I started my first original comic Boxing Bugs in 2018, and since then have finished the first issue as well as a mini side comic.
It’s been a long while since our bug friends Tap and Rumble have shown up again, and I’ve actually had the script for issue #2 finished for a little while now that I was going to work on after Pac-Man: Ghost Gamble. However, I’ve recently made a big decision: Boxing Bugs is officially going on an indefinite hiatus.
I do want to make clear that it is NOT being cancelled, but instead will be set aside in favor of working on a new original project. I’m honestly really happy with this decision and very excited for the new project I’m working on! I’m going to wait a little while before officially showing anything publicly, but rest assured it’s going to be something big and fun.
While I’m working on this new project my plan is to continue making fan comics in the meantime, so expect lots of short adventure stories from Pac-Man and more (and hey, maybe I’ll finally be able to get to that bomberman comic soon too). I might switch between another comic with each I finish, but I’ll make sure each story gets wrapped up!
As for the future of Boxing Bugs, I do plan on returning to it one day, hopefully next time with a full team. That’s all for now, thank you guys for reading and look forward to some great things!
After watching an episode of Battle Bots for the first time, I got inspired to create some fun fighting robot designs of my own! Since the robots on the show often had funny names, I decided to design robots based on pun names. For this one, I chose Dog Pound.
I sketched out a design for the robot, leaning heavily on the dog theme. I though of a dog walker with two wild dogs on a “leash” attached to his back. He’d shoot tennis balls at the opponent, prompting the dogs (named Chomps and Biscuit respectively) to attack. I gave him two ear-like points on his head as well.
Inks
I chose colors that would make both Dog Pound and the dogs stand out just enough from each other.
Then I did some simple shading and added a colorful background!
Here are some extra sketches I did as well to get used to the character.
Dog Pound’s detachable kennel with the robo dogs sealed safely inside.
I mentioned back in February in my Kirby: Chilly Reception process post that I had written another short Kirby story I’d be covering soon. I started posting it in January and come April 28th I finally posted the last page. Now, let’s talk about it!
Right after I finished Chilly Reception in October, the very next month I began writing Meta Knight wants to Battle. This was going to be another comedic comic with a simple concept: Meta Knight wants to fight, but can’t get the battle he really wants.
Where Chilly Reception was done with a style in mind to keep things simple and fast in a comic strip format, this time I wanted to take my time on both backgrounds and characters in an format similar to manga.
I spent November to December sketching out all sixteen pages of MKWtB. This was a self imposed challenge for myself, as usually I’ll get a couple pages sketched, get those pages ready to post, then spend the remainder of the comic having to sketch out and finish the rest of the pages weekly. I wanted to try waiting until all of my pages were sketched before getting a couple ready to post, then all I have to do is ink and color the rest. Sketching for me is the longer process, so this help cut out a ton of time in the long run.
After all my pages were sketched, I set out working on the comic cover.
I looked at some Kirby manga comic covers for inspiration on what the cover should look like. I though of having the two other stars of the comic, Kirby and Galacta Knight, looming above Meta Knight, but didn’t end up going with it. I liked the composition, but it didn’t really reflect the comic itself properly.
What I did go with was MK jumping in the air with a determined look, with Kirby and Galacta watching on.
I colored in the characters and background. I felt like keeping the background lineless would help frame the characters better.
After some shading and a title, the cover was done!
I already had all the comic sketches done, so all I had to do was ink and color some buffer pages and the rest from there. Here are all the sketches.
I mostly wanted to experiment with composition and storytelling with this comic. Some pages ended up having panels too close together, so it was a learning process.
Next are all the completed pages. Since Chilly Reception was done in black and white, I wanted to go all out with colorful pages.
This was a very fun comic to work on and I’m happy with the result! Short comics lend themselves well to experimentation and learning techniques to bring over to bigger stories. I’m currently in the process of drawing another comic, Pac-Man: Ghost Gamble, that I’ll be covering the first part of once I’m finished.
I’ve recently gotten into the Professor Layton series, and it’s games have been a constant source of inspiration! Engaging mysteries and challenging puzzles have been on my mind for a few months now thanks to them. I’ve done quite a few drawings for it by now, but I got an idea for another illustration around the game that introduced me to it all: Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask.
I had found out that the Japanese version of the game had an update that added extra cutscenes, and one in particular caught my eye.
Said cutscene I though was cute for obvious reasons. Source: https://youtu.be/8TWOpWgGeeo?t=79
A cute little scene of Layton (on the left) and his assistant Emmy (the right) dancing. I really liked it, and suddenly I had decided to do a screenshot redraw. I’d recently been experimenting with lineless artwork, and chose to go that route with this picture as well.
I started off with a very rough base sketch, just getting the poses down.
Next I got as clean of a sketch as I could of essentially the final picture. Since I’ll be doing lineless I need as clear direction and details as possible.
After the sketched was prepared I laid out all the base shapes and colors of Layton and Emmy to build the details on.
