Tag: 30 Characters Alumni

2012 Challenger: Ralph Contreras

| October 24, 2012 | 0 Comments


SHAZAM! Hey everyone!

My name’s Ralph Contreras, I’m a three year alumni of the 30 Character Challenge. This will be my 4th time around. The first year was the only challenge I was able to complete. I’m very excited and determined to finish all 30 this year. It’s a great challenge and I’m really looking forward to it. In past years I’ve made some great online friendships with fellow creators. I’m looking forward to seeing all the amazing characters everyone will create this year.

I’m a huge comic nerd with aspiration of working in the comic field professionally. Comics have always been a part of my life. I even owned and ran my own comic book shop. For the past few years I’ve really been trying to make the dream a reality. My day job is graphic design, but at night I work on sharpening my storytelling, drawing and inking skills. I setup a personal blog Comic Book Graphic Design where I combine my comic artwork with my graphic design skills. I post all my pencils, inks and character designs on the blog. I also post great comic book resources to help other aspiring comic artists in their journey too.

Plans for the future, I’ll be focusing on my personal comic projects in 2013. A quarterly print comic Hero Guard, and a weekly webcomic Amazing Hero Adventures (website under construction). Several characters in these projects were created during the past 30 Character Challenges.

Check out my characters from the last challenges: 2009 Challenge, 2010 Challenge, 2011 Challenge

Samples of some Character Designs.

 

Let’s be friends: Connect with me on my Blog and other Social Media sites!

All rights reserved. All contents â„¢ and © 2012 to Rafael “Ralph” Contreras, unless otherwise noted herein to respective content owners.

2011 Challenger: Ralph Contreras

| October 24, 2011 | 0 Comments

SHAZAM! Hey everyone!
My name’s Ralph Contreras, I’m an alumni of the awesome 30 Character Challenge. This will be my 3rd time around. The first year I completed the challenge, but last year I didn’t. I’m determined to see the whole thing through this year. It’s a great challenge and I’m really looking forward to it. In past years I’ve made some great online friendships with fellow creators.  I’m looking forward to seeing all the amazing characters everyone will create this year.

I’m a huge comic nerd with aspiration of working in the comic field professionally. Comics have always been a part of my life. I even owned and ran my own comic book shop. For the past few years I’ve really been trying to make the dream a reality. I setup a personal blog Comic Book Graphic Design, where I combine my comic artwork with my graphic design skills. I post all my sketches, character designs and comic book resources to help other aspiring comic artists in this journey too. I’ve very excited to announce my first self created comic project will be seeing print in early 2012, Amazing Hero Adventures (website under construction). Several characters in the comic were created during the 2009 & 2010 Character Challenge.

For this challenge I’m planning on getting some characters fleshed out for several comic stories bouncing around in my mind. I’ll be using this as my starting point, the challenge always sends my mind to all sorts of directions during the month. This year my goal is to pencil, ink and digitally color all character designs.

Check out my characters for the last challenges: 2009 Challenge, 2010 Challenge

Samples of some Character Designs.

Let’s be Friends!  Connect with me on my Blog & other sites!

#4 Trixie Hexpot

| November 4, 2010 | 6 Comments

For all my pagan friends out there. Sure its a bit late for Halloween, but who’s complaining? I’m not, that’s who!

Professor Potbelly

| November 1, 2010 | 4 Comments

30 Character Challenger: Ralph Contreras

| October 28, 2010 | 2 Comments

SHAZAM! My name is Ralph Contreras, I’m an alumni from last year’s 30 Character Challenge. It’s super great to see so many creative people getting involved this year. I had a blast last year. So there was no question I’d accept the challenge this year too. This time around I have a better idea what to expect. I’m just going to let my imagination go wild, no planning or restrictions when it comes to the characters. I will approach the actual artistic process differently though. Last year I only did penciled work. This year I’m planning on inking them as well. I’ve recently started inking my own work (and totally enjoying it!). So I’m very excited to strengthen this skill with this challenge.

