Posts of Halloween, Final

"It's not death if you refuse it."

Welcome to the last Halloween-related post I'll be putting up here for a while... well, for a year, most likely. Rest assured (or be warned), this isn't the last you'll see of supernaturally-oriented characters, or even scary Hollywood-type characters; this is just the end of using Halloween as an excuse.

Today's posting is an old favorite character of mine, the Crow. Back in the early 90's, the Crow was pretty huge in the comic world. It was a very popular independent comic about a guy who's brought back to life to avenge his and his girlfriend's murders. What made this much more affecting than it sounds was the sometimes lyrical quality to the writing- sometimes literally, as the Crow would quote music. Moreso than that was the backstory to the book- the creator of the comic actually wrote the book in response to the death of his girlfriend. The depth of feeling he put into the work really helped it transcend its somewhat pulpy roots, and was popular with the non-comic-book crowd. So much so that it was made into a movie, which most of you have probably heard of, if only for it was while filming that movie that Bruce Lee's son Brandon was killed. Cheery stuff.

Anyway, for me personally, The Crow was a gateway into a whole new world- one where comic books didn't all have to be about superheroes smashing things up, and creators could talk about real-world issues (though certainly not foregoing their fantasy routes). To be honest, I haven't read the book nor watched the movie in a few years now. I know my nostalgia-meter is typically buried in the red, but I'd like to think that the book and movie would still hold up pretty well after all this time.

As to the picture itself... I'm fairly pleased with it overall, though I think it might have been better had I not attempted to color it. The character is basically black and white, so trying to work with those options, given my relative newness to Photoshop, makes the results somewhat... lacking. The lines are somewhat buried underneath the layers of color, though this actually leads to a less well-defined figure. One of my biggest drawbacks with my character drawing is the fact that I grew up drawing superheroes, who are essentially nothing more than super-defined musculature models. It's hard to draw normal-looking people. Even dead ones like this guy. It's hard to know when to put the pencil down, and keep from rendering ever last damn muscle. But, I'm trying. Oh- this version of the Crow is pretty much a split between the comic and the movie.

That's about it for this trip through Halloween. Thank you all for coming back to visit so frequently- hopefully it was a pleasant diversion while at work. It's been a challenge to put up so much work, especially based around one general idea (no, really, I don't sit around drawing Halloween-type stuff all the time...), but I think it's gone pretty well. Which isn't to say I wouldn't be perfectly happy to pull all the pictures down and re-color them when I've learned more about these dang computer programs.

Coming Monday- reality! Well, my version of it, at least.

Music: "It Can't Rain All the Time" - Jane Siberry