Infinite Wonders statuettes

It's been a busy month between school and working on the comic, but I wanted to make a post on here about something I've done recently. I thought it might be fun to talk about these things.

It's kinda like that.

Never really did anything like it before so it was fun to try and fun to bring these two into 3 dimensions. I was working with wire in my 3D class in school, creating two abstract forms representing closure using positive and negative space. and I had an urge to try my hand and see if I could pull off doing something with Infinite Wonders in an okay way.

The one on the left I called "Getting Smashed"

Got some armature wire and some fast setting clay and worked on making an Infinite statuette that could just stand there. I call it a statuette since it's the full figure, but not really like a big statue. He's just the size of a Mego figure. Anyway, I got so into the process that I forgot to take any pictures of Infinite when he was all wiry underneath. You'll have to settle for just the unpainted sculpt, that's when I finally got to take a breather and step back!

Clay man

Gave him a fun glossy black paint job, painted the white and yellow parts and gave them a neat varnish coating to finish it off all over the rest of the costume to give it a gloss. Fun stuff, was pretty happy about him! I was standing him up next to other superhero toys I have around that size and just getting a big kick outta that. He's got a pretty firm booty, that's one thing I must point out.

Happy lil' dude!

Therein, I was compelled to attempt to make a Mr. Wonder in the same scale to accompany our Infinite figure. It is called Infinite Wonders, so then there would be the two guys that have their names in the title. I did snap a picture of Mr. Wonder in his wireframe form to give you an idea of how their skeletons appear underneath. Mr. Wonder required more padding out of the wire to give him a sturdier skeleton since he's so hefty.

Wiry guy

Then he got pretty heavier with layering on all that clay. He needed a lot of it! I think I ran out of my supply and went to go get some more to finish the rest of him up. One interesting thing for the both guys was doing the faces, it's fun to translate the way I draw those faces onto a 3 dimensional surface and see how it works as a tangible thing in reality. That's where doing some turnaround models of the two of them came in pretty handy because you are able to visualize how that jump will work with a pretty nice guideline to go by.

Hey, that other wire thing's behind you on the left

Painting Mr. Wonder was fun, too. The painting part's a little denouement for the whole thing as you're just giving it that little extra bit of life. His cape is connected on both shoulder pieces and also on his spine, creating a little 'W' shaped cape. Lots of W's sprinkled all over!

Big and jolly

So there he is. And there the both of them are standing next to each other. Mr. Wonder's a big piece of bulk and Infinite's a skinny lightweight.

Super colleagues

Hope you dug that. Just something new to put on this blog. You should check out the Infinite Wonders blog! Lots of goodies on there that might eventually be talked about in more detail on here. Also, 1st issue's on there to read, 2nd one's more than halfway done now. Really fun, offbeat happenings in it!

Where do the Infinite Wonders begin?

Thumbnail to ink to color

There hasn't been a post on this blog from me in a few weeks. It's a sad state of affairs, I know. I wanted to make one to talk about this, though. The first issue of Infinite Wonders was finally shown to the public last week. It has been gathering dust for nearly a year now. Since I did the first issue on my break in December of last year I had another semester of college work, then Timespace became my life. It's weird to think we did the book when we were 18 and just now it came out nearly 11 months later.

Infinite head turnaround

Infinite Wonders was not the first comic Tristen and I did together but it is the first we're showing to an audience of sorts. Its genesis lies in Tristen coming to me one day wanting to do an old fashioned superhero book because it was something he knew we both wanted to try. It would have a young and thin looking protagonist with more modern design sensibilities, and a seasoned superhero with the traditional cape and the trunks on the outside (I'm looking at you, Superman! You need your red trunks back on!).  It's foggy how exactly, but quickly we decided on Infinite as the name for the main character.

Infinite model turnaround

I recall months before I was playing around with this design for a spacey looking character, wearing a very organic but simplistic costume. Small boosters on his hip, mask covering the full face, big round eyes and antennae pieces on both ears. I think I was on a big Steve Rude kick (although you can never not be on a Steve Rude kick) because he bore similarities to the Moth.  I don't think I have those drawings anymore, it was one boredom-induced product found on the side of a high school math sheet.

One of the earlier Infinite designs.

I threw something similar to Tristen and he really dug it, but he wanted to see the mouth, no antennae and wanted this guy even skinnier than I was drawing him already.  The basic principles held firm and it kept refining itself as the months went on. I wanted the big eyes because they evoke the wide eyed youthfulness and inexperience, and also takes me back to my roots as a Spider-Man fan.  Color-wise, I wanted to keep him black and white since I knew the comic would likely stay black and white, you wouldn't miss much going on that way.

