Dan Hale : Comic Artist & Illustrator

Sneak Peek

2011-02-25T20:55:00.000-08:00

I am working on prints for C2E2 and a comic project that is a lot of fun to draw. Here are some peeks into what is brewing. BTW- I will be at table F6 at C2E2.

Comic layout

Conan

Green Lantern

Art Dump

2011-02-10T22:56:00.000-08:00

I am going to be dropping a bunch of work once every week. I have several projects in the works and hope to be able to make some announcements soon.

Some sketches for an X-Men print I want to have ready for C2E2 (come see me at tale F9!)

Character Designs for a personal project

Thing speedpaint process. He is so weird to draw with the rocky surface.

Inked Batman, still want to color this.

Boba Fett Inkwash that I did at Wizard World Austin

Inked Cowboy. Going to color this eventually.

Same as the inked piece below with some color magic in Photoshop.

Inked Ghost Rider done at Wizard World Austin

Girl pencil sketch.

Character Design for a personal project. Colors coming soon.

Open Mic Sketch

2010-12-10T16:26:00.000-08:00

So earlier this week I went to the cool local restaurant/venue Uncommon Ground to hear my good friend and fellow Funemployee Mike Lippert ( creator, writer, director, editor, also plays "Jay") do some signin' and guitarin'. It was a great time and I did a few sketches while I listened to the jams. The older man with the bowler is actually inspired by one of the musicians, the lower right drawing of me was done by Mike's wife Kate ("Amy" in the show, also a writer and creator). The others are out of my head.

In art news I am valiantly working on Super Hero Showdown 2 and a secret project that I am really excited about :)

New Work!

2010-11-27T10:36:00.000-08:00

Head on over to my Website to see a bunch of new comic pages (Zombies and Robots!) and illustrations. I also posted pictures and sketches from Wizard World Austin.

--Dan

Back from Austin!

2010-11-17T14:52:00.001-08:00

Just got back last night from Austin where I met some great people and sold a few things. Got some great ideas to prepare for the Cons next year as well. I will post some pictures by tomorrow night!

Dan

Huge announcement!

2010-11-09T16:35:00.000-08:00

SuperHero Showdown is a new column I am illustrating with my long time friend and film-maker Nick Gregorio over at www.Geekscape.net I did all of the illustrations (color and all), we are planning to do these once a month. I hope you enjoy it! Here's the link to the article http://geekscape.net/super-hero-showdown-boba-fett-vs-samus-aran.html

WIPs

2010-11-05T22:41:00.000-07:00

Some works in progress. Plan to ink these traditionally and then color em in PS. Will probably work on these when I am in Austin next week :) These are concepts from a story I am working on. More details to follow.

OMG

2010-11-04T16:14:00.001-07:00

I am so totally going to post new thing soon(and redesign the blog)! In the meantime check out my new website with recent work. www.thedanhale.com

- Dan Hale

New site! How to Generate Ideas, Great Illustrations and an Animated Short!

2010-10-23T13:43:00.000-07:00

I'm back! Will be posting more often now and will be doing a redesign as well. Some of my art soon!

Check out my new site with new illustrations, comics pages and more! www.TheDanHale.com

How to Generate Ideas for Artists, just what I needed to inspire my comic writings, with a Chuck Norris inspired for an example! With pictures! Via the man himself Frank Chimero .

Great Art! Comic art, illustration and my favorite, process shots at Sam Bosma's great blog.

Margarita - beautiful indie animation short from Hampa Studio. There's a making of video as well.

Characters!

2009-03-03T10:42:00.000-08:00

So it's been a while but i promise I will start updating more regularly. I have a 7 page comic project that i will be posting soon but for now I am posting some character sketches that I've done over the past few months.

This is my take on Batman and his alter ego (in that order) Bruce Wayne. I have been trying to do more mainstream characters for a while and am pretty happy with this. I'm not sure if I would keep doing all of the folds in the suit in the future but some realistic details do work in many modern interpretations including Paul Pope and Lee Bermejo's takes on the Dark Knight.

This is Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman without her mask. Adam Hughes has done a ton of amazing covers for that book and he's a great inspiration to many artists. His new Audrey Hepburn inspired look for her really influenced this sketch. I am also happy with the near-dead brush pens that allowed for the drybrush effect.
This is a character design for a story that I have been working on for a long time. It was a pretty small drawing (maybe 3x3") that I colored in Photoshop. I really like that nubby headgear design.
This is another color test from the same SciFi story as the guy above. Another very small sketch I really rendered the hell out of it and came up with this.

