My way-too-tight layouts for "Unnamed Robot Comic" issue #4, pt.1! (Patreon)

(UPDATE: Here's a link to our previous installment, in case you'd forgotten what the heck was going on in the series.)

Behold, the first set of my layouts for issue #4 of 2004's Marvel mecha-team miniseries Livewires, titled here as "Unnamed Robot Comic" as I'm more than a tad dubious about identifying this series of posts publicly. Keep this to yourselves, won't you? (The joke of using the title "Unnamed Robot Comic", by the way, is that Livewires' mecha protagonists consider the term "robot" to be an offensive slur.)

The final art on the series was done by my old bud Rick Mays (and the fine inker Jason Martin and the coloring studio Guru eFX, lest I forget) , but as you can see I cranked out insanely tight, fully dialogued, Sharpie-and-pencils layout pages for the series ahead of time; not only was this approach a faaaar from cost-effective use of my worktime, but in retrospect I feel that these layouts constricted Rick from drawing the beautiful faces and figure work he produced for other books. (Oh, well.)

Anyhoo,  with this set of Unnamed Robot Comic layouts, we've be kicking off the three-issue action epic that takes up the rest of the miniseries. Death and destruction await! Ah, but we've also kicked off a three-issue arc in which I started drawing a fair chunk of the comic myself, both due to deadline issues for Rick and also (mainly) because the story started featuring heavy-duty, technically complex scenes of ultra-tech hardware that weren't his strong suit.

So, starting soon, I'm gonna do a bunch of Work Stages posts featuring my pencils (and occasionally inks) for miscellaneous scenes from Livewires #4-6, possibly along with a look at the coloring stages as well. Yay?

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: At the moment I'm not quite sure what's going up when, thanks to the semi-randomized "M/W/F+" posting schedule I'm using nowadays.

UPDATE: Ehh, Friday's post will very likely be something in the commissioned Distressed Damsels vein for the $5+ tiers, though at present I'm behind in digging up scans, so I'm not sure what said content will be.