NILES NEMO IN SEGALAND-Episode 2 "Columns"

Here is episode 2 of Niles Nemo in Segaland from the October-November 1990 issue of Sega Visions Magazine, almost a quarter of a century ago!  The Sega Genesis version of Columns was brand new.  Bill Kunkel wrote another great script with some very creative characters and scenes.  FUN FACTS:  The stage manager character is a cartoon rendering of my friend and The NoWhere-Men™ writing partner, Dave LeBlanc.  Dave is not a little person, nor does he normally wear a toga, but otherwise he looked just like that circa 1990.  Also, this was the first Niles Nemo adventure where I rendered separate art for the line art and color, using a fairly complex technique to get the look I was after in the color.  If memory serves, I believe I went through this process because I was less than satisfied with the fact that my hand lettering was printed in color in the first episode, rather than separated out and printed in just black ink.  Separating the line art from the color also gave me crisper black line work throughout. 

Here's the rundown on my technique:

Having done the pencils on a large layout pad, and then inked and lettered them on a light box onto Bristol board, I next rendered the color on a separate overlay. I did this by putting a sheet of watercolor paper over the inked art and tracing the color areas in colored pencil on the light box. For example, Nile’s coat would be outlined in red pencil. Then, I could paint in the colors using overhead light, which gave me more control over the tonalities. Finally, I would add some airbrush effects, more colored pencil, and voila! This was in the early days of desktop publishing, and though the rest of the magazine was produced using various graphic programs, I was many years away from learning how to use a computer to generate art. Today, I still use pen and ink for all my illustrations and then scan, and finish them in Photoshop.

As always, click on the images to see the larger art, and stay tuned for more Niles Nemo adventures!  NEXT:  Barbarians, dragons, and elves! Oh my!!

THE NOWHERE-MEN™ NEW ANIMATED LOGO AND CHARACTERS ART ONLINE!

A year passes like nothing, or so it seems.  The first six months of 2013 are a total blur, as I was busy with a major book project.  The rest of the year has mostly involved catching up with everything I put off during that period.  Hence, it's been over a year since my last post and even longer since I revamped The NoWhere-Men™ website with this very cool and dramatic animated art featuring all of the heroes on the cliff with the logo animated and some striking lightning and lighting effects.  It's an animated GIF and at 2.5MB can be a bit of a download, but is worth the several seconds of wait time in my opinion.  The above image is one frame from the animation.  Click on it for the larger version, or go to the site for the animation  Several more updates for The NoWhere-Men™ site are in the works, including adding Joe Comet™ and Hour Father™ images, as well as animated logos and a wild illustration featuring a face-off between The Maniacal Mister Bones and The Phantom Aardvark!  Stay tuned!

Meanwhile, I've added some new products to The NoWhere-Men™ gift shop, including a very cool new black T-Shirt adorned with the classic cliff scene.  Check it out here!

THE NOWHERE-MEN™ ART 2

Here is a brand-new character also featured in The Nowhere-Men™. Hour Father™ is an enigmatic time-traveler who summons a time vortex with his pocket watch. HF has a habit of showing up at critical moments in the time stream, uttering his catch phrase, "It's about time." and disappearing. His motives are thus far unknown. For this illustration, I stuck mainly with traditional flat colors, which I tend to prefer with crisp line work, eschewing the airbrushed tonalities I used in the Joe Comet™ piece. For some reason, to me it looks like an old Charlton Comics cover, which suits me fine! My comic art style influences are mainly from the '60's and '70's, with stalwarts like Ditko, Colan, Kirby, Buscema, Heck, and Kubert high on the list. This is Hour Father's web debut, by the way. You saw it here first!

And of course, you can click on the image for a larger version of the art.

THE NOWHERE-MEN™ ART 1

Behold the mysterious being known only as Joe Comet™! Joe is one of my characters from The NoWhere-Men™ (see www.thenowhere-men.com). This cover concept was rendered in pen, brush & ink, scanned and digitally colored in Photoshop. I pulled out all the stops on this one, using lots of airbrush and other effects to enhance the eerie mood of this scene from Joe's origin story. The first NoWhere-Men story, featuring Joe and the entire cast of heroes, is scripted and in thumbnail form. I hope to serialize it online in 2010. The NoWhere-Men project is a continuing work-in-progress. Some of the "Cataclysmic Cosmic Comet Comics™" characters created by both me and my cohort Dave LeBlanc go back to our teen years (long ago!). Joe Comet and a few others are more recent creations from the last decade or so. Click on the image for a larger version of the art.