Sometimes we work until our fingers are sore and our eyes are red and still barely reach an acceptable level of satisfaction with the finished product. Other times we nail it right out of the gate.

Post the single panel that you are most proud of.

Guidlines:

Choose either the panel that made you happiest at the time, or the one you think is best overall, but state which it is (we do improve over time after all, but sometimes our oldest successes showed the greatest leaps of syle and ability.)

Should be a single panel, not a page, and not a seperate piece of artwork. A panel.

Do not post you're funniest punchlines. That'll be another thread. Post your favorite artwork.

Write up a brief description including the date. Why is it your favorite?

You can remove the text if you'd like.

Try not to plug your comic too much that's not really the point, and we have other forums for that.

It should look something like this:


Issue # 3
Page 12
Panel 7
02.03.06

I chose this panel because while I've since created better from a purely artistic standpoint, I think this panel conveys more in a single image than anything else I've made. The shadow of the hand on the gun on the bottom of the frame was a happy cooincidence, but it works as an indicator of the upcoming action. I wish it had been intentional. Also, I think I conveyed "Badass" more effectivly in this shot than any other, and I always have a hard time with "Badass."

Wow. That is an AWESOME panel. Definately badass.

~B

Chapter 2
Page 9
Panel 1
Posted May 31, 2007

I don't really know why, but I've always liked this panel. I had tons of fun with the color scheme (I love greenish grey, it's one of my favorite colors) and although he got shrunken down SO TINY that you can hardly see him, I spent a lot of time on the little character sitting there, lol.

I love both of the panels posted so far. I'd love to post something in here, but not only do I have no clue what it would be, but I think my art will be an embarrassment compared to the great work that's already posted here!

From the 6th of September. I like it because it's a nice angle and it's a recent pic... Unlike most of my art though, this was based mostly on a photo from a magazine, but even so I constructed the whole thing from scratch structurally: Working out the perspectives, placements, and sizes of things. Heh, which is why the perspective isn't right. ;)
I can't honestly say it's my favourite ever, or even my best ever, because I have a million faves and bests, but this is the most recent fave.

What Brock said.

Compared to ya'll, my panels blow. It's really hard to have an awesome panel in a strip.

I have quite a few from my main comic that I'm proud of, but they would all be high on the spoilers scale, since they are all over 100 pages into my "buffer." :-/ I'm not especially proud of anything I've actually posted so far.

SO... I've chosen a panel from my other project. It is definitely "crap" compared to the stuff you guys have, but this is a personal thing, right? ;)



A Midsummer Night's Dream
Act 1, Scene 1
Page 5, panel 1
(text removed)

The anatomy is off, but it's still a better hand than I usually draw. The thing that I'm actually proud of is the lighting. I struggle with shadows and highlights, and this time it actually turned out decent looking. So, I'm proud of it.

I definitely hope it won't be my "best" panel for too long. lol

I don't think you can say your stuff is ever crap "compared" to anyone. Art isn't done along a linear scale from good to bad, -or I'd never post my own stuff then since with that way of thinking unless you're on the "perfect" end of the scale, there's always someone going to be better than you...

No, it's what's good to you and what you love. Both those panels you posted Usedbooks were good to me. I especially liked in the first one the way you chose the difficult option and went with the perspective. I myself have tried and failed with getting a good view on a perspective pic with a lot of people!
And in that last one, with the combo of the gesture and their expressions, that looks extremely tender. It just works so well as a scene, conveying the narrative all by itself with no need of words or preceding or following panels.

ozoneocean
Both those panels you posted Usedbooks were good to me. I especially liked in the first one the way you chose the difficult option and went with the perspective. I myself have tried and failed with getting a good view on a perspective pic with a lot of people!
And in that last one, with the combo of the gesture and their expressions, that looks extremely tender. It just works so well as a scene, conveying the narrative all by itself with no need of words or preceding or following panels.

Thanks. I love the first thing I posted very much, but I decided to delete it since it came from page 400-something, and I got to thinking about spoilers. If the subject comes up again in four or five months, I can show it then. :-/ (Damn buffer always holding me back.)

