"food for thought"...

done and done!
against all odds, and thanks to an ever stretching deadline (thanks, ed) i was able to deliver the last page on monday, AND an additional page of sketches. Almost all the pages are in, we are only waiting on one more contributor to deliver his artwork, which was partially lost due to a gremlin eating his hard-drive over the christmas break...

i've seen the collected artwork, and it's gonna be a glorious book!!!

onward and upward

m

thumbnails!!

no...not the kind you chew. the kind that i'll use to figure out my framing and flow of the story. while three pages is a good amount of space to try and fill, it's actually not that many to convey this story. i'll be getting creative. i guess that's the point anyway.

here's my thumbnail for page one. i'm really happy with it. i hope to have page 2 and page 3 layed out by the weekend. that should give me just enough time to get the final pieces all put together.

merry christmas everyone!

"never give up..."

"never surrender!"

keeping up the fight, both hope and me!
I'm knee deep into my third page, and it's looking pretty good so far - i should be able to finish it in time for the deadline, despite all the moving- and holiday-related craziness going on around us - and THIS TIME, hope will encounter a REAL monster - not some genetically enhanced bumble bee, or some faceless corporation - but a big ol' city-eating, tentacled comic book-type monster - OH YEAH!
And while keeping with the overall theme of environmental issues and challenges, this one will also be an homage to fantastic four #1 and little nemo full page sundays, all rolled into one - BOOYA!

;)

m

lil' devil

wow...i wasn't expecting to get this finished tonight. however, thanks to the kids getting totally sucked into Scooby Doo 2, i had perfect inspiration and a couple hours of focus time for my monster.

now it's time to model these boogers!!

pieces of the puzzle

hi ya folks!

i'm chiming in late because i've been hella busy getting settled in at sucker punch. i'm a newbie.

admittedly--and probably much to edward's shagrin--i'm just now getting to the point that pencil has hit paper.

i've had the idea in my head for my pages since back in october when edward invited me to participate in atomic lead. it's basically a morality tale...or a parable depending on your views of these types of stories. it involves a sweet little girl, her mean older brother, and a puzzle that tells the future.

i'm still deciding if i have the time to incorporate my idea for the presentation of my panels. i've been noodling with this neato idea of having the panels laid out like puzzle pieces. however, i may run out of time for this idea.

for now, here's two sketches of the characters in my story. i have one more concept of the little girl(lindsay) with her hood pulled up. these concepts are really rough and loose at this point. i'll be taking these concepts and converting them into cg models in maya and mudbox.

enjoy! there will be more to come over the christmas break.
--bill(y)

at long last...

... the second 'hope'-page is finished - the backgrounds were more labor-intensive than anticipated (one would think that i'd have learned by now - but noooooooo!!)

it turned out quite pretty, i think - the panels were all painted in full color, as usual - but i also prepared a gray-scale version for atomic lead, taking a different level of contrast and the lack of separation through color into account...

i have an idea for a third page (with a real monster, this time!!!), but it's getting awfully close to the crazy moment in time where our stuff will arrive here in seattle, then the family will follow a week after (finally!!), we'll be moving into the new house, and christmas will be right around the corner...

whee!!!

i'll try and get it done on time... i promise...

;)

m

p.s. here's another little preview - you're gonna have to buy the book to see the final product...

Flying creatures!

Here's an awesome 3D rendered creature by Jamie.

Check out more of Jamie's artwork in his new BLOG!

panel 2

main characters are inked:



one more to go, then backgrounds....


;)

m

shawanna closeup

dunno if that will end up on the page after all, but here she is:

enjoy

m

another floridian bird

background character (as in: "there is no such thing as a...")

EWA: 'egret with attitude'

enjoy

m

are we there yet?

MADE IT!
geez, that was quite the trip - six days on the road, a different hotelroom every night - not my thing at all, it turns out - but on the other hand, i got to see a LOT of the good old US of A for a change, instead of just staring at the monitor in front of me day in, day out...

i did draw a little while in the hotels, and got the computer up and running yesterday, so i finished the inks of this panel, finally - more to come, of course, but not quite sure when - this coming week is gonna be another crazy one...

m

Hi.

Hello, friends/fans/fellows! My name is Marcellis, and I'm an animator at Sucker Punch these past two years.

