Hands Up! Studio is the studio of artist John Collins, a.k.a. Johnny Splendor. Johnny is a freelance cartoonist and illustrator who works in a mix of both traditional and digital mediums.
For a side project, I re-imagined the Drak Pack, a Hanna-Barbera cartoon from 1980-1982 I'd watched when I was a very little kid. I used the core characters of Drak, Frankie, and Howler for the piece, thinking of them in terms of more modern, action based, and themed teenagers (Drak as a "prep", Frankie as a "jock", and Howler as a "skater kid").
The original promo image.
Pencil layout for the piece.
Inks added, Digital Cleanup, Logo, and text.
Some quick color, shadows, and effects.
It was fun to do, and I think with the current popularity of supernatural characters this concept could work again.
On October 20th, 2012, I attempted to do a 24 Hour Comic Day comic. I started at 1pm and I failed miserably in my attempt to make a 24 page
comic book from scratch in 24 hours. I didn't even complete a single
page of finished art, but I learned a lot on what to do and what not to
do for next year and I had a fun time doing it. 24 Hour Comic Day 2012: The Rundown
Plot, Character Idea, Prop design, and Page templates.
I started out with no concept, as per the rules, so I grabbed a dictionary and flipped to random pages with my eyes closed and pointed to words. I did this 6 times. I jotted down the randomly chosen words and with them started to mentally build my plot. I think I got really lucky as I the words I picked worked well in a crazy way and I got a basic concept down fast. The words chosen were "Cleopatra", "Beatnik", "Invocation", "Fragment", "Seed", and "Fateful".
While I thought up my plot ideas I made a six panel template on a 8.5"x11" sheet of card stock, cut out the panels, and layed out light pencil panels on 30 sheets of 8.5"x11" bristol for my pages. I decided to go with 8.5"x11" because I figured the smaller size would be easier and faster to work on. I then spent the next hour or so writing up the plot, making it work for page count, and creating my characters.
My page layouts for my 24 page story.
After a short break I went to work on my page layouts, to make sure my story fit the pages right, and with the idea that by laying it all out it would speed things up. This took me forever. I lost hours. I lost Sooooo many hours. By the time I finished the page layouts it was after midnight. I had trouble in a few spots getting things to work the way I'd envisioned them, and I stubbornly had refused to push on past them until I'd gotten them right. By the time I'd finished them I was so mentally exhausted that I knew I was done before I'd even really started.
Page 1. The First and only page I began.
I decided to give it ago anyways to see how long a page would take. After some very loose pencil work I went straight to inks. I realized I wasn't going to be able to squeeze in my word balloons and narrative boxes so I mentally told myself I'd do them on the computer after. To save time. My inks went down fast. I was happy with the time I was making. Then on the fourth panel I realized that I had about 10 hours to do 23 more pages. I knew I wouldn't get done. I might hit page 10 by then, and that was all just build up to the actual story. At about 2:30am I threw in the towel and called it a loss.
I did some logo designs for a new reptile business.
The store Full Type Banner
The store Logo
The Banner snake was drawn and inked by hand and scanned into Photoshop for coloring. The font used is a modified version of Bleeding Cowboy. The snake head in the logo was added digitally in Photoshop.
This is Hekate, a teenage witch, who will be making an appearance in Strange Encounters later this year. She is accompanied by her familiar Flip, a tree frog, and Broom, a magic broom.
Hekate is based on a character I created back in 1995 in my last months of high school.
On February 27th I gave a lecture and had a gallery show at Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica, NY. The lecture for students was about my experiences as a freelance illustrator and cartoonist in a difficult industry. I feel it went well, though I did have a few rough spots, and some of the students seemed very interested in my presentation. The meet and greet after was fun, where I talked one on one with several of the students. I think I gave them some realistic hope for pursuing a career in comics and illustration.
The gallery show ran from the 27th of February to April 5th. The pieces I displayed were all black and white illustration pieces, in various styles, of projects I am working on this year. I got very positive feedback from everyone who attended the show over the month.
All in all it was a very fun experience and I look forward to doing more lectures in the future if given the chance.
I've been away for a few weeks working on pieces for my gallery show and working on some ideas for new sequential stories. Here are a couple of pieces I've done that will be used in the show.
Dwarf Warrior 5x7 ink pen
Elf Prince 5x7 ink pen
Zombies 5x7 ink pen
If things go well, the Dwarf and Elf may appear in a black and white comic book later this year.
The British Being Human is a great series I just started watching on Netflix. It is a story about a Vampire, a Werewolf, and a Ghost who are flatmates. I highly recommend it.
Today I felt like doing something a bit darker than my normal work so I did up a fast King Dog piece. It went with a very loose and fast ink style that works I think.
It has been a busy week and I have a lot of work all sketched out with little idea notes attached. I'm about to start working on final versions of some of the pieces which include some paintings (my first in years). I will post up the sketches with the finished pieces as I get them done.
I'm also finishing up my Winter Wonderland story line in my Strange Encounters comic this upcoming week. After that I will be slowing down on the art by switching to a more standard comic strip style for a few months while I get things set for my gallery show.
