..a pencil sneak...

Here are a few panels of pencils to get your appetites going, Issue two moves slowly, but it moves.

Issue #2 Layouts are DONE!!!

Great job BRP!!!

Here's another sneak peek . . .

Onward and Upward!

And so it Begins!

. . . again . . .

Layouts for issue #2 are underway by the talented (and sexy), Mr. Benjamin Reid Phillips!

Here's a tease >

COMIC CON 2008

PANDORA, INC is now ready for a publishing partner!



The entire first issue is complete. The first three story arcs are complete. We know where we're going and we're ready to go! We'd love to go on the journey with you :

Dark Horse?
Image?
...

Who's gonna take this hottie to prom?

We're at Comic Con all week and ready to make a deal! Let us buy you a drink and let's discuss the next great original title: Pandora, Inc.



---
Interested in a date? Wanna get to know us and see if we're a match made in heaven?
If you represent (or have a connection to) a potential publishing partner - request a pitch pack and full first issue by sending us your name, position, company and contact info to : pandora@innfusion.com




We do put out, you know...

Cover Process - PART 2

Picking up from Ben's previous Cover Process Post . . .



I got the pencils from Ben - and popped it into Adobe Illustrator (Where the entire finish is done) - and started to outline the key shapes and areas with the pen tool.



Then I start to lay in flat colors just to delineate different shapes and planes in the image.



I wanted to make sure I understood where Amy's body was under her armor so I added that in as well to give myself a little better foundation as to where all of her parts :) belong.



All the Flat color is done. I know where everything is.



I start adding gradients to create dimension and define the various planes.



Gradients are mostly done.



Tah Dah! A few more tweaks and a little correction to the blacks and Boom! Look for this bad boy on the shelves soon.

...what's in the box?

...more promo stuff...BRp!

cover process part one

I start off by composing thumbnails at one by one and half inches with a technical pen, just developing ideas and layouts...This was the one we picked as the best for the cover...
I decided to reverse the image since it worked better as a composition, I then photoshopped the thumbnail up to 10 by 15. With a lightbox I roughed in the layout and then went from there. I've been use a lot of col-erase pencils to do this work recently....

We go back to the lightbox and trace up the rough version onto bristol and use all sorts of different graphite tools to do the finished pencils, note how I've tweaked and adjusted the composition from even the last stage. We revisit this from Eben's end in finishing this in part two...

BRP!

THE LAST MAN ON EARTH....

...is dead....

Isaac and the Fly...or...SuperFly!

He heard it before he even knew it was in the room. You’d have thought he would have heard the buzzing.

But no, it was simply a muted ’thwack’, and the little housefly landed on his desk. Right in the middle of it. Isaac looked down and saw the little black aeronaut, kicking its legs feebly, over on its back, one of its tiny transparent wings split down the middle. Like a sad winter leaf.

Isaac looked around him. None of the other kids had noticed it. He wondered what Ian was doing. He was probably having sex. That’s what his big brother would be doing while he was examing a dying fly in the middle of Advanced Calculus. Some girl would be screaming out his name and he would probably not even remember it.

Isaac extended one long, skinny finger out toward the little fly. It was small, even for what it was. A runt fly.

It buzzed every couple of seconds, skimmed along the surface a few micrometers (how Isaac loved this word) on it’s pathetic little cellophane wing. Isaac made sure none of the kids were looking. His teacher was going on about stuff he’d lost interest in two years ago. And he wasn’t smart enough to teach Isaac what he wanted to know, now. There weren’t any high school teachers that were. Just like there hadn’t been any middle school teachers.

He pushed his finger closer to the little dying black housefly.

Look at it’s tiny brain. How does it think with that? Or better...how does it fly?

Isaac licked the tip of his finger. He wasn’t sure why. He reached out and touched the head of the poor little downed pilot.

And then he was blind. His eyes went white -- or the world did.

Isaac jerked his head back. He opened his mouth to shout but as he did the world hummed back into focus. Went from a universe-eating white nothingness...to shapes...to colors...to the world he knew. He closed his mouth.

The other kids surely saw it. He looked at them. They didn’t look back. They were all either sleeping or zoning out on the monotone wavelength of the teacher’s bored voice.

Before he remembered to look down at the fly he heard the buzzing.

It shot past him, and it left a black streak in the air.

The buzzing was so LOUD now.

A few of the kids were looking, now, too. Trying to find the fly in the air. The teacher stopped talking, suddenly.

