow, its been a long time since this issue came out.

Page 11-

One of the neat things John Workman does with his letters is stick word balloons to the edges of a panel and drop the border out for it. I think its stylish and looks super cool. This page has a lot of great examples of it but my favorite is Sally’s first word balloon in panel 03, it knocks out the whole corner and really helps her to pop out and further highlight her dominance over Geoffrey in the shot.

Bouncing back to panel 01 you’ll see I did the panel as a bleed but it was cropped with a border on the left for the final art. I think the crop looks better especially with the cool location title cut into the top of panel!

This page is also a good example to see that from my pencils to inks the characters get even more roughed up than I had originally envisioned. If you’ve dug out your copy of the issue you’ll see that Sally and Geoffrey’s hair become more frazzled and even their cheek tufts show some wear.

Page 12-

I’m really happy with the second panel. A big quiet shot to tone everything down after all the fighting .

Page 13-

I think my personal favorite background character I’ve drawn is the pink girl in the background of panel 01. I can’t recall if I mentioned this before, but the dog peeking around the pointing guy is a design from Dave Manak in issue 24. I think he was an apple salesman? I draw him in every crowd scene now. He gets all over town.

In panel 03 there I like everything but Nicole’s mouth.

I feel weirded out about doing some references so she doesn’t look exactly right, but in panel 04 down there the girl in the back is, in my mind, Maka from Soul Eater. I remember thinking I should not show the x pattern of her straps otherwise it’ll be perfectly obvious. Now I wish I had, I dont know why I chickened out. And I should have drawn her skirt as a plaid.

Page 14-

I recall having a miserable time trying to figure out panel 01. Sometimes the simplest shots can be the hardest apparently. I really like how it turned out in the end though. In fact, I really like how this whole page turned out. There’s a lot of fun drawing in there.

I dislike Hamlin’s design. He’s a generic cartoon pig, totally lifeless and very un-Sonic to me. Sometimes I have fun sketching out redesigns for characters and I did Hamlin a little while ago. I wanted to include the drawings with this post but I can’t find them. Maybe they’ll surface later.

Page 15-

I frequently find Naugus annoying to draw because he’s almost always doing the same “evil smile” facial expression. Throughout this issue I tried to bump up the range of expressions he would make. I think this page (along with page 16) are good set of different kinds of evil smiles.

Matt Herms colors on Naugus in panel 03 are particularly excellent. You get a real sense of him existing in 3d space and are probably my favorite color in the entire issue.

Mega Man Universe Style

Ben Bates — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 09:04:11 +0000

Mega Man issue 8 is out this month which means the end of the ‘Time Keeps Slipping’ arc. Starting next month is the ‘Return of Dr. Wily’ arc that I was lucky enough to pencil! I thought I’d draw some different styles of Mega Man, just for fun, as we build up to the release of issue 9.

I thought the art for Mega Man Universe was pretty cool. The game itself didn’t really look like my kind of thing, but who knows, maybe it would have won me over if it had been fully developed.

Sonic 224 layouts and pencils -Part 2-

Ben Bates — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:21:39 +0000

Page 06 layout-

Page 06 final pencils-

I’m unhappy with how I did a lot of the special effects in this page. I’m not into the chunky blur on the sword hilt for panel 01, or the less than spectacular effect of Sonic blocking a bunch of ice needles in panel 04. I should have done much, much better.

What I am happy with is the sense of movement throughout the entire page. I feel like I captured a very natural progression of the characters bouncing from one panel to the next.

You’ll notice if you’ve got a copy of 224 anywhere nearby that you can see Naugus’s left arm in panel 05 in my pencils but the panel is cropped in the actual issue. I’m assuming this is a choice made by Terry Austin, the inker. I’ve been noticing this more and more as I compare pencils to inks and I think this can be a good choice on his part to cap a lot of the bleeds I draw and focus the action as well as balance the page. As much as I enjoy the full pose I’ve drawn here for Naugus I really like that white space underneath the full bleed panel you find in the actual comic. I really, really like the choice to drop the right panel border on panel 01 up at the top. Looking in the actual comic you’ve got just that little sliver of Naugus and I love it! Makes me think of the stylish little panels Bill Watterson would do for Calvin and Hobbes.

