Zulu's art

[zuludelta]

Working on "cleaning up" my illustration style, going away from the more exaggerated proportions of my previous work:

[zuludelta]

Bored. Decided to do a Capcom-styled sprite of House Quake:



Maybe I'll do the rest of the original NPI guys (Kommando, Desdemona, Bloodshadow) when I find the time

[Carravaggio]

Keep teasing us with Seniority pics, ZD, I'm hooked!
Love the 2D Quake :D

[zuludelta]

Keep teasing us with Seniority pics, ZD, I'm hooked!

Glad you like it Car... I'm actually reading the script for the first issue right now, and I gotta tell you, I really have to pull my weight on this one because Tort has done a really good job writing it.

And finally, because I'd rather goof off instead of work, the original NPI guys, in Capcom sprite form
(from L-R: me, Kommando, HouseQuake, Desdemona, and Bloodshadow):

[catastrophe]

Awesome art Zulu

[zuludelta]

Thanks cat.

Here's a drawing I made of a Filipino Igorot warrior some time ago, but only coloured recently. It was the first of a series I was going to make of ancient warriors/martial artists (besides the Igorot warrior, I was planning on making a samurai, a ninja, a Shao-lin monk, a traditional muay thai fighter, etc.) but I never really followed through with it. Maybe in the future (I get distracted too easily).



I drew this while I was still heavily influenced by guys like Skottie Young, Humberto Ramos, and Adam Pollina, hence the wacky proportions.

Some background on the subject matter: Igorots were some of the most feared fighters in the Philippines, and their territory in the mountainous north of the country was one of the few places that never fell under foreign military subjugation. They resisted over the 300 years of Spanish colonial rule, and thwarted the Japanese encroachment of World War II (in fact, a good number of Japanese soldiers ended up being assimilated into Igorot society during and immediately after the war... I could probably go off on an amateur sociological digression about how the warrior culture of the Igorots probably held some appeal to the samurai mentality of the Japanese, but I won't). The Americans made some headway into the north during their occupation of the Philippines in the first half of the 20th century, but only because they tried a non-military approach... they established churches and schools and waged what could be termed as an assault on the indigenous culture (these days, most Igorots are nominally Christian, although they still practice some traditional rites, and English is generally considered the third most widely-spoken language in the area... also, strangely enough, country music is popular in many Igorot communities).

Much of the Igorot martial art, as it were, is weapons-based, using the sib-at (pike), the bu-neng (otherwise known as the bolo or itak, a heavy long knife for slashing/hacking, much like a machete), and the ax, although wrestling also plays a large part in the indigenous martial arts. The traditional martial arts of the Igorot are all but forgotten (although some of it survives in ritualized dance), but elements of it (along with the martial arts of other Filipino communities) can be found in the modern-day Eskrima and Kali martial arts schools (popularized in comic books such as Nightwing)... the eskrima staves are supposed to represent the original bladed weapons (19th century Filipino martial art practitioners had to resort to wooden weapons during the Spanish and American occupation since carrying bladed weapons in public was made illegal).       

[electro]

Enjoying the art Zulu :blink:

[Figure Fan]

I've always thought that your work on Senority looked pretty realistic. How would you plan on changing it?

I like the newest piece, though.  :cool:

[zuludelta]

I've always thought that your work on Senority looked pretty realistic. How would you plan on changing it?

Nothing major... I noticed that while using simpler and blockier designs works in animation for conveying movement and expression, it doesn't work as well as a type of shorthand in my panel-to-panel art (which is already "simplified" because of the flat colouring approach I use).

I like the newest piece, though.  :cool:

I actually hated the drawing when I finished it (the warrior one) because I felt like I did a bad job of mimicking the whole Eric Canete/Skottie Young aesthetic (not copying them specifically, but just exuding the same type of energy their work typically has... the static pose I picked doesn't really help), which is why it took me so long to get around to colouring it. I still plan on developing a style in that direction (just not for Seniority) but I still need a lot of work and practice using that much of a stylized approach.

