Ben Says Farewell to Lemmy and Bowie

I really don't have the deepest understanding of either Bowie or Lemmy.  My earliest memory of David Bowie was his "Dancing in the Street" cover with Jagger which was followed by his work in Labyrinth.  He was one of those people whose catalogue you didn't realize you knew until you were much older.  And that's when I started to appreciate his more popular stuff.  I would become later become obsessed with Ziggy Stardust through Guitar Hero and Life on Mars last year through American Horror Story.  Great stuff if not wasted on my less than impressive tastes in music.

Lemmy and Motorhead was a different road all together.  I had never heard any of their music until Ace of Spades was featured on one of the Tony Hawk videogames' soundtracks.  My brother took an immediate liking to it and stripped out all of the other songs in playlist so that Motorhead would only play in a loop.  It was his infatuation with the band that lead me to taking him to see them live in Cleveland when we were both in our 20's.  It was a smaller venue with no seating and low, concrete balconies to the side. We sneaked over to the balcony closest to the stage for an amazingly close look at the band.  A friend from high school cut surprised me on the balcony.  I didn't realize how terrible an idea having a close seat was until I saw my friend pull out a pair of ear buds from a plastic bag in his pocket.  The show was amazing, but my ears literally rang for 2 days. Still glad I got to see them though.

So I give to you this crossover that never happened.  I wanted to go full color with it, but I just have way too much on my plate at the moment.  Thanks for checking it out.

Ben
www.needyourdisease.com
www.facebook.com/needyourdisease
www.twitter.com/needyourdisease
www.tumbler.com/needyourdisease
www.instagram.com/needyourdisease

Ben Takes You To Space!

Boy have I neglected this blog.  Well, I've neglected mine too, but that is neither here nor there.  Either way, the rest of the monsters were heading out to Genghis Con while I was driving back from Philadelphia so I couldn't attend.  But why not send something along for them.  So I sat down one night and threw this together.  I've never really played with half tones in Manga Studio so that was pretty fun.  I could actually see me abusing it if I'm not careful.  You can watch a time lapse of the drawing being made in the video below.  If you enjoy the video, please like and subscribe.  Thanks!

Ben Hale
Instagram
Facebook
Twitter
Tumblr

Ben Gives You Nuclearman!..

The character you never asked for! I'm not sure why I drew him. I think I've been wanting to do Zod and his fellow Kryptonian criminals from Superman 2, but just started sketching out Nuclearman.  And this is what you get.

I'm feeling the itch to go through and do the rest of the villains, but we'll see if I have time.  Time Lapse of the entire thing is below.

-Ben
www.NeedYourDisease.com
www.twitter.com/needyourdisease
www.instagram.com/needyourdisease
www.facebook.com/needyourdisease

Ben Brings You The Thing

Still having fun with some speed painting.  This one is about an hour and just an attempt to change up my light direction and add some contrast.  Took about an hour in Manga Studio.  You can watch a time lapse below.  See how I completely abandoned my first idea...yep, confidence.  

You can follow me at:

www.NeedYourDisease.com

www.facebook.com/needyourdisease

www.twitter.com/needyourdisease

-Ben

Ben Asks You To Live Long And Prosper

Last February I drew a quick sketch on the day that Leonard Nimoy passed.  I came across it again and decided to do a quick paint over.  Still playing around with the brushes in Manga Studio.  Liking what I'm finding so far.

Music by www.bensound.com

You can follow me at:
www.NeedYourDisease.com
www.facebook.com/needyourdisease
twitter.com/needyourdisease

Ben Hale

 

Ben: Christopher Lee RIP

Its been a long time since I've posted.  Hell, its been a long time since I've drawn anything.  Today seemed like a good time to jump back in.

It was announced today that Christopher Lee had passed.  I don't know his work as well as I should, but I always enjoyed seeing him on film.

This one is done completely in Manga Studio.  I was trying out some of the new water color brushes for the rendering and really liked the results.  I should have a time lapse of the whole thing up in a future post.  More to come.

