Not sure how many more pages of this story I’ll be posting, but for now…here is page 2 of my 10 page story for BURN in Secret Identities 2, due out the end of this year maybe early next year.

Both the pages you’re seeing are not complete yet.  I still have to add in some photoshop stuff to add some atmosphere and special effects.  For example on this page, I’ll be adding some misty type of stuff inside the mirror on panel 2.  The “mirror” would be that large circular thing off to the right on the 2nd panel.

Plus I’ll be adding some grey tones to give the effect that they are indoors on the interior panels here.

pencils to ink

Again, I used a 4h pencil to lay down my initial pencil work.  Then used a sharpie pen to ink it all.

Hope you guys are digging these pages.

-jerry

www.epicprops.com

So I posted the pencils to this page a little while ago.  Have been sitting on the inked version of it for a bit and realized I should post it up.  Not sure how long it took me to ink this, but it went a little quicker than I had been expecting.  Which is a good thing I hope.  Most of you are probably reading this thinking I butchered it or something.

But I’ve been trying to play with textures a lot more recently.  I want to use textures in place of solid blacks.  So that when I do go with a solid black, it’ll have a huge impact.  Hopefully it’ll all work out for me.

pencils to ink

The above image is to show how I went from my semi-loose pencils to ink.  I used a 4H pencil, which is a hard lead.  I like it because it gives me a hard clean light line.  Which is easy to erase.  I find when using a soft lead(which most artists like), it leaves too much smudging from my hand going over panels and stuff.  And is just a pain in the ass to clean up in photoshop with.

When I inked the page, I just used my sharpie pen.  Which is my favorite pen in the whole world.

Whenever I get around to grey toning this page, I’ll post it up too.

Maybe over the weekend or something.

-jerry

www.epicprops.com

Now…I generally don’t want to waste anybody’s time by writing about things I buy.  But I just thought this was so damn cool, I had to.  This is my new magnetic wood ipad cover with my logo engraved into it!

It took 6 weeks to do, and it was quite expensive priced at $120.  I had almost forgotten about it until it came in the mail today.  And daaammmmnnnn….daddy like!

it bends nicely

full shot

As you can see from these images of it, the cover bends pretty well.  And it feels pretty sturdy.  Not flimsy at all.  I’m not crazy with the height it achieves though.  I’ll most likely use it only as a cover.  And still bring my stand around to watch movies and run apps off of.  The inside of the cover is a nice soft felt also.  Which will not scratch your ipad screen at all.

Overall, I think its a pretty good product made by MINIOT.

Check it out if you want.  I’m super happy with mine.

-jerry

www.epicprops.com

So here are the 6 artist proof cards I get to keep for myself from the Marvel Beginnings Set.

For some reason I just wanted to draw some mutants.

This is it for my run on sketch cards for a little while at least.

It was pretty fun drawing all sorts of random characters.

Hope you guys liked them too.

-jerry

www.epicprops.com

So this 2nd batch of cards will complete my run on the Marvel Beginnings Series 2 set.  Some of these characters are really obscure.  Like…Captain Ultra here on the bottom left of the jpg on top.  That colorful bastard was recommended to me to draw from my friend Adam Miller.  I think he wanted to see how many colors I had in my marker set…

With these guys, I was pretty excited to draw the Alpha Flight characters as well as one of my favorites Arch Angel.  Oh and Star Fox with his “power of persuasion” always cracked me up.

Anyway I’ll try an post my artist proof cards of these later on.

Hope you liked these.

-jerry

www.epicprops.com

Here is a first batch of sketch cards I drew for the Marvel Beginnings series 2 set.  I felt a little more comfortable working on this set than I did with the Avengers Assemble set.  Plus I just decided to draw a bunch of “B” characters.  Which I generally enjoy drawing more.

This is essentially the first half of the cards I drew for this series.

Will post the others later on.

But hope you like em.

-jerry

www.epicprops.com

Just wanted to post my Artist Proof cards from the Marvel Avengers card series I drew for.

With these six cards, I really did just want to stick to more or less “mainstream” characters.  Or at least….characters people were familiar with.

I’ll be bringing these cards(along with others) with me to the Pop-Art Con in Philly this June 10th.

Most likely be selling these there…not sure yet for how much.  But they’ll at least be there.

Even though I tried to keep these cards “main stream”, I still wanted to go with some “B” Listers in Hawkeye and Vision and The Scarlet Witch.

