Peter's Projects: A Thundering Font

PeterAndCompany · March 2009

Hey guys.

Here's the end result of my first project for Advanced Inking Techniques: eight individual one-hour inkings. Basically the only rules were that we had to time ourselves -- with 10 minutes for pencils and the remainder for inking -- and we were only allowed to use brushes for large spot blacks, with the majority done in crow quill. I hadn't touched a crow quill in almost four years (it always felt like nails on a chalkboard to me), so I was a bit rusty going into this. Lemme know what you guys think.

Reference taken from a DA stock gallery.

The clock ran out as I was putting details into the tree on the left, so I had to stop. Dang it.

My new kitten, Emeril, mentioned in the chat thread a week or so ago.

A well-loved kitty tree.

Scarlett O'Hara. I ran out of time while trying to put consistent details into the dress.

My fiance, Whitney.

It said "Imaginary Figure," so I took that literally and drew a sort of tree fairy. I was watching Pan's Labyrinth at the time.

All in all, a fun exercise, and I have a bit of a better feel for crow quill now. I definitely felt a bit out of my element with not being allowed to touch a brush. Also, I meant to post this earlier, but I made a video tutorial a while back for basic brush inking techniques:
Brush Inking

Edit: Ahh, I guess the video embedded itself! How convenient!

NightDragon · March 2009

There barely seems to be any depth to these pieces. I'm not sure if the assignment suggested you do mostly linework and not any shading...but even then, I think you could've really pushed the idea of depth by using thicker lines in the objects closer to the viewer. In some of the areas where you do cross hatch, it seems a bit messy (especially with your fiance's hair - rather than drawing multiple strands of hair and making them overlap randomly to give the hair some form, maybe try doing the hair shadow in spot black with some minimal linework in it to express the hair's curly texture?)

Something more along these lines (but with more spot black, and a bit less hatching and linework, to match what you seem to be doing with these) would seem to be a more effective way to ink hair.

I would suggest overall that you try to really push lineweight variation, and try to make your hatching look more uniform and neat. With the lady in the dress, the dark, messy hatching on her hat isn't working, and doesn't mesh at all with the bit of hatching you've done on the ribbon. On the buildings, it's kinda all over the place, too.

I think that the most effective piece here is the cat, absolutely. There's a nice balance of spot black there, and the hatching blends well between the black and the white. I think it could even look better if the "most black" areas were make into spot black areas. The hatching seems pretty good, is unified through the entire piece, and works well to denote form. Maybe you should turn the rest of these assignments into ink drawings of cats!

rts · March 2009

Yes, study Gibson. I have been doing several Gibson studies recently and they help immensely.

Kendeathwalker · April 2009

You may want to try a more delicate nib on the croquill because you dont really have any thin lines. Either that or be a little less heavy handed with the application. Not much harmony or rhythm to your line quality right now.

..I just read ND's post and realized I'm repeating her. O well.

Grenn · April 2009

First one is great, for me, and in the context of one hour drawings they all work, some better than others.

Glad I'm not the only one who sticks their brushes in their mouth also...

PeterAndCompany · April 2009

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I agree with pretty much everything you guys said already and can definitely see where you're coming from. Admittedly my biggest problem with this one was the fact that I'm just so uncomfortable with using crowquill that it slows down my process dramatically, and with only an hour allowed to work, it kinda limited me with how much I was able to squeeze in. I do want to go back and touch up a couple of them when I get them back from the professor, so I'll post those updates when that happens.

Also I have to get 8 more images cranked out over the next couple days, only this time finishing them in brush (with the same topics as the original 8). I should be able to work much more quickly and get more details into those, so I'll post those once they're done.

In the meantime, I finished my next project for my other class, Digital Design Issues. We had to take an old comic or cartoon character and redesign them to appeal to modern audiences. I decided to go with Howard the Duck and reimagine him as a detective-noir style comic.

Yeah, that's pretty much Daffy Duck in drag there.

RubberAC · April 2009

Peter how does it feel to be Steve Buscemi

PeterAndCompany · April 2009

Pretty good, actually. I get that question a lot. I look exactly like him, too.

PeterAndCompany · April 2009

A few selections from my latest assignments in my inking class. These were all done with a brush. Unfortunately I forgot to scan them before turning them in, and they're all currently hanging on the wall in the sequential building, so I had to deal with just taking photos. I do apologize for the lack of quality here; hopefully you can still see the line art well enough.

A still life with a stone pot filled with water.

My own rendition of Where the Wild Things Are. I tried to mimic the inking style of the book as close as I could.

A depiction of the song "Mariner's Revenge" by the Decemberists. Two guys get trapped in the belly of a whale, and one is bent on killing the other.

