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2010 SKETCHBOOK (60 pages, black/white/tone, print run 100 copies)

Editions

Sunday, November 15, 2009

StingRay (part 1: pages 1-4)

Here is the first 4 pages of a StingRay (an underwater character from the mid 70's that was first introduced in Marvel Two-In-One) that I did for Marvel Comics Presents:






There is a lot of baggage associated with this 8 page story for me. It turned out to be my Waterloo, and by the time I saw the story in print I decided to quit comics...up until about a year ago I would have been embarrassed to show the pages, but now it all seems kind of funny.

I did the layouts/pencils/most of inking, the StingRay figures were inked by Mark McKenna who was also the guy who went out and got the job. Mariano Nicieza wrote the story (I believe he was related to Fabian Nicieza who was doing a lot of writing for Marvel at the time) and a lady with the last name Buscema did the colors...

8 comments:

John Taber said...

Hi Alex: Would you believe that I actually have this comic. I thought it would be cool to get stuff you did. ;)
John T>

Alex Sheikman said...

Hi John,

Thanks for stopping by the blog AND buying the comic, it is wonderful to see that you have not lost faith in my after that story :)

I think that my biggest problem here was that I drew it 11x17 and while it was OK full size, I just did not understand what will happen to it after it was going to be reduced and colored.

I learn by looking at artwork, and since I see it already reduced and reproduced there was a lot of confusion on my part about what I needed to do. I tried to make the same marks on 11x17 that I saw on 6x8 reproduced pages...it sounds silly and like a straight forward sort of thing to fix, but at the time it seemed huge.

My very graphic approach to rendering came out as a way to try to get as close to reproducing the original artwork in print (although it also helped that I have inclinations leaning in that direction as well). Now that I am working almost print size, some of my excitement about rendering (correctly) is back...I am kind of curious to see how it will work out :)

Alex-

Jack Keefer said...

I remember this! There's a lot of cool stuff happening in these pages; lots of nice detail and rendering.

Alex Sheikman said...

Hi Jack,

Yeah, I used to bring all the page over to Santa Cruz and try to get inking advice from you :) You were the guy who taught me how to use a brush and that was a milestone.

I also remember going to San Diego together right after this story got published and finding White Wolf Games at the convention...I ended up working for them for almost 6 years.

Do you remember that I bought an original Mike Mignola page at that San Diego convention? I had a choice between a Hellboy page from the first mini series that just came out and an older page that he did for Amazing Adventures (?). Anyway, I ended up buying the Amazing Adventures page and I remember thinking: "Wow, this page has everything, Napoleon, French generals, even a monkey!"...now I kind of wish I gave that Hellboy page a bit more thought :)

Jack Keefer said...

I do recall you buying the Mignola page. It was only about fifty dollars, right?

San Diego 93 and 94 were a lot of fun!

Alex Sheikman said...

Jack,

I wanted to buy it for $50, but I think I ended-up paying $75 for it. My whole "budget" was $100, so after I was done with Mignola page, I went over and bought 5 pages from the 70's GI Combat drawn by Vic Catan (sp?), they were $5 each...and that was the whole bank :(

I still have that Mignola page and the GI Combat pages :)

norm said...

I loved buying those 5$ Vic Catan pages. I just wish I hadn't been so broke at the time (even 75 for a Mignola page was beyond my budget)

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