I’ve been messing around with different techniques lately, looking into some alternative styles for my next comic.

First I sketched up Nathan, one of the characters for my next comic, posing on the deck of the raft.

Then I tried painting it in Art Rage 2…

…and inking it in Comic Works.

I painted it on my iBook, and when I opened up the image on my Windows box the colors came out much stronger than I had expected. It’s near impossible to make sure your colors turn out correctly on other peoples computer screen anyway, so I just left it as it was.

On to something completely different. The film Slipp Jimmy Fri (Free Jimmy), that I’ve spent around five or so years working, will premiere in Norway on April 21st. If you’re in Norway, go see it! Release dates outside Norway have not been set, but I’m hoping it will find it’s way to a cinema near you, wherever in the world you are.

Here is a design for the comics I’m working on. It’s a raft loosely based on the Kon-Tiki, except it’s built by a couple of teenagers on top of an old floating pier. I got the starboard mast steps all wrong, but other than that I’m quite happy with it.

Other than that I’ve been making a computer game to teach myself object orient programming. It’s called Area 51 Blackjack - where the aliens play. You can get it here for free for both Mac and Windows. Go get it now! Did some rough “pencil” sketches for it in ArtRage 2, a brilliant little program for natural media painting and drawing. Here is one of the aliens after he lost all his money playing blackjack.

I spent the last weekend doing web design for Skeiv Kunst (Pride Art), a group of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender artists who arrange a yearly exhibit of their work during Skeive Dager (Pride Week) here in Oslo. I’ll most likely be showing some of my work at this years exhibit, though I have no idea what it will be yet.

I’ve been lazy as of late so there hasn’t been a post here for over two months. I’ve been working on a story for a new comic, so I haven’t been drawing much. I’ve also been playing around with my new computers and some new software. The drawing below is a sketch of Nathan, one of the characters in my upcoming comic. I just finished inking it in ToonBoom Express. It’s a software made for doing vector based 2D animation, but it works fine for doing static 2D drawing too.

Below is an inked image of the same sketch I did in ComicWorks.

And finally the original sketch I used for the inked images above. This I drew sometime last year with a pencil on good old fashion paper.

Sometimes it’s just a single element I want to try and get out of a picture. This drawing I did just to try and capture a certain kind of chin I wanted to use in a more cartoony style. I often find it helpful to first attempt to draw things in more realistic proportions, before making them cartoony. This drawing was done in ComicWorks too, click on it to get a larger one.

Finally here is a 70s heavy rock guitarist I sketched up while watching the Gogs. I figured those stone-age puppet characters would look cool as a rock band.

I guess my new years resolution will have to be to post more sketches next year.

First up is a drawing I inked on top of a 3D model. The model I made with Animation Master and the inking was done in Painter Classic. I tried to keep it kind of rough and loose to get away from the 3D look. I like the end result, but wasn’t very happy with Painter Classic. It simply lacked the most basic tools for inking or painting with flat colors.

Below are a couple of quick and rough sketches. The first one is of Private Hopeless, a doodle I did in ComicWorks inspired by a friend of mine joining the army.

This final one I drew extremely quickly a few years ago after watching Pixote. I guess the film must have made an impression.

Welcome to my new sketchblog and a re-designed ragtag.net. On this Sketch page I hope to regularly post sketches and drawing of what I’ve been working on, some info on how they are made as well as tidbits of news from time to time.

To start with is the first page of Kamikaze. A comic that will never see the light of day as I shelved it due to story issues (don’t ask). The page was drawn in pencil and inked with a brush on oversized aprox. A2 paper, which I then scanned in and stitched together in the GIMP.

The image below is a panel from Kamikaze I used it as test for inking in Creature House Expression 3. Expression 3 is a vector based painting application I’m still testing for use as an inking tool. It takes a bit getting used to, but so far I’m quite pleased with it. It is currently available for free from MS, but has been discontinued. MS is using the technology for their new app Acrylics, so it won’t die out entirely (though the OS X version might ).

The image below is a the same one you see up in the left corner of my Sketch and Comics page. It’s my comic book interpretation of the photo Youths Embracing taken by Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden around 1900. This one too was inked in Expression 3 from a pencil sketch.