PeterAndCompany · April 2009

Here's my latest assignment for my Digital Design class. We had to take a fairy tale and produce four playing cards: the J, Q, K cards, and one number card, all in a suit of our choice. The only requirements were that the face cards had to be reversible, and they all had to incorporate the suit into the artwork somehow. I decided to use the Grimm's fairy tale "Hans My Hedgehog." You might get more out of these cards if you know the story, so to those who aren't familiar with it yet, give it a quick read.

I think the least effective of the bunch is definitely the Queen card. I can't quite put my finger on why, but I think it's because she doesn't take up as much retail space as the other cards, so it feels a bit more empty. What do you guys think?

Mustang · April 2009

To be honest I think your jack kicks the queens ass. The rediculousness of human legged hedgehog riding a rooster is so completely preposterous I cannot not love it.

That being said I love the shit out of all of them, it's just that the jack is best.

Grenn · April 2009

I like the designs (Jack being my fave) but am surprised you didn't round the corners so they actually look more like cards! Very, very picky of me but it's the first thing I noticed.

PeterAndCompany · April 2009

Hehe, thanks Mustang!

Grenn wrote: »

I like the designs (Jack being my fave) but am surprised you didn't round the corners so they actually look more like cards! Very, very picky of me but it's the first thing I noticed.

Oh, for the love of...

I can't believe I didn't do that, seriously. I just slapped myself for that one. Hehe, thanks dude, I fixed the original image so it should have the rounded corners now.

PeterAndCompany · May 2009

Here are my latest practices from Advanced Inking. We did some exercises with inking over another artist's pencils. These were a lot of fun to do.

And a closeup of the final panel to show detail:

These were all done with a brush. I've found that I've been experimenting more with dry brush techniques in this class, and I love how it looks. I may start incorporating it into my own projects after this point.

DeeLock · May 2009

Pretty snazzy, you're definitely improving.

Mustang · May 2009

Yup, that's some good inking.

The_Glad_Hatter · May 2009

looks pretty good, altough the wolverine was a bit confusing to me.. hard to see where wat stops or begins in his torso/ neck area.. You can work it out, but i think it'd be better with some more contrasts in it.

PeterAndCompany · May 2009

Thanks, guys!

Glad_Hatter: Yeah, I tried my best to make sense of the original lineart, but it was really a jumbled mess of hash marks and scribbles. The professor chose the page specifically because he wanted us to figure it out. Most people had problems with the leg areas, since those all seemed to just blend together into one big mass in the original. I actually messed up big-time with the character on the right -- look at his left leg (our right), those bricks are supposed to be his thigh. Whoops!

Anywho, here's the next assignment for my Digital Design class. We had to make a computer font, so I seized the opportunity to put one together that I have been wanting to do for a long time, called "Thunderous Roar:"

I wanted to make a font that looked like the voice was so powerful, the letters themselves were crumbling from the force. Both of those lettering styles are in the same font. The top is lowercase, the bottom is the caps. I mapped out duplicate punctuation in both styles onto some of the unused keys, so it's essentially two fonts in one. It's just lettering, though, without any numbers (since I figured I wouldn't need them immediately. I may add them in later on). Also, the gray on the bottom was added in separately to improve readability; the font itself is just the black outline.

ManonvonSuperock · May 2009

the N looks like an M in the bottom one.

Rankenphile · May 2009

those are actually pretty decent, although the bottom one looks like chocolate chip cookies and is pretty hard to read

Projeck · May 2009

i thought the bottom one was brains, or something

The_Glad_Hatter · May 2009

personally, i get more of a nervous/ jittery feel from the top one than the powerfull roar.
i DO like the top one. a lot.
the bottom one.. hrm... the specks are way more visible than the font itself, something i'd try to avoid when doing typo...

NightDragon · May 2009

The first font is leagues better than the 2nd one, in my opinion. The spacing between the letters on the bottom font is all over the place...some letters are much, much larger than others, and are holding a lot more "weight". The blank space you've got between each of the letters varies a huge amount, and makes it a bit difficult to read additionally with all the black dots you've got floating around. I know you probably don't have time to redo it, but I think trying for letterforms that are more uniform in terms of spacing and visual weight may help the readability and overall look of the typeface. I think the lineweight on the bottom font is also varying waaaaay too much...and the black dots you've meant as a "space filler" seem way too dominating to be that, when you compare them to the very thin lines on the actual letterforms. I suppose that wouldn't be such a problem if the black bits were much, much more uniform in size and spacing, and if the linework on the letterforms didn't vary as much in weight.

The lettering on the top is evenly spaced, and most of the letters don't compete with eachother in weight. It's easily read and doesn't have the confusion the bottom font does.

Penny Arcade

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