Monday, November 30, 2009

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Art trade



For a friend's art trade, came out kinda cute, ball point pen

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Rockman Perfect Memories Winner

I was fortunate enough to win second place in the "content" category here. http://forum.rockmanpm.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=55101de007a053cf28f0204f28398ca8&topic=2689.0

Here's my entry:

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Megaman Legends



Done for the new contest on the megaman-legends-club. The theme this time was "Alternative Art Style", aka Draw something besides the usual capcom imitation style, or anime look for this. I chose to base my work off of the comic works of Jae Lee, an artist i first noticed back in the early 2000's who used to work on Transformers and GI Joe. You may know him from his illustrated version of Stephen King's "Dark Tower" and his Hyper Realistic work. I usually dislike Photo Realism in Comics, However Mr Lee's work is fascinating to me, in that it combines photographic realism with very very dark blacks and interesting compositions. His work is very evil looking and different from the numerous other photo realism comics currently being made. As for the coloring, that was done on a whim. The colors are a bit strange, however i like them. This entire picture is an experiment. Overall I believe the results are decent. It was a fun project though..

Oh and thank you to Marcus J. Ranum for the stock photos i used for references.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Painting and colored pencil experiment




Done based off of the photomanipulation drawings on the back of Luca Turilli's "Prophet of the Last Eclipse" one of the my favorite cds suggested to me by my good friend Essai many years ago. This was just done as an experiment, and I think turned out very nicely. Sorry about the glare, my scanner seems to scan colored pencil strangely...

Acrylic paint, pencil, pen and colored pencils

Monday, August 31, 2009

Being good at being imperfect.

To a comic artist, being perfect is a must, at least in my mind. Since the beginning of my senior year I have been producing a comic project for web publication, and eventually printing into book form. While in school I had the freedom to work and work on the first 33 pages of this project without any contraints or feelings of fear, there was no website at the time, there was no weekly deadline. Everything was to be done by the end of the school year.

This, unfortunetally, created a difficult situation, when I begin to work on something with safety nets such as the ones I had in school, I find it difficult to adapt once the nets are taken away, as they were when I graduated and began to do the comic as a weekly, color sci-fi adventure. So far things have gone decent, I have managed to crank out 24 pages just in time to keep up with the now depleted 33 I drew for my senior portfolio. But, just as with my original story, there are errors, not BIG GLARING errors, but small things. A panel I don't like, a black section that is not black enough, borders messed up, ink or white out in places it shouldn't be, normal things that happen during page production under a deadline. During the school year I just passed these these kind of things off as normal mistakes, that I would get back to later on, which I did.

I spent a few days repairing pages I didn't like during the last week of classes. This procedure turned out to be a very good investment, and dramatically increased the presentation of my work. Now facing the completion of another 24 pages, I am having trouble accepting the fact that there are errors and things are not perfect "The first time around." However making perfect pages is nearly impossible, due to the fact that I am human and DO make mistakes. Even making 5 pages perfect on the first go is near impossible. I have no idea where I got this crazy idea.

It has been a while since i've been in school, and as I said earlier, there is no safety net, no brilliant instructor pointing these little things out to me. Perhaps the transition between having an instructor to assist in pointing out errors and finding errors on my own creates this tension? This could mark the beginning of one's journey to being a self contained professional. It is my responsibility to not only make the pages, but to ensure that they are done to the best of my ability, if not the first time then during the revision period. Somehow I forgot this in the period of 4-5 months since I finished my degree.

My revision process was something that was both helpful and practical. It did not involve redoing entire sections of the comic or tossing pages. Usually it involved going through each page and cleaning up messy lines, whiting out mistakes, darkening blacks and occasionally redesigning a panel or two (perhaps becasue of an unwise storytelling decision or just bad lettering). For some reason I have been thinking I could go without these steps and just consider my pages "done". I kept saying to myself "You don't have time for revisions now, just make more pages" and just kept drawing. The pages I've done are some of the best i've ever made, but STILL regardless of that, they need some cleanup and revision, there is even one panel I hate and want to redesign. So while driving to work today I asked myself, "Why am I being so upset about not being perfect? and second, why don't I just take the time to go back and do some repairs?" The realization that the world won't end because I made mistakes on my comic hit me and I decided to continue the process I invented for myself last year, lesson learned.

No one is perfect with their art and there is no shame in mistakes. You would think i'd know that after how many years of doing this. There is also no shame in ADMITTING to making mistakes. Trying to make pages perfect on the first try is a good goal but will not always happen. The fact that I feel I should be perfect says something about my self esteem. Hopefully in the future I will slow down and remember to go back and give my pages the attention they deserve.

Tim Sparvero

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Sakura....



I pity whoever is going to get hit

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Painting



Based on the concept work by Warhammer artist John Blanche. I really love his work and was hoping to try at my own version of it. Done on 11 by 17 drawing paper with red white and green acrylic, with ball point pen and ebony pencil.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

illustration publication

My illustration

About half way down, the "Habitat Size and Diet", the illustration ran in print last week and is online now

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Samus


For a good friend

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Infinity Roads page 2.

Site INFINITY ROADS



More to come monday!

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Webcomic Launch is TODAY

Hello everyone, this entry is to announce the launch of my new webcomic Infinity Roads. Check it out here: INFINITY ROADS

This will update every Monday and Friday with new comics.

Please feel free to leave comments there and interact. Thanks a lot for reading!

Tim S.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Graduation Day

Overall things have gone well.

For those of you who don't know, today I graduated from the New York School of Visual Arts Cartooning Program. I'm very proud to say this has been a part of my life for the past three years, however, in the future I plan to still be involved with the school and the people I have come to know. Hopefully this will only be a first step and not a end of the road, as which happens with many college graduates I know. (perhaps they lose contact with college pals, forget their major, or dreams they worked so hard for, or just become comfortable in life, and decide to stop improving themselves.)
I hope this will just be the opening to a path of new opportunities to work more, with the ultimate goal being to be published.
Again, however, my goal has changed since it's first conception. Originally my goal was to just have my work published in my own series of books. NOW, the goal is that, but it been expanded to include me wanting to try some different types of work for say, companies or small press magazines. In addition, I wish to include my friends in this endeavor. I can't see being successful or becoming famous without the company of my best friends from SVA and other parts of life. I would really like now to have my work published in books alongside my friends. This is one of the many things SVA has brought to my life.
Artists, even comic artists, are in a state of constant growth and change. I believe SVA has given me new tools to make those changes, and see what comes of them. Let's see where this goes, for everyone.

Tim S.

Monday, May 4, 2009

Infinity Roads, new comic Cover,



Done for the web comic, (which might I add is also in mini comic format now)

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Miranda Stars

Monday, March 2, 2009

Done in Paintchat


An idea for my next Comic Scroll book.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Friday, February 20, 2009

spiral....

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Astral ink drawing


Done a while ago, ink and white paint on bristol

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Painter, Harley Quinn


This was a painter sketch done for a good friend, i was happy how it came out.

Painter Astral

Thursday, January 1, 2009