Now onto the colours. First of all, and this is the most boring part of the process, I have to block out all the areas with a flat colour:



But there’s good reason for this. It allows me to create layers masks with the areas I’ve painted, and then when I start to shade things in, I don’t need to worry about going over the edges, and overlapping brush strokes. And for those of you who are interested, I’m using the oil pastels in Painter, nice and loose, with a low ‘resat’ level so they all start to blend in. I find it works well for metallic effects.



And here’s a bit of close-up detail on the right leg.



More on the way soon…

Once I had completed the pencils and therefore the character design, in classic comic art tradition it was time to work on the inks. Again I should say that this all done digitally in Painter, with some cleaning up in Photoshop. First of all, I outline all the finest details with a small brush size…



Then from there, I add shadows and heavier outlines to bring the whole thing to life, defining the weight and adding some metallic sheen with the shadows…

Following on from my original post, once I had the pose I wanted in my sketchbook, it was time to get to work. As I mentioned previously, the character hasn’t appeared in a comic for several years, and no doubt if he did, he’d get a bit of a refresh, so I didn’t want to just draw the existing character in a new pose.



The first stop was to get my fianceé to take some photos of me in the pose. Well, as close to the pose as this mere mortal could get, anyway. I’ll spare you the horrors of seeing those, and move straight onto the part where I interpreted them into digital drawings in Painter. Had you worried for a moment there didn’t I.

Because I’m trying to reinterpret the character, the first drawing is especially loose. It’s like feeling the way, and you’re relying on instinct, whilst constantly referring to the existing interpretations of the character. Did I have to exaggerate the muscles, you ask? Well, yeah, a little bit. Okay?



From there, it’s about refining and editing, both the character design and the quality of the drawing itself, until this fantasy character starts to feel real and has a sense of weight. I wouldn’t always do three drawings, but in this case it was necessary to bring ROM to life in my mind.

ROM has quite an unusual looking weapon (the Neutralizer, which can actually send his enemies into another dimension – pretty cool huh?) and I had a few attempts at this before I felt happy with my update. It’s always hard to get the balance between making something your own, without losing the characteristic features that define the original. You can see on this second drawing how a lot of the character had come together, but the gun was still being ‘figured out’. At one point it looked like a dust-buster, and needless to say I abandoned that version!



From there it was a case of making one more pass, with even neater lines, making a few additions and edits, and providing a platform from which to create a dramatic piece with colour and texture. More soon…

This year I’m hoping to share a lot more of my work in progress with you, so I’m starting here as I mean to go on. To quote wikipedia, “Bill Mantlo is an American comic-book writer, primarily at Marvel Comics, best-known for his work on two licensed toy properties whose adventures occurred in the Marvel Universe: the Eagle Award-winning Micronauts and the long-running ROM”. Sadly, in 1992, he was the victim of a hit and run accident and has been in institutional care ever since.

I first heard about the project via the ubiquitous Twitter, when I saw the great pieces that Ben the Illustrator and David Cousens had contributed to the forthcoming book and exhibition in aid of Mantlo. In short, I also enquired, and volunteered to create a piece of my own, and below I’ll show you how things are coming along.

Naturally first of all I did lots of research, looking through all the images of ROM Spaceknight that I could find, and reading up on the character. As wikipedia explains, “in the comic book, Rom is more than a simple cyborg, being originally from a utopian society on a planet called Galador. The series details Rom’s defeat of an invading alien race known as Dire Wraiths, and the continuation of their battle on Earth and other planets.” I honed the images down to a few dozen of my absolute favourites, printed those and put them up on the wall.

In order to pay tribute to the character, I felt it was important to develop my own interpretation of the cyborg’s costume, especially because it varies quite a bit across the official art anyway. Here’s a quick snap from my moleskine as I started exploring this, in general thinking how a truly contemporary ROM might look today. Another reason for considering an updated look is that Marvel no longer possesses the licensing rights from the original toy manufacturers, Parker brothers, so the character hasn’t actually appeared in comics for several years now. Interestingly enough, Rom apparently provided inspiration for the initial design of Robocop, and in the film, the liquor store thief grabs a copy of a ROM comic book.

Following this initial drawing, I wanted to create a more dramatic pose for the character. I played around with a few ideas, and the photo below shows where I got to. You can see that I started by drawing cuboids for the limbs in order to get a sense of proportions and perspective:

Next up will be my neat pencils, so keep an eye out for those soon.