Ben Hale
www.NeedYourDisease.com
www.facebook.com/needyourdisease
www.twitter.com/needyourdisease

Ben Peeks In The Justice League Locker Room

I really went back and forth on this one.  Adding things, cutting things, rearranging things, and pushing myself to exhaustion.  Luckily, I called it finished at 3 in the morning Friday night... and then I woke up at 7 in the morning and noticed something I didn't like.  Fixed it and sent it to be printed.  Usually takes a deadline to get me to work that hard on something.  I definitely haven't worked on that many characters since last years Free Comic Book Day.  I should probably do stuff like this more often.

If you'd like to see this up close and personal (and maybe even buy a print of it), you can come to Free Comic Book Day at Carol and John's Comic Shop in Cleveland.  The last few years have been amazing.  Any fan of comics should do themselves a favor and attend.

Till next time,

Ben

Ben Draws Ninja "Toitals"

I haven't drawn with pencil and ink in a long time.  I haven't completely abandoned the physical realm, but I've come to enjoy my tablet and computer more and more.  Also, I've been animating and coding more than drawing.  Well, that is going to change this month.  Tons of projects and little time.  As a nice little warm up, I broke out my handy little pencil pouch and drew a Ninja Turtle.  Why?  Because my cousin's little boy is becoming quite the artist and I bought him a copy of "How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way".  It was the first art book I ever bought myself and was hugely influential.  I wanted to make it a little more special, so I threw this drawing on the inside cover.  Fun Fact: that inside cover worked surprisingly well with the Copic Markers.  Who knew?

There should be plenty more to come in the next few weeks as we get closer to Free Comic Book Day.

-Ben

www.NeedYourDisease.com

www.twitter.com/needyourdisease

www.facebook.com/needyourdisease

Ben Continues the Gauntlet! Day 4

So I got a little carried away with 1 aspect of today's challenge and focused solely on the Knight Templar part.  I originally planned on incorporating the other aspects in the background, but that didn't happen.  My time was limited, so I did what I could.

The whole thing was done in Manga Studio.  I tried out some of the paint brushes.  Really enjoyed them.

Ben

www.NeedYourDisease.com
www.facebook.com/needyourdisease
www.twitter.com/needyourdisease

Ben Runs The RBMC Gauntlet! Day 3

I had to skip day 2.  The Hale household is in the midst of a baby sleeping rescheduling that is not going well.  With that in mind, I wanted to continue the gauntlet and jump back in on day 3.  So here is a quicky sketch knocked together on my lunch break.  The day's theme was:

The Outlaw  /  Young  /  Mad Scientist

This was the first thing that popped in my head.  I would have loved to refine it, but am happy that I'm at least sketching again.


-Ben
www.NeedYourDisease.com
www.facebook.com/needyourdisease
www.twitter.com/needyourdisease

Ben Brings You Penguins!

Wow. It has been a while since I have put paint to canvas. If I'm being honest, it has been a while since I've drawn anything. The Rust Belt Monsters and I descended upon Cleveland's Brite Winter Festival with another mural. We hadn't done a traditional, painted one since Ingenuity Fest so it was good to be back. I kept my contribution small as I was feeling the rust (pun intended) but I ended up happy with it. I'm looking forward to the next event and some bigger projects this year.

-Ben
www.NeedYourDisease.com
www.facebook.com/needyourdisease
www.twitter.com/needyourdisease

Ben Enters The Gauntlet! Day 1

Day 1 of the Rust Belt Monster Collective: Gauntlet has begun and I wanted to knock this out quick. The theme was "The Evil Mentor Armed Space Marine".  I Sketched quickly in Manga Studio, continued in that program for inking, and then brought it into Photoshop for some quick color.  Going to try and keep with this scheme through the week.  We'll see how it goes.  Bring on Day 2!

-Ben Hale
www.NeedYourDisease.com

Ben Hale is a WIZARD!!!

Not one of those showy, pointy hat style wizards like Merlin or Gandalf more of a stealthy, do wizardy things and fade into the shadows like Batman.  He is the Batman of wizards.  A quick disclaimer; this is NOT a post written by Ben cause our Bat-zard don't work that way.  Our man does the work, puts it up and moves on to crushing another crazy difficult task! 

