Sketch - Victor and Nakia

So I spent the better part of 2 days really flushing out the story for Conflagration, and the Prequel, Embers. There is some awesome imagery in those 2 stories, if I do say so myself.
I started sketching some of the scenes and for once, liked something enough to take it beyond a doodle, or a gesture.

Victor and Nakia

I can't decide whether I want to go full colour with this, or play with warm and cool greys. Anyway, just thought I'd share it before I butcher it with colours and ink, LMAO.
Ps: I'm fairly certain this is the cleanest sketch I've ever produced, Lol.

NanoMango

So November is NanoMango. Today was the first I heard of it too.
It's something someone started on livejournal (unfortunately) as a Comic artists alternative to NanoWriMo.
I've decided that while this is an extremely ambitious goal to have, I'm going to try to make the prequel to Conflagration, Embers, In this time frame. The goal is a page a day of pencilled comics, and with a full time job besides.. I don't know if I can do it, but I'm sure going to try. I'm working on scripting it out right now, and have layout complete before November 1 so that It's a more obtainable goal.
Embers should be at least another comic to have going to sell at conventions and to generate some interest in my biggest awesomest story I have going right now. Unfortunately because I've been working with these characters so long, everyone knows OF it but really nothing about it. So hopefully this will be an asset to my comic pile.
I'm still planning on having Hello, Albertosaurus done by the summer of 2012, then a couple Mini Projects in there as well (2 of them I'm very keen on) then Full production on Conflagration. How cool!

Copic Original for Comics.

Hello,
I have been doing a few black and white comics lately, and something I've come to value in this adventure is my Copic Multiliner SP's! Oh yes! The Multiliners are a godsend. I've sort of tallied up what it would have cost me to buy disposable pens VS Copic multiliner SP's (refillable) and I've saved over 100$ on these 2 wee comics alone!

Something else! I have a couple Copic Original in black that I got in my Comic Inking Pro set a while back, and recently I swapped out my Fine nib on it for the Super fine and it's AMAZING!
This is what it looks like:

"One Day to Live" Comic, in progress! Will be available at Vcon sept 30!

Isn't that a keen nib? I've been adding some line weight and stuff to my inked pages with it! It's awesome because it doesn't get fuzzy like the Fine nibs do, and it is regular copic marker ink. It's like one step up from the .07 size Multiliner which I often crave.

Anyway, Just thought I'd share that with you :D

 (Cross posted from MarkerGuru)

Ghost tales cover- please vote

We've got a public vote going on to decide the cover of ghost tales! Please go look at the entries and vote for the one that most fits the theme!

Participation!

I've decided I like participating in things. I used to be so aloof. Never participated in things, never went to groups or anything but now, I've been going to cloudscape every week, and I've Submitted (and been accepted) to a beastiary with cloudscape too! It's been great fun!
Now I've got to motor on my Ghost Tales submission! AHHH!

Lots of projects

I've been taking on a lot of projects lately. We've been trying to come up with more merchandise for conventions and the shop as well.
I've started an intermitted blog only web comic called bad kitties. No set schedule on that one, its just cute blog content. I've also started a dinosaur calendar that should hopefully be available in september at vcon, but that would be pretty miraculous. If nothing else it will be in the shop.
We've got 3 conventions sceduled and paid for one in august, one in september and one in november. So we're keeping very busy!
Only a few days left to submit to ghost tales and we're still accepting calgary donations!

Help us get to Calgary Expo

We are taking a big leap in our Comic Convention adventures. This time we're diving into Calgary Expo. We've heard great things from other people who've attended the Expo, and we're really excited to take our comics there! By the time the expo is here we should have ghost tales and maybe even Hello Albertosaurus at least available for Pre-order! Excite!

Now there is a small issue of funding. It costs a lot to travel these days. especially by plane and with lots of Luggage. To sell for 3 days, thats a Lot of merchandise. We need 2 plane tickets, hotels, and other costs. We live rather simple lives so we don't need much. Please take a look at our campaign below:

It would be really amazing if you could help us by donating some money, or even just promoting it for us! If you have Twitter, facebook, google+, Tumblr, blogs, or websites or anything (your dA journal for example)! if you could just promote our cause, and get the word out we'd be forever in your debt!

