Friday, June 19, 2009

Style + Mood


Click for full size.

Last night I was coloring up some pages and realized while they were just fine, they were missing something. They told a clear story and hopefully look nice to the viewer, but they seemed to be missing something, in my eyes at least. A few years back I was going back and forth with a publisher about a book that I was going to do with a writer. The publisher liked my work but suggested I add some more shadows and heavy blacks. I did and I've loved the result ever since. That project never went anywhere, but I think my style lends itself very well to the heavy black shadow look. While my stuff doesn't really look anything like Mignola or Miller, I do use their influence heavily when spotting blacks.

So I was thinking about how much I love working like this and decided to just sketch up a new promo piece for a very old concept of mine. Meet Ethan Ellis is something I came up with even before The Hurricane Kids, so probably around 2000, or very early 2001. I've recently been thinking of a new direction to take the story in that I think will be a lot of fun. We'll see, nothing is going to happen anytime soon with it I don't think. Or maybe....?

5 comments:

mattcrap said...

i like the cigarette smoke joining the light source- how 'bout continuing the smoke waft threw the black on the other side of the block of white?

Ryan Cody said...

I didn't even think about that, but yeah, it makes sense.

rory said...

Nice black and whites, Ryan!

Gary Fitzgerald said...

looks great.. gives weight and dimentionality.
this is something I really have to work on..

Ryan Cody said...

Thanks guys!