Who else do you know illustrates....

Does animation and video production...

.....and is single handedly creating his own video game!!!!

Click here for the current game build.

It's true, we are very lucky to have Ben in the collective.  In many ways he's our secret weapon.  So be sure to keep an eye on his work here,on his blog, needyourdisease.com, twitter, tumblr, facebook, everywhere you can consume media.


I know I'll be watching.

Ben Hale Presents: Baby Violet Year One

Finally, I can pull from the darkness and head towards the light.  I've been missing from the fold.  Not from laziness, but from extreme busy-ness and secrecy.  My little girl Violet turned one and I was working on a video for her birthday party.  Because I wanted it to as much a gift to her as my wife, I had to keep it off the inter-web for it to remain a secret.

It worked.  My wife seemed overjoyed and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Post by Ben Hale.

For people who are interested in this kind of thing, I thought I would break down a couple of the effects in the video.

First thing.  All of the videos were taken with cell phones.  For some reason, everyone takes videos vertically and not horizontally (as in wide screen movies).  So my big problem was that I couldn't show video clips traditionally because of the black area on the sides.  My solution? Show the videos with cropped edges.  That's when I thought of doing the scrapbook.  It would allow me to cut off the black edges and place them on top of fake Polaroids.

The next problem was that I wanted the pages to curve like normal paper.  After Effects is a pretty flat program when it comes to 3D...for the most part.  It can basically be like flying index cards around a 3D space.  There is a normal page turn effect you get with the program, but it is just faking the turn.  I wanted to do better than that.

So after some research, I found a script called Bend Layers by Jacob Danell.  This program takes your flat image, asks you how many segments you want, and then splits that image in to a bunch of strips.  2 strips would be like folding it in half.  The more strips, the smoother the curve.

With that problem solved, it was just a matter of flying the camera around past the pages.  

I also wanted to give the whole thing a more cohesive look and better represent it in 3D space.  So I added a particle effect to better sell the depth of field and the the camera was moving and banking around.  I then loaded up Red Giant's Magic Bullet Looks, and did some color correcting and flare.  I used to do a wash of film grain to make everything blend together better, but much prefer this way.

Without Filters

With Filters

I also decided to do some pseudo 3D photos.  The effect is from duplicating your image and isolating the subject from the front layer.  Then you spread them apart and move the camera through the 2 images.  A little play with the Lens Blur effect and it will work pretty well for you.

There were some smaller effects in there too, but these were the trickier ones.  If you hung in this long, thank you.  

You can see more on my personal blog: NeedYourDisease

Or on my Facebook Page: NeedYourDisease

And why not Twitter: NeedYourDisease

-Ben Hale

Ben Emerges From The Shadows...with stuff.

Boy have I been neglectful.  Not because I wanted to be, but because nothing is finished.  So rather than give off the impression that I'm some lazy lump that rides on the coat tails of his fellow monsters, I thought I would share some Work In Progress stuff.  So let's get up to speed.

Post by Need Your Disease.

First up, I had grand plans for Halloween.  Namely, a quicky animated short to post on the site.  Turns out, animation takes longer than you would think (even limited animation).  So I missed my deadline.  

Luckily, it took the pressure off of me and I can toy with it more.  Even remaster the whole thing in 3D.  Apply your 3D glasses....now.

Next up: My superhero game!  Since I last showed it, I was in the process of revamping my animations and adding art.  Well, I have a couple new things to show you.  First, I was running into a problem where my stopping animations (character resets and cape falls to the side) was playing twice.  It was really bumming me out.  So after some coding wizardry and a healthy dose of luck, that has been corrected.  Now the animation plays beautifully.

Post by Need Your Disease.

The other addition...well, more of a test...is these speed trails I've developed for the game.  I wanted some kind of trails behind him when he flew and threw this together. 

Post by Need Your Disease.

And finally, I'll be on the C2 Podcast talking about my game and using Construct 2 this Friday.  More to come soon.

