Superheroes

Lo-Fi Cosplay that I didn’t do (Part 1 of 2)

~ J.Ho

Believe it or not, I was contemplating some lo-fi cosplay for Comic-Con this year, but due to time constraints and, how you say… LAZINESS, I decided against it. However, since the beast Comic-Con is upon us, I figured that drawing up the cosplay concepts from my head would be appropriate. Here’s the first one, me as a Green Lantern:

PRETTY NERDY, HUH?

I have truly been enjoying working on the sketch commissions for Help the Cheerleader, but being so entrenched in analog media, I’ve really been feeling a craving to do some digital coloring again. It felt good to stretch my Wacom muscles.

Tune in next week for a Comic-Con wrap-up and another costume concept. Also green-themed, but a bit more involved, and drawing from Marvel’s fiction rather than DC’s.

Post Script: I am well aware the term “lo-fi” refers to audio quality and therefore would seemingly have nothing to do with a sketch or a costume. I hope you will pardon the verbal liberty that I have taken.

Help The Cheerleader Commissions, Round 4!

~ J.Ho

Here’s the fourth round of commissions that I’ve finished for Help the Cheerleader. To read more about my involvement with this fundraiser, please CLICK HERE.

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From left to right:

And even though commissions are closed for now, remember it isn’t too late to donate to Help the Cheerleader.

I might take a break from posting commissions next week (even though I’m still working on them). Perhaps I’ll post something more specifically related to THE COMING STORM?

Help The Cheerleader Commissions, Round 3!

~ J.Ho ~ 1 Comment

Here’s the third round of commissions that I’ve finished for Help the Cheerleader. To read more about my involvement with this fundraiser, please CLICK HERE.

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From left to right:

I will continue to post new commissions next week! And even though commissions are closed for now, remember it isn’t too late to donate to Help the Cheerleader.

Help The Cheerleader Commissions, Round 2!

~ J.Ho ~ 3 Comments

Here’s the second round of commissions that I’ve finished for Help the Cheerleader. To read more about my involvement with this fundraiser, please CLICK HERE.

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From left to right:

I will continue to post new commissions next week! And even though commissions are closed for now, remember it isn’t too late to donate to Help the Cheerleader.

Help The Cheerleader Commissions, Round 1!

~ J.Ho

So I’m posting on a Sunday for what was supposed to be a Friday post. But at least my post was late becauseI was actually drawing, right? Right?? Anyone?

Anywaysss…

Here’s the first round of commissions that I’ve finished for Help the Cheerleader. To read more about my involvement with this fundraiser, please CLICK HERE.

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From left to right:

Status of commissions:

  • 18 commissions FINISHED.
  • 19 commissions inked and ready to be colored.
  • 21 commissions pencilled and ready to be inked.

We rollin’. Come back this Friday to see more commissions. And I’ll be prepared to post on time!

Stormy Weather

~ J.Ho

This is late, I should have posted yesterday!

If you aren’t aware of my commissions to Help the Cheerleader, then CLICK HERE.

The write ups about Help the Cheerleader have been incredibly supportive, and there have been some terribly kind things said about me, which I certainly do not deserve. However, I am grateful and shocked, to say the least. A few highlights (click to see each article):

Never did I dream that I would see a huge burst in my pageviews, and that the vast majority of the visitors would be from Ms. Magazine!

So, I have indeed started on the sketch commissions–pencilled about 23 of them so far. Nothing inked and colored yet, but I am making progress. In the meantime, here’s one of my sample sketches, Ororo Munroe, AKA Storm of the X-Men:

Back to drawing for now!

MACHO WEEK!!! (Part 3 of 3, So long Randy, and thanks for all the Slim Jims)

~ J.Ho ~ 2 Comments

There used to be a cartoon called Powerpuff Girls, and before that there was a cartoon called Dexter’s Laboratory, and that cartoon featured a segment called Dial M for Monkey, and one of the best episodes of that segment of that cartoon was titled, “RASSLOR.” Macho Man Randy Savage guest-starred as the eponymous Rasslor, a masked neon-hued wrestler whose power was on a cosmic level.

So, here’s Rasslor executing a Macho-esque flying elbow:

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And thus does MACHO WEEK draw to a close. I’ll be back to “normal” posts next week. Until then, have a great weekend, and stay macho, my friends.

MACHO WEEK!!! (Part 2 of 3, The Moldy Oldie Edition)

~ J.Ho ~ 3 Comments

MACHO WEEK continues, with a piece of vintage nerdery from my archives, drawn and colored in 1999. TWELVE years ago.

Let’s think about this people. That was before 9-11, before the dot-com bust, before the (still ongoing) energy crisis, before I owned a car or a DVD player. I was fresh out of college, just starting out full time at the day-job after interning there for 2 years (same day-job that I have today, by the way), and living in a tiny studio apartment that paradoxically had a huge walk-in closet (which I filled up with comic books and action figures–mostly Beast Wars at the time).

So… I confess, this was drawn to impress a geeky girl who I was talking to at the time. Believe it or not, the subjects in the illustration were our common points of interest–and there’s the Macho One himself, front and center! Oh, and I’m in the picture too, inbetween Optimus Prime in Pikachu, because apparently I have a raging ego. For what it’s worth, I think the girl was in fact impressed by this. However, things didn’t work out for a number of complicated reasons which I will not bore you with. You know how it goes.