Next was was adding the faces and smaller details of the clothes and hands.
Here was where I started on the background, paying close attention to the screenshot reference.
Since the shading would be coming next I went ahead and added all the lighting details in the background.
Character shading, there wasn’t that much so it didn’t take too long
Character highlights.
After adding extra lighting details and an overlay, the picture is done!
I really love how this came out and so far it’s one of my best lineless works. Hope to keep experimenting and improving! Thank you for reading, and give the Professor Layton games a look! You might find yourself wrapped in a puzzle.
After getting into Rayman again recently, I started thinking about how much fun it is seeing game mascots together in series like Smash Bros and other crossover games. I decided to do an illustration of some of my favorites coming together, and thought it would be fun to draw their younger selves for it.
This was a rather tough one to figure out at first. I had a general idea of what I wanted to do, but not exactly how I wanted to show it.
First I thought about Rayman telling young Mario, Crash Bandicoot, and Sonic about his adventures in a book, but I wasn’t a fan of the composition.
Then I played around with the idea of him teaching them, since almost all of them had some sort of learning games. However, I still didn’t like how it was coming out.
Eventually I ended up finding a nice solution and a composition I was happy with. I kept the idea of Rayman reading to baby Mario, while having Sonic and baby Crash off in the background.
I refined the character sketches and fleshed out the background a bit. I was referencing referenced Pink Plant Woods from Rayman 1 for the setting.
I refined the background even further for more details, and at this point I decided against inking it and instead coloring it lineless.
I inked the characters then laid out the background flats for later.
Went into more detail and shading in the background, then laid out the flat colors for the characters.
Then finally I added the last bit of details to the characters and background with shading, lighting, and text on the book.
Here’s a video of the process!
This illustration has been one of my most detailed ones so far, I’m very happy with it!
In 2019 it was announced that one of my all time favorite beat-em-up game, Castle Crashers, would be coming over to the Switch. To celebrate, I decided to draw one of my favorite characters to use in the game, Pink Knight, along with another favorite from an equally colorful but considerably less violent show, Pinkie Pie.
In Castle Crashers you’ll come by animals that you can ride in certain levels, so drawing Pink Knight riding into battle on Pinkie was an easy choice.
I started by finding a good pose for Pinkie. She’d be the type to happily bounce into a battlefield, so I needed something energetic.
I went with the second pose and roughly sketched where Pink Knight would sit, along with his signature lollipop weapon.
I refined the sketch and added two hamsters Pink Knight uses in his attacks. I thought about adding a defeated enemy they’d be prancing away from, but ended up ditching the idea.
InksFlat Colors
I colored the lines to match the style of My Little Pony and added Pink Knight’s rainbow power, along with the sparkles and hearts that come with it. One colorful background later and it was finished!
Castle Crashers means a lot to me and this still stands as another one of my favorite pieces. I started doing a series of these with the other knights in the game that I’ll have to get back to later.
In 2017 Sonic and The Legend of Zelda had an interesting crossover, and I wanted to draw a picture inspired by that. However, I never ended up finishing it and eventually gave up on it. Jump ahead to 2020 and the idea came back to me again, this time with me fully committing.
First, I had to figure out which of the Zelda games I wanted to combine with Sonic. My original idea was with Twilight Princess (which I’ll still get to eventually), but after thinking it over I decided to go with Ocarnia of Time for inspiration.
I took time to look at some of the game’s art to figure out the type of mood I wanted the picture to have. Then, after gathering as many references I could find of Sonic’s outfit from the official crossover, I got started.
I had the image in my mind of wandering into the forest and encountering with the fairy that travels with you in the game, Navi. I wanted to really capture that feeling of wonder, with Sonic reaching out in curiosity,
Next I refined the detail in the sketch as much as I could. I pulled out a lot of forest references for this one. Also tried to get the most out of the references of Sonic’s outfit.
After adding extra effects and details, I came away with an illustration I’m still very happy with now! I’ll have to revisit this crossover combination again one day, and maybe finally tackle that Twilight Princess picture.
Something I always wanted to do is create short stories based on franchises I love. Now I have done an eight page Sonic comic, but that was mostly playing around with a concept. What I wanted was a full story that felt complete, but also short enough that it could be done in a feasible amount of time. So last November, when I saw the daily October drawing challenge, Inktober, was coming up soon, I knew it was the perfect opportunity to finally plan a story.
Now Kirby, one of my all time favorite game characters, was on my mind at the time so I wanted to write a fun little story about him. When I decided to take part in Inktober I immediately wrote the script and planned how I wanted to go about this comic.
I usually separate the actions into panels, but keeping it like this ended up working just fine.
I decided the best way to go about drawing the whole comic without burning out would be to add two restrictions: four panels per page, and only a black and white palette. This way it’ll take less time compared to doing a traditional comic layout, and force me to condense the story.
I sketched out all the pages within four days. Each day I livestreamed the process for as long as I could so that I would be focused. I didn’t want to do any sketching when October came, just inking and coloring.
