LEGO Agents 3 Page Comic!

Hi everyone! Here is a 3 page comic for the most recent issue of Lego Club Magazine. The pages were spread out in the magazine so they were not next to each other in a single group. Each page ends with a mini cliffhanger to get you psyched for the next page. I thought it was a fun idea so I hope it worked out well for the readers.

Images removed by me. Sorry.

The Agents product line has some REALLY cool vehicles. I like the boat and the semi truck. The car featured in this comic is also very nice.

Images removed by me. Sorry.

It was a snap to draw the car since I was really warmed up from working on all the Hot Wheels books for Scholastic. Cars are pretty tough and it took me a LONG time to get decent at it. I think I still have a long way to go before I feel like I'm GOOD at it, if you know what I mean.

Images removed by me. Sorry.

I have a cool LEGO Star Wars spread I want to post too, but I haven't seen it printed yet :(

Cheers!

Back from NYC

I went to NYC for a couple of days for a little business and to do some sightseeing. Of course I went to Kinokuniya because no trip to the city would be complete otherwise. I didn't get to go to Image Anime though :(

Here's a pic of my spoils! A couple of mecha books and a bunch of Japanese brush pens. I currently use the blue one closest to the books but I wanted to try out some of the others to see if there's anything better. Don't know when I'll have time to actually use them 'cause I'm super busy as usual. There were 3 other books I REALLY wanted but I had already ordered them from Otaku.com or J-List (I forget which) so now I just have to await their arrival.Monday's post about the Mars Mission book was set up last week using the Blogger scheduler. I love that feature.

New Mars Mission book for Scholastic!

LEGO Space Adventures: Mars Alien Attack! Available Sept 1st for $3.99

Here's a book I did earlier this year for Scholastic and LEGO. It was actually a very fun project and hopefully the book will do well. I'm sure people will enjoy it, especially if they like Mars Mission!Check out the book and pre-order it on Amazon...

Mars Mission Cutaway 2.0

Anyone remember the first Mars Mission cutaway spread I did when the product first came out? Well, I got to do a sequel of sorts for the recently published "Mars Tech 2.0" 2 page spread in the newest Lego Club Magazine.

Images removed by me. Sorry.

I really love this type of thing! I know lot of people loathe doing tech stuff but I find it irresistible. This image is a hefty 1.1 MB so dial-up users beware!

BONUS! This image actually shows the walker mode for the ETX Alien Infiltrator and the mobile mining unit. Both of those ships were removed from the printed image because the tech call-outs took up too much space. (all the ships were created on separate layers so the art director could move stuff around).

Mecha Sketch and Letraset Tria Markers

Letraset was nice enough to send me a free set of their new Tria markers for me to play with. Thanks Letraset!!! Sadly, that was in mid May and I just now had the time to do anything with them. You can probably tell from my lack of posts that I have been super busy.

The Tria carrying case. VERY nice quality! Yesterday I finally made myself start a drawing. Of course I wanted to draw a mecha because it has been ages since I got to do anything for myself, but I seemed to be missing any inspiration :( So I turned to my toy case and saw the Super Sylph jet from the anime Yukikaze... WOW, what a beautiful design. I decided to use that jet as my inspiration and draw both shapes and colors from it. See the toy here... SUPER SYLPH

I was given my choice of any set from the catalog so I chose Modern Fashion because the colors looked just right for my style. I was sent sent the "regular" fashion set which is quite a bit different and didn't have all the colors I wanted. I was disappointed but I understand how easy it is to make this sort of mistake so I didn't bother telling them about it. I did need some of the missing colors so I ordered a few more marker from Blick art materials (formerly Dick Blick). Blick offers everything at a good discount so I get all of my supplies from them via online ordering. The original set came with a catalog with pretty accurate color swatches for all of the markers. I use dhte catalog to select my colors instead of the Blick online swatches because they were very inaccurate.


The Tria use a unique triple tip system where one end is a "brush" tip and the other end has a chisel and fine point tip. I usually use Copic art markers so I dug those out and did a comparison. I prefer the brush tip on the Copic markers because they are a little softer and return to their original shape immediate. The Tria would stay bent from drawing and you had to manually bend them back . I was pretty put off by this at first but it didn't turn out to be an issue and I got used to it quickly. The Tria were otherwise equal with the Copic markers. One final difference is that the Tri have replaceable ink cartridges and you can easily buy any of the markers individually. Copic markers cost more and can only be bought in sets (at least that was true the last time I bought some).

The Tria system. The brush tip after a single stroke.
Finally, here is the mecha I drew using Micron pens and coloring it with the Tria markers. I took incremental photos as I worked. I need to create a few more pieces and then contact Letraset and let them know that I finally made something. They will probably post the work on their "Manga Artists" site. I'll post all the photos with notes to my blog if they are OK with it. Oh yeah, this drawing took me a total of about 5 hours from start to finish. I was really rusty !!!