We have a campaign goal we're trying to meet.

Lots of love this week

So I didn't win the deviantART San Diego Comic Con Sponsorship but I'm not at all surprised, only slightly disappointed.  I wanted to win for the validation of winning and someone saying my stuff was good. I'm the only person who pats me on the back. I never had an interest in a mainstream company picking up my work, and in retrospect I believe that's what they were canvassing for.
Working for one of those places (DC, Marvel) is actually one of the few art related jobs that makes me cringe.

Having said that, I had a lot of nice stuff happen this week that helped boost my spirits and this time, from a Company that I really like and respect.
Copic marker featured me on their new Copic Social Network - Copic Color In fact, it's been 2 days I've been up there and I'm still the "featured Created".
On top of that, they've been tweeting the heck out of me as well, and as a result I've gotten a few new followers.
I also was featured my submission on their Tumblr account! I was pretty please about that.
I love Copic as a company their PR is great, products are amazing and ...ya. I want to work for them! LOL

So we've also got a lot of convention lined up! check out Gurukitty Studios blog and see where we will be and when!

Daily Deviation

HEY! I got A DD today!
SChweet!
Albertosaurus Page 9

Thanks to Damaged927 and kangel for that!
Heres some info on the comic:
Hello, Albertosaurus is a Comic memoir of a trip myself, Kitty, and our dad took to Alberta to visit Dinosaur National Park and the Famous Drumheller Royal Tyrell Museum. The comic will be a full colour from cover-to-cover graphic novel. It will be coloured traditionally with Markers and will be a 6"x6" square comic. It will be available to purchase in the shop and at conventions when it's complete.

The first chapter is available to read online here at dA as well as other places (see links in description of the DD - too lazy to dig) and the rest will be print only :)

Thanks so much!

OOPS... gunna be late for work, LMAO!

Marker Sketches

Kinda experimenting with some skin tones, and some accents....In reality I just wanted to colour Victor with his moustache. It gets a little hard on a person to be drawing cartoony stuff all the time, every now and then I want to bust out some drawings of my more....real characters. not that these guys are real looking at all...

Side note, I'd like Aaron Ekhart to play Victor in a TV movie of Conflagration

Free Comic Book Day

http://gurukitty.com/ fcbd happening now at gk. Get a free comic now! rt pls

Hello, Albertosaurus page

http://ping.fm/c0Oab Todays comic page is posted :) I also made a tutorial on making the print ready file! http://ping.fm/j2QEW

Production Diary - Hello Albertosaurus photos

Well, I'm pretty fond of how crazy my thumbnailed pages are in my book for working on Hello, Albertosaurus so I thought I'd share with you the crazies that is my notebook for H,A.

Enjoy!
OH, Next week after I colour my page on Live stream, I'm going to make a tutorial on how I make my print files for print and web for the comics, so if anyone else is looking to publish comics it might be a good thing to check out :)

Page 10 Hello, Albertosaurus

Newest Hello, Albertosaurus page: http://ping.fm/oA5wk

Page 11 Coloured Live

I finished colouring todays page (which will be posted shortly) Live on Livestream! Check out the video!
How are you liking the comic so far?

Watch live streaming video from guruubii at livestream.com

New Hello Albertosaurus Page

http://ping.fm/7K3uM

its a bit of a milestone - its page 10, but because I didn't put the Splash page online as a page its only page 9 on the web. Boo hoo :p Enjoy. (OMFG DIALOGUE?!)

Page 10 Live stream

Page 10 Of Hello, Albertosaurus I coloured live on Livestream just now. Check out the Video if you want. You can watch me make a mess with my Copic Airbrush. Gosh there were some scary moments in there :|

Watch live streaming video from guruubii at livestream.com

"'You draw pretty pictures all day. How hard can it be?"

This is an important thing for anyone to read. Not only does it apply to artists (I too have gotten this comment from people and not only is it offensive and ignorant but it's HURTFUL). So please go read it, and think about what you're saying before you open your mouth ;)

ShadowScript - The Art Blog of Angela Sasser: In Defense of Pretty Pictures: "So lately I've been seeing a lot of this particular statement: 'You draw pretty pictures all day. How hard can it be? That's not a re..."