Page 07-

Ah, okay here we go. I was surprised to find how much I was liking my art in the first five pages of 224 when my memories of my work in the issue were less than favorable, but here’s a page I’m not too keen on. Mainly its all in Panel 02. Many problems.

I do like Naugus’s flailing backward while shooting fire in panel 04, thats a good pose and a fun little piece of character reaction.

I also really enjoyed the idea of Elias coming in and totally whaling for a moment. I don’t know much about him aside from he is Sally’s brother and the current King, but man it would be cool if that guy did more stuff like this! The guy has clearly got some skill. And he’s a squirrel right? He’s got an awfully fox-like tail for a squirrel. You can see in the layouts I drew him with a standard cartoon squirrel tail and I may have briefly considered drawing the tail different for the final pencils. Not like the layouts though as that is standard cartooning and too literal, not very Sonic like. I would go with a tail like Ray’s from Sonic Arcade if I was allowed. With his current tail you could argue the point that Elias is a squirrel-chipmunk and that perhaps the cross breeding has altered aspects of his tail, but that seems uselessly complicated to me.

Oh, my absolute favorite thing about page 07 is Naugus’s face in the last panel in the layouts. I love that frown.

Page 08-

This is my favorite of all the layout pages and my least favorite for the actual pencils. I absolutely love the two little stick versions of Hamlin and Dylan running off to do battle in panel 03. I love all the little stick characters! I also think Hamlin’s expression and drawing in the layout for panel 04 are far superior to the actual drawing I did for the pencils.

Going back to panel 03 though, its important to create compelling and dynamic “camera” angles in comics, especially in Sonic. You also want to make sure the shot you choose is telling the appropriate story. I love the layouts for panel 03 because its very funny to me, but that’s exactly the problem as it should not be funny. The two characters are running off to do battle and hearing something that stops them in their tracks. It should be dramatic or intense. So I rotated our camera a little to get a more interesting view of the situation and hopefully take an originally boring shot into a more exciting one. If you’ve still got your 224 around compare the eyes of Hamlin and Dylan in the pencils to your issue.

Page 09-

Here’s a couple of nice differences between layouts and pencils. Panel 01 changed completely and panel 02 was reversed. I think the layout of panel 01 is very exciting and you’ve got a lot intensity with Hamlin’s large figure. I also think the small Sonic off to the side changes the tone of his dialog for the panel to be more humorous than the final result. I think this is overall a cool possibility for the scene but it has a flaw and some missed opportunities that I luckily caught on to and adjusted for the pencils.

If you check your issue of 224 you’ll find that Hamlin speaks first, followed by Penelope, and then Sonic. The order that characters speak in comics is all important and the artist needs to make sure characters are placed to allow for the correct order. In general, you want the first character to speak on the left and move to the right accordingly. My layout mixes the order up and complicates the readers progression by placing Penelope first instead of Hamlin. You can of course get a little creative and place Hamlin’s text below Penelope’s to solve this problem but I gained more opportunities to provide better storytelling for the following panels by shifting my camera in panel 01.

In the layout my view allows for only three characters but when I shift the view behind Sonic in the pencils I’ve suddenly gained room for twice as many characters and their reactions to the argument. Most importantly though I’ve given the reader a clear understanding of where all the characters are currently located so that when we move to panel 02 its immediately understood Rosemary is standing higher than Rotor. This gives her more authority in the panel and maximizes the impact of Rotor’s frustration and weakness. By excluding Uncle Chuck in panel 01 it helps sell the story that he stalks toward Rosemary in panel 03.

I was super happy to get to do some exaggerated expressions in this page. Penelope slamming her hands in panel 01 and especially Rotor’s ‘One Piece’ style exasperation compared to Rosemary’s collected demeanor in panel 02 were a blast. I love stylish and exaggerated storytelling when its appropriate. (And in my personal opinion with something like Sonic the Hedgehog thats almost all the time!) My personal take on this moment when reading the script was that because Naugus was manipulating emotions we got a lot of characters overreacting and behaving like fools in a fairly serious situation. A perfect opportunity to get a little wild with these characters.

