Yo Abt, just sent you my e-mail for the drop box thing.

I was wondering if someone could direct me to some scenes taking place inside the HU Commander's office or if there was possibly a rough layout of the room just so I have a better understanding of how it's structured. The scenes in HU: Fury are rather helpful for the most part.

I uploaded the schematic I made for HU: Fury to the references folder. I think there are also some scenes in her office in HU: The Darkness Within.

Thanks! These are really great! And just for clarification, is the coffee machine in the storage shelf by the window?

Yes, exactly. Here's the scene in “The Darkness Within” which takes place in her office: http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Heroes_Unite/5185350 By the way, on the wall behind/above the Commander's head (when she's sitting at her desk) hangs a framed reproduction of Pastoral by Henri Matisse: http://www.luxuo.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/pastoral-henri-matisse.jpg

HedonisticActor wrote: I'd need to have a reference picture for Kaine as well(I did find a hero called Kain the White Shadow from the forums but I'm not sure is he the mentioned character) plus for Peligroso's motorcycle.I noticed that many have started working on their pages already so I wanted to ask how the things are usually done here? I'm asking this because I was originally going to wait until seeing Byth1's pages so I could keep the continuity between the pages by different artists consistant but since some have already started should I just start working as soon as possible and not think too much about it?

You bring up a good point. I know we have a reference page, but would it be helpful if we have a make shift storyboard like an outline. I can't really explain it right but like items and backgrounds that should be consistent between artists.

It *would* be nice to standardise our approach to references a little more: Have full character turnarounds for all the major characters - the “Alpha Omega” one is a great example. And yeah, key items and locations too. It would probably even be useful to have a Dropbox folder for key recurring references: The core team, HA Headquarters, etc.

As a colourist I'd also like to request that references be in colour. For HA #8 I coloured the building where the big battle took place based on a black and white sketch. :/

And, as mentioned earlier, currently our ‘finished’ folder contains pages that differ on something as fundamental as what colour zombies are. (Can someone *please* give me a definitive answer on that?)

We're all volunteers and we don't wait to straitjacket people. I'd definitely not suggest having pre-prepared layout storyboards for each page, for example - that would suck a lot of fun out of it for our artists. Just a single source of truth for key setting details would be very, very useful.

cdmalcolm1 wrote:
You bring up a good point. I know we have a reference page, but would it be helpful if we have a make shift storyboard like an outline. I can't really explain it right but like items and backgrounds that should be consistent between artists.

Still confused as to who is drawing Act 2: Page 9? Is it me or CD?

ironhand wrote: Still confused as to who is drawing Act 2: Page 9? Is it me or CD?

You can draw page nine iron. I've moved on to page ten. The one I drew will be for a promo.

As for the outline, I ment exactly like a turn around but for items and places. Even if a fraction of the person place or thing was drawn, I think it would be ok. Nothing too serious. The only things that remain static are the heroes and villains we draw for the stories.

Consistency between different artists has always been a problem for HU and HA. Everything important - characters, tools, buildings - have to be designed and accounted for as reference, but we've always avoided specifically designing the general backgrounds, but rather have photos as a general inspiration. If somebody were to put in the additional work, I wouldn't complain though ;)

Specifically, I think we'd need some shots of downtown Darwin for act 2 and 3. If anyone finds some, please add them to the dropbox folder.

Also, regarding the Zombie's colour - who's the authority on this issue? Possibly AzuJOD, because he created the Zombie Queen?

Irrevenant asked me yesterday and I said they range, depending how long they've dead for. So normal skin colour, to murky grey to green, I'd say.

I did a pinky-purply color, myself, to associate them with Zombie Queen's power (since her reference has purple energy).

I figured that was the reason, and it makes sense (I can see a deeper, desatured purple working well, too) .

Conversely I based mine roughly off the teaser art and more traditional zombie colours.

I have no strong preference which we go with, but we need to nail it down so we're all drawing the same thing.

shastab24 wrote:
I did a pinky-purply color, myself, to associate them with Zombie Queen's power (since her reference has purple energy).

I put together a few examples because hey, why not? :D This is notmeant to be all-inclusive, and there's no reason zombies all have to be the same colour, either. It's just so we have a common reference point.

irrevenant wrote:
I put together a few examples because hey, why not? :D This is notmeant to be all-inclusive, and there's no reason zombies all have to be the same colour, either. It's just so we have a common reference point.

I like them all, and I agree that they don't have to look the same, since the fun of zombies is seeing both the level of decay and just the immense diversity that you can get with zombies :D

I agree that a mix is cool, but if we go with that we still have to use a roughly consistent mix. The problem is that currently Shasta's pages use #7 exclusively then when you hit my pages they suddenly transform to a mix of 1, 3, 5 and 6. I need to know whether I should change some, all, or none to #7.

sux wrote:
I like them all, and I agree that they don't have to look the same, since the fun of zombies is seeing both the level of decay and just the immense diversity that you can get with zombies :D

I more or less will be using the gray and very few greens. Look at resent dead bodies look close to those colors. However I will be using lighting to help me. As I'm drawing page 10, I realize there will be a lot of gross splatter. Red and green.