[zuludelta]

A tad tied up with some RL stuff... thought I'd share a couple of my recent reading material with you guys, though, if you're looking to refresh your art skills:

Dynamic Figure Drawing by Burne Hogarth: This book basically takes the core elements of the Dynamic Anatomy, Drawing the Human Head, and Drawing Dynamic Hands books and puts them all together into a concise, practical, figure drawing guide. Not a book for the beginning artist but for the student who's already studied human surface anatomy and basic musculature, this is a great reference for rendering the human figure from all sorts of angles and in all sorts of poses. It's also a good refresher book if you feel the need to bone up on your formal life drawing skills, but have lost your old human anatomy references or don't have the time or resources to do a live life drawing session.

Storyboard Design Course: Principles, Practice, and Techniques by Giuseppe Cristiano: A practical and comprehensive guide to the art of storyboarding for film, commercials, animation, video games, and other media. The book's layout is designed to mimic a formal school course, with chapters devoted to specific "lessons" in storyboarding. A lot of the techniques here can easily be applied to writing and drawing comics.   

[zuludelta]

Seems like as time goes by, I get lazier and lazier with my "analog" drawing. It's gotten to the point where I usually just draw basic shapes and movement lines on paper and then draw everything else digitally. I still bust out the pencil when I feel like loosening up my hands and fingers, though, like this sketch of Successor (a character from Seniority):

[zuludelta]

Some head rotation references I made for a certain character:

[Tortuga]

Hey Eugene!

I love that Successor pic too.

[MJB]

Nice work on the head turns Zulu. A few more frames and you could animate it. Heh.

-MJB

[zuludelta]

Hey Eugene!

I was trying to flesh out his look, going for a cross between "thin Henry Kissinger" and "post-freaky stepdaughter marriage Woody Allen"  :lol:

I love that Successor pic too.

In retrospect, I think his look was subconsciously inspired by Gerard Butler and Stellan Skarsgard in the 2005 Beowulf & Grendel movie.

Nice work on the head turns Zulu. A few more frames and you could animate it. Heh.

I'm actually thinking of using an animator's approach to drawing the comic, basically building up a library of "cels" that I can re-use and adapt to cut down on the drawing time for future issues, similar to how printed adaptations of animated films are made (although I'm obviously skipping the animation part). Building the image base is the hardest and most time-intensive part, though.

[zuludelta]

Here's a piece I did for kicks:



It's Iron Man re-imagined as a tokusatsu type character... I guess he'd be called Tetsujin ("iron-man") in this case... I didn't want to go the obvious route and re-make him as a manga-styled mech suit wearing guy.

[UnkoMan]

Ha ha! That's awesome!
And, I would probably totally watch a Japanese Iron Man. Besides, he's bound to have to jump into a giant robot by the end of the episode. In fact, he'll probably join up with War Machine's and some other people's. And he can STILL fight The Mandarin!

[zuludelta]

Ha ha! That's awesome!
And, I would probably totally watch a Japanese Iron Man. Besides, he's bound to have to jump into a giant robot by the end of the episode. In fact, he'll probably join up with War Machine's and some other people's. And he can STILL fight The Mandarin!

Yeah, the giant robot thing sounds great (especially if it's a combiner of some sort), maybe I'll look into it when I get the time.

[Mowgli]

I really love that drawing of the japanese style Iron Man. It's almost like a power ranger meets shellhead. Cool concept and execution. The pose has the perfect feel for the genre.

I have to say, I REALLY like that sketch of Successor from Seniority. It's a departure from the other work you have been posting (digital). I like that sketchy look and think there is a lot of feeling in his face and eyes. I would like to see more of that sort of work from you.

I also am dieing to read some Seniority!!!!  :blink:

[zuludelta]

I really love that drawing of the japanese style Iron Man. It's almost like a power ranger meets shellhead. Cool concept and execution. The pose has the perfect feel for the genre.

Thanks! I wouldn't call myself a fan of tokusatsu, but I grew up watching a lot of Choudenshi Bioman and Shaider, so those two shows basically informed the design. 

I have to say, I REALLY like that sketch of Successor from Seniority. It's a departure from the other work you have been posting (digital). I like that sketchy look and think there is a lot of feeling in his face and eyes. I would like to see more of that sort of work from you.