And bam, page 10!-

I went digging through my files and could not find layouts after page 09. I think what happened is I forgot to do layouts for the rest of the comic and I’m lucky that the editor Paul Kaminski trusted me to carry through the rest of the comic without seeing what I intended to do. At this point I was starting to feel very tired and burnout with the 2010 Christmas holiday and the amount of work I was doing. I’m pretty sure this was the first and last time layouts just slipped my mind.

This page was a lot of fun and hard work to do though. When designing this room I did a lot of research for Eggman styled headquarters in past videogames, especially Sonic Adventure. That door for example in panel 02 is lifted straight out of the game. While you’re looking at that door right below it is a second Egg mobile station. That one belongs to Snively, and although you can’t see it, to Eggman’s left is where Lien-Da’s Egg Mobile is. They are both set lower than Eggman so its clear who exactly is in charge here.

Speaking of Snively, I think he is a hideously designed character and can’t stand him. I’m always looking for ways to make him more palatable.

Up next 224 Part 3!

Sonic 224 layouts and pencils -Part 1-

Ben Bates — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 14:22:20 +0000

Wow, its been nearly a year since I drew this issue. I recall working on the pages of 224 around the time I was supposed to travel back home to visit family for Christmas last December. Some friends suggested showing my layouts would be cool this time around as they might provide some fun insight into creating Sonic comics.

So all right, let’s do it.

First, just in case anyone is not familiar with the process of making comics, I as a penciller receive a script from the writer describing how many panels are on a page and what actions and dialog need to be in those panels.

My job is then to come up with the most exciting but easily readable sequence of those descriptions. I’ll start by making thumbnail versions of each page showing my intended layout of the entire comic to the editor so he can make a quick judgement on whether or not its working and if anything needs to be changed.

I use to do my layouts as rough versions of the final pencils like page 4 here from Sonic #218.

And now compare it to the final pencils and you can see I did the bulk of the work during the layout phase.

The problem I had with this approach was that I put a lot of time and energy into practically drawing the final pencils for each page when I couldn’t be certain any of them would be approved. I was taking a risk that I wouldn’t have to change anything and taking a lot of time doing it. I started to stress out about getting my layouts done as fast as possible but still produce rough completed pencils. It began to feel like an unhealthy expectation.

So about half way through issue 223 I decided to simplify my layouts to increase speed and make layouts fun.

When issue 224 rolled around my layouts looked this:

Page 1 layout-

The script describes a splash panel along with all appropriate text, titles, credits, and roll call. When laying out pages I also like to plan for balloon placement to make sure the page reads correctly. This is mainly just for myself as in the end I leave all final placement of speech balloons and titles up to the letterer.

My only responsibility is to provide pencils for the art.

Page 01 final pencils-

Now if you happen to have your copy of 224 around you’ll see that somewhere down the production line it was decided that the Naugus I drew for the roll call should be replaced with a different character.

Page 03 layout-

Page 03 Final Pencils-

Here you can see I switched the placement of Geoffrey and Sally in panel 02 from layout to final pencil. The basic rule of thumb is to have whoever speaks first in a panel on the left. I accommodated for her being on the right in the layout by placing her speech balloon at the top of the panel, forcing the reader to see her first before moving down to Geoffrey. My idea behind making this choice was that in the story Sally and Geoffrey are in the middle of a confrontation and I wanted to give the sense that Sally is agitated and in motion as she circles around a confident and calm Geoffrey. I felt this would be easily achieved as Sally is on his right in panel 02 and as we progress to panel 03 Sally has shifted to his left indicated by the direction of her body and literally by the placement of her in the panel above Geoffrey. If this wasn’t enough I’ve got three little motion lines intended to help show Sally’s quick change in position.

Apparently I must have chickened out and went with a safe storytelling approach. I still have some action lines in panel 03 but this time to me they don’t necessarily indicate Sally physically moving but the rising intensity of her dialog.

Oh yeah, I use to absolutely loathe those two main background characters in panel 05. Sometimes when doing roughs I’ll quickly sketch out some shapes and i interpreted those to create those two. I had intended to go back and create better looking fellows but as time wore on and I had more artistically demanding pages later on in the issue I reluctantly accepted they had to stay. I don’t hate them as much now because I realized the city can’t be entirely populated by cool characters, some of them have to be normal or like these two, a couple of buffoons.