Victors Moustache

This is my character Victor from my Conflagration Comic. I've decided that he needs a moustache. I've been going through my characters and tweaking them, and trying to make them more believable, and also more drawable for the comic etc. I thought since Victor is a bit of a baby face, he would want to age his face a little and the way men do that is with a moustache, I'm assuming. But I wanted his moustache to still fit his happy go lucky, sarcastic, slightly clumbsy and snarky but sometimes DEAD SERIOUS self and I thought this slightly curled puffstache was the one for him... so here he is in all his "I'm a big boy" glory - Victor and his moustache. This is how he will appear in the Conflagration chapter of the comic, but in the Embers comic he will be baby face :3

Drawing B.C.

So, I've posted Page 8 today (which is technically Page 9 because I didn't post the illustration page online) you can check it out here if you like. I really enjoyed colouring this page, but it got me thinking about how potentially monotonous my comic could become. B.C. is pretty renowned for its gorgeous scenery of tree's and mountains, and when you're driving through the rockies you can't look away from all the amazing, but once it comes down to illustrating a drive through the rockies, there is a real danger of being boring. hopefully I've avoided this fate so far in my comic (I hope you're reading it).

Every Monday from now on I'm going to colour the latest comic page live before its posted. It takes me around 2-5 hours each page to colour it, but I've been told its interesting to watch so, maybe you'll tune it. I'll try to download them after and post a fast motion version on Youtube as well.

Watch live streaming video from guruubii at livestream.com

SO I've got 3 more commissions to work on, and then if I have time before the staff meeting I'm going to sketch the next page, or work on some more character design tweaks for Conflagration. But first... a shower!!! :p

Some sketches, and an inked Comic page

So I thought I'd share a cluster of sketches from my sketchbook. Most of them are of my character, Bala, but there is one little sketch of jack and a caveman. I'm trying to tweak their designs a little bit to something I wont struggle to keep on model in the comics. I always design someone then after I draw them a few times some little trends in how I interpret them comes up so this is what usually happens. Balas face shape has been simplified a lot.

I am also trying to do something to Victor's (main character of conflagration) face. besides simplifying him for repeated drawing purposes, I'm also thinking that he needs a moustache, but its pretty clear I need to research more types of moustaches to find the one that doesn't make him look like one of the village people. LOL

They're not the best drawings, but for scribbles of moustaches, it was alright.
Okay, so now for the rest of the day, until I have to go to a staff meeting (on my DAY OFF FROM THAT JOB! hate!) I'm going to be colouring todays Hello, Albertosaurus comic page on Live stream so watch for it:! here is a preview:

Dino Riding commissions - 5 days left.

for a limited time I have opened commissions for Copic Sketch cards of you/your character riding a dinosaur of your choice.

YOU HAVE UNTIL APRIL 10th to Order them!

Fill out THIS ORDER FORM to order a dinosaur riding commission! After you submit it I will send a paypal request for money to the address you provide me. Once I receive your payment, I'll work on your Dinosaur!

Because they're sketch cards I can add a simple Background like the examples in this blog post: [link]
please note! Sketch cards are 2.5"x3.5" small! there is a limited amount of detail that can be obtained in this! you can specify shirt colour and pants colour, IF I can get that it.

Each sketch card will cost $10!

Payment is due before I even start your card, and you must pay before the 10th of April. Any payment received after the 10th will be refunded and I will not do it! 

Here are some examples of the sketch cards:

 

Sketch Cards - Dinosaurs!

I was trying to get some sketch cards done up for the Convention on Sunday that were dinosaurs and Hello, Albertosaurus related. These dinos I thought turned out really cute! Theres also a Moma in there from BATP.

All coloured with Copic markers on Bristol sketch cards (the only time I use bristol)

Click to visit the image on dA

LochNess. Not a dinosaur as much as a cryptid. Could be a plesiosaur though.

Click to go to dA

Orthocones! I liked playing with these deep blues. got carried away!

quetzalcoatlus! 

