The Sean C Art House

I took a shot at the Fantastic Four - always liked these characters, even though Mr. Fantastic’s a jerk.

Also, I’ve been working on a major section of The Way of the Geek’s how-to guide for webcomic production. You may have already seen the first entry, and the second one’s a beast; I’ve been creating art for examples like crazy for the visual concept chapter. We’re hoping to collect the final result into a proper book that we’ll distribute, hopefully, for free.

This is Anthem, a supporting character in the Goldskull universe. Credit for his creation goes to my good friend Jason, who came up with the concept. I’ll admit I tweaked the idea, Jason, changing the sword to an energy hammer. It just doesn’t seem too heroic to slice up the bad guys; blunt trauma works better for that. Powers include flight, psychic generation of his energy hammer through his staff, and the ability to redirect energy attacks.

I’ll tell ya, the costume was a pain to design. Armor isn’t my strong point, so I wanted something that I could handle from multiple angles consistently, and I think this works. Some silver, white, and a touch of regal purple, and voila.

Always wanted to take a crack at this character, but never really got around to it until now. Went for the Turner-esque green design, looking to make it more organic rather than metallic. So much texture, but I think it was worth it.

Venom’s always been one of my favorite characters, and this was a fun one to do. Massive, hunched over, and threatening. That’s the stuff.

This one’s Phosphurious, a more minor villain in the Goldskull universe. I had a lot of fun with this design, and took the opportunity to practice some more shading. I’m not settled on that shade of green, or even if I can get the effect that I have in my head, but for now, this works weel enough.

I haven’t forgotten this blog, but my scanner went down for a couple weeks, which led to a backlog of images to work on. I’m working on Goldskull pages now, and hopefully it will launch sometime this month.

New art will come soon - promise.

Okay, here’s the cover for Goldskull issue #1. I’ve added shading to my traditionally flat style; the cover image needs to be more special than the regular pages. Gotta grab attention. The figure of Justice, peeking from behind the blindfold and holding the scale weighed down with cash should help to at least hint at the concept. I’m pretty satisfied, especially since this is my first real attempt at proper shading. I think the kind of angular shading really compliments my style, to boot. It all seems to fit.

Right now the main concern is whether to scale it down more so at least most of the cover appears on-screen when that page comes up. If it’s scaled like the rest of the comic, you’ll have to scroll more to see it all, and it loses some impact. I want to be consistent, but the splash page doesn’t work too well on the computer, now does it?

Well, here’s the basic design for the Goldskull website. My site host/webmaster, the very cool Jerry Stephens, is going to tweak it some more in order to make room for the Bomb Shelter banners and the drop-down archive menu - things like that. It pretty much follows my personal design philosophy, simple and bold. It’s very yellow, but it looks good to me; that could be the color-blindness, or maybe it works…I dunno.

The logo was fun; the skull was created seperately and inserted into the text, which was done with a font called Lowrider. (I don’t mind sharing that bit of info.) Sizing it all up was the tricky part, but I’m very pleased with the spacing between the letters.

So here’s a major supporting character for the Goldskull universe - Red Hawk. She’s another superhero, with the ability to fly, and is old friends with GS. Nothing romantic planned, as their relationship is simply platonic. She’s another former member of the Silver City Sentinels like Goldskull, and they’ve stayed in touch since departing the team. Expect team-ups.

The little blurbs at the bottom of each page are a feature that not only provides a joke, but it lets Goldskull get a little more personal with the audience. So far, people like it, and I’m glad, because I really enjoy writing these.

And yes, it’s a superhero comic. Sean C gave in. But you know something? I grew up on that genre, I love that genre, and I want to do that genre. So nyah!