Page 04-

I’m fond of this page. I like when the characters get to do cool things. There’s a lot of action packed into this one page but it doesn’t feel forced or rushed.

Page 05-

Huh, I like this page too. I’m kind of surprised because when I think about issues 223 and 224 I just recall being burnt out and tired all the time. I’ve got kind of a negative memory about it all I guess. But now that I’m looking at these I feel like this stuff is pretty cool. It was a lot of fun designing the Engine Room there for example. I just started playing Sonic Colors around this time and I looked to that game to influence Eggman’s tech. I had fun, as simple as it may be, trying to imagine if the engine room were in the games how would this be designed to allow Sonic to run around it. In the background you’ll notice a couple of platforms sticking out, a hint of a track that runs around the base, and several tunnels that allow Eggman to move about the Death Egg 2 as well as Sonic to grind through with the little rail seen at the bottom of panel 05.

There are more pages to talk about but that’ll have to be in Part 2.

Nancy Thompson

Ben Bates — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:20:10 +0000

I think Nancy is pretty cool and a great adversary for old Freddy Krueger. She was the only one in the whole show who was with it and she turned out to be pretty tough too. It would take a lot of guts to walk away with Krueger at your back.

While finding reference for this I found that Heather Langenkamp recently created ‘I am Nancy‘, a documentary about whats happened to her character in the past 30 years. I’m looking forward to checking it out. Go to the blog for some neat behind the scenes stuff and memories of her experience making the original ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’.

Something I really love that I found there is this little doodle below that Langenkamp did of Nancy for a t-shirt design. I thought including the coffee pot was the coolest! I’m not sure if I can accurately explain this, but I love little defining details and accessories for characters. One of the biggest reasons I did the above image for example is just to draw the streak of white hair. I was pumped to draw the Alice the Dream Master last time because of all the accessories she has representing each of her fallen friends (and brother).

Maybe what I’m looking for is icons? What is iconic of a character? Here for this little doodle Langenkamp got all them perfectly. I’m not totally sold on the phrase but I’ll get this shirt for the drawing anyway.

It also occurred to me how cool it would be to meet “Nancy”. A new goal of mine is now to find and attend whatever necessary convention I must. Unfortunately it looks like I discovered an interest in ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ right as she ends her appearances for this year. Hopefully there will be something set up for next year and damn it would be cool if Robert Englund was around as well.

The Dream Master

Ben Bates — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:21:07 +0000

Friends and I decided to suddenly watch all of the ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ films. I’m sure somewhere in my brain I was thinking how cool it will be to draw Krueger but the Dream Master here was the first to really demand I draw her. I think its because the movie was bad enough that I had to make it fun for me somehow.

I genuinely like the first movie and in it realize how cool and scary Freddy Krueger once was and can be under the right creative direction. We just finished movie 4 and are now moving on to 5 which is supposedly the worst of the series. That’s really saying something if you’ve seen ‘Freddy’s Revenge’.

Archie’s New Crusaders

Ben Bates — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 21:54:46 +0000

Its gonna be a digital comic released on a weekly basis which I think is a pretty cool idea. There’s a lot of fun to be had in the town of Red Circle and I look forward to getting over there and drawing it.

Pokememe 03

Ben Bates — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:03:30 +0000

I’m curious for any Pokemon players, what move do you think this is?

I dislike overly powerful moves in general but this one I think is the perfect representation of all of them. Back when I use to be a more dedicated videogame player I thought it would be cool to get Ho-oh from Colosseum. I personally have no value for Colosseum but I wanted Ho-oh and I was intrigued by what Trainer would be at the top of the 100 battle mountain. This trainer had to be the best, they had to be worth the effort, they would be a truly skilled opponent.

Of course I was bitterly disappointed.

I fought the story mode mountain though, I just assumed the battle mode was the same set of trainers. But I just looked it up and the top trainer is totally different. Maybe thats the guy I wanted to fight…

Pokememe 02

Ben Bates — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 05:13:20 +0000

Okay here’s part 02. This is as far as I got last time so after this its gonna be all new stuff.

Totodile through its evolution are definitely some of my all time favorite Pokemon. In fact, I’m nuts about all three of the Johto starters and each of their evolutions. Easily my favorite starter group. Even though my first Pokemon game was Blue and I traveled all through Kanto I consider myself to be a Johto kid at heart. Its where most of my favorite Pokemon hail from and when my love for the series truly kicked in.