Right now I'm working on my second story for Atomic Lead (my first being "Apocalypse" for AL3), and it's a HUGE departure from my previous style. That is, Apoc was all narration, with art inspired much after the concept art for The Incredibles, and for the tentatively-titled "Knight," I'm going for a character-driven dialogue, with art inspired by Bill Watterson's and Doug Tennapel's works, which means I might even draw and ink the panels on bristol this time! Wow, right? I know!

Anyway, here's a rough sketch of one of my characters, who has yet to be named...pretty happy with this design. The color was just for fun, since the books are always in black and white.


I just realized there's a hidden Star Trek logo in my drawing.
If you can find it, you win!

inks! - pt.2

the snail kite - as promised....

;)

m

inks! - pt.1

as promised....

;)

m

'nother panel....

pencils for panel 3

TODAY, i'm gonna ink the bunch!

pinky promise!!

seriously!!!

;)

m

clone-ink...

HA HA!! (get it - 'clone-ink'??- sounds like .... 'cloning' when you say it out loud - that's why it's funny...)

anyhoo, here's the inks, but i'm of course not as fast as i had hoped with the other ones

*sigh*

i'll keep you updated

m

attack of the clone...

hiyall,

here's another study of the 'faust clone' - see how much fun he can be? -

just to get acquainted with the character, to get a better feel for him...

i'll try to ink all of these tonight


onward and upward

m

aaand another one....

this time, i decided to put a 'new' actor on the stage - i need two 'bad guys' to headline this one, and i decided to not use the little 'professor'-guy again, but rather cast a more 'die-hard' omnicorp-employee, one of the countless 'faust-clones', to better tow the selfish, destructive company line alongside omnicorp's 'head of customer relations' shawanna - plus, he's very fun to draw, a little childish, very expressive

i also had to employ shawanna again as the main character, because she represents 'omnicorp' at its worst, in an attempt to turn the everglades into omnicorp airport - yes, you read that right - INTO AN AIRPORT - (that was an actual plan back in the 1960s to build an international airport in the middle of the Everglades) - so i needed two corporate meanies to survey the land and explain how corporate greed usually overrules environmental issues - i.e how the interests of the few outweigh those of the many, and how shortterm concerns win over longterm strategies -

anyhoo, a great pair visually, here's a sketch colored in quickly to see how it'll work -
imagine them canoeing down the kissimmee river...

more to come soon, so stay tuned


m

high as a kite

for this one, our heroes find themselves back here in florida, so this strip will be some sort of a swan-song, if you will...

the bird depicted here is NOT the bald eagle, but rather the snail kite (Rostrhamus sociabilis plumbeus), found only in florida, and federally listed as endangered.
the snail kite relies on the availability of apple snails (Pomacea paludosa) which they pluck from under the water using only their talons. The U.S. population is non-migratory, though the birds will move in response to food availability. Thus Snail Kites are sensitive to droughts and/or other changes that impact the hydrology of their foraging habitat.

We recently saw some specimen on an airboat trip going down the kissimmee river, the northern entry into the everglades - so i decided to let that be the location of the hope strip right then and there

and no, this isn't 'the monster' of the story - somebody else will be playing that part....

;)

keep on checking in


m

hiyall!!

hello fellow suckerpunchers/comic book artists!!

greetings from beautiful, hot and muggy florida -
i hope everything is great up in the northwest...

i feel very honored that edward invited me to participate in this great adventure, and i promise to do my very best - my output may be a little spotty, just because the double whammy of the upcoming move PLUS the new job MAY be a bit overwhelming - so please bear with me...

nevertheless, since i will be working within the 'hope'-universe (a character/storyline i have created a couple of years ago and have been exploring/expanding ever since), i was able to adapt an online comic strip from a few weeks ago into a first page


this should fit within the theme of the book -
i think that genetically manipulated bees DO count as monsters, no?

the strip concerns itself with some hot topics: not only DON'T we really know how gene-manipulated organisms will affect our environment, the ecological equilibrium, in the future, we're also allowing big companies to basically own certain varieties or types, or breeds of fauna and flora that heretofore couldn't belong to anyone, like flowers, corn, wheat, pigs, chicken etc.

yes, brave new world, indeed - no wonder that our protagonist, poor little hope, is somewhat overwhelmed by the self-confidence and intellectual brilliance on display by the representative of multinational food-supplier 'omnicrops', who reassures her that everything is under control...

but going by her intuition, she just KNOWS that, when someone tells you THAT,
you gotta be doubly careful and get the hell outta dodge...


anyhoo, enjoy

m