Mr. Wonder model sheet

Mr. Wonder's I was trying to use motifs from a lot of the big leader types. The colors of Cyclops' 90s design as well as something over the face, Superman's cape and trunks, Captain America's ears popping out was something I always enjoyed. Stuff like that. MW has a massive build, like a towering boxer.

You look like Wolverine or Batman here, why?

But one of my main goals with these designs was to go for simplicity and hopefully achieve something that feels memorable through that.  There is definitely something attractive that comes from a combination of simplistic design components.  There's that silhouette idea you hear sometimes that asks if it's something you could know with just the outline or some of those more distinctive parts of the outfits. Nolan himself I wanted to look identifiable out of costume, too.

Dat is the caption. ^

He has a strange parted flowy top hairstyle that looks like it's stuck in the 90s but also dresses pretty traditionally with the vest- again going back to my Spidey roots, Peter would wear that awesome yellow vest all the time.  The Ransacker himself was a lot of fun to draw, his design was straightforward. Supposed to be like a big schoolyard bully, wearing clothes too small. A striped shirt, short shorts, big socks, sneakers, a little bandit mask on and a beanie. Then you've got a Ransacker.

Grrr.

Working on this book and these charaacters, what it's really become for me is sort of a reactionary piece tonally compared to the majority of mainstream superhero books on the market these days. There is this fascination with making everything look super realistic and mimicking that sensation from the movies, costumes are overly detailed these days and it just lessens the fantastical escapism for me personally. If I want to see a superhero movie I'll go and see one, but I think there is something really valuable that is getting lost a lot these days with comics.

The system, man!

Big editorially driven event stories also dominate and it just keeps pushing both Tristen and I further away. It's a discussion we've had many times that directs us to the books we enjoy.  There aren't enough honest in scope mainstream books these days. They don't sell as well. My personal favorite comic at the moment is a great example of this, Superior Foes of Spider-Man (unfortunately ending soon)- which focused on villains nobody cared about before and made a humorous and character driven story out of their lives.  We wound up caring about these jerks going through these normal things along with them. I suppose what I'm relating here is that we like the comics like that which play with tropes in fun ways. They feel fresher and more earnest.

The man knows what's going on.

The way Tristen's approaching this series and the way it's mapped out, specifically its focus on character really reminds me of any Peter David book. This really smacked me in the head the other day while working on the second issue because there's this great understated wit in his words that's something I really find fun drawing.

IT'S WABBIT SEASON.

One of my main goals was to infuse my own personality into the book, and I hope you can see some of those flourishes stylistically because I'm pretty offbeat- so there's lots of quirks in there. From body language to expressions in the line work itself. Humor is the word, I wanted some slightly off-kilter humor. Cramming 10 goons in the back of a van, the licence plate, piles of security guards and goons, that one thought-process thought bubble on page 14, sound effects. I dunno, there's a lot of me in there is what I'm trying to say.

Eager front row guy!

I tried to do some experimental things with layouts, sometimes even pasting things on top of other panels and playing with the panels as part of the work itself sometimes, and with inking techniques. I used India ink, which gave some life. I've really grown to love using that stuff.

Part of an early cover rough

I really didn't like the last page. It would have bothered me to no end leaving everybody on a cliffhanger with something I didn't feel was up to par with the everything else. I ended up redrawing it months later to make it look more dramatic. Mr. Wonder himself became more streamlined as I kept tinkering with his design months after that original last page, as he just looked damn goofy before. Goodness.

Original page 21 with revised page 21

One page that was satisfying for me was page 9. It happened to be one of the most difficult to figure out because the script called for him just putting on his costume and climbing up a ladder to a rooftop. I needed to see how he gets himself over there in a more exciting way so he makes it back to his dorm taking a few silent panels to suit up. Then he jumps out the window (obscured by a tree!) into a bush to check if the coast is clear, then he dashes out and slingshots himself up onto a roof.

Page 9. 11x17 on bristol board. Pencil, pen, India ink.

The slingshot doohickey wasn't in the script (we need a name for that thing), but I thought since the guy is an engineering major he could come up with a fun gizmo like that to keep with him since he can't fly. Now he could launch himself all over the place just as quickly! I imagine it like a super duper piece of measuring tape, he keeps it inside one of those side panels on his suit.

BOOP

Another visual piece not in the script is when Nolan makes his big play against all the goons and smacks them all around-the costume inversion. I wanted there to be a visual indicator of when his power is peaking for a short while, where all of the colors on his costume would invert and there would be this bubbling all around him. Because if he could lay that kind of smackdown all the time he could have laid out all those guys as soon as he stepped in there!  I had already hinted subconsciously to myself something like this with his hand on the cover, strangely. This ended up being dubbed 'Infinite Energy' and one thing I find funny about our character is how ambiguous the powers are. He's called Infinite which implies a lot, but his powers are super mysterious and he these uncontrolled bursts where he can perform incredible feats.