Spinosaurus aegyptiacus! in the rain :)

Therizinosaur. I used copic airbrush on this one.
His colour scanned bad. his neck and throat is actually
fluorescent!

That's about all I got for you! I hope you enjoy them :D These will all be for sale at our next convention! thats March 20th!

Gurukitty Studios: New Notebooks available in the GK shop!

Gurukitty Studios: New Notebooks available in the GK shop! - Check it out! It's so exciting!

Markers - Work in progress

So I tried to get on livestream yesterday but my internet has been so screwy it really hasn't allowed much of anything lately. So instead I've been snapping little photos with my overhead camera as I've been working on my illustration.
starts at the top and scrolls down. The very last picture is the current state that it's in (as of typing) so as you can see, its a long process, lol. the first 5 are working on the wall, then the Tudor style horn cup, and skin, then Vic's hair.

Its Copics on Xpress it blending card.
This is by far my favourite paper to work with!

I thought it important that if I have 12 days off I should get something completed in that time, illustration wise. something more epic than the usual little portraits I've been doing. Also since I wont get much time for these sorts of work once I go full tilt on Hello, Albertosaurus.

By the way, you can read pages of Hello, Albertosaurus on GK now!
Chapter one posts mondays :)
Thanks!

A sketch

I feel like I needed more art of groups of my characters together.
Nakia, Edlyn, Demi, and Victor.
That's a corn cob on Demi's drink, She's getting her revenge with Mr. Scorpion. Nakia will have a drink and the BG is just drawn really light in Non photo blue so you can only see a hint here or there of what it is. LOL

I feel like I should be creating a decent sized piece of art in my vacation time, not JUST comic pages :P

Hello, Albertosaurus - Production Diary - posting online!

Some of the inside pages of Hello, Albertosaurus are chapter dividers, and I've tried to do something kinda of cute with them so far. My dinosaur style is... a little odd... LOL!
So here is a sneek peek and the chapter 1 Chapter page:

Albertosaurus is Sad by `guruubii on deviantART

I also coloured some of it on livestream as well if you're interested in that sort of thing

Watch live streaming video from guruubii at livestream.com

So, Chapter 1 is going to be posted online for all to read, while the rest of the comic is going to be print only.
you will be able to buy it online in our shop or at our conventions.
I'm excited! The Comic is available now, the page 1 is up, it will update on Mondays!

Read and RATE Chapter 1 online at your favourite places:
smack jeeves
gurukitty
Drunk Duck

I'm also working on getting a gallery of my own art up on Gurukitty.com so I'm not always hosting on places like deviantART but I want to find something with a commenting system. One of the things thats actually enjoyable about dA is the interaction (though it's few and far between, the hope is there). I might have to use tumblr or blogger for a gallery... hmm.. Any thoughts on that?

Studio news:
Kitty and I are working on getting a pretty fancy pigment printer for our studio so we're not ordering online for prints. The benefit of Pigment VS the standard dye based printer is the archival quality. Pigment is archival and has better ink stability. So we can be more assured that the prints I sell will be worth the price no matter where the purchaser puts that print. I also have access to lower cost ink refills for the printer I have in mind through my work so it makes it a rather cost effective adventure for us.
We can then print on special papers that will best reflect the medium they're create in (and will also serve to further protect the art work being printed).
Canson has created a gorgeous line of artists print papers that I've now used quite extensively and they're phenomenal. When you can and print a watercolour painting onto their arches paper, it's incredibly hard to find any difference from the original painting! On top of that, the paper (being watercolour paper and other types of artists papers) will actually allow you to continue to paint on the print itself! This is a good way for us to create a unique product to sell.
This all came about with a few print service frustrations lately.
Over at deviantART I found that half of the prints I wanted to order hadn't gone through the approval Queue, so in order to purchase the bulk quantity I needed, with a shopping cart of mixed approved and some not approved, I'd have to go through the cart twice and place 2 separate orders with 2 separate shipping charges! I angrily submitted to this and went to purchase them to find that when I went to put through my order of the un-approved batch that they had cleared from my cart. So the orders were quite big and that was a lot of wasted time. besides that, the quality control of dA prints is very low now. They used to be good, but now I get prints that have bad trim on them and on top of that there is no artists identification on the prints at all.
Other print places online have a great reputation or wonderful services but have limited payment options, or don't ship to Canada.
So our solution will have a big start up cost (at least $1000) but in the end we'll have amazing print quality, the ability to print mini posters, cards, ACEO prints, and an infinite number of other things. The quality of our notebooks/ sketchbooks (convention only product) will go up as well as our bookmarks, and comic covers (mini comics).
This change will hopefully be happening in the Summer sometime (July/ August) so watch our for Print sales, and if you want to order prints from deviantART before they're gone forever, you better get on it, because once we have our own printer it will be prints through our shop only.

