Hello Arlong Park, for me it's been years. I'm sure some of you here may remember me and I'd like to imagine the forums are doing well and plenty of you won't. My names David I'm a cosplayer by hobby and a self proclaimed comic book artist and writer by trade. Any one who remembers me probably remembers me as Mr.Prince, I was decently well known for my various Sanji cosplays as I was formerly a culinary student for many years and I'm a blonde chain smoking pirate by nature, and over the years a lot of things have changed. I since had to leave culinary schooling behind due to being diagnosed with a debilitating auto-immune disease (I'd prefer not to go into it if I don't have to, but I do feel some explanation is needed for my absence not that I expect many to remember or care) and I'm now following my childhood dream of pursuing a career in comics.
Earlier in the year I started work on my first independent comic collaboration with a dear friend of mine, this thread will mostly be a space where I post progress and concept work, possibly even sneak peeks of the script if anyone is interested. At this moment the first issue is "done" that is to say it is drawn up and copies are being printed. For the project I've done the concept work and the writing of the script. The story had been in my heads over the past few years and later I will post.
While circumstance required him to do the art for the first issue, for my own sake I plan on drawing my own version, for now I'm happy to share the concepts, redesigns, and details as they emerge and I would love to hear your thoughts
if you'd like you can view my older body of work at http://dancingsquall.deviantart.com/ although I haven't updated it in AGES
I literally just spent half an hour typing this post out and inserting images to get logged out and lose my whole post except the first paragraph as I clicked post. Okay. Round two, Ready? FIGHT!
recently caught up with the One Piece manga. One piece has always been near and dear to my heart (and it’s not just cause I’m a chain smoking blonde pirate chef, even though I am)
Sanji was always my favorite, anyone who knows me knows I used to draw and cosplay Sanji all the time.
I decided to try my hand at drawing him now given my increased experience and skill since the last time I tried. It's a W.I.P which I will update as I work on.
working on some stuff for my comic ‘Omens in Ink’ redesigning the look of Gene to be more like his original design as I try to iron out a stand out stylized look for the characters and world of Omens.
A tattoo concept for a friend based on a drawing I did in highschool, titled 'Little Claw Machine of Horrors'
Meet Jack, formerly known as Spring Heeled Jack—the terror of London and the newest character to emerge into the Omens in Ink.
Don’t let his roguish charm or rock star lifestyle fool you he’s a master con and has been since the early 1830s.
In Omens in Ink's universe I have a rule. If a monster, creature, or demon of any kind that exists already in popular media and folklore is to be brought in to my universe I'm going to put my own spin on them.
The vampires in this story, when turned lose their souls. During this time they are no more than mindless heartless monsters hence Jacks time as London's monster of urban legend Spring heeled Jack, Depending on the sins and deeds of their mortal life a Vampires soul may return, while it remains lost it stays in the form of a will o' wisp and wanders the earth looking for it's host body to return too. After 100 years of wandering a souls flame extinguishes and the Vampire remains a monster.
Jack manages to be fortunate enough to only lose his soul until late in the 99th year. He awakens and is faced with the horrors of his actions of the past century. He tries to change his ways as much as possible, helping others when he can, drinking only of animals, and burying his guilt and horror in drugs or booze.
He joins with Gene and Phoebe early in their journey together, Saving them from a group of 12 vengeance seeking cannibals, all while drunk of his rocker with his pants around his ankles.
Jack's 'colors' he thinks himself a modern day pirate on occasion.
A piece I'm working on for my mother in the unfortunately missing and largely un-photographed sketchbook
A piece from my most dark and difficult days
My redesign of Booster Gold (top) and Blue Beetle (bottom) their my favorite super heroes, soon I will be cosplaying this 'fifties greaser' version of Booster.
Batman inspired driveway art
Bolin from The Legend of Korra, I love this dude.
I'll post more later and as I have it.
Expect the origin story of Gene and the 'Omens in Ink,' Universe later today, after I sleep, wake up, and weep about not being able to afford my San Diego comic-con ticket.