Hard to believe but this and the girl above were drawn in the same style originally. After doing the more rendered one above (and taking way too long for such a small sketch) I decided to do a much faster animated-style color test. This one only took a half hour or so to color and would be more suitable for using in an actual comic.

New Work

2008-12-02T17:28:00.001-08:00

So I haven't updated in a while due to some major computer issues and with work and the holidays. The good news is that I've been working pretty steady drawing, writing, and coloring. Below are my first cover colors (and process) for 10th Muse, a book from Bluewater Productions (bluewaterprod.com) that should be out in the next few months. I am also uploading some personal work as well. I hope you like them!

This is the final for the 10th Muse cover. I'm not sure who did the actual drawing, I did the coloring. You can see some of my process below.

This is some of my process in creating the colors for the cover. Zoom in to read my description of each step.

This is a teaser for my upcoming book , "Bout" that I writing and illustrating. It will be a 5 issue, 125 page story about a boxer here in Chicago. This was done entirely in Photoshop with a tablet, about 3 hours total.

This is a quick sketch I did in Photoshop while having coffee and talking with several people about books and storytelling while at my favorite coffeeshop, the Grind, near my home here in Lincoln Square. I'm really pleased with how it turned out, especially compared to my earlier digital painting attempts from just a few months ago (trust me, they were NOT good!). Eventually I would like to do some comics and more illustrations entirely on the computer.

This is an older drawing an a teaser image form the sequel to "Bout" (I know I'm a little ahead of myself with a sequel since Bout isn't even drawn yet!) I'll upload the full finished piece when it's done.

Blast From The Past

2008-12-02T16:59:00.000-08:00

These are the pages form my first published work from my school days at SCAD. I wrote the story as well but haven't included he word balloons since Top Shelf might sue me. The story was okay, but then again it was only 4 pages long. You can check the book out at
http://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog.php?type=3&title=531 . My story, "No Good Deed" is on page 252.

ATLAS Pages

2008-10-06T23:41:00.000-07:00

These are the first 5 pages of ATLAS, a miniseries that I'm coloring for Bluewater Productions (link) I believe it will be a 4 issue series and will come out in March of '09. I'm very happy with the pages since it's a complete 180 from the color I do for my own work and matches the animated style. I might be doing another book for them as well but it's all very top secret right now. Stay tuned!

Godless Pages

2008-09-05T19:06:00.000-07:00

So I have been pretty busy lately, first I had a great trip to Phoenix to see my family for my grandma's 80th birthday which was a lot of fun. I also started a new day job and have been using all of my free time for drawing. I'm posting here some inked pages from Godless and the final colors for page 6. This page marked a big leap as I started painting the backgrounds directly in the computer with no hand drawing to go from, specifically in panels 4 and 5 (the top 2 of the triple stack). I'm, pretty happy with how it worked and I think works well to separate the foreground and background elements.

These are pages 9 and 10, the big finale before the big fight scene plays out. These were intended to be the last pages for submitting to companies but I'm actually already working on page 20.

Godless Page 5 Color

2008-07-27T18:34:00.001-07:00

So here are the final colors for page 5 of Godless. I'm pretty happy with it, I opened it up the other day and thought I had more work to do but decided that it was done. The file was so large (over a gig) that I had to do the last panel on it's own so that my laptop could handle it! I've been working on keeping layers to a minimum but that big panel was a beast. I will also have some more inked pages up soon and colors for page 6 should be done this week as well.

Godless Page 4 Color

2008-07-22T18:11:00.000-07:00

So I finished this up the other day, I might make some small changes but I'm pretty happy overall. I've been really branching out, trying to push the work past any preconceived rules or regulations. After all, I think an original style is an artist's main selling point. I hope you like it.

Sneak Peek

2008-07-10T19:53:00.001-07:00

This is a peek at the colors from Page 4. I should have the color for pages 4 and 5 both done within a few days. I'm pretty happy with how it's going, I've been learning a few new tricks and it doesn't take that long either, if it was published I could do a full page drawn and colored every 2 days I'm sure.

Crazy Character

2008-07-07T12:49:00.000-07:00

I did this really quick last night to demo how I work for a friend. This is one of the main characters from a graphic novel that I'm currently writing. He's pretty insane due to a gunshot wound to the head (the scar is on the other side of his head) but he's actually my favorite character to write due to his imperfections. He was also and aspiring artist like myself before the "incident".