I also am dieing to read some Seniority!!!!  :blink:

My "analog" drawings are actually a bit of a departure from the purely digital stuff, more so, I think, than most artists who work in both media... as I've mentioned before, I "draw" digitally with a mouse (and not a pen & tablet), so the movements are really different. I definitely lean towards more stylized and generally rough figures with my pencil work (I think some of my biggest influences would probably be Goseki Kojima and more recent guys like Eric Canete, Goran Parlov, and Gabriel Ba). With regards to Seniority, Tort and I have talked about going the "analog route" when it comes to the art... I'm actually penciling a sample page right now (to be sent out to the potential inker), well, after I finish fixing a client's PC, anyway, maybe I'll post it here eventually.

[zuludelta]

Wow, it's been a month since I posted here... been away from the boards to deal with some messy messy real-world issues, but thought I'd pop in here in case people start wondering what happened to me. And even if people don't, oh well, I've always found doing art to be pretty cathartic.

Anyways, here's where I clumsily segue into today's pieces. I learned to do silk-screen printing as a kid; part of the old practical arts primary school curriculum (Grade 3-6) in the Philippines when I was growing up, along with agriculture (each student was alloted a small plot of land that they had to tend to for a year), cooking, basic electrical stuff, sewing (which I very nearly failed at), and woodworking.

So I was thinking of doing some silk-screen prints (maybe on a shirt or something), but I didn't have a silk-screen (or even an x-acto knife) laying around, so I just took some acetates and cut my drawn patterns onto them using an old box cutter I found in one of my old school bags:


This one's a likeness of Dr. Jose Rizal, noted 19th century author (his darkly satirical novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo are two of my favourite books), reformer, and politico-ideological predecessor of more notable "pacifist revolutionaries" such as Mahatma Gandhi and Sun-Yat Sen. You can read more about him here.   

Once I'd finished one, though, I decided to do another:

This one's Andres Bonifacio, another Philippine revolutionary (more about him here), albeit a more controversial one than Rizal: although he was inspired by Rizal's writings, he advocated revolution through armed struggle, and he was actually killed by his fellow revolutionaries during an internal struggle for leadership. He's been lionized in current Philippine history though, as sort of the common man's hero (as opposed to Rizal being hero for the intellectual elite).

I've already tested the stencils out via spray-painting (kinda reminded me of my teen "graffiti" phase), but now I'm looking for some fabric paint so I can do some transfers on some old shirts.

Also, here's a more intricate pattern I drew (I'll cut it out soon as I get some more acetates), it's of a girl playing "piko", which is sort of like the Philippine version of hopscotch.


   

[zuludelta]

Well, time I dusted off this thread.

I haven't been very active art-wise lately. I'm not really in the habit of talking about my personal circumstances in these forums, so let's just say that I've been in a position these past few months where the creative impulse and art (commercial and personal) was not a priority. And while I don't want to speak for Joel (Tortuga) and his own unique set of circumstances, it's probably safe to say that it was the accumulation of what we like to call "RL issues" that's pushed the Seniority comic book project back for an indefinite amount of time.

That out of the way, I did just get a new tablet (thank you tax refund!), so I'm trying to adapt my process to incorporate it. Here's a couple of clumsy early efforts:


A self-portrait of sorts, done within 5 minutes of hooking the tablet up


Started out as a sketch of Philippine actor Robin Padilla, but I kind of lost interest half-way through and ended up just filling in his face with generic features.     

[style]

Dope....But, "Why so serious?"

[zuludelta]

Dope....But, "Why so serious?"

Ha ha... I'm not that serious at all, style... I'm so laid back I practically sleepwalk through my day!

[Aly Cat]

Pretty cool stuff Z', always a pleasure to see your work  :)

[zuludelta]

Pretty cool stuff Z', always a pleasure to see your work  :)

Thanks Aly!

Here are some samples of the work I was doing for Seniority before we decided to re-think the approach to the art. Originally, my goal was to build 3D "sets" in Sketch-up (Google's 3-D modeling program), and use publicly released .skp models, and then draw and paint over screenshots of those "sets"... that way, I could concentrate on drawing figures. It ended up being a bit too time-consuming, though, and I wasn't exactly happy with how my figure work meshed with the models. But here are a couple of samples, for what they're worth:

[UnkoMan]

While the exterior of the houses is a little too "obviously 3D model." the rest of the pictures seem to look really good, I think. I can see how it would end up taking MORE time than just drawing them, however.

I really like that cowboy page, though.