So yeah, I've been working on this test page, hoping to land a job working on a published comic. This guy sent me a page of really, really tight pencils, and before I can ink over it I have to trace over his work using a lightbox. Basically this means I'm re-penciling it before I can get started. Like I said, these pencils are really, really tight with a shitload of detail, and it's taking me roughly three times as long to pencil it as it takes me to actually do the inking.

Which is tedious, and more than a little annoying. But I am more than happy to push myself to the point of mental exhaustion and possible insanity, because I want this. If I were inclined to have children, I'd offer up my firstborn for a job in the comics industry. But I am not inclined to have children. I wonder if they'd settle for one of my dogs, instead...

Anyway. Yeah. Test page. I've got a panel scanned in. I know there are some people out there who will want to see this... Eli will, I'm sure. And I promised Badcandle before-and-afters.

These are moderately large. Well, too large to post directly here, as it would totally ass up my blog layout. So here are some links:

This is the panel as penciled by the guy who sent it to me.

And this is the panel as I have traced and inked it.

Note: I had to reduce the original considerably (as sent it was something fucking insane like 17 by 25 inches, and I had to scale it down to 11 by 17 just to print it out). Scaling down really diminishes the amount of fine detail one can easily see and draw. Also: tracing never produces anything as good as the original. Yes, I'm making excuses. But I think I did a good enough job tracing the guy's pencils to be able to ink it accurately.

Also: is it just me, or do that guy's stop sign and mailbox kinda suck? I mean, mad props on cranking out an awesome Bane. He's deffo studied up on his anatomy and whatnot. But, dude. That stop sign makes me wanna cry, and not in an "I'm so moved by its beauty" kind of way. But hey, this mofo draws Batman, who am I to make fun of his stop sign.

But yeah, there it is.