This was painful.
I roughed it out fairly quickly and blundered into the final pencils. Then realised I'd done a terrible job.
So I started again, got as far as colouring and as the page was nearly done when my laptop went dark. The battery doesn't work and I'd accidentally pulled the power supply out. In my haste to make up for lost time I hadn't saved any of the colour work. Deciding that the day was a dud I figured I should go to bed, emailed the other Huzzah guys.... then decided to block in some colour, and that blocking in led to finishing it up. Thankfully.

My latest Huzzah

I did these last week, really enjoyed doing them, and I think it shows.

Huzzahing

Been a while since I did anything for Huzzah, partly because of busy, a little drawer's block, and a fair bit of being at work and missing a chance at putting my name down for the next bit.
Huzzah's had a new start of sorts and it's such a strong one that when I saw I had the chance of going next I jumped at it, despite not having a clue what I was going to do. As soon as I commented 'huzzah' to take my turn an idea came to me with the images popped into my head straight after and requiring very little redrawing and refining. It didn't end up being the action packed scene I promised myself, but I have learned that if you get an idea you like then it's best to go for it.
Here's the rough inks I drew the final version from, there's very little changes from this to the finished pencils, but I like to know where everything's at before the final stage. Most people leave a lot out for the final stage to keep things from looking too stiff and overworked. Frankly, I'm not that good and I need to know it works before commiting to finished pencils, or inks. I'm sure it'd drive some people insane and it does mean extra work, but it helps me refine certain details, I find that bits get simplified, and I start 'pushing' the proportions of things and discovering shapes and interesting lines and patterns. Those happy accidents keep it interesting, and without them I think my work can look a bit bland... at least that's how I justify it all to myself.Here's a scrapped version of the first plate, it's a bit too obvious and cliched. All it suggests is menace, mystery and an attempt at looking cool. Big deal. Then I scribbled a bit of dialogue based on the relationship suggest by Colin's wonderful previous plate and I knew there should be real affection shown between the two characters. This turned out well for two reasons - when sinster folks show love it can seem all the more unsettling, and it gave me the idea of having the globe be a bit more glowing with the light coming through the fingers to suggest a feeling of emotion coming from it. The other change from initial idea was that the bottom plate was not divided into two panels, the second eye socket simply had the second bit of dialogue and a bit of background. It just didn't balance right, so I decided the second socket could be another panel, which was lucky because I think the Munoz-esque shadow looks quite nifty and gives the dialogue more weight.

Again with the Huzzah

Seems to be a pattern forming to my Huzzah contributions - I've been doing 'inbetween' bits, sort of character stuff, no plot. Nothing wrong with that, I hope, but I should challenge myself a little..
I love how contributors each develop a character based on how we each see them, because we see them from slightly different angles. We all respond to the different facets we each see in the characters, as Rob did with his powerful portrayal of the witchy character recently. I think it's making for some well rounded characters,
This page has been in my head since Ian introduced Khadari, inspired by one of my favourite comics (gets better with each reading), Nexus. One issue featured a back up with the character 'Dave' in prison that has always stuck with me. There's another influence, but I can't say as I'm trying to keep things vague and implied because there's no fun us giving each other a map for the story.

I huzzah therefore I am

After what seems like a while I contributed some more work to Huzzah.
I was really pleased with how the Blue Devil pic I did came out, and what I felt worked was the lose and rough quality, so I thought I'd pursue that. Getting the balance between solid drawing and something more personal is tricky, and I'm not sure I'm there yet, this page looks a little too rough to be 'proper' drawing, and a little too restrained to be as expressive as I'd like. This is where the 'Covered' and 'Huzzah' really compliment each other for me, one encourages me to just have fun and mess about because a much better artist has done the hard work, the other forces me to work to bring my drawing up to the standard of everyone else involved. Reminds me of reading how Moebius liked how his work under that nom de plume informed his work as Jean Giraud and vicey versey.

More Huzzah

Feeling bold I decided to do two 'plates' for my turn at Huzzah. An interesting one this time round, I made a lot of mistakes drawing these, but found it to be such a positive experience that I'm not sure 'mistakes' is fair. So, here they are - don't forget to look at the strip so far.

Huzzah!

Just finished and posted my first contribution to Huzzah, if you want to see the story so far, and you really should, go here.
In the meantime here's the finished pencils and final colour version. I've been wanting to skip the inking stage for a while, as much as I like chunky fluid brush lines I've always felt my stuff loses something in the process.