I've been so crazy-busy in the studio that I've had no time for further work on RofD but here is an illustration I found time to do. Prismacolor pencil line work on paper and color by ArtRage and Pshop.

Well, the story of The Robots of Doom is still being written and revised, but I thought I would post the very beginning:

The Robots of Doom

The Troubles Begin

With pebbles flying everywhere and a cloud of dust following behind, the Professor careened down the rocky trail, very nearly out of control on his high-wheeled bicycle. He was failing miserably at avoiding the bigger rocks and was being bounced all over the place.  “Ooof, no wonder they called these old bicycles bone-shakers,” he muttered while pedaling furiously.  He was deliberately not looking behind him because his last glance back had scared the bejeebers out of him.  Through the trees he had seen the red glow and lumbering shadow of the giant robot that was chasing him. Now was not the time for looking back, now was the time for pedaling! 

Even though he wasn’t looking back, the noises of trees crashing and brush breaking were letting the Professor know that the robot was definitely getting closer.  And now he could hear the clanking and whirring of the robot itself. “Pedal, old man, pedal!” the Professor berated himself, “If that thing catches you the kids will be on their own.”

The Professor’s niece, Ruby, and nephew, Roscoe, had been visiting for the summer and were in the house that morning when the world changed, and not for the better.

More rocks meant more trouble for the Professor and after hitting a particularly big rock he was nearly launched off the penny-farthing. Luckily, he grabbed the handlebar streamers just in time to keep him on the bike and slapped his top hat back onto his head.  “Why oh why haven’t I been working out more? Or at all for that matter? I certainly would have made time to hit the gym if I had known I’d be racing for my life!” he thought.  Then he put his head down and pedaled with everything he had, which, in his case, eh, wasn’t a whole lot. Now, was that the heat from the robot he could feel on his back or was it just fear making him imagine the worst?

I think this piece is done. I'll have to give it a look in a day or so to decide. The line work was done with Prismacolor pencils on tracing paper and the color was done in ArtRage4, except for the sky, which is Photoshop.

Woot woot, robot done, now onto the background, foreground and underground!

Making some progress on the Robots of Doom project.  Spent all day and evening Saturday working on this new illustration and writing a book version of the story to pitch at a children's publishing conference in a few weeks.  That's right, a whole book!

This illustration process could use some explaining. I first did a wireframe sketch of the robot in Photoshop because it's so  much easier to build circles and ellipses and move them about to get them right. Then I printed that out, did some pencil shading on it to get my light and shadows where I want them. Then I slipped that under some tracing vellum to render the line art with a Dark Brown Prismacolor pencil. Then I scanned that, cleaned it up and imported it into ArtRage to color with it's watercolor brushes. There will be an entire scene with a street view and crows on a wire, but I'm doing the entire illustration in layers for maximum adaptability.