Piano Ghost Comic

I wasn't going to post this but I decided to do it anyways, if only because I spent so much time on it.  We had to do a 4-8 page comic for Narrative illustration, and I ended up going more towards the 8 page side...  I was essentially cramming a 12-16 page story into 7 pages, which was a little frustrating.  I wish that I would have had time to ink this, but I did the best I could with what time I had.  I might go back this summer and draw the flashback page about the girl's past (instead of cramming it into a speech bubble.)  Anyways, It was a great learning experience in terms of pacing a narrative and working with a lot of dialogue.  (also a good lesson about biting off more than I can chew...)

Drawing from the Tablet work

Here are a few recent assignments from my tablet drawing class.  The first two are partially from life, finished from a photo and the last one was done exclusively from a variety of photo refs.  (thank you katie for helping me out with that.)

Working on color, instead of focusing so much on rendering.  I'm learning a lot in this class.  Colors got a bit squashed as usual... I really need to figure out how to fix that.

detail:

Speaker for the Dead book cover

Here is a mock cover I made for one of my favorite books, Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card.  (Yes, it recently came to my attention that the author is a homophobic ass- a revelation that came as quite a shock and disappointment...)  The book begins with the gruesome murder of a human scientist by a race of seemingly peaceful native aliens, called Piggies. The scientist's adopted daughter, who feels responsible for the incident, calls a Speaker for the Dead to come to the planet and discover what happened that night.  I wanted to symbolically depict the incident, which serves as a catalyst for the main conflict between the two races, while hinting at the secret behind the murder.

I've never liked the published cover of the book.  Its a generic looking, massive space port on the surface of the planet.  It doesn't even make sense in the context of the story, where the colony on the planet is tiny and isolated.  In my opinion, good book covers should contain more thought to them, and reveal something about the story inside.