My favorite panel comes from penis page 0078. This page was a response to criticism of penis. People always tell me that I draw very poorly. Yeah sure. I know I draw penis pretty poorly. Thats one of the many jokes of penis and is kind of on purpose. So I put an extra hour on penis doing a few panels a little more elaborately and then for a coup de grace, I added a rant about my trip to the moon on the authors comments. Someone had said my authors comments were fake and that he expected a future one to be about my trip to the moon. How could I resist such a funny post? My favorite is probably the fourth panel, which I've blown up pretty big below here, but it doesn't look as great that big. The real best panel has to be that last one, its just so funny for some reason.



This one turned out pretty good I think.

Fuzzy Modem
Try not to plug your comic too much that's not really the point, and we have other forums for that.

That will be easy for me since the panel I'm about to show isn't from a comic I've done on DrunkDuck. Or a comic that's ever actually been published. It's from a 5-page sample I submitted to Marvel Comics to try and get work as a colorist. Never heard anything back.




Issue: N/A
Page 5, Panel 1
October 17, 2006

(EDIT: For those who don't follow super hero stuff, I guess I should state who is in the picture here ... that's Moon Knight, and a very obscure Marvel villain named MadCap. The funny hook of my coloring sample was that I treated this as a Moon Knight: The Animated Series, kind of a send up on Batman: The Animated Series, since MK is kind of a character that's always been sneered at as a Batman rip-off ... and I used MadCap as my Joker-fill-in to complete the hook).

It was really hard to choose the "best" panel I've "ever" made. But I decided to go with this panel for this thread because of all the stuff I've drawn in the past 2 years or so, it's the one that made me the happiest. Why? Really simple ... it's the action. I sometimes struggle to fit action into my work. And the way this panel turned out I was really very happy at the dynamic lines and the pop of the villain getting kicked in the face. I'm also very happy with the color scheme and the design. It's very simple, very clean and it's very easy to tell what's going on in the panel. It's one of the few panels in the past couple of years that I feel I got right the first time I put pencil to paper to even lay it out in roughs. No re-drawing. No "OMG, that perspective sucks!" or "OMG, the foreshortening looks horrible" or "OMG, was I on crack? The villain was just on the LEFT side now he's on the RIGHT! ARGH I SUCK!" It was just "hey, that looks exactly like what was in my head."

The art style here set up the clean-line semi-Timm-inspired animated feel I was going to go for with Superchum. So it's sort of related to my comic. Basically, I saw how good stuff like this panel came out, and felt confident enough to drop cross-hatching from my work when I relaunched Superchum. I could have picked a Superchum panel as I've been very happy with almost every page of the stuff I've done here on DrunkDuck. But I chose to go back to this panel because this submission and this work here really is a turning point for me in recent history.

Sorry to ramble.

My brain has exploded from the awesomeness. Those panels kick major arse ya'll. I think Ozone and Fuzzy are most likely aliens from another dimension in which art skill is injected into your brain upon birth and grows ten fold on each birthday. And that both of them are well into their 90's.

Anywho my favorite panel...

Issue # 1
Page 03
Panel 2
09.14.07



Not really skillful but it makes me happy to look at it from time to time. I'm really not sure why it's my favorite... I suppose the fact it's the only one I used a "real" background in makes it different and the fact it's half grayscale... idk. Can't explain a whole lot. Basically though it's a parody of Silence of the Lambs which = one of my favorite movies as a kid, so I'm sure that has something to do with it.

Its actually a tie...



Original page: http://www.drunkduck.com/BK_Shadow_Nemesis/index.php?p=247165

- Because I tried experimenting on a slightly different way to depict motion. This is Mara-Nina dodging the weapon of her opponent. I used the spiderman toy with this.




Original page: http://www.drunkduck.com/BK_Shadow_Nemesis/index.php?p=171661

- Because its the best drawing I ever had of a building. And I know I suck at drawing buildings and backgrounds.

This is my favorite because I feel like I got the message through pretty well. Oh, destruction...

It's funny, I got an idea for a thread like this just yesterday. I think it's a great opportunity for everyone to show off the actual artwork that you won't see unless you follow the person's banner and check out their comic.

Ozone's simply blew me away! There's just something incredibly captivating about the geometry/composition, and the colors.