In the mean time, I'd love to hear what you think and I'm glad to be back.
I'll be updating or staring a new cosplay thread as well soon for anyone interested.
I've missed you AP faithful. Chrissie! Moke! Mryllok! and all of you better still be around to say hello!
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
I lied! Sleep is for the week, so I present to you the "Origin Story" for 'Omens in Ink'. It is fair to mention the first issue picks up three years in to this 'modern day biblical apocalypse' and things have changed in a lot of ways for Gene. He's spent three years alone knowing everything wrong is his fault. I apologize for any awkward spacing,typo or grammatical errors as this copy pasta from my personal notes on the story.
The main character Gene is a tattoo artist, he has a loving wife and daughter who support him in his ventures, although they have money he continues to work as a tattoo artist. Unfortunately he finds himself in a classic existential crisis as he realize he is losing focus and inspiration in his art, which to any true artist is a soul crushing thing to experience. So his wife encourages him to search the world, find inspiration, as long as he promises to come home to her like he always does. So he leaves the country, months later finding himself in a small village of aborigines living in south Africa. He's walking through what would be the village bazaar in this meager village, not much is being sold–the streets are practically empty save for the occasional fly covered corpse of a child and other significantly unpleasant things indicative of a 3rd world country. Their is however one booth in the bazaar that stands out, maybe because it has more than a tattered carpet on which to display it's wears or maybe because of the strange man running the almost tourist trap like stand. He's an African man whose stature I often refer to as being similar too Rafiki from the Lion King, he wears nothing but a white suit jacket, white suit coat, and white top hat. From what we can see of his hair hanging from under the hat he has long gray dread locks that seem to have a strange gradation from black at the roots to a pure perfect and innocent white. His grin is large and many of the teeth that aren't missing are gold replacements, making it rather obvious that he's not local. However what makes the man stand out the most is what he's painted on his face, A skull pure white obviously adorned with care and made of something natural and more than likely unpleasant outlined and accentuated with jet black; Giving him an almost unnatural smirk and making his grin appear even larger.The street had seemed empty before but suddenly to Gene seemed rather busy, the man in white called out to him. saying "You boy! I know what it is you are looking for" Gene feels compelled upon hearing his voice to walk over to the stand at the bazaar, chalking it up to curiosity that the man knew he was looking for anything at all. After a brief conversation the man set a tattoo gun on the table, it's intricate and made completely out of human bone he follows by removing from under the "counter" a bottle of scarlet red "ink". The man in white picks up the tattoo gun and it's almost as if you can hear bacon sizzling, a puff of smoke billows out of his hand as he hands it to Gene. Gene takes it, inspecting it carefully before realizing he must own this tattoo gun to him its an instrument of beauty, immediately he pulls out his wallet without a word but the man in white stops him and says "No charge, we all need a little inspiration from time to time, son" Filled to the brim with excitement Gene returns to the states with his new instrument of inspiration and for a while things are normal; He spends time with his family, gets back to work, and starts tattooing some of the most amazing pieces he's ever done. But everything can change in a day. After his first week home he begins to find he can't sleep and when he does he has terrible nightmares that he can't remember upon waking, all he knows is he feels incredible fright upon waking. Shaking it off he goes to work. A woman comes in asking for a tramp stamp, she leaves with a piece looking more like a modern day rendition of the Sistine chapel or etchings from books like the Bible and Dante's inferno. His customer is visibly upset.That is until the event depicted on her lower back becomes a reality, then she starts talking, word of mouth proves a powerful tool as Gene's shop (Genesis Ink) is the busiest it has ever been and while people are still not getting what they asked for they are getting truly beautiful works of art, that are coming true and faster than anyone would believe. Initially this leads to the media focusing on him, wondering if it's a hoax or a set up until something of grave importance and danger that he had previously tattooed comes to life. It's at that moment that the world thinks Gene is tattooing the future. Unfortunately their wrong and even more unfortunate for Gene the wrong people take notice. A Criminal