300 Print

2008-07-02T19:24:00.000-07:00

So I finished the colors for this 300 drawing that I did last year so I could sell the print at Wizard World Chicago. Unfortunately, my buddy wasn't able to share his table so I couldn't sell anything, but I actually had a great time and met tons of cool people. I'm pretty proud of it, especially the fact that I buckled down and redesigned my website and colored this in the week before the con.

Thor redux

2008-06-19T13:15:00.001-07:00

So I took and older color version of this Thor drawing that I did then ran it through a bunch of adjustments and layer styles in Photoshop and came up with this.

You can see the original version and the inked drawing too at my deviantart page.

http://thedanhale.deviantart.com/art/Thor-Color-79627902

Godless Page 3 Color

2008-06-19T10:27:00.000-07:00

So I finally finished the colors for page 3 of Godless. The difference between this page and the last 2 is pretty drastic. I'm going to go back and make some adjustment to 1 and 2 to make them match up more. I guess at least it means I'm getting better :)

Tone Highlights

2008-05-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

This is a greatest hits of sorts. My favorites from the last few weeks of sketching.

Godless Pages

2008-05-16T11:38:00.001-07:00

Here are pages 7 and 8. Only 2 more to finish drawing and then a few more to color before we send it off to publishers.

Sketch Time

2008-05-16T10:43:00.000-07:00

These are some quick sketches I did, no pencil drawing underneath, just starting with a thin Micron and then using bigger pens and brush pens. A few I toned using Copic grey markers.

These are more quick ink sketches, the top 2 are toned pencil drawings made using 4B lead and a blending stump, then erasing with the Tuff Stuff eraser.

2 small panel drawings. The ninja one was a lot of fun trying to imply the sea below.

Very loose brush pen sketches and a toned samurai guy.

Mo Sketches

2008-05-06T15:39:00.000-07:00

Here are some sketches that I finished recently. The Indian was rendering practice using the Pentel brush pen to do some fine hatching and feathering which I have all but abandoned as of late.

These 3 toned sketches were all done on the same sketchbook page, I just isolated then from the other junk. They were all done with no pencil under drawing, just went from a loose 005 Micron sketch to bigger Microns and then to brush pens and Copic grays. The 2 character on the end are from Godless and the middle guy is from a book I'm working writing now.

Collage Sketch

2008-05-05T19:15:00.000-07:00

This is a sketch of a book I have planned down the road. I am still finalizing the sequence of events but I have the main themes and characters all planned out. This is one of the "panel" sketches, original size is probably 3.5" square.

More Godless Pages!

2008-05-01T12:12:00.000-07:00

So I finally sat down and finished both the color for page 2 and the inks for page 6. I feel like getting up to page 10 all drawn and up to page 5 colored won't be a problem for the end of May. Looks like June will be submission time.This page was difficult since I had to draw horses and riders at all kinds of angles and I really wanted to give a sense of place with a wide open desert. Not to mention fitting 7 panels, lettering is going to be a challenge.

Page one is Done!

2008-04-10T10:42:00.000-07:00

So after two weeks (and a 1.2 gig file) of on and off coloring I finally finished page one of Godless. I spent way to long on it but i figure the first page is the most important for grabbing the readers (and editors!) attention. I might make some small changes here and here before we send it out but this is probably 99% final. I hope you like it.

3 Techniques

2008-04-08T22:23:00.000-07:00

I forgot to put up some of these sketches and color experiments that I finished recently. I'm also including a digital layout I did for a story called "Moriarty" that I am working on with the local writer MG Farrelly. I enjoyed doing the drawing completely in Photoshop and it was great for resizing panels and might be a nice change from the traditional pencil and ink Godless.

This is the layout, the story is there are two cops chatting near a police station located at Belmont and Western (only a mile or so from my house actually) when a Semi comes barreling down the overpass smashes though the guardrail and careens towards our doomed officers. Definitely grabs the attention.

This is an experiment with a small pencil sketch (maybe 2.5" square) I spent a half an hour or using a dark 4B lead and smudge stick and then use my Tufff Stuff eraser (my most used tool by far) to erase out highlights and details. I really like working in this method and actually did a 4 page WW2 story in school using the technique. I prefer it for highly detailed illustrative work though as it takes forever and is extremely messy. Anyways, I slapped some flat colors on it in photoshop and 10 layers later came up with this. Oh yeah, it's kinda supposed to be Frank Castle( aka the Punisher).
This is yet another technique I've begun to use recently involving tech& brush pens, as well as Copic grey markers (30% and 50%). This is probably the best example of the technique so far. The color version is a few hours in Photoshop, tried to mainly use the values I already had and only added a strong rim-light and background.