-jerry

www.epicprops.com

So It’s finally begun.  Or rather….I’ve finally begun to do some drawing on the BURN story I’m working on with my brother for Secret Identities Volume 2.  Just thought I’d post the pencils I’ve done for page 1.

These are semi tight pencils for me.  I’m leaving a lot of the detail work to be done when I ink it.  I didn’t want to waste any time penciling in the different textures and stuff.

The original for this is an odd size.  It stands at 10×12.5″ due to the 8×10″ page size of the graphic novel.

So I had a little trouble adjusting to that as it through off my whole “scale” in terms of close ups and far shots on the page.

But am hoping it came out alright.

I also did not use a ruler to do any of the drawing besides the panel borders.  For some reason, I just wanted to keep this loose and just kinda “wing” it.

Just the pencils for this page took me about….5 and a half hours to draw.  As pathetic as this sounds, inking generally takes me a little longer.

Yeah….I’m pretty slow.

Anyway, I won’t be posting every page I draw here, but thought it’d be fun to post the first one.

I’ll definitely post the ink and grey tones of this page when I finish each stage just so you can see how much more detail I intend on adding.

-jerry

www.epicprops.com

This coming Thursday I’ll be with GB Tran, Christine Norrie and Fred Chao at the APA Institute hosted by NYU talking about being a artist/writer in comics and all things revolving around similar topics.  Should be a good one if you’re interested in working on your own project from top to bottom whether its comics, graphic design, novels or really anything art related.

Each creator will have some of their private stock of books to sell and sign.  Me personally, I’ll be bringing some copies of Secret Identities Volume 1 as well as my Sketchbook.

I’ll also be throwing down some free sketches for people at the very least.  So swing by if you’re in the neighborhood.

-jerry

www.epicprops.com

Creative Narratives: Vietnamerica and Other Stories
Talk and Panel Discussion Curated by Author and Graphic Artist GB Tran, Vietnamerica

RSVP: www.apa.nyu.edu, apa.rsvp@nyu.edu, or 212-992-9653

… Co-sponsored by NYFA’s Artists & Audiences Exchange, the Vietnamese Students Association at NYU, and the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program at NYU

Cartoonist GB Tran will talk about his graphic memoir in which an inspired artist/storyteller reveals the road that brought his family to where they are today: Vietnamerica. Born and raised in South Carolina as a son of immigrants, GB knew that his parents had fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. But even as they struggled to adapt to life in America, they preferred to forget the past and to focus on their children’s futures. It was only in his late twenties that Tran began to learn their extraordinary story. When his last surviving grandparents die within months of each other, GB visits Vietnam and begins to learn the tragic history of his family, and of the homeland they left behind. In telling his family’s story, Tran speaks on many levels from working through trauma and reinvention and also finding his own place and self in a narrative of diaspora.

An artist conversation follows featuring multi-Eisner nominated comic creators Christine Norrie (Hopeless Savages, Cheat, Breaking Up), Fred Chao (Johnny Hiro { Half Asian, All Hero }), and Jerry Ma (Epic Proportions, Secret Identities).

Books will be available for sale. Cash or check only.

Vietnamerica has been featured on ABC’s World News Now and selected as one of the best books of 2011 by Library Journal, Kirkus, and School Library Journal, and recently earned GB the Society of Illustrators gold medal for Sequential Art. He is a 2011 Artist Fellowship recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA).

With the intent of raising the rate of bone marrow registration within the Asian American community and other ethnic minorities, NYU Team Janet will be hosting a bone marrow drive at this event as well as many others throughout NYU’s Asian Heritage Month. For information, please contact Ben Dumond at Ben.Dumond@nyu.edu.

This presentation is co-sponsored by Artists & Audiences Exchange, a NYFA public program, funded with leadership support from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA).

So yesterday I decided to do something I haven’t done since college.  Which was to do some drawing on location.  Not sure exactly what possessed me to do this.  But I grabbed my Moleskin notebook and some pens and sat my ass down at the South Street Seaport.  I didn’t realize how cold it was until I was sitting outside for over an hour and realized my hands were freezing.

The above sketch took me a decent amount of time to do.  Probably about 45 minutes.  And it was my last drawing of the day, so at the end(right hand side of drawing), my hands were so damn cold.  It started to really effect how I was drawing and had to just stop.

Did a few other sketches, but they were all just little pieces of things so didn’t even bother scanning them in.

Anyway, just wanted to post this sketch up as I haven’t put up any artwork in a little while.  Have actually been super busy with stuff, but don’t have anything ready to be shown just yet.

Soon though…

-jerry

www.epicprops.com