I’m a proud self proclaimed major comic book nerd. On one random weekend in the summer of ’84 my aunt gave me a stack of comic books. She was doing some spring cleaning and was tossing her husband’s comics. (bad for him, good for me). She thought I would like them (she was right!); a new world of of great stories with amazing art took hold of my imagination. From that day on comic books have been a major part of my life in one way or another. I was your typical comic fanboy (collector) throughout the 80’s and 90’s. Buying every issue I could find. Reading and memorizing all the rich character histories. I always loved to draw the characters I was reading about too. I’d fill notepads with drawing of all the amazing characters I was reading about. My real first dive into to character design was when I was playing the Marvel Comics Universe role playing game. I’d write up a description and draw the character, like the way I saw in the Marvel comics Handbook. There was “Mister Gloves”, “The Duplicator” and so many others. This is when I discovered I wanted to someday create my own comics.

Fast forward a few years, I graduated from college with a Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts, emphasis in Graphic Design. Ready to conquer the world I looked for work for about a year, but couldn’t find anything. So what’s a comic nerd to do? I opened my own comic book store. (It was Awesome!) I was surrounded by comics for five years, meeting fellow fans and great local comic artists. After closing the doors to my shop, I jumped into the world of graphic design. I was moving from to city to city doing that. It was during this time I started drawing again and creating my own comic characters.

For the past 2 years I’ve been focusing on creating my own comic. I’ve been working on sharpening my storytelling, drawing and inking skills. I setup a personal blog www.ComicBookGraphicDesign.com, where I combine my comic artwork with my graphic design skills. I post all my sketches, character designs and fanboy adventures. I’ve created several Free comic book resources there to help other aspiring comic artists in this journey too. I’ve recently set up www.NewMexicoComics.com, a comic creators community to help connect writers and artist in New Mexico. Always the comic nerd I’ve also created a Marvel comic news fan site, www.TheHeroicAge.com.

Plans for the future, I”ll be focusing on my comic projects in 2011. A quarterly comic “Hero Guard”, and a weekly webcomic “Amazing Hero Adventures”. Maybe some characters coming out of the this challenge will make it into one of these comics. I’m excited to be involved in the 30 character challenge again and I’m ready to start creating!

Let’s be friends: Connect with me on my Blog and other sites!

30 Characters Challenger: Rob Stenzinger

| October 28, 2010 | 2 Comments

Welcome Back “30 Characters” Readers and Challengers!

Rob Stenzinger

I’m Rob Stenzinger. I survived last years challenge and though it was a ton of fun, it was also quite challenging. Recalling the good and bad stresses I ran into last year, part of me is asking my self… “DUDE! Why in the world do you want to do this AGAIN?”.

But the truth of it is that it was great practice and an incredible experience. It was inspriring to be part of a group of artists and writers sharing the best we could muster each and every day for a whole month. The practice, inspiration, shared experience and supportive audience made it totally worth while.

So I’m back and stoked to see what comes of it this year! What cool art and words will I wake up to everyday in November?

As to the other projects I do:  I draw the comic Art Geek Zoo: The Way of Sound every week:

Art Geek Zoo - The Way of Sound
(Art Geek Zoo – The Way of Sound)

… and I continue with new updates for the game I released earlier this year, Guitar Fretter.

Guitar Fretter
(Guitar Fretter – an action-puzzle game of learning the guitar fretboard and defeating Minions!)

Finally – there’s another big event I’ll be a part of this November: the UP! Fair. I’ll be meeting and learning from other comic creators and independent publishers and that’s where I’ll be debuting my new workshop “Storytelling to Make Your Comic’s User Interface Awesome“.

Cthulhu - Deep Sea Bassist
(Cthulhu – Deep Sea Bassist will be in the UP! Fair art auction coming soon…)

Good luck, good practice, good discipline to us all! And thanks again, Tyler James for instigating such a fun creative challenge!