Kid Hercules makes his dramatic return in these four, full-color illustrations for weeks 17-20 of my 52-week drawing challenge. You can check out my progress so far here: 52 Week Drawing Challenge
Category: Comics
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The Return of Kid Hercules
Heroic Kid Hercules battles the iron-clad criminal Chrome-Dome. Kid Hercules struggles to prevent a science lab generator from falling on Vidya as one of Dr. Finkenstein’s killer robots approaches. Young superhero Kid Hercules is faced with safely calming Big Baby. Kid Hercules confronts the deadly, hydra-headed, Mega Venus Flytrap! How will he escape the lashing tongues and crushing jaws of his many-mouthed foe? -
A Good Mother’s Day Card Is Hard To Find
My family has never been a fan of the flowery, mushy greeting cards, preferring instead irreverence, silliness, or sarcasm. Even my wife, whose tastes lean a little more towards the flowery and sweet, understands my family well enough to know that those types of cards are totally inappropriate for us. Unfortunately, we’ve noticed an odd downward trend among greeting cards over the past several years. For some reason, they seem to have drifted away from cards that are actually funny in favor of uniform blandness. Every year it gets harder to find a good greeting card, but this year’s search for a Mother’s Day card was the worst. We went to three different stores and found nothing. My wife finally got fed up and told me I should just make one myself, so I did. I may not win any awards, or have greeting card companies beating down my door to hire me, but my mom had a good laugh and seemed to genuinely enjoy getting an original homemade card.
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Wonder Realtor Part 5 | Client: Nest Realty
I got a happy surprise after completing part four of the Wonder Realtor ad campaign. Turns out, everyone was so happy with the ads that they decided to go ahead and have me do one more. Heather thought it would be nice to show her and her family expressing their thanks to everyone who voted for her. (Heather was nominated for best realtor C-ville Weekly’s annual Best of C-ville.) I figured this was a great opportunity to show the whole family as having super powers, and help gives the ad a little more of a narrative flow beyond a simple “thanks for voting.”
I had so much fun working on this ad campaign and am super-grateful to have had the chance to do an additional bonus Wonder Realtor ad. And who knows? If Heather wins in August, I may get to do one more!
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Wonder Realtor Part 4 | Client: Nest Realty
Wonder Realtor Part 4 came out yesterday in this week’s C-ville. It’s the last of a four-part comic book style ad campaign for Heather Griffith of Nest Realty, who was nominated for Best Real Estate Agent in C-ville Weekly’s yearly Best of Charlottesville. I had so much fun working on this campaign! While I’m a little sad it is over already, the good news it that Heather is currently ahead in the voting and may very well win. If so, I’ll have a chance to do one more final Wonder Realtor ad announcing the win and thanking all the people who voted.
Below is a shot of the ad from the magazine.
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Wonder Realtor, Part 3 | Nest Realty
Wonder Realtor, Part 3 came out yesterday in this week’s C-ville. I decided to change things up a bit this time and went for a comic book cover approach. Given all the various powers being highlighted, there really wasn’t room to take a story based approach. All in all, I think it worked out really well and gives that feeling of a comic book packed with action and adventure that I was going for. Right now, there’s just one more ad to go. If Heather gets enough votes and wins Best Realtor, then I may get to do an additional Wonder Realtor ad. Keeping my fingers crossed!
I’ve included below a gallery of all the little action scenes from the ad, along with a work in progress image, and a shot of the ad from this week’s C-ville.
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Best of C-ville Ad | Nest Realty
I was contacted recently by local Charlottesville business Nest Realty to do a series of comic book style ads for realtor Heather Griffith. Heather has had the honor of being nominated as Charlottesville’s best realtor in C-ville Weekly’s yearly Best of C-ville issue. Voting takes place this month, and to help inspire voters, Heather asked me to illustrate four comic book style ads highlighting the heroic lengths she goes to for her many happy clients. I have to say, this may be my favorite assignment I’ve gotten so far this year and I’m really looking forward to working on the next three ads!
Here’s a shot of the ad from the current issue of C-ville. It’s been awhile since I’ve illustrated or designed anything for a newspaper, and I’m so happy everything came out well. The colors are bright, and the text is sharp. Stay tuned for the further adventures of Heather Griffith, Wonder Realtor!
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Wrong Planet
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A Charles Addams-style cartoon of a weary space traveler who unknowingly arrives at…The Wrong Planet! Wrong Planet was a single-page comic I did for a graphic novel class I took while attending VCU. I came across my rough pencils for this when I was organizing my art drawer a few weeks ago and thought it would be worth finishing up. I’m so glad I did! Not only was it a lot of fun, but I’m really happy with how it came out. Since most of the panels are more or less square, I went ahead and broke them up into individual images so I can post them as my first-ever Instagram comic. Below are images of the original pencils I did way back when, along with a recent progress shot of the inking done with a combination of brush and crow quill pen.
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Supervillain Throwdown!
Recently, I was going through a drawer of old artwork when I happened across this four-page comic I did while taking a graphic novel class at VCU. We were told to create a super-villain with a defined set of powers/abilities. Once that was done, we were put into groups and had to come up with a story together where our characters fight. Even though we all worked on the story together, we were each left to make our own version and come up with our own dialogue. My character was The Mezmerizer, whose powers included disorienting people and projecting energy. I was always very fond of him, but never quite got around to using him for anything outside of this particular story. Overcompensation-Man was created by designer Matt Leahy, and Octo-Girl was created by illustrator Ally Hodges. Put it all together and you get webcomic Supervillain Throwdown!
I originally drew and inked the pages for class, but we were not required to color them. It was always in the back of my mind to go ahead and add color, but between graduating and starting a career, it got lost in the shuffle. I’m glad I went back and did this- I had a lot of fun revisiting these characters. Who knows, if I dig a little deeper in my art drawer, I may find a few more comics that get the finishing up treatment.
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Preview early draft of Kid Hercules
Kid Hercules was a personal project I started years ago that I’m finally getting back around to. Since then, I’ve made several refinements to how I draw the main characters, in addition to expanding the story to an epic, multi-part series. Pop over to KidHercules.com for a peek at the original first three pages, and stay tuned for further updates! www.kidhercules.com
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Story Starters With YA Author Lamar Giles
Last weekend, I attended a local SCBWI event (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) in Richmond, Va. Among the three excellent panelists was YA author, and 2015 Edgar Award Nominee, Lamar Giles.Lamar did a super-fun Mad-Lib-style exercise with us called Story Starters, where he and the audience create a unique opening line by committee. Once the line’s created, the writers/illustrators in the audience have 15 minutes to write or sketch whatever that line inspires.The sentence we came up with was “Alice never wants to hurt anyone again, but the robots won’t end the experiment.” Here’s what I came up with in 15 minutes:
I liked the sketch so much, that I went ahead and did a more finished version at home:
The cool part was that Lamar was pretty excited to share what everyone did on his blog, so I happily sent him both the sketch and the finished piece. Much to my surprise, not only did he post my images, but wrote up a pretty great review of my work as well. You check it out here: http://www.lrgiles.com/story-starters-scott-dubar-illustrator/ And for everyone interested YA fiction, definately check out Lamar’s books Fake ID, and Endangered.
