PUMMEL 01 - 'Black Lagoon'

My first round in the monthly P.U.M.M.E.L. league competition over at Penciljack.com. I think I won, so that moves me up a notch.

It's keeping me on my toes, I suppose. Should be doing one or two of these every month for a while, never know what the topic will be. And since whatever I do is my own, it'll give me something to post more regularly.

This month the topic (chosen by my opponent, as he was the higher rank) was the manga & anime series Black Lagoon. This worked out well for me, as I am a big fan of the comics. Given that the topic wasn't specifically about any one character, I went with the main cast of four, and tried to do two things: A) use a panelled composition, because I'm trying to be more conscious of layout, and II) communicate something about each of the characters, even if you'd never seen the show.

Drew it all up in Manga Studio EX v.3, did the tones and the text BG treatment in Photoshop CS2, all of it on the Cintiq 21 (love it). Lightboxed the guns for the basic shapes and perspective, then had to go in and do the details freehand. Thank god for the Line tool.

Everything else is oldschool, sketch and clean. Typed out all that background junk myself, actually wrote out three columns of nonsense about the characters, most of which is completely covered up. Hardly seems worth it now, but I guess it's the effect that counts.