Womanthology: Space #1

One of my cool summer projects this year: working as comic book artist for the anthology “Womanthology: Space” issue #1 through IDW Publishing.  I partnered with writer Sandy King Carpenter on her story “Dead Again".  It was just released on September 19, 2012.

There is some preview material from issue #1, here:
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/09/19/womanthology-space-1-preview-ming-doyle-stephanie-hans-jordie-bellaire/

Quote:
The preview material...includes excerpts from "Waiting for Mr. Roboto" by Bonnie Burton and Jessica Hickman, which depicts the life of a bored space-waitress; "Dead Again" by Sandy King Carpenter with Tanja Wooten, which is a kind of ghost story in space; and "Scaling Heaven" by Stephanie Hans and Alison Ross, a speculative piece about a race to put the first woman on the moon. Not included but available in the issue is an exceptionally cute story by Ming Doyle and Jordie Bellaire called "The Adventures of Princess Plutonia," which puts a fun spin on the John Carter/Adam Strange trope, as well as the first installment of "Space Girls," a recurring humor strip by Stacie Ponder that imagines an all-woman crew of Star Trekkian-style spaceship that's actually my favorite bit of this ambitious new release. All stories (except Ponder's strip) are lettered by Rachel Deering.

This project was something different for me, a ghost story set in space; but I definitely enjoyed the challenge and gained some valuable comic book development experience once again.  This was my second contribution as a comic book artist and I plan on having more opportunities if at all possible...whether I work with another writer again, adapt a story for a graphic novel...or write and illustrate one myself. :)

Here are a few reviews for W:S issue #1:
http://www.comicbastards.com/homepage/2012/9/19/review-womanthology-space-1.html
http://www.readaboutcomics.com/2012/09/19/womanthology-space-1/
http://www.primaryignition.com/2012/09/20/first-impressions-womanthology-space-1/

Below is one of the early concept sketches I did based on Sandy’s initial thoughts about the story.  I posted some of the original pencils over on my Facebook page here as well: https://www.facebook.com/TanjaWootenIllustration

Year of the Dragon

In keeping with 2012 being the Year of the Dragon, I created this illustration as one of several dragon-ish projects.  The digital painting is above, with a crop of the original pencil sketch below.

Where Wolf?

"There wolf!" 

Did a quick werewolf concept illustration today that still needs just a bit of fine-tuning before I consider it final.  Below are some progress images as I created the werewolf concept, from initial pencil sketch to almost final color in Photoshop.

Baby Unicorn

A quick sketch yesterday of a baby unicorn which I then colored in Photoshop, inspired after seeing photos last week of various baby goats (kids) and horses (foals and fillies) posted on a couple of Facebook pages that I follow.

It's similar in style to the "pin-up" illustration that I did for the artists' gallery in the soon to be published Deluxe Version of the graphic novel "The Last Unicorn" coming out in May 2012 (per Amazon).

The baby unicorn I've done will be one of several traditional watercolor illustrations I'll be creating over the summer. I'll be launching my new Etsy shop in the Fall with assorted prints and original fantasy artwork available for sale at that time. If there are particular creatures or characters you'd be interested in seeing or buying, let me know! I'll be setting up a commission schedule soon as well. :)

Spring Things

As usual in my self-employed illustrator universe, various projects are in development and in various stages, so here is a bit of what I'm working on lately:

- concept art for custom painting of Disney figurines
- product design concepts for Holiday 2013
- assorted traditional watercolor fantasy illustrations (personal work)
- assorted digital fantasy illustrations
- picture book dummy proposal (author/illustrator)
- artist for an urban Fairy Tale adaptation graphic novel proposal
- writer/artist of my own YA fantasy graphic novel proposal

And, just officially announced -- Womanthology: Space!

Yes, I'm dancing with extreme happiness over that...! :)

Creating Cameos

Last summer I volunteered for what turned out to be artist Renae De Liz's most excellent Womanthology comic book project. By contributing, I hoped to gain some practical experience as a comic book artist (a long-time dream of mine), while at the same time create art for a great cause. It turned out to be so much more than that!

Cameos
One of my creative tasks for the Womanthology: Heroic project was doing cameos of a few of the Kickstarter contributors. My writing partner, Kimberly Komatsu, wrote the script to a wonderful short story called "The Aviator and the Elephant". It had multiple characters which meant I could do more than one cameo.

I ended up doing six.

In order to capture the individual look of each of the contributors, I did a variety of sketches for each subject using the photo(s) they submitted, and then did some more sketches of them in character and in costume in the same poses (or close to) for the story panels. Some of the cameos were in two panels, but most were in only one. Here are some of the preliminary panel thumbnails and sketches I did for the cameos:






After all of that, I did final pencils of each of the cameo panels along with the other panels for each page. Here those are, in no particular order and without text (FYI, there were 4 pages for the story with a total of 35 panels):






And then I scanned the final pencils, patched them together and inked/colored/painted the pages digitally in Photoshop. Here are the final color panels of the cameos (again, without text):






More about my interesting, always fun and challenging experiences, and what I learned about creating comics while working on Womanthology in a later post. :)