SpongeBob Comics #1 Cover Art

It’s finally here! Today is the release date for the very first issue of SpongeBob Comics! I’m very proud to say that I drew and painted the cover art for this baby!

Here is the original pencil version… Here’s the inked version below:
…and finally the fully-painted artwork below. Completely logo-free,
but still with the crop marks and bleed lines and all that jazz.

In the next few days I’m also gonna be posting the TON of rejected preliminary drawings from this project. There’s a lot of drawings that I really like a lot, but for one reason or another they were all passed over for the version you see above. So come back soon and check ‘em out!

And meanwhile,
I hope you’ll all go out to your
local comics shop and pick up a copy of
SpongeBob Comics #1

Some old SpongeBob doodles on a scrap of illustration board

Click on image for full-size SpongeBob doodle

As much as I hate sketching in sketchbooks, I LOVE doing doodles on oddly-shaped pieces of stuff. Anything with a writing surface. Newspapers are good. I also have an old "Voter Information" publication with a lotta sketches inside. I like doodling on newsprint with a roller-ball pen. My current fave rollerball is the Bic 730R. You can get 'em at Staples. Oh, and I'm also doodling in a copy of the expired TAG union contract. So? I dunno.

I prolly drew this during the third or fourth season of SpongeBob. I've always liked drawing SpongeBob...he really makes me happy ^_^ Sketched with a PITT artists Pen - brush tip. One of my favorite drawing tools.

Hope you like it!

Giant SpongeBob Wall Painting

Here's a 12-foot tall wall painting I designed for Nickelodeon Studios back in 2005

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This is the original Inked art (I didn't work in color back then)

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Here’s an earlier version
which was considered too busy:

…I guess it WAS a little too busy.

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...and here's Sherm proudly mugging for the camera!

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More storyboarding tutorials coming soon!

• Storyboarding Commentary series:
• #1 - Storyboard Scans and Overview
• #2 - The Establishing Shot
• #3 – The Pan Shot
• #4 – When to Cut
• #5 - Staging and Design
• #6 - The Close-Up
• #7 – The Three-Shot

SpongeBob Hangover

A few fun storyboard panels from
“The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie.”

I usually just made black and white xeroxes of my boards,
but I liked the way the colors looked on these, so I scanned 'em in color.

In case you haven’t seen the movie, SpongeBob goes on an ice cream bender after getting passed over for a promotion at the Krusty Krab. When he wakes up the next morning, he’s pretty ornery!

Aaron Springer did the original rough sketches for this scene, so I had some great art to start with!

Some of my SpongeBob Comics – Super Suspicion

Here’s a SpongeBob comic book story I did for Nickelodeon Magazine back in ought-two. This was done during the break between the end of SpongeBob’s 3rd season and before production started on the Movie.

It was fun ‘cause I finally had a chance to get back to my comic book roots, and reach a huge audience, too.

Story, pencils and lettering by me,
inked by Vince Deporter, coloring by Digital Chameleon.

Anyway, just click on any image to open up a HUGE high-resolution comic page.

I’m not sure why, but I’ve never posted any of my Nick Mag comics before. Oh, wait…I remember why. I was still freelancing for Nickelodeon Magazine and I didn’t wanna make  them mad. But last December the magazine shut its doors, so here they are.

^ That was a fun panel to draw!

I’m always fond of bookending the opening and closing panels
(or scenes in a cartoon)

A lot of these comics were collected
into book form: Comic Crazy!

Click HERE to see more on the book
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Wanna see more of these SpongeBob comics stories? I’ll post some more if you let me know in the comments. Talk to you soon! --Sherm

Storyboarding Process – How Clean is “Clean?” – Thumbnails, Roughs and Storyboard Clean-up Examples

One of the questions I’m often asked by storyboarding students is “How clean does a cleaned-up storyboard have to be?”

 

The two drawings above show the difference between the cleaned-up storyboard drawing (drawn with 3B pencil on standard copy-grade storyboard paper) and the rough drawing (done in ball-point pen on a Post-It note). It’s usually fine to let some of the construction lines show through on the finals. You can’t quite see it with these scans, but there are faint sketch lines visible on all the clean-up drawings shown here.

(These storyboard drawings are from a Burger King commercial in 2005. BK was giving out SpongeBob watches, and this was the commercial promoting them.)

 

For the examples above, the rough was drawn with a Pitt brush-marker on Post-It note, then finished with 3B pencil.

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Here’s a tiny Post-it thumbnail (above) followed by marker rough, followed by the final storyboard drawing.

 

As usual, the drawing with the most life is the rough. It’s hard to keep that energy when you clean it up, but that’s the eternal challenge!

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The clean-ups shown here are actually cleaner than we usually draw for storyboards. Since these were done for an advertising campaign, I had to make sure that they looked as close to “finished art” as possible because they were being looked at by non-animation people. I wanted to show them here to demonstrate the extremes of roughs to clean-ups.

 

This is a good example of not drawing lots of detail until you know that the shot works. There’s no way I’m going to waste my time drawing all those falling Krabby Patties until the final drawing (below).

Click on any of these drawings to see a BIG full-sized scan!

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If you click on the drawing below (to see the larger version) you’ll be able to see lots of construction lines on the characters and perspective lines going through the background. These are totally acceptable in any storyboard clean-up! This is as clean as I have ever drawn (except for the SpongeBob Movie because we had so much time on that project to make the drawings perfect).

If you’re interested in learning how to storyboard, check out my two-hour long DVD workshop called “Storyboard Elements” Just click on the DVD for a free preview and to find out more!

Next time I’ll post the entire storyboard for the commercial in thumbnails, roughs and cleanups for comparison. See you then!

My Last Cover for the Last Issue of Nickelodeon Magazine :(

The last cover for the last issue of Nickelodeon Magazine. Very very sad to see the magazine close its doors, but I'm happy that I got the chance to work with so many great people at Nick Mag for the last 13 years. Proper eulogy will follow when I can properly gather the right words. I am very honored to have the opportunity to paint this final cover, capping a thirteen-year relationship with the coolest magazine on the planet.

Here’s the version of the painting that I sent in to the magazine, before all the text overlays and color adjustments.

I tried something new on this one...I used Photoshop to put a knit-sweater texture on all the sweaters. I never knew how to do it before, but all I had to do was import a texture that I found online, then cut it to shape, adjust the angle and make the layer mode into Overlay. It worked!

Original drawing in marker on printer paper. Inked in Illustrator CS3. Painted in ArtRage 2.5 "Knit sweater" Texture applied in Photoshop CS3.

I’ll run a “making of” process feature as soon as I have time to put it together. In the meantime, head to your newsstand to pick up this historic final issue.

Spring Cover for SpongeBob Magazine

  

This cover for SpongeBob SquarePants Magazine ran last spring (see, “spring?” Get it? ahem.). Drawing in pencil and Photoshop. Inked in Adobe Illustrator. Painted in ArtRage 2.5 except the background elements which I stole borrowed from old production backgrounds. Usually I paint every background from scratch, but I was in a real deadline crunch. Below are a whole bunch of preliminary sketches and layouts…