So there's the news! Back I go to work on more comic Pages!

Hello, Albertosaurus - Production Diary -colouring

So I've spent a great deal of today working on Hello, Albertosaurus. It's been fun. I've got a full page coloured and I'll finish the second page here in no time. Once I've got a few pages done I'm going to start posting them online to view. The first chapter will be viewable online while the rest will be available to purchase either through our shop or at Conventions. Hopefully by the end of this week I'll have some pages started to go up :)
Here are some little teaser pictures:

LiveStream Colouring again

So I took the opportunity I created by being organized in the morning to Live stream another couple quick marker drawings.
I coloured 2 images. They were sketches I drew at Vancouver Comicon in January, and I kinda liked how they turned out, so here they are. As usual I love the rough sketches more than the completed images but I like how Stacy turned out especially. I used a very limited palette with her and I think it turned out well.

Sketched on really smooth Claire Fontaine paper with my Drafting Pencil.
Stacy is the pouty one, and Pehny has the braid.

Now here is the video of the colouring proccess. it's about 50 mins long.

Watch live streaming video from guruubii at livestream.com

And here are the completed images seperately


Pehny Portrait by `guruubii on deviantART


Stacy Portrait by `guruubii on deviantART

Colouring Edlyn

Sketched in my Puggys best sketchbook! LOL

So I had a productive day so I thought I'd spend a little time colouring a image. I liked the sketch.

I decided to do it on live stream; forgot how much I missed it. I realized I didn't have many good pics of Edlyn so she was on my colouring block.

 I  wasn't entirely pleased with how it turned out in the end, but no matter. it's still ok.

Heres the video:

Watch live streaming video from guruubii at livestream.com

And here is the final image.

Sketches, classes

 I've got one BUSY month going on! 

My Copic Class starts tomorrow! There is still time to register! I'm a little nervous, but then again... I'm not. I've had such a good response to my blog, and my many tutorials out there I'm sure I can make it worthwhile for the students. 

I am also teaching a second class through my work. I'm going to be teaching Acrylic Gel transfers In North Vancouver. If you're a card maker this is a really neat and unique way to add some dimension and texture to a card! Check out the information on the class here.

After these classes are all done, I'm going to try to get my natural life rhythm back! If my work schedule can be more consistent that would be much easier but I wont hold my breath on that one, or I'll turn blue and die.

I'm going to go back to working on my Comics consistently, and occasionally throwing out a free bee to you guys, though they won't be with the regularity they were in the past.

So I've been sketching here and there:

Here's a page of hand sketches I did in my new sketchbook.

Rough hand sketches. Blue ColourEno pencil.

Also, and Kitty might kill me for sharing this image before her, but I coloured it so... whatever :p

Kitty drew this sketch and I was itching to play with my markers so I did some skin colour testing on it for her. Here is what we came up with. 

http://gurukitty.com/batp for more information on this comic!

I'm going to go rummage for some food, and play my Wii a little bit before diving into the colouring and making some more examples for my class!

Sketches - conflagration

Well, I've pretty much only sketched a few random things over the last few weeks. The hub-bub of Christmas and stuff, kinda cancels out the drawing sometimes. Over the next month or so I'm not sure how much drawing I'll be doing either since I'll be preparing for my class.
I do plan on forcing myself to randomly sketch some more, and not always try to push boundaries with every image that comes out of my pencils. I just need to sketch!
well heres some of them anyway; Conflagration characters heads :P

Bala, Sarah and Edlyn