Working on a little homework in prep for Natalie's first day of school, 1st grade, tomorrow....
Natalie doing a good job!

Dad's version.....

Adding an Author

I have just added an author to the blog ....TrooperTreehouse....lets hope this works

A page from my note book...Ethan want to stay up late and watch movies....its fun...

Color

Trooper is obviously upset with my progress and seems willing to pull me off the project.  I can understand his frustration having talked with him about this. I did not appreciate such a public statement,  nor did I feel their comments will help my situation or his.  It is not my intention to delay his comic or hinder him in any way,  These things just take time....and sleep....time for bed.:)  I will hope for a full apology ...

Black and White

More playing with inking, this was done in Manga again.  I feel like I am getting more and more comfortable with the inking.  I like these 2 images of Trooper.  Now I need to figure out a story.  I have been focused on styles and workflow...but have not made progress with thumbnails and story lines.  In the next few weeks I will be pulling stories or mini comics together....lets hope ...time for bed...

Stars....

playing with color...Trooper and the Bear out on a star filled night....time for bed

Wishing...

Testing a posting from posterous....

Inking

Playing with inking in Manga studio again...redid an old rough for clean up and starting to look at text....

warm up doodle in photoshop

warm up doodle in photoshop

can I draw with u

I did this for a few hours this morning.....it is a panel about the making of a panel...just for fun

Trooper meets the Bear

More playing with Manga Studio for the inking.  Really starting to love this program.  Brought into Photoshop for color.  I know the Creature Box guys use sketchbook pro...and I love their mix of line and color.  They do the best stuff!  I have sketchbook but feel I am just starting to really feel good with Photoshop and to learn another new program and duplicate brushes and all...I just have to spend more time on PS to get the color and rendering down...also need to understand comics "flattening" techniques.

Way to late to be up doing this...time for bed...

Ogre or Troll

Tried to use inking techniques in Manga debut 4 software....really like the line work in this program...
Still need to figure out coloring techniques...looks to dark and muddy ...but we will see how it looks in 3 days...

butcher paper Troll

Doing a few character studies before bed.  Using a new sketch book and brush ink pens.  Watched the closing of the Olympics and did a doodle before bed...good night.

Panels

Sketches for a comic....note book with inking and white prisma color pencils ....hopefully more to come...

 a few more sketches from the sketchbook...

Art Parent Comics

        For the last Art Parent we did story telling and comics.  My son's teacher dressed up for Halloween as the character "Super Cow" ...very funny.  He also has a evil villain visiting the room called the EVB (Evil Villain in Black) Who steals pencils and takes bites out of lunch time sandwiches.  I made a small 4 pager with open speech balloons for the kids to fill in.  We had fun and I tried to sketch some of Ethan's classmates in the scenes also...it was a fun finish to a really good year

....can't wait till it's Natalie's turn for 2nd grade!

The scene opens in the secret lair of the hero known as Super Cow.  A barn on the outskirts of the city. As SC reviews his crime monitoring devices he sees something is not right at the school and calls his special helpers, the 2nd grade class

Our teacher rallies his troops and gives them what all little kids like....small crime fighting robots to be planted around the school looking for someone up to no good. (sorry if this is a little big brotherish...but Ethan loves robots and this is the best I could do in the time I had)

The little cameras pick up children in the Gym.  Some evil doer has planted extra stinky socks in the class.  The little robots catch the EVB in the act with his bag of dirty tricks!

SUPER COW is on the way to the rescue!...you fill in the blanks...

Trooper Returns

So I am thinking about starting up "Trooper" again....since no one ever really saw Trooper anyway it would not be much of a return ....just for me...
Time for bed...

Please

just a quick warm up sketch for fun...it was a scribble that turned into a fun little feeling....

Art Parent Cover

Here is a rough cover for a school "Art Parent" handout for the 1st and 2nd graders...I guess the mouse still needs a lot of work.  So the next posts will be more character development....
Time for bed....

Time To Go

Sometimes time passes quickly and you miss all the small clues until that moment when,  be it fate, luck or destiny,  it finally bites you in the butt....And if you are lucky you realize its time for a change.  Scamper and Mousey had one to many close calls....and decided to move on. Scamper and Mousey are the names given by Ethan and Natalie to this pair.

Photoshop rendering...I wanted to play with light in a more dramatic way.  He finally "sees the light" as it were. This took 2.5 hours from a true blank piece of paper.  Trying get more of a scene, and story telling, move away from just technique pieces.  I like the textures and the feet and floor.  Notice the poop droppings ....Mousey lost composure on this close call....Implied fir textures...with the main character in shadow I was hoping for drama and contrast but I may have to revisit this in a few days.
Time for bed....

Trooper

Trooper comic is a short,  unfortunately unfinished, story about a boy and a bear...just for fun.  This was a first attempt at multiple pages and inking...
Color page sampler...

pages in sequence....