Silentkitty: I think that's the way to go! I'm the same. Even if the character ends up being really tiny or lost in the shadow, I'll draw them in full detail. And that gray green is a nice color.

UsedBooks: don't be so hard on Yourself. That's actually a nice one! You did a really nice job on the shading.

ShinGen: I can see why you like it so much. The waffle totally rocks! lol! And that shadow behind it looks creepy, actually. Good job!

Here's my favorite:

A Bit Cheesy, Page 10
Panel 6
28.09.2007

I actually have a few favorites, each for different reasons. But since I had to pick just one, it's this. It's from my latest update. I'm proud of it, because it's the most "technically advanced" piece of artwork I did for my comic. It's not perfect, and actually contains several mistakes/factual errors - but I just totally enjoyed the opportunity to try out the lighting effects on the headlights and rear lights. Not to mention drawing the car itself. It's something I picked up from my dad when I was a wee little kid. He was a real pro back in the day and I always looked up to him. I haven't actually drawn many vehicles in my life, nor did I have a great talent for it, but I enjoyed it every time. The comic is my comeback to drawing and this panel is on some level the crowning of that process.

This thread should be moved to A & L Corner.

Also, this thread is an evil plot to tempt me into posting spoiler panels from my buffer pages.

Edit: I have 2 many favs, but I've not posted this one on DD yet.



For action panels, I like to duplicate an animation frame feel. That is, the panel appears asymmetric and simple on purpose, because it's 1 frame out of many. Asymmetry in composition also denotes violent action.

Love the rain illuninated by the tail light Fitz.

ozoneocean- that perspective is beautiful! Pro and a half! But then, I am a huge fan of photo refs ;)

I love the green/grey too silentkitty. It gives such a damp / cool (tempature) / peacefull feeling. I especially love what it does to the trees in the far background. I can almost feel the forest dripping with condensation as I move between the bows.

When picking a favorite from your own pool of work, Brock, it is laid to comparison only with itself. You're estimation of the quality of our work is of no consequence, and is no excuse :p

Thanks guys. I can't accept much praise for that image though, because the original photo from the magazine is too close to it: They'd already framed a beautiful view in a beautiful building and that's my version of it. I might have made this one by working out where the lines and circles go, the right angles, analysing the perspective, changing the sizes of some things, having people etc, but the end result still came out close to the pic (which is what I was aiming for). So that praise, while nice makes me feel like a fraud. :)

So here's a single panel (from the 11th of August 07), that I like a lot. It's just a good, simple pic of tanks being knocked about by a couple of landmine explosions. The mountains in the BG are nice, the explosion of flying sand turned out exactly as I wanted it to and it was great fun to draw big solid objects like tanks being affected by the blast.



Love Mlai's action scene! POWER.

The car lights on the rain are amazing Fitz. Nice use of black.

Kyupol masters the use of direction blurring for cinematic action and his intricate detailing on the church bricks and tiles are astonishing. Always top use of technique.

Hmmm - not being the artist on my comic, there are sooo many of Harsho's panels that just leave me in awe! This panel is from a 4-page sequence at the beginning of Chapter 7 (not online at DD yet, so think of it as a sneak preview!) I don't know if it's my absolute favourite (some of the others are full page splashes, so I've avoided those), but it's certainly up there with them.



Shades : Chapter 7
Page 3, Panel 1.

I think I like it so much partly because it's at the centre of a key scene, partly because it has one of my favourite lines and mostly because Harsho's artwork is just so cool that the characters' expressions fit the dialogue perfectly.

Fitz, I love your colors and inks. The rain effect is nifty, too.

ocean: I love your perspective on the stairway frame.

mlai: Very explosive, I like it! :)

kyupol: your first frame made me dizzy! But I like that.

ShinGen: Ah, the abusive waffle...that made me laugh!

usedbooks: I really like that panel. The subtleties of the lighting, the colors and the expressions are very enjoyable.


The Due East panel below is my fave, even though it's from my black and white material.



Due East , Book Two
Page 8, Panel 9

The emotional resonance is what I like about it (no words necessary), plus the literal breaking of the fourth wall.

@ShinGen: I love your evil waffle with everything else b&w. lol

@kyupol: I like that church a lot. Buildings are hard to draw... I especially like the texture of the bricks and the roof, and the clouds look awesome.

