Illcraft

I found this a while back on deviantArt and I just recently found it again on my computer. It’s a great challenge for artists to create different facial expressions for you characters.

You can make a sheet for each of your characters, draw their expressions, and keep it on hand to refer to when drawing your comics. It sure helps when you are under a deadline. It also has the added benefit of making you figure out these important facial features of your characters so they don’t look lifeless on the page.

Here is the link to the talented artist Nancey Lorenz at deviantArt…

http://napalmnacey.deviantart.com/

And the link for her deviation 25 Essential Expressions Challenge

http://napalmnacey.deviantart.com/art/25-Essential-Expressions-55523083

Here is the file for you to look at, but please go to her DA page and download it there so she gets the hits on her page.

This is an 11×17  Template for drawing comic art pages in Illustrator.

The page is set to the official DC guides and work with any other traditional comic design templates.

This one is streamlined down from previous versions and is just set up for American comic standards. Let me know if you have problems downloading this and I will email it to you. You can reach me at briandenham @ gmail.com

Comic Template 3

Here’s the new deal.

I moved all the Illustrator tutorials over to illcraft.com along with all of my other posts I have made there since 2005.

I will put up a bunch of art and other news and happenings in my life at briandenham.com

It helps to seperate these 2 blogs into different sites. I think some people may just want tutorials and some just want to see my work.

More to come…

I have some of the Comic Book Templates in a secret folder here on the site. It contains the Adobe Illustrator template for CS3 and a template for everything before CS3. http://www.briandenham.com/AI-Freebies/

I’ve been posting on Twitter for a year and a half and I never posted that info here. If you want to follow me I sometimes post cool links to other comics pros, artists and various geek related sites. You can follow me at http://www.twitter.com/briandenham

Byrne Denham Perez, originally uploaded by Brian Denham.

I just found this picture today. 11 years after it was taken.

I cropped it close but this picture shows it was taken on March 15, 1998 at the Florida Mega-Con.

I was debuting my comic American Woman at the show. John Byrne sat across from us and he had a huge line the whole weekend. I talked to George Perez at the end of the show one day, we talked before at a couple of shows in Dallas and I felt comfortable around him. I asked if I could get a picture with him and John Byrne who was leaving and walking right toward us.

George said “Sure!” and yelled for John to come over. LOL I was so excited. George explained that I wanted a picture and John said a joke about kissing me on both sides. They laughed, leaned in and planted the smooches on me.

Funniest moment in my life ever.

I laughed a bit to myslef thinking of the time I met Jack Kirby. I told the King that I didn’t want an autograph, but I did want to shake his hand. As we were shaking hands I told him maybe his magic will rub off on me. He looked at me like I was a nut, of course I was a teenager at the time so I probably was a nut.

I wonder what kind of magic would rub off through these kisses. I shudder to think…

Brian Denham Cintiq, originally uploaded by Brian Denham.

Here I am with my new Cintiq on March 14, 2009.

I’m drawing on the Cintiq and I have a secondary monitor set up with Illustrator stretched through both screens.

I have a second instance of the image I’m working on, opened on the other monitor.

This way, I have one big image of the art zoomed out and the Cintiq is zoomed in so I can instantly check what I’m drawing from a distance.

When I used to draw on paper I would place the art on the ground and climb on to a chair to get a distant view of the art and ensure my proportions were all true.

Uploaded by Brian Denham on 14 Mar 09, 8.46PM CDT.

Here is a new piece I drew for the Hero Initiative. It’s also the cover for the upcoing How To Draw book from Antarctic Press shipping in July.

As it was to be a cover for How To Draw I felt like instead of using generic superheroes I would make a back story for each of these characters. I loved the story and the group so I’ll work on this as a comic over the next year. Originally I was going to draw some public domain superheroes, but I felt it might be better to show what new and modern heroes would look like instead of looking at the past.

I hope you like it!

U-G-L-Y

Sorry the site is a little yucky looking right now. I’m trying to find the right theme and color match. Bear with me. I’ll have this all worked out soon enough.

I’ll post all the art from iron Man soon with guides for how I did things. I’ll also post up a lot of work all the way through my current run on The X-Files series I’m drawing for Wildstorm/DC Comics.

Got this from Tragic Antihero on Facebook via Mark Brooks…

Part of Mark Brooks’ plan to take over the internet, this cd cover exercise is a fun way to blow-off a little steam and create something that might just surprise you.

Howdy y’all,

I hope all is well and this message finds you all in great spirits and even better health, and in the mood to create . . . if you have a few minutes to spare, and are so inclined, please participate in our social networking experiment.

This is super fun and extremely random. Ever wanted to be in a band and wonder what your CD cover would look like? Try it, you might be surprised with what you come up with!

Attention friends with basic Photoshop skills.

1 - Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to “Random quotations”
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Photoshop (or similar) to put it all together.

5 - Post it to Facebook as a note and tag the friends you want to join in.

Here’s my 1st try…

BAND NAME
“African military systems after 1900″
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_military_systems_after_1900

QUOTE
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/2405.html
“Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry. Worry never fixes anything.”
Mary Hemingway

PICTURE
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jlmitch/3284450197/

CD Art Exercise