Bring Back Skeleton Horror.

So I've recently uploaded some new Babayka pages over on Deviantart. The scene in question is my little nod to the very underrated 'Skeleton Horror Genre' (although my skeletons turn out not to be alive in the end).

While Skeletons have never really took off in movies and so on (probably because before CGI, it was too hard to do a decent onscreen Skeleton without using Stop Motion Animation), there was a time in the 1950's when they were some of the coolest monsters around.

I've got a lot of love for classic style evil skeletons. They're not mindless like Zombies and can often be incredibly ruthless and spiteful. Something about being dead and the wrong side of the grave has really brought out the masochist in them. I also like that they're team-players and would often go after lovers ('Couples Peril' being something else that was also big in the 50's but has gone out of fashion now.)

I will one day soon do a proper Skeleton Horror pin-up in the coming future. Hopefully as part of SLASH-UPS: Volume 2, if I can fit it in. I'm currently just trying to think up a good creepy skeleton themed idea to draw at the moment that will do them justices.

Anyway... I hope there's a few other Skeleton horror fans out there who might also like to see more of them about in horror. I really do think they're due a comeback.

P.S. I also think I deserve extra points for finding an old skeleton horror cover as an example where the skeleton is actually called Andrew. I wonder if Skeleton Andrew is in the public domain yet as I'd love to do a comic starring him.

Dracula Descending: Toned.

I should make it very clear this is NOT a new piece of artwork or anything. This Dracula pin-up dates back to around 2013, and so is pretty old (and shows it in some places). But I've recently just swapped over art programs, and so have really had access to adding decent tone to my art for the first time ever, and this image just seemed like a good candidate for updating.
   
I've always had a bit of a soft spot for this image (even though it never really found much of an audiences, truth be told). And I spent so many hours drawing in all those rocks. It's also still probably the closes I've ever got to doing a Hammer Horror style art project.

I really feel tone has given this pin-up much better depth now, and that the rocks and Dracula really feel like they've been pushed into the forefront of the image. Plus now the room the woman is bathing in is dark and shadowy it's a lot more foreboding.

I know non-threatening sexy Vampires are very much in at the moment, but this is how I like my Vamps. Predatory sub-humans with nothing on their minds but blood. Plus I think every horror artists should do their take on Dracula at least once.

If you would like to compare pin-ups you can find the 2013 original Dracula art HERE.

I wish I could post the higher Res copy, as I notices tone really suffers when you drop the resolution for posting on the internet.

Bloody Vampire Nurse.

I've been more playing with tones this weekend in Clip, rather than doing any actual colouring. It's been a lot of fun and something I've been wanting to do for years. My tone work was very basic in photoshop, and I never got to try using the sheets.

I will show more of my toned up work in a future post, but as a bit of a treat, and to get things started, here's a revamp of my recent Vampire Nurse sketch, now with added dots and bloody mouth.

I'd love to do a comic (or at least a short story or pin-up) about a sexy Vampire Nurse one day. There's something so sinister about a healer turning into a parasite that takes life slowly.

The Adventurer.

For anyone wondering how I was getting on with switching over to Clip, I thought I would just quickly share my first attempt at colouring using it.

I'm not brave enough or skilled enough just yet to tackle a whole pin-up, so I just coloured up this old sketch of Amy in her adventurer outfit. Using this new program is certainly not a million miles away from Photoshop, although I'm still trying to figure out all the new brushes and what they can do, and how blending them together is going to work. I'm also a little daunted by all the new options I have to learn to really get the most out of Clip Studio.

My plan for the summer is to try and translate my old colouring skills into this new program and hopefully push things to a new level, if I can.

Anyway, enjoy this little bit of bonus Pith Helmet action. Have we seen the last of Amy The Adventurer, some may wonder? When last we saw her, she was trying to escape a giant spiders' nest, after some arachnid bug collecting had gone terribly wrong. I guess only time will tell...

Colour Me Curious.

One of the things I'm trying to get done during lockdown is to upgrade my home tech and move things forward with my colouring in 2020. And so as part of this, I finally bite the bullet and decided to invest in new colouring software.

It's been a long time coming, and I know I've got a lot of hours of trying to figure out and master this new program ahead of me. Being a trained Graphic Designer, I was very comfortable using Photoshop for all these years, but it feels crazy not to at least try software made for comic book artists, and I feel a little annoyed you can't outright buy photoshop anymore and own it.

I hope to have results I can share with people at some point soon, once I can find the time to get on there and play around with it more, and figure it out better. I was a little disappointed with the fonts that came with it, though. Was expecting a big list of fancy new comic book style fonts, but the ones included are pretty vanilla.

I'm also currently trying to decide if it's worth investing in a Wacom Tablet? I've heard very mixed reviews from people I've asks in the past.

Do You Wanna Corona?

I can honestly say I don't...