Damn right! Effin' A! Except for page to page tweaking and shading and effects, I’ve colored all 32 pages of ANGELCORPS Issue #001! Woo Freaking Hoo! I might make Megacon with a stack of Issues #001 after all. We’ll see. No biggie. There are other cons too. But NOW I get to play with standardization of character profiles, trading cards, posters, introducing new characters and all the rest. Hope it all goes well. Hey, if I just please one little kid out there (or one little kid trapped in an adult-sized body), who will read this stuff and go, "Coooool!", then I'll feel pretty good about my efforts! I remember that feeling when I was coming up, and there are few things like it!

ANGELCORPS...ADVANCE!

E-Man

Just back from a Royal Caribbean cruise (our 6th, we love 'em) down in the actual Caribbean with some of my family. We hit up St. Thomas, St. Maarten, San Juan and Labadee. Killer trip! ATV'd thru rain forests, medicated myself with drinks of the day, relaxed on deck with a great James Bond biography, fun, sun, auctions, massive food, shows and all the rest! Can't wait to see RC's newest mega-ship, the Oasis, due out next year!

On the artistry front, only managed to color two more pages. Starting a 3rd today. About 10 more to go to complete 32-page Issue 1. Also inventing new original character after new original character, new theoretical technologies and weapons, new villains, and all are sitting patiently in a lonnnng dugout somewhere. But ANGELCorps first! Miss rendering full-bodied, fully-colored snaps of heroes in action and bombshell pinups, but I'll be back to it in no time. Eye on the prize y'all.

Hey, Merry Christmas!

Scanned in the final 13 pages of 32 to color. With going to Vegas and the Rodcom Challenge and other challenges, I just haven't had time to do squat except sketch! I have hundreds of interesting heroes and villains shaping up in the pipeline! Hope to begin changing all the delays this weekend and move steadily til I'm done with the first Issue of ANGELCorps. Then comes the fun part - promotion, marketing and planning some cons - that sort of thing.

Issue two is half roughed on comic boards already so I'll have a good jump on the follow-up when the time comes.

Fortunately my 320 Gb external hard drive arrived today so I can back up my entire hard drive this weekend, including a lot of damn fine art if I say so myself! Keep getting the shakes over what might happoen if my computer crashed. Brrrr.

Really enjoying the creativity out on DA. Wonderful, cool ideas out there! Can't wait to see more because it can be, frankly, quite inspiring!

Onward, everyone!

E-Man out.

Whew! E-Man here. While it was fun and all, Rod Williams' Multiverse Original Character Challenge was quite the artistic bear!



My drawback is that I simply don't have a team to help me out by making all the chores easier. I have...well...just me! Scripting, Pencilling, Inking, Coloring, Special Effects, Lettering, etc. - all just me and Photoshop! The challenge was particularly grueling because of all the research on every one of the five characters, how their powers work, making deductions around their personalities, making sure their brown hair wasn't colored chartreuse, etc. This is the most underestimated part of the challenge because it requires so many consultations and re-consultations with each character's profile! Is Premiere's wrist band metal or cloth? Did I make sure to have Rachel's left hand be fire and the right one be light? Can she do laser bursts? Just how strong is Blue Jaye? Is Blue Star the wise-cracking one? Should I go with Aurora in bellbottoms as in the profile or follow Rod's example of tights and boots? What does each hero's energy discharge look like? Does the sword glow? I just found out today that Rachel's costume is really just black and white, but the profile shot led me to believe that teal-ish highlight was a permanent part of the color scheme! Sorry Sebastian! By the way, that costume looks awesome on her but quite the challenge to render! Anyway, if I dropped the ball on anyone's character, I apologize because I really became fond of each and every one of them!

I figured that they would probably click as a team on some occasion in the future, perhaps, and if so, that group would need that clever little team name to make them stand out.



I opted for DOOMGUARD because it sounded pretty cool and sort of describes their special "go-to" status as occasional protectors of the Multiverse when the doo-doo gets deep. DOOMGuard stands for Dimensional Operatives Overseeing Multiverse Guardianship (Actually they are ASSISTING with the "Overseeing," of course. The Vindicators have things pretty well in hand in their own dimension, I'm sure!)

Well, all of this just lets you all know that I really enjoyed playing in (and constructing part of) Rod's universe! Pretty cool place if I say so myself!

Thanks for your support, folks and the constructive feedback as well. I know there are lots of you guys out there teeming with talent and ideas right here in THIS dimension and I can't wait to see them featured in DA's own dimension!

More to follow!

E-Man / Eric

After a series of computer-problems that scared the crap outta me, I thought I better get my submission in to akins7075's character rendering challenge before the 11/15 deadline and before something ELSE went wrong. That submission was put up quickly in a form that did not include any line coloring. I did that because I wasn't sure I was going to have a computer to be able to go back and take care of that chore! So without wasting anymore time, and because the deadline is not until Saturday, I just went back and pimped it out by coloring the lines, my favorite final rendering effect. Hope you like the added pop. Hey, I tried, ya know?

On other challenge fronts, I'm happy to report all pencils and 90% of the inks are finished on Rodcomm1000's Multiverse Original Character Challenge for which I'm carrying the first leg of six segments. It features my guy, I-Force, carrying the Assegai Sword in the middle of a pack of 5 other original charcaters, all banding together to try and assist in saving the Multiverse over the course of the maximum allowed four pages. Not easy to dynamically feature six characters and still advance the story line, but I think I managed okay. Hope you all will agree when the finals are posted.