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Man, just look at this thing. It was one of the first things I ever colored in Photoshop, and I thought I was pretty hot stuff, using the Dodge/Burn tool to render the shading. WHAT WAS I THINKING?

And yet, here we are, twelve years later. My drawing is a little better, and my coloring is much better. And I still pretty much won’t shut up about Macho Man, Transformers, Batman, Pokemon, Miyazaki movies, and Bruce Lee.

Tune in on Friday for the final installment of MACHO WEEK!!!

Kal El

~ J.Ho

Still red and blue, and there’s several things I don’t like about this one, but it’s a big improvement over last week’s marker sketch. And posted in a relatively timely matter. Unthinkable!

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Plenty of marker sketches on the way. I’m much more fond of the ones I did after this one.

*Cue Danny Elfman*

~ J.Ho ~ 1 Comment

I sketched this up for Dustin last weekend during the Long Beach Comic Expo, inked it up when I got home, and colored it this week. And here I am posting in a reasonably timely manner, as promised:

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I did my best to channel Alex Toth, Bruce Timm, and Derek Fridolfs when I drew this (please go to Derek’s DeviantArt page, look at his awesome black and white ink sketches, and give him some compliments–it makes him very uncomfortable). There are some other influences at work as well… the general leanness of form is from Neal Adams (whose influence I’ve discussed previously), and of course the crescent moon eyes are from Dick Sprang. I think there’s a little Jeff Matsuda in there too.

This started out as a pretty static sketch, but I’m trying to be more dynamic these days, so I consciously tried to move away from that. The big experiment for me on this one was spotting blacks heavily. I usually do all my lighting in the coloring stage because I’m uncomfortable with my ability to execute heavy inks. I feel okay about the result though–you can tell because I was actually willing to show you what the original lineart looked like.

(For those who care about such things–of course he has the yellow oval on his chest.)

Tough As Nails

~ J.Ho ~ 1 Comment

Real quick like: For those who enjoyed the step-by-step walkthrough from the last post, I’ve compiled it into a single huge image file–you can get it on my DeviantArt account here.

But back to today’s post…

I yammered on forever in the last blog, so I think I’ll try to keep it brief today. It’s Red Claw from Batman: The Animated Series:

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During a typically nerdy late night conversation, I was talking about B:TAS with Josh, and was reminded of this bad-ass villainess, so I decided to draw her. Sometimes it’s just that simple!

The H-Word

~ J.Ho ~ 4 Comments

I think I’m out of vague teasers for the moment, so let’s see if I can get back to the regular nerdy fare for the moment, yes?

I wanted to do something quick, fun, and 100% digital, so here’s a super deformed Hellboy done in less than two hours (my sloth-like idea of “quick”):

Please forgive any inaccuracies–I drew this without looking up any reference.

To Infinity and (Batman) Beyond!

~ J.Ho ~ 1 Comment

AKA Terry McGinnis:

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Pencil, pen, and marker. You can kind of tell that I started this drawing at the top and lost momentum as I reached the bottom. Oh well, I’m still happy with how the head and neck turned out. I definitely need to do more drawings with heavily inked shadows.

Things That Should Not Be: Meow?

~ J.Ho ~ 2 Comments

A few months ago, I finally saw the Watchmen movie on DVD, which was also the first time I had revisited the story in a number of years–the last time I read the comic was maybe… ’98 or ’99? Anyways, it occurred to me that it would be really funny if Bubastis somehow was able to reconstitute himself the way Doctor Manhattan had. Okay, I guess it’s not really funny, but it was funny enough that I thought I should draw it.

I came up with the name Doctor Manxhattan, and Sherri suggested Doctor Mankattan. I decided optimal funny-badness would be achieved by combining the two names. Thus was Doctor Manxkattan born.

The idea really makes more sense (insofar as such an idea can make any sense at all) in the context of the movie, wherein Bubastis is colored similarly to Doctor Manhattan. However, research into the comic corrected and reminded me that Bubastis was actually magenta colored, not blue. Here, for your enjoyment, are both comic and movie versions of the good Doctor:


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The pose, composition, and colors are all executed in imitation of chapter IV, page 20, panel 1 of the Watchmen comic. HILARIOUS, right? Right? No? Okay, that’s enough of that.

In case you missed my previous Watchmen goof, please check it out.

And here are some superior Watchmen goofs, from sources superior to me–enjoy:


Things That Should Not Be: Hurm.

~ J.Ho ~ 1 Comment

I think today’s post manages to top the dumbness and nerdiness of my previous record holder. Here’s Rorschach of the Watchmen, resurrected as a Black Lantern, presumably planning to extract vengeance from Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias:

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This one turned out a little better than I expected. As I was drawing it, I had no idea how I was going to approach the coloring, but things ended up working out. Occasionally that happens. Occasionally.

For those who missed this particular detail–the ink blots on his mask are in the midst of forming the Black Lantern symbol–you can thank Josh for suggesting that! And the ring construct grapple gun is fairly accurately derived from Rorschach’s device in Watchmen.

My apologies to Alan Moore. I love the man’s work, but I can’t resist the lure of stupidly awesome nerd crossovers! I’ve got another Watchmen-related post in the “Things That Should Not Be” category… I think I might have it ready for next week. Stay tuned, it’ll be hi-larious!