Ben says "Welcome to Apokolips!"

"Had I known one human's death would pained you so, I would have killed more. And kill more I shall. Carry that agony with you to oblivion, Superman."

I really like Darkseid.  As a character, as a design, it just works for me.  Granted, the majority of my experience with him is from Superman: the Animated Series.  So a lot of that appreciation may come from the voice of Michael Ironside.  Either way, I decided to draw him up last Sunday and here he is.

Sketch and inks with Manga Studio.  Colors in Photoshop.

-Ben
www.NeedYourDisease.com
Twitter @NeedYourDisease 

Ben: A Redesign!

Time for a project update!  I've been really busy lately with a redesign of the game.  After looking at some of the things that I liked and didn't like, I came to the conclusion that it would really benefit from a restart.  What would I do different if I started over?  The characters would be built with Cut-Out/Skeletal animation (mostly), the art would still be retro, but at twice the size, the levels would be built with repeatable tiles, and the controls would be streamlined.

Well, I can show the first couple of changes.

After getting some flack on the internet for the original design basically being Superman, I decided a redesign was in order.  I took a bunch of unflattering reference photos of myself and got as far from the last design as I could (except for the cape).  Another problem with the original design was the short legs.  It looked tolerable standing up, but tipping him on his side while flying was a little ridiculous.  Those tiny legs just didn't hold up. 

With the new design in place, I built the character up in pieces from both the front and side angles (additional angles coming).  Then, I started rigging the bodies with a skeleton so that they could be animated.

Skeletal Animation rigged in Toon Boom Animate Pro

With the rigging in place, I animated a simple "idle" loop and attached a cape animation.  I did the two separate to break up the cycle.

Idle Animation next to Original Design (Left)

Next, I started rebuilding the backgrounds.  I reworked my first "shop" in a more simplified design to keep my file size down.  The new version is bigger and only 12kb.

There is still plenty more to do, but I thought I would show some of the new changes.  You can see much more at my personal blog: www.NeedYourDisease.com

-Ben

Original art and after derezzing in Photoshop

Ben: The Monster At The End Of This Book

I was recently asked (months ago) to participate in a gallery show at Bay Arts by my friend Erin Schechtman.  The general theme of the "Old Friends Gallery Show" was to reference a beloved childrens' book.  I immediately knew I wanted to do something for Grover in The Monster At The End Of This Book, I just had no idea what.  Having planned on doing it at the last minute, like all of my projects, I had plenty of time to ponder my approach.  The more I "pondered" the less I thought about the story and more about the title.  "Monster At The End Of This Book" taken out of context sounds much more like a classic pulp novel than a children's book.

And that's sort of what happened.  Here is my Pulp/Film Noire version of Sesame Street.  Work in Progress at my personal site : NeedYourDisease.com  

-Ben

Birthday Ben

Today is Rust Belt Monster Ben Hale's Birthday. What a lucky girl am I to have him in my life!
Ben is hilarious, talented, intelligent, and has great taste in music but above all, he is kind. If the world was filled with Ben Hales it would be a much better place, but celebrating his birthday wouldn't be quite as special. Hope you had a great one, buddy.

Happy Ben Day!

Ce n'est pas Erin Schechtman

Nope!  It's our very own, ever lovin' Ben Hale who is one year older today!!  I don't even know how long I've known this fancy Gent but since maybe day two of my time with Mr. Ben Hale he has been an instant old friend.  You Sir are a dynamo of awesomesauce with a dash of Cetera, may you have many more birthdays for us to become even older friends than we are now.  Happy Birthday!

A little about the style.  After I did Randy's portrait, in a style I am comfortable in I got the idea that I should do these portraits in a style fitting the person I was drawing. Next year's Randy will get some hatching, Jim's is in a variety of inks and Erin's and Tim's are a secret that you will see soon enough!  SO this Ben portrait I did kinda in a Bruce Timm, Batman the Animated Series (or I should say Superman the Animated Series) style.  One of the first things we geeked out about is our love of this style so it seemed only fitting to give it a shot.