Puppets: A Graphic Novel

New character art updates and clarifies the original Ratso character style. Ratso is one of the central villains in the blog. His pages are largely separate so I can sort out where he comes into the story. He plays a large part with the history of the Magic Shop, Miette and her Grand Dad. He's like a Morlock - a dweller in the periphery of culture that only wanders in and out of the book to provide some foreshadowing. It's his rat wave that does all the real damage. Ratso thinks he's Dr. Gone from The Maxx. Original digital inks for this character without shading or color in AI. Thought that I would also post some process pieces with each one of the final images to provide an idea on how this stuff gets thrown together from inks to colored art.

The cover for the first edition of Puppets by Schmitt and Edwards. Puppets is a graphic novel that revolves around a strange 9-year-old girl named Miette and the vengeance she seeks in the form of a giant concrete monster named Cement. As for production, the final art style itself is getting sorted out, pages inked and six chapters of story are completed. The plan is to animate this book project after the book is released. I'm currently planning the audio elements for the animation as I complete art for the book. This is going more smoothly thanks to the writer on book, Mr. Derek Edwards, of White Rabbit Books . Derek has re-written the book into 6 chapters that will have readers following Miette and her fractured childhood. Cement is surprised by another monster, the massive Blob. The Blob busily dissolves people and buildings then is confronted by the ARC equipped military forces. It/they are smashed up into smaller parts by Cement. The scene features Cement, Miette and AR...

WAR Cry is a full-color web comic being built at Smack Jeeves.com . Another web comic I have going is called War Cry. For you guys that really are into Japanese animated shows like Berserk and Fist Of The North Star you will immediately see similarities in this story. I figure: if I am going to be influenced (i.e. "steal") then I am going to be influenced by the best. This material is Horror and rated PG-13 for adult themes and gore. WAR Cry is a full-color web comic being built at Smack Jeeves.com . The War Cry web comic started as my October 2011 24 Hour Comic Challenge pencils and just sort of exploded into a full story set on another planet w/in about 2 hours. The original drawings are over also at WAR Cry on Smack Jeeves . I'm making and uploading newer versions with these Star Trek setting/colors. As the print editions of Roaches and Puppets are getting printed in black-and-white books it's great to use color in a story. Both my current book and m...

Cement crosses the Mittman Street Bridge. Inks are fun. I'm trying to get more of the central pieces of art, which have a lot of expressive action in them, inked after the first coloring phase which is a twist in my process which usually goes from pencil to ink to color. This time the process is pencil to color and back to inks. There's another color pass comin' as well. Ratso is kinda psyched about stuff. Rat stuff. Currently, I'm inking digitally over 120+ pencils. I'm finding a few tight little compositions like these, including the silhouetted hero shot for the graphic novel and animation. Yep, I did say 120+ panels. That's about 17 pages. ART FYI: Adobe Illustrator accepts Photoshop PSD Layers when the PSD is imported with the "individual objects" setting checked in AI. PSD Layers for color/detail/lighting can be sent from PS into AI while keeping a sharp vector line. My vectors/inks AND the PSD are saved in two docs: INKS.ai (illus...

Miette is the main character Puppets and always in some kind of bad trouble. These raw colors are a few steps removed from finalized panels but hey, buddies, they contain the art basics. Above, Miette is getting swarmed by giant sewer rats, the rabid followers of Ratso The Rat Man. This charming fella is Ratso the main baddie from Puppets. Adding hordes of small rats and having them move in a massive wave is admittedly pretty fun. Ratso rides along like Ice Man as the rat wave moves beneath his feet like a mobile escalator. I'm having a lot of fun with Ratso and his pals. Copy code to add Puppets to your site: Copy code to add Roaches to your site:

The Blob, merrily eating it's way through Midtown Central City. Cement is surprised by another monster, the massive Blob. The Blob busily dissolves people and buildings then is confronted by the ARC equipped military forces. It/they are smashed up into smaller parts by Cement. The scene features Cement, Miette and ARC troopers and the Blob. There's two principles (Miette, Cement) plus 1 Kaiju (Blob) plus misc. ARC soldiers (7-12 of them firing ARC's) and tanks (3-4) to animate here. That's a total of like 14-19 plates spinning around at once, minus the flames and smoke! In the script, the Blob bellows when hit by small arms fire or by Cement - like a heavy bass meant to rock small film fest theaters. Each time one of the blobs are hit they sound off as a herd with the bass's pitch and volume relative to the size of each blob. The "central" and largest "main" blob would always be the deepest sounding bass with the smaller blobs sounding dif...