adamwarren
patreon
THE RANDO'S CORNUCOPIA returns!
🕑 Added 2020-07-10 13:00:05 +0000 UTCTime for another installment of the sporadically recurring Patreon feature The Rando's Cornucopia, aka "a grab-bag post of miscellaneous odds & ends lurking on my hard drive."
And now, a few words on said odds & ends:
First off is an illo I drew circa the early 2000s depicting Jaeger from my friend Carla Speed McNeil's great comic Finder, with purty colors provided by my buddy Ryan Kinnaird. For once, this is an actual piece of uncommissioned fan art, done just because I was so enamored with Carla's daring and challenging storytelling on Finder.
The Jaeger figure isn't photoreferenced, but that tree behind him certainly is; I believe I reffed that from a coffee-table book of "unusual trees from across the globe," or something like that.
Above is a color test done back when Dark Horse and I were briefly contemplating the idea of coloring my layout-based story Dirty Pair: Quick and Dirty (as serialized in full here a few months ago) for publication. I didn't follow up on this concept because I thought the results were too wonkily sketchy-looking—or perhaps because communications were already breaking down with the Japanese license-holders. Not sure, TBH.
Next up are the initial design roughs for the foul-mouthed yet formal ninja "F**king Oyuki-chan," as first seen in Empowered vol.5:
These loose sketches are actually a rarity for early Empowered, as I usually designed characters on the fly—in fact, on the page—rather than bothering with preliminary design roughs.
Note that Oyuki-chan shows a hint of an actual facial expression in the rough above; I hadn't yet decided that she would be perpetually expressionless throughout the series.
For a clearer view of what the character looks like in her finalized form, next up is a 2009 con sketch of F**king Oyuki-chan. Note that her outfit is in part photoreferenced from pics of THAT leather jacket:
With this sketch we see her proper, blank-eyed look, meant to evoke Quint's famous soliloquy about sharks from JAWS:
"Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he’s got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eye. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be livin’. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white."
Next up are two of the very few photos I possess of myself from the late 90s, as I had little interest in such pics back then—and still don't today, judging by my aversion to selfies. I believe these photos were probably taken for the "How to Draw Manga (sort of)" feature I did for Wizard magazine circa 1997:
Lurking behind me on the drawing board is a layout page from my three-issue "Grunge! The Movie" arc on Gen13 Bootleg, which I was working on whilst crashing with at a friend's apartment in Providence, Rhode Island; next to that is a copy of the Asian World of Martial Arts catalog I was using as photoreference.
I should probably try to overcome my selfie aversion and take a present-day pic of myself with my hair down, as the results are pretty wacky-looking. My hair is still almost as dark as it was in 1997, but my eyebrows and facial hair have long since gone almost entirely gray, for a truly peculiar look overall.
For the Wizard piece, we wound up using a tuxedo-sporting photo from the same friend's wedding, as seen in the cameo "biopic" below:
I'm vaguely alarmed to be unsure whether or not I've actually posted the entire Wizard "How To" piece here; I've been posting every g-d weekday on this Patreon for well over a year, so it's easy to lose track of what the heck I've put up here. If any kindly Patrons can remember if I've done so, feel free to let me know in the comments below!
And that's it for another installment of The Rando's Cornucopia, folks. Hope this was random enough for ya!
NEXT WEEK ON THIS HERE PATREON: Time for our usual Monday double dose of life drawings from photoreference, along with the high-res raw Photoshop scans for both sketch sets!
Comments
Ruth and Darrin Sutherland
Great seeing the photos of you working at your desk. 👍
Adam Warren
Worry not, I'll be posting scans of the whole WIZARD piece here shortly.
Mike Powers
Saw this on another board and thought you'd like it; no idea whether the creator knows about Po2... https://www.tfw2005.com/boards/threads/dwarf-barbarian.1196607/
Strypgia
And your _eyebrows_ have gone gray? I am getting it spattered through my temples and on top, but it's still kind of scattershot.
Strypgia
F***ing Oyuki-chan is a delight, a perfect balance of Ninjette'sformer BFF and the one who was hurt the most by her leaving.
TF Commando
The heavy rings around Oyuki-chan's eyes initially made me think she was just wearing a "face" mask, like False Face in Batman.
TF Commando
No, and that was one I missed at the time (Wizard was such a godawful rag it was hard to look at, or for). Even if we've seen it before, seeing it again with your commentary is nice, as well as having a good digital copy.
T.Geist
Thanks for sharing these OG classics...I think I still have that Wizard issue(or whats left of it?)somewhere...
Adam Warren
Huh... So I haven't posted that "manga-style superheroes" WIZARD cover either? Jeez. (Perhaps I was assuming that most Patrons would already have seen that stuff; well, I'll post 'em here in the next few weeks, then.)
Tim Price
I'm tickled seeing prelim F**king Oyuki-chan having pretty consistent impatient, unamused expressions. Fascinating how that turned to completely expressionless.
TF Commando
I'm pretty sure you haven't posted anything from Wizard before. Content from you was pretty much the only reason I ever picked up a copy, so it gets my attention.
Dave Van Domelen
Wow, Jaeger's been out in the wilderness a LONG time. His tats are completely gone.
Adam Warren
Hey, that's a great catch! Will add that tag and link to the edited post.
Otaku Twenty-Four Seven
Nice to see THAT leather jacket making another reappearance