The thing is....all the coloring! Geez! I think I can get to it all....flats at the very least...but I'm already busy as all get out. Any coloring stars interested to take a shot? Emanz?

E-Man or
Eric or
Tired Dude

Well, alllllllllllll righty then. Things sure got busy in a hurry. Deadline is creeping up on akin7075’s ongoing challenge calling for artists to render one of his many powered characters. I’ve had a rendition of his original Magna inked since the day he announced the contest, but I like submitting toward the end of the cycle. Kinda like bidding on Ebay, y’know?

ANGELCorps still requires only coloring but its been hard to get time. I will probably hit the zone soon where I simply have a flurry of activity and get it all done.

One welcome distraction is the Multiverse OC Challenge, which gets cooler by the minute! And I’m waist deep in it. Sponsored by Rodcom1000, the challenge is a little secret side mission for six original characters out here on Deviantart, including my own powerhouse, ANGELCorps leader, I-Force. As it turns out, I drew the first leg (and an arm or two as well!), a nifty jaunt wherein the team moves a weapon that may save the universe from the transporter bay to the ship’s bridge, one segment of a journey designed to get it into the hands of the hero(es) who will confront the evil threatening to destroy the multiverse. That weapon? The Agessai Sword! Whew! High drama indeed!

In the first couple of days of my three week allowance, I’ve managed to rough-pencil the art for the all four pages and completely inked the first page. Juggling six characters over only four pages, inventing formidable defenses aboard the Vindicators’ futuristic ship, Domus, and giving each hero equitable, appropriate treatments was as much a challenge for my writing skills as any aspect of the artistic pieces. I must have consulted the character sheets about 100 times! In the end, I think Rod and the other artists will think I did the story and the characters justice, for the most part. Hope so anyway.

Why I might just throw a li’l panel shot up to whet appetites.

And the title of my assigned chapter?

”AGESSAI-FORCE!”

Stay tooned while I TRY to rock this mutha.

‘Sup artistes?

Just got back from a week on the strip in Las Vegas and boy is my drinking arm tired! Nothing spells partying success in Vegas like hanging out in a pub for six hours and puking out of the back window of a rental car! Woo-Hoo! Saw Cirque du Soleil’s “Love,” a truly amazing audio-visual tidal wave for the senses, as well as Mr. Las Vegas, Danny Gans, doing his impressionist thing. Went to the Hoover, which was dam good, and made a trek out to the west rim of the Grand Canyon, a section I would regrettably never recommend to anyone ever. Please go to the south rim or some other rim until access improvements are made. The current system is just not set up well, is excessively expensive IMHO, and I’ll just leave it at that.

Took a limo out to Lake Mead for a dinner cruise at night and had all drinks comp’d! Came face-to-face with about seven Georgia O’Keeffe originals, as well as other modernists, at the Bellagio’s Art Gallery expo. Got to dine at some cool venues, but the Thai restaurant hailed by critics as one of the best in the country had to be the highlight. Add to this the awesome hotels, slots, and casinos (wherein I lost no money) and ya get an idea of how freaking cool the entire area is (which is quite a testament given the desert zoning!)!

One final thing that made me inspired to return to rendering smokin’ hot pinups as soon as possible: the meticulously decked out Vegas women! No one’s hotter to me, or more inspirational, than my wife, but the femme forces out there get high kudos for putting on the heavy glitz and glam! Nicely done, ladies!

Las Vegas is so Money!

Vegas, baby, Vegas!

E-Man
Eric

It's not the Starship Enterprise, though. It's a Linquist Enterprise. It's ANGELCorps.

Corp Factor 2, Captain! I'm coloring at warp speed although it feels like slogging thru muck sometimes but it's steady progress I'm happy to report. When I've needed a break from PS, I've been pencilling the second issue and, to my own surprise, I realized I already had about 14 pages roughed!

Maintaining a forward-looking posture, there's no reason I can't start getting those pages inked. As time permits, I'll be looking for an inker who would be willing to work for an industry-supported backend percentage of profits from the sales of the comic book. I will not secure the publisher and distributor til I have the first issue product digitally finished out and publish-ready.

More on this later. Have to keep going to get that first issue banged out.

E-Man
Eric

Hey there! Your amiable, suburbanite E-Man here in the stately E-Manor.

Speaking E-man to man? Well, yeah, I miss the daily postings like most of you guys are able to pull off. I’m just trying to stay on target to complete the premiere issue of ANGELCorps by performing every piece of the production process all by my lonesome. Annnd work a full-time job! But hey, this E-man of action is making progress. I have seventeen inked, colored and word-ballooned pages out of the goal of thirty-two pages. Why, that’s half the book! I even managed in my - cough – “spare time” to rough sketch out the next 13 pages of Issue #2 where the values double and the scores can really change.

No wait, that’s Jeopardy!

I uploaded a little Photoshop jpeg that shows the slogging but steady progress.

Looking to secure one inker and one colorist for all other issues coming out after the first issue premieres. My pencilling is pretty fast and I really dig high detail when it makes sense to work it in.

Almost there and I won’t give up!

E-Man
Eric

Feeling encouraged. Hurricanes all headed around and away from Orlando. All pages 95% inked. Cover experimentation completed. More characters created in the last few days. Flow is good. Feeling like an E-Maniac, an E-Man of Action! I really want this bad boy done so I'm E-Manipulating my entire life to accomplish that very thing! Time now for a Photoshop fest to get this sucker colored up! After that, it's all downhill comparitively. What a freakin' ride...!

E-Man