@Fitz: The reflections on the rain are seriously cool.

@ozoneocean: I like all your tanks. They always look cool. The explosion looks great too. It's neat to see the way it affects the tanks.

@dueeast: I sorta liked your pencil work more than the colored stuff. It felt more intense and moody. (The colors make everything feel more cheery all the time.) That is an emotional panel.



Now that I'm more awake, I went through the pages of my "real" comic ;) and found a panel I'm proud of and contains no spoilers.



Used Books
Page 464, Panel 4

I'll call this my "best" panel of non-spoiler-ish panels. It's tucked away in my buffer and hasn't been uploaded yet. Why do I like it? I'm not entirely sure. I like that there's a lot in it. I love the rain, the two sets of footprints, and the expression. In context, it is pretty moving too.

I had some trouble picking one panel, or even two. Anyway I settled for these two.



I love this panel, and I was very proud of it at the time (it is chapter 3, page 7 of Wolf). I really like it because it is very symbolic. It is part of a dream Zoe is having laden with guilt about Dave's injury. I love the colours and the shading I did in this (I shade figures as well as backgrounds in Wolf only for specific purposes). It is also one of the few surreal panels I have had the chance to do :)


And I absolutely love this panel, even it is relatively simple.



This is from chapter 5, page 1. And it is a side of David that he very rarely shows overtly (he does display it but most people are blind to it). This is his dynamic, leading, strong side where his anger is a fuel and constructive.

I have more, but then it would be tiring as a post in the thread, to post and talk about them all, eh? ;)

@ Fuzzymodem:

That looks like a cover. You sure you're not cheating by posting a cover?

@ Fitz:

That rain illumination is really understated (s'why it's cool); actually didn't pick it up the first time until Ozone mentioned it.

@ Ozone:

That sand explosion looks like an EGA graphic from one of the old games! (That's a compliment.) They used to have less to work with, so every pixel counted. All the polygons today look too sterile to me.

You have lots of hobby tank models, don't you?

@ DAJB:

Hardy Har Har, I'm a reborn Christian pirate!

@ DueE:

I like the lack of sound FX as a sound FX! The "shattering FX" is better than any words you could have used. I hope you don't mind, but that is such a cool idea I'll have to use it for a (different type of) scene in my comic (200 pages away, so it's not happening for awhile).

It's kind of hard picking out your favorite panel...My pages don't have the traditional layouts...but I love how Yokai came out on this page from page 9 of ...I also like the line especially after the set up from the other character in the scene...

EDIT: resized.
EDIT2: resized again.
how's that?

@ Midge.

Is that panel really that huge? Wish you resized it for this thread...

The style rocks. Feels like those way retro blaxploitation flick posters, or Bruce Lee posters. You should just change the gray to bright red, and make it a poster. Does your whole comic look like this style?

mlai
@ Midge.

Is that panel really that huge? Wish you resized it for this thread...

The style rocks. Feels like those way retro blaxploitation flick posters, or Bruce Lee posters. You should just change the gray to bright red, and make it a poster. Does your whole comic look like this style?

Yeah I just cut it from the main page.
I'll resize it.
as to the whole comic looking like this...yeah pretty much...not so much with some of the earlier pages.

@ legendkiller13...that picture is awesome!

that guy's freakin' enormous...don't want to mess with him!

Adrienne Clare
Book 1, Chapter 3, Page 47

I don't know if it's the 'best' per se, but it's my favourite in terms of emotional accuracy. They don't know eachother very well, but he has just saved her life, and she's not sure what to say to him or how to thank him. She wants to touch him, to hug him, but can't seem to use her hands - -

(The fact that they are practically strangers and she only thinks she's a girl adds to the awkward confusion, but that's going on a whole other level of, I dunno .. comfort and discomfort, gender confusion, sexuality, lack of security, knowingness, naivete..)

She is tired and drops her head against his shoulder instead. She says 'I thought you'd left,' because she really did think,for a moment, that he'd abandoned her.

mlai
You sure you're not cheating by posting a cover?

Nope. 's from this page (with text)



I was trying to fit waaay too much onto each page back then...