Dennis Jones
eclectic artwork & other random things
Three Ring Circus
Another wall illustration I did for Living Stones Church in Crown Point, Indiana.
Holy Mackerel!
This is the wall illustration I did for the toddlers room at Living Stones Church in Crown Point, Indiana.
Getting Ready For Easter
The folks at Living Stones Church are getting their new building ready for Easter Sunday, and the Nursery, Toddler and Preschool rooms will all have a bit of my artwork in them.
I traveled up to Crown Point, Indiana to meet them and they told me they wanted the pictures for these particular rooms to follow the creation story. I took some photos, took some wall measurements and headed back home. I fired up Photoshop, created files with the proper room dimensions, added a 5.5 and 6 foot guy for scale, scratched out some roughs, sent them in for approval and then proceeded to create the finished artwork.
I’m pretty excited to go back some Sunday and see these three classrooms full of kids!
Croak-A-Cola
I used to have a job crushing Coca-Cola cans. It was soda pressing.
Still Working On Comics
The comic books I’m working on have really been eating up a lot of my work time. I’m currently working on issue six. I noticed that the pencil drawings for them are really starting to pile up, so I made a quick video to show how much artwork has gone into the first five issues.
You can visit THE FEW Online Comic Book Shop by clicking HERE.
Erasable Color Leads
I’ve just discovered something new! I typically like to start my drawings using an erasable blue pencil (a Prismacolor Col-Erase 20044 Blue) and then use a mechanical pencil (Pentel Twist-Erase) to finish the drawing. This process works fine, but I am constantly having to stop and hand sharpen the blue pencil. I have tried to find blue leads to use in my mechanical pencils, but they are all too brittle and not erasable at all.
Then I discovered PaperMate Erasable Color Leads. These are soft leads, fit my mechanical pencils perfectly and work like a charm… AND you can get them at your local WALMART!! …well, you can’t get them at MY local Walmart because I just bought every one they had last night… but you might want to give these a try sometime. I love em.
Elysia Rhone
The image on the left is a panel rough I sent to Todd for his approval in order to move forward on THE FEW Comic Book Series. The image on the right is the finished art. I’m glad Todd trusts me ’cause my roughs look like a four year old did them.
You can visit THE FEW Online Comic Book Shop by clicking HERE.
Making Stuff Up
THE FEW Comic Book Series exists in its own unique little universe… and what does that universe look like? Who knows? It’s being created from scratch one day at a time. In a perfect comic book creators world, there would be plenty of time to design all the different elements that go into a story, but in reality there is only a mountain of artwork to render and little time to do it. Here’s a panel that called for a couple of space motorcycles and my quick roughs to figure out what they might look like.
You can visit THE FEW Online Comic Book Shop by clicking HERE.
We’ll Getcha Hooked Up
Thanks to everyone for the positive response to the comic books. Many have asked questions that I don’t have answers to yet. We are currently in “soft launch” mode… but we will eventually get you hooked up with this story in a variety of ways.
You can visit THE FEW Online Comic Book Shop by clicking HERE.
The Comics Are Ready
In May of 2016 I began work on a three year, nine issue comic book project. The first three comics are printed and hard copies are now available for purchase online. I’m currently finishing the art for issue four and just received the script for issue five. This has been such a fun project to work on.
You can visit THE FEW Online Comic Book Shop by clicking HERE.
Ecto One
Ghostbuster Ecto One concept art I did for the folks at Cryptozoic a while back. Squashing a mile long 1959 Cadillac ambulance limo down into a cartoon compact size was a challenge to say the least.
The preliminary 3-d renders are by the amazing Stephan Ehl.
Creating A Few Panels
The next three issues of THE FEW are officially underway. Here’s a snapshot of how I create a single panel of art for a page in the comic.
I take the written script, “massage” the text to make it work in a picture format, create a really simple rough of the entire story and send it to the editor for approval. When I receive the go ahead, I refine the art, put it on a light table, do a tight pencil drawing, scan that into the computer an add color with Photoshop.
All I need to do now is repeat this process about three hundred times and the next three comics will be ready to send to the printer.
Krita Is Kinda Awesome
The other night I was wandering aimlessly through internetland and stumbled across something called KRITA. On a whim, I downloaded it to the Surface Pro 4 tablet I was using and began experimenting with it. I was shocked with the results.
First of all, let me say I know next to nothing about KRITA… except that it’s awesome and it’s FREE! It is a digital painting program that looks, feels and functions like Photoshop… and did I mention it was absolutely free?!
I loaded up one of my little sermon note sketches and began testing the brush engine. It responded like a trooper. This is NOT just another simple little drawing app, this is a full blown digital painting program. If you know your way around Photoshop it’s pretty easy to pick up. If not, there would probably be a bit of a learning curve to it, but well worth the effort.
It worked great on a PC and it probably would work fine on a MAC (like I said, I know next to nothing about it) so if you’re looking for a good digital painting program (or a substitute for Photoshop because you can’t afford it) you might want to give this a test drive. What have you got to lose… IT’S FREE!
LITTLE ZEKE GROWS UP…FAST
In the beginning… THE FEW existed only in words on paper. But those words had to be turned into a comic book, so Todd Sanders and I became the writer/artist team for the project. The green light was given for the first three books and we were off and running.
As I began looking through the paperwork, I noticed there was a sister (Audrey) and her little brother (Zeke) in the story. I scribbled together some character sketches and headed for a brainstorming session in Oklahoma City. When I showed the Audrey and Zeke sketch, Todd said “…that’s not the way I see Zeke. Zeke is a little brother BUT he’s a really large guy. I see him as some sort of protector for the group.”
So scrawny little brother Zeke turned into great BIG little brother Zeke… and he seems to be growing bigger in every issue.
Suiting Up THE FEW
Developing the character costumes for THE FEW COMIC BOOK SERIES was an interesting riddle to solve.
The Few takes place in a distant future, so the characters needed to have some sort of distinctive futuristic look. The tricky part was that a four part film based on this story (with real live actors) was going to run concurrent with the release of the comics. The film was not scripted yet because the film people needed the comic book story to work from and the comic book story was still being written.
With everything up in the air, I tried to design character costumes that the film people could recreate in some form or fashion for their actors. The outfits are based on everyday items you can find. An army surplus store could supply all the harnessed looking gear, hockey shoulder pads, tight fitting compression sport gear, fingerless bicycle gloves, carpenters tool belts… with a bit of modification all these items could be turned into FEW character clothing. The film decided to go in a more manageable direction and created a prequel film which eliminated the need to create elaborate futuristic sets and costumes. Smart.
So the good news is, it will be super easy for cosplay enthusiasts to create their very own FEW cosplay outfits using everyday items… and yes… Jeron does have Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls taped to his shoulders.
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