Tuesday, April 26, 2005


This is something I did way back when I was working for Top Cow... I think it's about 5 or so years old (I'm terrible at gauging time). Anyway it was for a book called Witchblade 1/2 which was some Wizard exclusive or whatever. You know, a lot of people have complained about Top Cow having a "studio look" that all the artsists copy or adhere to-- that's true. It was never something that any of the guys there (including myslef) were told to do, it's just that when Marc Silvestri would turn in pages everyone would go so nuts over them that we would ( without really thinking) want to emulate them. And then it becomes this unspoken pressure to have your drawings look a certain way. What made it all the worse ( and I do think this was the biggest problem in the studio system) was that the editorial department only responded favorably to artwork that looked similar to Marc's or Mike Turner's. And since we were all pretty much freelancers, we were all trying to impress the editors to get that next assignment. Now, I'm not trying to cut them down or anything because I learned a lot and had great time when I was there-- in fact I made some great friends at Top Cow that I still hang out with this day. And in the past few years, the studio has tried to expand their overall look or style. Okay, back to the cover-- The writer, David Wohl, asked me what I wanted to draw and I told him I thought it would be cool if she fought a bunch of dudes in a graveyard. And then I came up with this drawing ( I tried to put her in a body suit since I always hated drawing her almost naked). The story didn't take place in any graveyard but we all liked the image and that's how it stayed as the cover. Check out the link to the larger image herePosted by Hello

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

That is lovely, it must be great to be able to draw hot women ;)

Is that angel stabbing himself through the face? :o (:p)

5:02 PM  
Blogger BrianChing said...

Well, it gives me an excuse to look at girls-- it's for "reference." Now I don't sound as creepy.

Yeah, that angel statue does look a bit odd doesn't he? It's some cross thingy that extended to the top of the page before it got cropped off. Oh well, another example of poor planning on my part. :)

8:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey there Brian, I always wondered where u went after top cow and now I know! XD took long enough. Anywho, I remember picking up an old issue of wizard mag way back and inside was a nice poster of that exact drawing. It was the first time I saw your work and I was blown away ^_^ As for the angel stabbing his own head biz, I kinda looked at it as a Jesus carrying the cross figure.

Quick question for ya Brian, do you sell your original art pieces?

3:11 PM  
Blogger BrianChing said...

Thanks Mike,

Glad to hear you like the stuff from the old Top Cow days!

I do sell my originals-- only my Top Cow stuff though, I have kept all of my Star Wars work so far. Drop me an e-mail if you're interested -- brianching1@aol.com

later,

Brian

1:19 AM  

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