Open Mic Sketch

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!

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!

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!

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

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

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!

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!

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

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

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.