Written by Steve Morris
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In Project Updates
Tagged Buffy the Vampire Slayer, art, cover, comic book, whedonverse, willow, steve morris
Buffy the Vampire Slayer – cover s10 issue 14
This originally started with Buffy walking through an attic, with the background/foreground assembling into a likeness of Spike. I was concerned about how well the likeness would read and decided to switch to the easier route and use a landscape...then going a step further I used a literal likeness of Spike carved into stone.
Page two
This is page two from my personal project. I'm still getting used to inking with heavy blacks and using this style in general. Some of these panels went though a number of revision to the rendering of shadows, but I've moved onto page three and it's going more smoothly.
New sequential art
So this happened over the weekend...
This is for a story I wrote in 2006. I wanted to use a new style, and had experimented some but never got past that stage. Recently, I started working on the story again and came to the conclusion that I would be better off partnering with an artist (other than myself). I came to this conclusion mainly because I thought it was better time management...but in the last week the control freak in me began surfacing so I start to experiment again with the newish style. Once I had done a few pieces, I made an impromptu dive into the art for page one. Part of me would prefer the style to be more exaggerated, a little less real, but this direction seems to be working so any alterations will likely be small. I also have a page two which is almost done.
The Occultist cover #3 of 5
I've included the sketch below.
The Occultist issue 2 of 5
The Occultist #2 of 5, for November 2013.
With this second cover I started to hit my stride on this series. I veered towards stylization, which lends itself better to the costume and subject matter, rather than the more realistic rendering I had used previously.
Spike variant cover, issue 1 of 5
Dark Horse requested that I use a more comic bookish look for these Spike covers, to create a better visual separation between my variants and the main cover art. I essentially used my sequential style, but I drew/colored it all in Photoshop rather than Illustrator, which had been my typical means of drawing sequential art. After finishing this cover, I realized I had gone a little too thick on some of the line art...so subsequent covers, for this series, will be on a line-weight diet.
By request, I'm adding the original line art, click through to see it...
Verboten pg 2 WIP
Page 2 in the Illustrator faze of converting the old black-and-red style to the full color style. The second panel is only partially converted. After I get the second panel completed, I'll bring the page into Photoshop for coloring bells and whistles.
Finished Verboten page 3
Verboten page 3 with the additional Photoshop finishing. I decided to bump up the initial Illustrator colors as they were too dull. I also added some more details and the dog.
Dollhouse comic cover
Info on the Dollhouse comic adaptation was just released in the last day or so. I created this cover shortly after I did the "Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale" cover. This isn't being released as an individual comic but is being bundled with the Dollhouse season 2 dvd release. More info here . Having been a fan of both Serenity and Dollhouse, I was really excited about providing art for their comic incarnations.
Graphic Novel Art
This has been in the works for a while, or rather was started a while back but progress has come to a stand still because of other projects and work. Above is the first page of a very long Graphic Novel I wrote, set in Medieval Northern Europe. I originally planned on doing the GN in my Butterbroda style because it fit the subject matter, and a simple style would speed up the drawing process...although that style is deceptive and takes more work than even I seem to realize sometimes.
I completed the first four pages, but the general consensus said it wouldn't work over an entire book. I was really determined to make the style work, but admittedly wasn't really sure myself, that it would hold up over 300 pages...so after allot of mental ping pong I went in the direction of the image above...a mix of Butterbroda with some Russian and Japanese influences added.
The desire to use the Butterbroda style was fulfilled when I started the print series...and any lingering heistation about using the more rendered style for the GN dissipated. Now I just need to get on with it...