You’ll notice a few pages I combined two panels into one for a big impact on special moments, and of course one big panel for the very last page. This way I was able to make us of the limited space to save time, and still make things look interesting.
Once October came, each morning I inked, colored, and added words to a page. It took me about 2-3 hours for each page, the simple style I went with helped to get them done quickly.
Since the story only came to 28 pages I didn’t end up drawing through all of October, but the experience was still incredibly satisfying. Once I set my mind towards doing this project I didn’t let anything stop me until it was done. I finally made a story for something I loved that I was really happy with. I felt so inspired that I wrote another short Kirby story right after that I’ll be covering soon!
In mid December last year, I started getting into Pac-Man. I don’t think there was ever a point where I didn’t like the pellet muncher. I’ve played the arcade game before, used him in Smash Bros. every now and then, and have even drawn him a few times. He’s been a passing thought that would pop up whenever I saw him for the most part. This time though, he was set on my mind.
It started with a fun little doodle of Pinky and Pac-man. I used a slightly updated design of the ghosts I made back in 2018, and for Pac used my usual style for drawing eyes. After I did this, however, I thought it would be fun to refine my look for Pac. So I got to work on it.
It’s mostly just a clear version of the Pac I already drew, but I liked it. Now at this point I was really curious about him, and as with anything I get interested in, I started diving into as much media of him as I could.
Hanna Barbera 1982 Cartoon
I started at the cartoons and found the 1982 series to be a really charming and strange ride. I thought it was interesting how they went about portraying the world the characters, and honestly found the wackiness to go quite well with him.
Looking further I came across a series of cute Japanese shorts made to go with a pop up retail chain called Pac-Store. I may not have know completely what was going on in each animation, but there was another fun portrayal and personality that oozed from it.
As I went on I kept looking deeper and deeper into information and media of a character I had only known on a surface level, finding out about different characters and facts I had never even known about.
My take on the ghost Yum-Yum and Pac-Jr (or Pac-Little as he’s called in Pac-Store) both from Pac-Jr. Only a few of said characters I didn’t know about.
While watching gameplay and reading wiki articles, I began to form a patchwork world in my mind based on all the different versions and stories of this single character. It would be amazing to see something where all these elements are combined in a way to make one big world we can explore with him. That’s when I realized there was one form of content of the yellow boy that I hadn’t seen yet: a comic.
Comics are full of opportunities to set up and explore the world, stories, and personality of a character in a way that you usually might not see in a game or other media in general. There are quite a few video game characters that have had comics made of them. Kirby, Mega Man, and Sonic the Hedgehog (who is still getting them made today) are some prime examples. With comics being my biggest passion, I had to find out if Pac-man had taken that opportunity.
To my surprise, he did. Sort of.
As far as I’ve been able to find there have only been three Pac-Man comics, two of which were made in France.
Page from Pac-Man Journal #5 written and drawn by Vince Ricotta
There’s Pac-Man Journal, written and drawn by Vince Ricotta, that follows the Hanna Barbera cartoon.
Pac-Man et les Aventures de Fantômes Volume #1 by Delcourt Jeunesse Editions
Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures by Delcourt Jeunesse Editions.
Pac-Man’s Christmas.
What you’re looking at is a piece of lost media. This comic was printed only once in Woman’s Day magazine back in 1983. In the 36 years since it was printed, no photo or scan has existed of it on the internet until now. pic.twitter.com/IoHndkz0HK
Then lastly a once lost Christmas comic in a Woman’s Day magazine, again following the 82′ cartoon.
None of these were what I was expecting, and didn’t really satisfy the itch of what I was looking for. The few of the Ghostly Adventure comics the fans translated are nice, but it only ran two volumes.
With ideas swirling in my head of the fun possibilities Pac-Man could bring to comics, and nothing pre-existing that offered it, I put my pen to the tablet screen and started putting these ideas out.
I started by imagining what kind of feeling a comic series about our yellow hero would have, then sketched some quick rough covers of vague ideas the issues would be about. Based on what I had seen, Pac-Man would be fun, wacky, whimsical, and exciting.
Next, I went and redesigned the ghosts. Now earlier I mentioned I did my own versions back 2018, but with those I was going mainly off the Ghostly Adventure designs. Now having learned about their in-game personalities and taking inspiration from different versions of them, I came up with much more fun and interesting takes than what I’d done before.
After all this, I began to look back at my initial Pac-Man design and felt very unsatisfied with it. Something felt off about him. His face was too small, and having completely watched through gameplay of Pac-Man 2: The new Adventures, I also realized he wasn’t nearly as expressive as he could be. I decided had to rework the design, and what I got connected with me.
Now this had way more personality. I love classic and modern Pac-Man’s look, and through this I felt I managed to blend the charm of each with my own style and inspirations.
Having the designs of the main cast covered and a style to go off of, I’ve been writing a slew of ideas and concepts for the world and mini comics to create since then. I plan on sharing each step of this fun exploration with you all as I go!
