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Thursday 18 March 2010

Liquid Dev 1.


So I'm trying again with Liquid City. I was really unhappy with it as it stood after the "promo" I made for MCM, so I went back and redesigned the bastard from the ground up. What I was worried about in the first instance was the total failure to get across the feel of the city. Liquid was supposed to be slutty, slimy, vapid and stupid. What the promo was pushing was just a generic cyberpunky mess. This redesign, I feel, is much more on the nose.
I'm still arguing with the way I want to draw it, and these pinups i'm currently pretty unhappy with. They're missing a couple of things i've figured out as "probably important in comics" lately, but are still much more in the vein of what I wanted for the book. I'm going to stop faffing around with style choices soon, mind you. I have a couple more characters to design, a couple more locations and then it's straight into test pages.
I feel like i'm getting there. Albeit bloody slowly...
~John~

8 comments:

nana said...

Yay, bish dude! Sweet pinups man, I love the first one in particular! Great to see contrast between the busy buildings and the open white space. Would you be able to carry out a whole comic like this? That's worship-worthy!

Second one... really cool overall but I have minor nitpicks. My biggest issue is probably the eyes. The right eye looks higher than the left eye. Wonky eyes is something that I'm particularly sensitive about.
I have some thoughts about the composition as well, let me know if you want them. I don't want to say too much if you're not looking for crit. :)

aqws said...

Hrm Wonky eyes are my pet problem. I think in this case I actually screwed up his pupil too! The composition is also pretty iffy, I agree. I had something in mind for the background, but It didn't work so I left it out. Better to get these things wrong now, I guess. Cheers for the crits. Always welcome.

Paul Duffield said...

Awesome! I love the looser brush style going on, it frees up your figure drawing a lot. Wonky eyes didn't stick out to me, I think the quality of the drawing is good enough to carry a bit of wonk.

I must be honest though, the "liquid" text on that logo sticks out like a sore thumb to me. The shape of the text is great, but the gradient inside it is seriously 80s, and not in a good way.

Kate said...

Ahh, I'd actually really like to hear what you consider to be probably(?!) important in comics... will you write about it? :) I think these are awesome btw... quite Hiroki Mafuyu ^^

PS. Very happy to see a treasure trail! So often see drawn men totally lacking pubes of any sort and it's a SHAME. Bah!

aqws said...

Kate: yeah, once I do a drawing that demonstrates I actually understand what i'm talking about!

Paul: text is Very intentionally out-of-date 80's. I think it'll all become clear when you see the rest of the cast. It's shoulder-pads and eyeliner all the way. Perhaps it's actually not 80's enough, in that case, if the choice isn't obvious!

Paul Duffield said...

Maybe it's a personal taste thing. I got the overall theme I think, the logo is 80s in a good way, but the gradient is 80s in a bad way. Maybe I just hate clean gradients that much.

Andy Foot said...

(cough) seconded.. get some sweet screen tones in there. ^_^

Reddavebatcave said...

Firstly, totally love the awful-retro-80s logo. Perfectly sleazy and out of taste. Resist all impulses to make it cooler.
Secondly, the pin-up images look very different to what I've seen you do recently (have I missed a lot?) Perhaps you've been using a (pictorially) cleaner/rounder style for the DFC work?
This somehow looks a lot more detailed and textural - it reminds me of Henry Flint a little(I know you won't appreciate that comparisson, but... meh)

Keep it up, let me know,

Dave