Copyright Nicholas Rubatino
nicholasrubatino@gmail.com
For over 10 years I did a portrait of my nieces and nephews for Christmas. This was from 2010, the second year, and I did them as characters from whatever they were watching that year. At top is my initial concept, and every year my most difficult artistic challenge was translating my usual work into a more family palatable medium.
Revv G4 I finished a while ago. It's cool, tends to skew a little shrill for my taste, changing a couple caps would probably fix that but I haven't looked into it.
Two effects I always use together so I put them in one box. And... they sound different. Something happened where having them in one box sounds way different than having them as two pedals. One of life's magic mysteries!
An example of two frames from the video prologue I'm cross fading between. Sometimes It's so subtle I can barely see it; the daemon's mouth closes, her face changes a bit, and the steam moves. I think it registers subconsciously and makes it feel unsettling even if the movement isn't detected.
November 8th 2023 I'll have been working on The Satan Killers everyday for a year. The first panels I drew on November 8 2022 were Roger confronting Satan in his office. I'm on page 25 of 45, actually 47, I added two pages of The Overseer at The God Labs to the end.
In high school a friend asked me to make a logo for the Death Metal band he was in. They didn't use it.
You ever spend hours, days, two weeks, staring at the painting you're doing of Rogers face, that you had already finished, but never quite looked right, and everything you do to fix it makes it worse and you punch some acrylic thing because you're trying to finish it at home all for a panel people will glance over in 0.5 seconds? Me too!!!!!!!!!!!
An example of the work I'm doing painting over my ink drawings in Photoshop
Getting to the point where I don’t want to post too much for anyone who doesn’t want spoilers.
I’m doing something different with The Satan Killers than I did with
Red and the Wolfe and that’s master backgrounds so I don’t have to paint
the same thing in multiple panels; in Red I painted every frame. I’ve
been frustrated with the slow progress but I realized I’m also skipping
an entire step I did with Red which was refining my ink drawings with
pencil layouts- and with this I’m working in photoshop directly from my
ink sketches, so it is a lot more cleanup. I also went back and cleaned
up some frames from the video, and added one, because I didn’t like
where they were at when I started working on it. So it is going well. It
has just been so long since it has gone well that I am extremely
anxious to charge ahead at 1000% and my brain and hand just can’t handle
that.
I got a toy model 29 revolver on amazon for reference because Roger
is left handed and I wasn’t sure how one would manipulate a revolver
left handed. It was described as having “Soul of Revolver” and as far as
I can tell it does.
A dual Reverb, a Ghost Echo going into a Levitation, two reverb
bricks under the boards. It’s pretty cool having the Ghost Echo feed
back into the Levitation, has a lot different character than the ray gun
kind of sound my delay delay delays. I suppose probably the most wiring
I’ve done in one box, but there was enough room once I figured out how I
was going to lay the reverb bricks. Both board layouts from https://dirtboxlayouts.blogspot.com/
Finished the frames for The Satan Killers video, starting on the
book. It is 45 pages at first layout, don’t know if that’ll change
Wasn't working at first, the LED didn't flash, seems it's a bit temperamental and will freeze up until you spin the pots about to a setting it likes.
I was working on legs in the background of a shot of Roger and
wondered if there ever was a strip club called Gams Gams Gams! and did
this quick painting
Frame from The Satan Killers video I’m working on. I say video but it
is more of a slideshow. Available here as a 4K wallpaper if anyone wants it
I’m making The Satan Killer’s video be a sort of prologue and I’m
getting all the frames for it done before I start on the main graphic
novel. That way I don’t have the entire video to make after finishing
the book and can just cut stuff together and finish the sound. I’m
planning to release both at the same time with the video not being
necessary viewing, but adding context, albeit obliquely.
Since November I’ve been working on The Satan Killers, a short story
that happens before the events of The God Labs. It was an idea I had
over 10 years ago and suddenly thought of the ending, wrote and drawed
it, then wrote and drawed the rest of the story, and it all fit nicely
into The God Labs universe. I finished the first pass, doing the layouts
now before a second, then I’ll do the photoshop paintings. I’m hoping
to make a little video to go with it as well; recorded some sound for
that with a Devil’s Drone Triangle Synth I made from paulinthelab’s
site.