LoL, this is actually getting *less* clear. xD

Can we please just get an official clarification of what the zombies in this issue look like that we can all use as reference? If it's not Abt_Nihil's call I assume it's AzuJOD's. He's the creator of the Zombie Queen, and ultimate arbiter of how her powers work.

In the interim, I'll put in my art as is, but I can easily tweak the colours once they've been nailed down.

I think the lesson learned from this is to have reference pics of the villain and her mooks before we start drawing. I'm not entirely sure we were consistent with our ninjas in HA #8 either..

EDIT: My second page is done. \o/

I'm not the ultimate authority on the issue of how zombies are colored, but here's my speculative input: We probably won't ever see the same zombie twice (and even if - who's to tell?), and they're in different stages of decay, so I think we could have the whole range depicted by irrevenant's chart.

The only zombie that needs to be consistant in colouring is the Queen herself (ie dark bluish-grey). The other zombies can be coloured to any colour you think looks nice (for a zombie).

Variety is the spice of unlife! :D

irrevenant wrote:
LoL, this is actually getting *less* clear. xD

Can we please just get an official clarification of what the zombies in this issue look like that we can all use as reference? If it's not Abt_Nihil's call I assume it's AzuJOD's. He's the creator of the Zombie Queen, and ultimate arbiter of how her powers work.

In the interim, I'll put in my art as is, but I can easily tweak the colours once they've been nailed down.

I think the lesson learned from this is to have reference pics of the villain and her mooks before we start drawing. I'm not entirely sure we were consistent with our ninjas in HA #8 either..

EDIT: My second page is done. \o/

Easy, make them look like dead guys. We DON'T want uniform dead guys. This doesnt work the way ninjas do. You want variety with your zombies. Watch fulci zombie movies for good refernces. I mean, it'll make me sound sick, but they're art in their own way. Dont contain yourself, expand!
But I do see your point. I think with agreeing on a level of decay, all we need to really say is “mix it up”. some zombies will me more trashed than others.
To help ignite the spark, I'll post some zombie references from some of my faves.

hell this is too fun! I might just post more later when I have the time. But until then, here's a gret little link.http://vincelocke.com/shop/100-zombies/

Well, I started doing my own thing, and then I decided to crack open an issue of Comic Heroes I have that features the Walking Dead and worked off those zombies (mainly the ones that were comic artwork in the magazine).

Ya, variety in the individual zombies is cool. I was really just concerned that the zombiesas a groupshift colours noticeably from page to page (from pink to green to white/grey).

I give up stressing about it at this point. xD It wouldbe good to nail these details down a bit more up front for future issues, though. Without being too fascist about it - just decide enough detail up front that different artists are able to render the main characters and events as recognisably the same thing from page to page…

BTW, is the plan still for me to colour PIT_FACE's pages? It's not flagged in the assignment list. Thanks.

I don't think any such shift would be too traumatic. As long as the coloring is done in the context that they're dead guys it should be okay. I'm just not sure it's worth so much concern. Maybe I'm biased because I want to see how wild people can get with these kind of schemes, but that's not to say that you can't do the same with a certain color scheme, so in that case, if we do want a color scheme thensomething in the purple span would be nice. not onlyis a user already using that, but it's reminiscant of ZQ's power. The purples can be any range from light light almost white lillac to green purples, to dark dark almost blacked purple maybe even sort of ulti-color. Bodies arent always necissarily one color depending on where blood pools and stuff (no I do not murder people and hide them under my bathroom.) so like, purples and blues with pinks and red splotches. throw a little moldy rot in there and black bile. i dunno. im not really coloring anyways so what ever you guys feel comfortable with.

irrevenant wrote:
BTW, is the plan still for me to colour PIT_FACE's pages? It's not flagged in the assignment list. Thanks.

Sorry, just an oversight on my part. I also put you down for colors on my first three pages.

Thanks. :) I created a ‘pages to be coloured’ folder in the Dropbox. If any of your lineart is done and needs colouring, just drop it in there. I'll keep an eye on the folder, but it's probably worth flicking me an email to let me know too,just in case. (Most of you have my email already. Uncreative_Name I'll PQ it to you…).

Abt_Nihil wrote:

irrevenant wrote:
BTW, is the plan still for me to colour PIT_FACE's pages? It's not flagged in the assignment list. Thanks.Sorry, just an oversight on my part. I also put you down for colors on my first three pages.

Act 2 Page 9 is in the “to be coloured” section on the dropbox.

Is anyone planning on doing teasers or pin-ups? We could especially use some pin-ups of the R.I.S.E. characters. I will definitely do one for Cobalt, and probably for Alpha & Omega (= Archangel & Fury) and Militia.

Cobalt would be great, especially as there's no reference for him on the Dropbox. And he's on the next page for me to draw…