"What is that?"

Someone was going to shout ’Bee!’ any second. Isaac was sure of it. Flies just didn’t buzz that loud. Maybe horseflies. But he didn’t think even they. It was as loud as a surprised cicada.

And then he saw it. Streaking toward the window.

He flinched before it happened. Like he was expecting it. Which just simply for God’s sake isn’t possible.

The window shattered. Children screamed. The teacher jumped, his glasses falling off his nose and clattering onto his desk. But it was lost in the sound of the violent shattering. It felt like the sky had busted open.

Isaac watched the fly as it shot across the lawn outside. It was leaving a black line in the air behind it. Like it was drawing on the world.

Isaac closed his eyes. Opened them.

He looked down at his fingers.

Isaac swiveled his head, at the kids, running for cover. Screaming at the cuts they’d received. From the explosion of glass fragments. Calling for their mothers and fathers. Isaac sat completely still. The teacher looked like he thought it was a bomb. Like it was terrorism. His face was begging the world to right itself.

Isaac pushed his fingers into each other, interlocked them, tying them to each other. He looked around. He smiled. For their sakes. To look normal.

And something inside him started to shake.



...the end?

Book One Pencils Complete!

A few days ago, actually...

Ben, You ROCK!

I-Mac Says "Chill On My Dad's Deadline Or Heads Will Roll."

Well, Script Three is late. And it's this guy's fault.

Now, normally, as per our unanimously-agreed-upon arrangement, the writer who is late with the script will be sock-beaten, then taken out to sea and keel-hauled, then buried up to his head in wet sand, then dug up and kicked in the nuts, before finally being burned as a witch.

(This arrangement doesn't apply to Ben, as Ben won Immunity during the Arm-Wrestling, Speed-Calculus, and Snuff Sudoku rounds.)

So usually at this time we'd be throwing a drugged and cross-dressed (Eben's idea) Adam into a trunk on our way to the Sock-Beating Place. (Kinkos.) But, frankly, I don't want to tangle with this little guy. The reason the picture is blurry? It's because his atomic matter actually vibrates at a slightly higher frequency than ours does. Two minutes after he was born he called me a "slightly boorish but nonetheless pleasant simpleton". In ancient Phoenician. He also suggested he might have developed, in utero, an advanced algorithm for ensuring that every Washington Redskins play-call is successful. He implied he had the margin of error down to negative six. I still don't understand that.

We'll give Adam a short grace period. This will give Eben more time for lingerie-shopping.

-- Jables The Younger

Anatomy of another Promotional Image

So, this time we start out the same way, with a simple thumbnail and an idea...
Except, now I go straight to the tablet and rough in color study really fast, by keeping it loose, small and low resolution....
That study gets developed into this rough in photoshop, then I print it out on the old trusty hp..
...and with a light box and my mechanical pencil (and a few hours) I do this finished pencil drawing. I really like how this one has evolved, now tune in for a color version later.

BRP!

Blog vs. Site Clarity

Hi team -

So - JBL posted a comment about how I see the blog being used vs. the Official public web site. . .

My thoughts are these :

This blog is a place for us to create a dialogue with our readers and to share stuff (LIke the great anatomy of a promo) that won't really have a home on the Official site. This will be a link from the official site and an ongoing behind the scenes peek into our process.

I'm keeping the blog private for now because I don't want to give anything away yet and at the same time want us all to be able to post whatever we want and whatever strikes our fancy even before we take down our collective fly's and show our junk to the world.

So use this blog as a place to talk about or show whatever you like (as long as it doesn't give away info on issue 2+) and go wild. This is to be more real, more raw and more fun than the "Official Site!"

Rock on!
E

Anatomy of the Promotional Image

Here's a quick breakdown of how our promo image came to life. First it all started with some thumbnailing from an idea from JB Love
That quickly progressed into a rough pencil drawing colored in photoshop...

Then I printed out a non photo blue version of the pencils and ink them in, and wound up with this, which just didn't do the job that we wanted...so back to square one..
So, to catch the attitude that was necessary for this piece, I went back to drawing that I had done of Amy that really worked well for her character..
And directly in photoshop with the trusty ol' wacom tablet we add her armor and do a quick value painting...
Then add in our frontpage, wall, etc...
On a new layer I do the finished figure painting, notice it changes a lot from that first color study...
A few tweaks and some last additions and we've got a promo piece!

I'll post soon about the new promo...

BRP!

HERE IT COMES!!