Godless Pages

2008-04-02T16:26:00.001-07:00

These are pages 4 and 5 from Godless. I had 4 almost done for about a week and I finally drew the figures and background in the last panel yesterday. I also did a lot of work on 5 yesterday, finally buckling down and inking the mountains and horses. There are a few problem areas but I'm confident all will be well once I get the color done. Speaking of which page 1 is almost totally colored, I'll have it online by the end of the week.

Godless Pages

2008-03-25T20:12:00.001-07:00

These are the first 3 pages of Godless, the book I have been working on for the past year. I want to finish around 7-10 pages to send off to companies, including several colored and lettered. I will post colored versions and the next pages as I finish them.

Process Time

2008-03-08T11:53:00.000-08:00

So i wanted to post this illustration I did for the Stranger Things story that I'm working on. I already posted the sketch form earlier but wanted to share the different variations that I made when I colored it in Photoshop. Overall I am very happy and can't decide on which I like best.

Panel Update

2008-03-04T22:05:00.000-08:00

So I inked and toned this "panel" the other day, using the gray tone markers to do some of the actual drawing this time, which worked out great in the color phase. I'll post that up tomorrow. I used some Microns, the Copic grays, and the Japanese Pentel brush pen.

Color Stuffs

2008-02-25T21:47:00.002-08:00

This is Mick, the main character from the boxing comic I'm writing/ hoping to draw one day. You can see the prequel pages at my Website. I'm actually pretty happy with this, although the background sucks but that's because it was just a figure sketch. I'm starting to get a process for digital color although it still takes lots of messing around to get anything good. This must be like 30 layers.

This was a quick (~1 hour) test I did at the "The Grind" coffee shop (my second home/studio) the other day. I like the luminous quality although it does look pretty digital. I drew a really quick arm sketch on the tablet with a strong contour line then laid in flats and rendering underneath. So far my process has been to 1- lay in flats 2- glazing on shadows, starting light and adding new layers of darker shadows on top. I also made it a point to merge layers often to keep my file sizes down (and to prevent 5 minute file saves). 3- I do the same as 2 but with highlights. 4 - Finally I copy the layers I have and try different layer styles and various dirty little photoshop tricks I've picked up over the years until I have something I like. I actually had a boxing glove begun on the hand when my laptop's battery died.

Panels update

2008-02-24T23:48:00.001-08:00

I inked the boxer and some of the ruffians in the bottom left panel (the front guy's body is too small, I'll fix that in Photoshop, however, I am happy with the improvements to the face). I also did some more work inking Stever, not my favorite of him but good practice nonetheless.

FIRST POST

2008-02-18T14:05:00.001-08:00

Welcome! These are my drawings, I hope you like some of them. If you have any questions or comments send me a message or an e-mail.

I've been dividing my sketchbook pages into smaller panels, I just randomly draw the panels with a sharpie then work on trying to make good composition for the shape. This makes me less worried about individual drawings and I feel more free to experiment and bounce around rather than focusing on one drawing lie I used to do. This page is filled with conceptual sketched for a story called Stranger Things that I'm working on with my friend Nick Gregorio (check his hilarious videos over at www.sweatyrobot.com) . It's a supernatural story set in both Philadelphia and Kansas, stay tuned for more details and art.

This page has a mix of Godless sketches (my main project right now a Western/Horror comic) and some ninja sketches for a story brewing in the back of my head. I threw in a random landscape and you can see some brush pen marks as well.

Quick color (Photoshop CS3 and an Intuos3 Tablet)over two of the panels from the above page. Ideally, I would like to color all of the panels and just have tons of little color drawings and experiments to help my digital coloring.

More ninja sketches, with a cowboy thrown in and a disembodied arm as well. I used brush pens and microns to ink the arm and Copic 30% and 50% gray markers for the tone.

These are character designs for Godless. The toned sketch is Jessup the badass outlaw and his brother. There's a vampire thrown in and an early samurai guy hiding in pencil there too.

So I got on this vampire kick this last week and am thinking of doing some Blade story pitch (MAX of course. I haven't read it recently but would definitely be fun to do. I'll throw some ink on these soon.

Sketches for Blade and baddies with some scribbled story ideas.

These are Raven drawings I used since I will be drawing them a lot in Godless, based mostly on photo reference.

Godless characters and monsters along with some boxing stuff and a tree. You can see I've partially inked Stever (the pastor of the church in Godless). I'll upload the finished inks soon.

These are what kicked off the vampire kick. Not all "panelized", I think keeping some open space will be good on some pages to do larger, more detailed work.