I’ve liked all the starter Pokemon for every game until Black and White. I’ve also liked all of their evolutions except Wartortle and Combusken. I’ll do a post later about Wartortle but when I originally saw Combusken I was shocked and disheartened. I expected Torchic to evolve into some Moltres kind of thing I guess. And its named reminded me of this brand of crackers which I thought was gross.

What I quickly realized though was the Combusken and Blaziken design were far, far cooler than any kind of elegant fire/flying type Pokemon ever could have been. And what an awesome debut concept of Fire/Fighting. I’m also someone who cheers for an underdog, even if I’m the only who thinks its an underdog. So little by little Combusken grew on me until now its one of my favorite designs. Oh yeah, and overtime I totally disassociated the cracker thing.

What I find to be really, really disappointing is Game Freaks decision to repeat Fire/Fighting three times in a row. Torchic’s evolution is a tremendously unique concept but Chimchar and up are the most basic and expected execution of the idea. Again, I like the designs, I just think the repetition in type set up and design are uninspired.

And then to do it a third time! At least a fighting fire pig is pretty unexpected and unique. We can guess its fighting style to be different from your average Fighting type pokemon due to body shape, you know maybe a sumo kind of thing, and thats pretty cool too. I’ve played very little of Black at this point, I don’t even know what Tepig’s final evolution is called so maybe the sumo connection is really obvious for you, but for me right now, all I’ve got is impressions from Sugimori’s illustration.

Anyway the Unova starters, for the first time I just wasn’t immediately captured. I was turned off initially by a feeling of repetition. I thought the overall feeling of Snivy and expression of its face was simply Treeko. I liked Tepig the most and was really into it until I noticed its tail which I felt took away from the design I was enjoying and simply reminded me of Spoink. Honestly, if Snivy/Treeko thing wasn’t there I would have quickly overlooked the Tepig tail.

I also try to remind myself that really, lizards of different species are going to share some common visual traits, same thing with pigs. I could just write it off there until the detail that Snivy is a snake comes in. I guess I feel that its a lack of courage in Snivy’s design that kept it with arms and legs until the final evolution. Why couldn’t it be a snake the whole time? I think it would have been a blast if it required a different set of body language to communicate its emotions in all the illustrations and anime.

Then there’s old blank faced Oshawott. I really didn’t have any appreciation for this Pokemon till I saw a drawing showing it express emotion. I don’t think I would have had such a problem if its head wasn’t white, adding to the feeling of emptiness and desolation of Oshawott’s soul.

I don’t want to go to far off on this negative tangent, the last thing I’ll say here is I don’t appreciate how complicated the Unova starters designs become as they evolve. Something I love and value is doing more with less and the Johto starters are prime examples of that. Cyndaquil and up are the best as they have unique shapes, two tones of fur, and key, tremendously unique placements of fire.

Okay so Totodile is my favorite because I tend to be attracted to the water starters, my favorite color is blue, and I’ve loved dinosaurs, reptiles, and amphibians as far back as I can imagine.

Sonic the Hedgehog 230

Ben Bates — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 06:09:40 +0000

Cover for issue 230. Very happy I got to do this one! The issue itself should be coming out next month and will have us learning exactly what happens to who, what some characters feel about it, and just what other characters intend to do because of it.

I think 229 just recently came out and is the final chapter in the Genesis story arc. I haven’t read it myself and right now I have no idea how it ends. I tend to get my comics way later than most people and it usually leaves me about a month behind. I like reading though to keep on top of whats going on and I’m keen to see how it gets wrapped up. I don’t mean to jump the gun by posting this so soon but I feel like if I don’t do it now I never will. And I really want to put this up before the issue comes out!

As a freelance illustrator I’m almost totally clueless about the story until I’m sent a script. At the time I drew this I had no idea what Genesis was or what it would be about. In fact I didn’t even know the story of 225. In order to draw Silver Sonic I was sent Tracy Yardley!’s pencils and I think that’s the moment I learned Sally was the one who would be killed. It was all quite shocking to me.

So, here in a couple of weeks I’ll be looking forward to hearing thoughts about 230. Let me know what you think!