Concept art from my new superhero comic

[Michael Anden]

Ceremonial regalia adorning Mt Ryzar's processional avenue halls.

[Michael Anden]

Gaunt processing chamber- from the realm of life, to the Great Beyond.



"The inside... is the same as the outside. There's nothing to separate them except our insistence. You understand?"
"Uuuuh... no."
"I really have been carrying you all these years, haven't I Drayton?"

[Michael Anden]

Bax Harriman... reptilian scrap iron dealer- in truth, a sideline to the his sidearm dealing.

Since he won't let anyone else test his merchandise, he is very proficient with them- and very lucky... and hence not a lizard you want to cross, especially when you've got an army of undead fascist shocktroopers on your back.



Bax is is himself on the run from Arch Deacon Lest Radan's order of psychic monks, who have not taken kindly to a missed shipment of motor-razor mines needed to protect their monumentally valuable cache of Lost War relics.

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

good sense of form, weight and imagination in your creations, Michael: many of these designs are on par with published work.

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

All great art is based on talent and originality, artists that went their own way regardless of success.Examples such as Van Gogh, Lowry, Beryl Cook the list is endless.If you're tied in with a publisher and need to make a living it's tough, but if you are starting out and fear rejection or not, you might as well ignore whats gone before and do the work that you want ,with the hope someday it will be recognised.

a contributer after my own heart!

Anyone setting out soley to make cash first and foremost with their creations will almost certainly come up with cynical, trying-to-please-everyone pap, [a bit like most Hollywood creations today]

Someone who sticks with their own original vision----and who essentially doesn't care about success or massive financial rewards---ironically has a better chance of coming up with something that will take off with the public: they are looking at art with a fresh eye and trying to forge a new style of looking at the genre, which produces healthier artwork.

[Michael Anden]

good sense of form, weight and imagination in your creations, Michael: many of these designs are on par with published work.

Thanks ISPYSHHHGUY. I'm learning to be healthier in taking both praise and criticism with a grain of salt, but very much appreciate your points about form and weight. Always more to learn for me there, as I think those (aside from a good script- soon to come) are key to making a made-up world believable, no matter how outlandish.

I relation to your following post, I certainly agree that it's best to draw what you love rather than what you hope will please others. It's not necessarily going to score you points on the social scene, any more than training all the time for competitive sports or studying the deeper minutae or the sciences, but there's more than one way to live.

Of course, you have to make a living unless you're really lucky- but I've tried drawing solely others' creations for money, and found the security wasn't worth the sacrifice when I've already got my own ideas- for better or worse- vying for all available space in my noggin

[Raven]

I rather like the busy style of the pictures; I'm not thinking of them as "cluttered" but "value for money!" There's a Canadian comic artist, James Stokoe whose work I find very appealing - I've even bought Godzilla comics for this chap! - who specialises in overwhelming detail overload - here's a picture of his: http://www.cheshirecatart.com/blog/wp-c ... Image3.jpg - and whose use of colour can be rather flamboyant, which I find quite attractive, and who's doing well, getting commissioned by Marvel, etc.

Whereas I could see people commenting on the colour/lighting not always being realistic, I expect you're not really aiming for naturalism but a purposely hyperreal effect, matching the exaggeration of the action. Nothing wrong with the odd psychedelic touch, and if your action's altered beyond normal proportions, extending that to the other elements can add to the impact.

Always more to learn for me there, as I think those (aside from a good script- soon to come) are key to making a made-up world believable, no matter how outlandish.

I think the important thing - bearing in mind that writing/storytelling is a specialist skill in itself, quite different from drawing, and a craft that can take years to get right in itself - is to expend at least as much - if not more - time on the script as on the artwork.

I relation to your following post, I certainly agree that it's best to draw what you love rather than what you hope will please others.

To an extent, though nobody exists in a vacuum, and, as the "marketplace" constantly shifts, versatility can help with survival. In the same way that reading very widely and deeply improves a writer, I expect that adapting to different projects can also be beneficial to an artist.

Of course, you have to make a living unless you're really lucky- but I've tried drawing solely others' creations for money, and found the security wasn't worth the sacrifice when I've already got my own ideas- for better or worse- vying for all available space in my noggin.

Have you ever applied your style to other genres, outside the SF action/hardware area, like, say, horror? Do you find you can do "quiet" scenes just as well as the dynamic, gung-ho, outré stuff - you know, like, say, non-armoured, non-muscled, regular guys sitting chatting in a pub?

[Michael Anden]

Sure- I've done girls-next-door sitting in pubs, I've done anthropomorphic numbers and letters for children's literacy & numeracy publishers, I've done lesbian vampire comics (that's comics with vampires for lesbians reader market, naturally, rather than exploitative comics with drawings of spuriously swimsuit-clad be-fanged supermodels in them); computer repair adverts, orange juice cartons, portraits; graphic design for a vintage car dealership; portraits of people's pets... and I'll never get those hours of my life back! The only stuff I enjoyed doing other than my own stuff was other people's comics- but I much prefer doing a normal 'non-creative' job with my working day, and my own creations in the evening.

If anyone wants to do for those things to create a decent working portfolio and earn a decent commercial crust, go for it, I'm not stopping you- and plenty of other people will appreciate those things far better than I can.

As to a script, to tell the truth, I've put far more time into the Gods script over the last three years than art. I've gone from being utterly mortified by the results of my writing since 1992 (two unpublished novels plus various scrips, short stories, Doctor Who pitches etc) to being able to sleep a tiny little better at night with how I write now. And I am absolutely positively of the opinion that in comics, as in movies, script comes first.... never really understood the point of anyone approaching comics otherwise!

[Michael Anden]

Hold sharpshooter Stengaard Pasha can thread a bullet through the eye of a needle a mile off in a hurricane... but has still sight a decent barber.

[Michael Anden]

The Scryer, chief druidess of the Lightlord Council and leader of the Hold resistance against the millennium-gestating- and now full blown- Great Incursion into our dimension.



"You've lost it Scryer- it's force that'll win this war- not whatever peacenik hocus-pocus you've been cooking up while the world's burning!"
"You're a very aggressive man, aren't you, Major Cyger?"

[Michael Anden]

The Incursion makes no bones about targeting and trapping fleeing civilians to boost the numbers of its Gaunt legions.

[Michael Anden]

Ryzar's Tomb Palace

[Michael Anden]

The Door of Dementia

[Michael Anden]

GDR (Global Defence Restitution) nuclear drill boring attempt to infiltrate the Mountain fortress from below.

[Michael Anden]

Those who 'successfully' resist being Turned by the Gaunts are swiftly deposited into the deeper pockets of Mount Ryzar's catacombs, where a possibly worse fate awaits them...