occult organization (for which I still need a good name if you have any suggestions) gets wind of these amazing tellings of "the future"They take it upon themselves to kidnap him, he never see's their faces, not once, not till it's far too late. They force him to tattoo; thinking they can use him to their benefit to gain money or artifacts of power so they can gain clout or achieve their diabolical goals. However no matter how hard they press him, it doesn't work--he can't tattoo what they want. The reason being he isn't tattooing the future, not exactly, unbeknownst to him he's the modern scribe of God (the Man in white) and what he's tattooing is the new testament/omens of the oncoming modern age apocalypse.However they keep pressing him, starving him, beating him, torturing in various and entirely too cruel ways. It doesn't work of course, so they threaten him further, tell him that if they don't get what they want they'll go after his wife and child. This too doesn't work. So they begin to torture his wife and daughter in front of him forcing him to tattoo all the time, meanwhile he's cursing the trance like state he seems to go into when he tattoos if that wasn't a problem he could at least trick them with something false from his imagination just to buy them sometime to come up with a plan. But it doesn't work. They grow impatient, very impatient and bring his wife and daughter closer, so close he can smell them, and tell him" Say goodbye hero, this is your last chance, if you don't give us what we want we're going to make them sacrifices to the great Nergal and you get to watch." It still doesn't work, he can't give them what they want. Tears flow from his eyes while he tattoo's in a desperate chance. The image he end's up with is the brutal death of his wife and daughter. The occultists stay true to their word and brutalize his wife and daughter barely leaving recognizable corpses, drained haphazardly of all their blood which is arranged in a circle held carefully in evenly poured into ornate gold chalices.When the final breath leaves his daughter, his Clara Belle's lungs--Gene blacks out. Dropping the tattoo gun letting the not-so-fragile bone he had just been using to tattoo one of the more heavyset occultist underling belly hit the ground and shattered almost in to dustAt the time he wouldn't realize it but he was making a subconscious agreement with his own demon, the demon living in the tattoo gun, for revenge. The tattoo gun God gave to Gene wasn't an ordinary tattoo gun by anymeans. It's whats known as a devil's trap one that kept a very significant devil as prisoner. When Gene went from his trance to blacking out his natural defenses weakened considerably letting the demon prisoner close enough to communicate with his soul. Belial spoke to his soul and offered him revenge for freedom, with out him ever knowing Gene offered his soul to the demon Belial, a lord of hell, one of the strongest demons in existence, and did so much worse all in a moment in which he had no control.Gene rises, covered in living ink, winding it's away around, eating away at his own tattoos and replacing them on his entire body. With absolutely no control, no thought, nothing on Genes part what so ever the demon takes over. It whips itself around the room as razor sharp tendrils killing everything in sight, he under the control of the demon kills everyone in a rather large warehouse within minutes and casually walks back to the bodies of his wife and kids after fishing his end of the bargain or so he thinks. This here is the first hint of the storys over all theme and Gene's overall goal. Man wanting to make God answer for the terrible things he does.Gene holds his wife and daughter in his arms, sobs for an untold amount of time before getting up and leaving the warehouse, having looked like he was completely empty inside. However the wold he see's when he walks outside is not the one he had known weeks earlier. It was the end of the world and boy was it just starting. In an instant humanity met electrical failure, disasters at nuclear power plants, nuclear fallout in some areas, fire in the sky, demons and monsters rising up from the ground, living nightmares of every kind, and then they saw the lucky ones as they would come to be called as it turns the rapture was real, Gene's first tattoo under godly influence had been a persons rising to the sky. Not many were saved in an almost ironic joke the only people raptured were the devote, the picketers, the biggots, the amish, generally all the people condemning others as sinners were saved. The rapture, the lucky ones, only had a population of say one hundred thousand people. the rest were left with the sound of two giant doors closing at once ringing in their ears as the door to heaven shut behind the raptures self righteous asses and and the door hell shut cause they had quickly met their capacity. Gene didn't hear the doors, but when he opened his he knew. He knew that not only had his world just ended, but everyone elses did too.
