Come With Me If You Want to Draw
Welcome to Killer Robot Comics, Design and Illustration Version 3.0! I’ve spent quite a bit of time creating this, and I hope you enjoy visiting and reading through it as I did making it. For the past 8 months, I’ve been fine-tuning my WordPress ninja skills and this site is the fruit of that labor.
Let me tell you a little bit about what I’ve made here. This site is the home of my personal and art blog, my portfolio and soon to be the hub of all my projects and creations. The entire site is hard-coded from scratch by me, using the most basic possible WordPress framework as a starting point. It was made using a truckload of CSS, PHP and whatever help I could find in order to make my creation come to life.
With a little help from DOMTab for some Java in the sidebar, and IconDock for the free social icons, I have made what I think is the perfect home for Killer Robot. I know there are some things I want to add and change already — things that came up during production that I moved to 3.1 — but I think this is a cool starting point to show a lot of what I can do.
So please take a look around, try things out, comment on posts, and let me know if you think of anything you’d like to see added for ease of use, or if you see something that is borked pretty bad. Also, for the three of you that have subscribed to my RSS feed, you might need to update it.
And for everyone’s sake, please ignore the CSS behind the curtain. The file is a little messy and something to be cleaned up in a future update.
Thanks for reading!
New Website: It’s Coming
Finally my home page is actually accurate! I really am working on a new website design. Currently, it’s in the early development stages (i.e. moving things around in Photoshop) but now that I have a plan and a timeline, I hope to have something new up around the first of the year.
Until this is done, I won’t really be posting anything new here — even though it’s been quite a while since my last post anyway — but once the new theme and site are live, I plan on coming back with more posts, more updates and more artwork to share with you guys.
While I’m working on the site, you can follow me on Twitter to get my latest updates and thoughts, and even if my new site can’t throw knives into heaven or dip ladies’ hands into acid, like George Washington, the new website is coming.
To leave you with something opinionated — it is a blog after all — here are some micro reviews of things I would normally post about:
Bionic Commando (Xbox 360): An incredibly fun and enjoyable rental even if the story is about as captivating as an empty trash can.
Iron Man (Netflix): One of the better comic book movies. The writers got the characters right, the designs right and the story was solid. The only thing missing was a more convincing bad guy.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine: As I’m trying to talk myself into X-Men Movie-verse Deadpool, I can’t help but be bothered by the fact that there was a complete lack of blood in this movie. A group of mutants killing people with claws, swords, guns and everything else, and no blood to be found.
The Lion Sleeps Today
I try to tell myself that I am working on artwork on a regular basis, then I wake up one morning to find out that it’s been six months since I’ve opened a file in Photoshop. I’ve been “working” on Laura’s logo for over 6 months, and I feel terrible that it has taken me so long.
I love drawing and designing, and every time I sit down at the computer or table to do some work, I love every minute that I’m lost in those projects. It really is my passion and when I’m pen-deep in a project, there is nothing that makes me feel more productive. The roadblock for me is getting my lazy ass to move itself upstairs and get to work.
Indiana Otter And The Rockabilly Adventure
Remember the sketch of my thieving otter friend from my last post? It seems he has found a home on a concert poster for my friends in The Rebel Set. Even though the band is mash-up of surfer rock and Johnny Cash country with a modern twist (+10 Description Bonus) this poster, as you can see, has nothing to do with that. And that’s the reason I enjoy designing concert posters so much: you can be as creative as you want as long as it’s attention-grabbing.
The poster design itself is my cell-shaded cartoon take on the Indiana Jones movie posters that were drawn so well by the master Drew Struzan. I would have liked to spend a little more time adding some shadows to the otter himself, but due to time constraints, I didn’t have that option. Even without the extra shadow detail, I think it turned out really well. My favorite thing about the design is the expression on the Otter’s face. Whereas Satipo’s look changed from concerned to conniving in the movie, I wanted the Otter to look as if Indy just yelled, “Throw me the idol!” turned around, and saw a giant otter staring back at him. I’m thinking that the silent exchange to follow would be quite funny.
Maybe they should have re-made the original trilogy with CGI animals instead of making Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? It already sounds like a better movie to me.