Page 16. 11x17 on bristol board. Pencil, pen, India ink.

I wanted to get this post out much earlier as it's been written and ready for some time now but I couldn't scan anything until right now. It has been quite a hectic month. I am starting to feel like I am in the Twilight Zone with little sleep. I finally rummaged through 5 books of mine and this isn't even everything but that should give you the gist of it, hopefully.

If he was older.

Ah well, thanks for reading if you made it this far. It was a lot, I know. I hope you enjoyed the 1st issue. If you haven't read it yet, do it now that I've spoiled it all for you! 

The Steve Ditko split!

Polishing That Iron

Okey dokey, I thought it might be fun to share some roughs for that Iron Man story to get a look at what the process goes like for me when making a page. I just do thumbnail sketches of what I'd like to do what the page. Sometimes it may take a few times before I settle on a composition that I like, other times it comes quicker than that. For page 1, it took me a few times before I settled on the shot that gives you some good Iron booty.

page 1 layout

With this, I was also able to get the Mandarin in the shot giving the first words that the script called for along with the mysterious hourglass object that was behind him.

Page 1 inked on bristol board 11x17

For the finalized page, you can probably see where I made changes to the original thumbnail sketch but it overall remains pretty faithful to that concept. Some things added like some smokey mist and good jazz from Iron Man's entrance. I thought the title looked too tacky on the thumbnail so I played around to make it fit more organically.

pages 3-4 layout

Pages 3-4 was a totally zany double page spread. I'd say it was justified because there ended up being 20 Iron Men bursting out of an hourglass, which is pretty zany.

pages 3-4 inked on bristol board 22x17

Double page spreads are a strange thing to do, it's got to be something that's big and doesn't waste the valuable space that's available to tell the story. Keeping our Silver Centurion Iron Man in the foreground and firmly there helped to reel in all the other guys and give them their debut in a way that presents it as kind of surreal, in the sense that it's that Iron Man's story but here are all these other guys jumping in. playing around with the sound is a booming whistle that reverses itself on the other half of the spread since there are Iron Men from both the past and the future there.

page 5 layout

For page 5, you can see where I ended up having some changes in the composition to allow for a more dramatic image. In the script, the final panel here said to just leave it blank, but I don't wanna skimp on anything ever so I just naturally filled it with another 21 Iron Men. Fitting so many Iron Men in these panels was a good time... I'm serious, too.

page 5 inked on bristol board 11x17

One thing I enjoy doing with comic panels or the way I lay out a page is to reflect some of the things happening in the story, so there you guys get some funky iron panels because they're about to iron out Iron Man's kinks.

page 6 layout v1

My original layout for page 6 is above. It was serviceable enough but I didn't feel like it highlighted the situation in a striking enough, or in a less conventional way.

page 6 layout v2

I became more and more interested in using the Mandarin's symbol as a way to capture the moment in a way that catches the eye. The Iron Men were arranged more like a game board in this rough, but that was bothering me because it didn't feel right.

page 6 inked on bristol board 11x17

I ended up solving the Iron Man problem by arranging them in a circular shape more akin to the Iron Man arc reactor- overtaking the Mandarin symbol. Too many symbols eating symbols for symbolism, ahhhhhh! The bottom half of Mandarin's goofy grinning face is situated at the top of the page, with his proclamation being interrupted by some repulsor blast's charging up and taking the eyes into the big circle of Iron Men. Oh boy. Then we get to see the Mandarin's eyes in reaction to this sight, he knows he's about to get thoroughly smashed. Not in a good way, nope.

Tony

Getting to draw 80s Tony Stark with his luscious locks and that fantastic mustache was also a big delicious treat. The manly-ness of 80s Tony Stark is too much to handle. Hope you enjoyed that peek into crafting this piece o work, guys. I will be sitting here just doing the dew of drawing at my drawing board in the meantime.

Iron Man, he's a big Tin Can

Picking up from a gust of wind, here I come blogging like I always have been blogging about my art when in reality this is actually my first post.

colors

Now, keeping with the established theme of diving into this in medias res- lets dive into this Iron Man short story I did with my good friend and frequent collaborator, Tristen Bagnall. This purely for the joy of the craft project, full of copyrighted character goodness came about after a discussion with said Mr. Tristen. Sparing many of the details, it was fun to do and done for good reasons.

cover inked on bristol board 11x17

You can find the full 8 page story over at this folder on my DeviantArt page, I will update this blog as often as I can with whatever rambling or discoveries I make or things I would like to share. Hopefully along the way people will enjoy reading the bloggings of Nick, maybe. That would be good.

thumbnail sketch