My way-too-tight layouts for "Unnamed Robot Comic" issue #4, pt.2! (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 second 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're serializing 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, following up on this post, in a few days I'll show you folks another Work Stages dealie showing the pages I wound up drawing from the gallery above, including pencils, inks and colors. Wheeee!

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: I'm posting all 5 weekdays this week to finish off January, so something will be posted tomorrow. Enjoy?