The First In the Hope of Many
As you can see, very quickly after I launched version 2.0 of this site, 2.1 is already live. I figured that since I design websites for a living, I should probably spend a little more time on my personal website’s design.
I went in and cleaned up all of the code, most of which was simply deleting tags in the CSS that I hid instead of removing. I also designed my own custom header in CSS, and custom email, rss and home buttons for the site as well. I haven’t learned as much about PHP in this process as I would have hoped, but I have cemented my knowledge of CSS usage and I’m very excited that this looks the way it does and I coded it correctly in addition to designing something for myself that I actually like. And doing that is quite a challenge in itself. I usually hate everything I design for my own use.
I even accomplished the subtle art of making the site look the same in IE, Firefox and Safari, and that makes me extatic. I hope to be done for a while. I like the feel of this site, I’m happy looking at it, and I feel a huge sense of accomplishment by learning something I didn’t know before. I hope you guys like it to.
End personal horn-tooting.
Just so this post isn’t entirely devoid of art, I posted the pencils for the first page of the Zabka comic. There isn’t any speech or story text just yet, so you can speculate what’s happening in the panels. Sufice it to say, it appears geeks are laying a smackdown, and there is only one man who can set things right.
KRC Website 2.0
Welcome to the new Killer Robot Comics website. If anyone follows my blog — and kudos if you do — you may have noticed that I haven’t updated in about two months. Many reasons have contributed to this, but the main reason is that I decided I wanted to get Killer Robot Comics 2.0 live. After thinking about different ideas, I decided on a Wordpress-powered blog where I could manage my website, portfolio and random sketch postings all in one place. I thought this might be the easiest way to keep all of my work together and make it better for people who actually follow what I write and draw.
The blog postings, sketches and comments system is all here still, with the added bonus of being able to post about my actual design projects, show off my portfolio and link to my resume. I guess you could say that it’s an actual website. Thanks to everyone who still reads and views my stuff, and I promise you now that my free time for design isn’t taken up with the site, you should see more frequent random art and actual project pieces popping up here. So, update your bookmarks and feeds and email me (srllaves[at]gmail[dot]com) or leave a comment if something is borked. Thanks so much.
I decided to kick off the new site with the sketch I used to create the poster for the Final HQAX Show last month. My original idea changed a little from an all-out royalty-free-dinosaur-drawing look to what you see now. I just think I couldn’t decide on a style that fit the information. The final poster design changed slightly from what I originally created for better readibility, but you can see the original version here.
Dog Days
I was out of town for the majority of the weekend, but I did manage to do a few logo mockups for a friend that works for a local animal shelter. The logo will be for an annual charity event to help less fortunate dogs get adopted, so it was worth the effort. My favorite logo design is above. I’ll admit that it’s really just an illustration, but I like it too much to add anything else. I’ll also admit that it suspiciously looks like my dog.
The fourth annual I Am 8-Bit art show kicked off this weekend in LA. It involves artists reliving their old-school gaming memories through art. My sister lives close by, and I’m trying to convince her to go check it out. For now, this gallery is as close as I’m going to get.
More Tablet C’mon Now
After a long period of cookouts, canoe trips, broken cars, filled cavities, and Burnout Paradise, I finally had the chance to get back to doing some art last night. I was asked to create a poster for my friends in The Rebel Set for an upcoming show on August 23rd. Apparently the show is at a “hilljack” bar and they wanted something blatantly stereotypical. Above is the linework for the main part of the design, a “hillbilly” if you will. Drinking Moonshine. It’s my homage to Bugs Bunny’s Hillbilly Hare where they had the two squat Hatfield and McCoy types duking it out for a cross-dressing Bug Bunny. And they say cartoons now are bad for kids.
This is another piece I created using my Wacom. The first few times I’ve used it, I’ve been very meticulous at following the original sketch lines, but on this one, I went a little more wild. I added in some details and changed some curves or hairs because of the freedom the tablet gives you. It really is like drawing with a felt-tipped pen that you can erase. I like the “flowy” lines I got with this piece. I’m excited to get better at this.