The Year That Was POWER RANGERS JUNGLE FURY!

As I type this, the last of my final artwork for Power Rangers Jungle Fury is being uploaded for the final approval stage. This is the last project I'll be doing (unless they wish to do more) and I expect it to approved in two weeks time with no problems. Candace Bell did a great job helping me get this all done and colored on time and we think it came out great!

It was February of last year that I started doing work on this version of Power Rangers and I have to say that it was fun. From looking at all the years and designs that I've seen from previous versions of Power Rangers over the decade and a half that it's been around, Jungle Fury has the best designs out of all of them and had me interested in it from the beginning. I can see why kids are enthralled with it since it has aspects of all the cool stuff that I had growing up such as Godzilla, Shogun Warriors, Ultraman, and a dash of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan mixed in.

When I was first offered the Rangers, it was the day after I turned in the last of my Handy Manny artwork on November 1st of 2007, I knew that I would be working on it then and I decided to see what the show was going to look like. I was hesitant at first thinking that it might be like a lot of the designs for the earlier versions of it, and it didn't really thrill me, so I thought that it might just be a job with a really nice check. One of my artist friends, Chris Bailey, who was the CGI Special Effects Supervisor on the Alvin and The Chipmunks movie told me early on that the new designs were great for the show and that I'd have a lot of fun with it. He was right in the end. The show has run it's course with the storyline ending with 32 episodes and they did leave it open-ended to bring it back. So who knows what they will do... At any rate, I post this this pic as a teaser for some of the newer images I'll post here soon. I posted the rough sketch of this artwork a while ago and now here is the final art for it! Enjoy!

POWER RANGERS JUNGLE FURY - The Purple Wolf Ranger Emerges!

Well, today marked a busy day here at the Neely drawing board...I finally finished the pencils roughs for the 4th Power Rangers book! I'd thought I'd post the last page I drew so you could see it! It's the Purple Wolf Ranger in his opening entrance shot to the story. I left the text blocks in so you can get an idea of where they go. The art direction was to have him emitting power and purple bolts of energy around him as he emerges from clouds of smoke from the battle that was ensuing. Looks cool for a rough, but it will rock when it's in full color. I'm just mapping out a look for the page at this stage. I had to get it done since now I have a new Scooby-Doo project to draw for overseas as this PR book goes into approvals at Disney over here. Enjoy!

POWER RANGERS JUNGLE FURY - Rough Spread Art!

Here's how I spent my Sunday afternoon today before the Eagles game came on TV at 4:15pm. It was a small rush to get it done by game time. Came out looking cool for a rough version, though it's still tight. It's a spread for the 4th Power Rangers Jungle Fury book I'm working on right now. The Rangers team up to use their cannon on the two evil Stone Warriors and the Purple Wolf Ranger amplifies the power of the cannon with his wrist thing. The blast vaporizes the two warriors and the Grizzaka in his fury creates two more warriors the size of skyscrapers...to which the Ranger then form a Megazord to battle them. Work in progress... Enjoy!

Still Protecting People From The Evil Dai Shi Clan! - Prelim Sketch for POWER RANGERS JUNGLE FURY Book 4!

Here's a sketch prelim for y'all! I did this rough for one of the new spreads for Power Rangers Jungle Fury (Book #4) called Enter The Wolf! I'm almost done the pencil stage of it and it's proven more difficult since there is a TON of detail on the villains of this story! I've got about 5 spreads left to tighten up from my thumbnails. This art that I'm sharing will have their three animal spirits floating behind the Rangers. I do it all separately so that I can play with the composition in the computer later once I scan the art...

In other news, I also got a new Scooby project this week from Schibsted in Sweden called The Forest Phantom to pencil now as well for a December 1st deadline! Moving right along I'll start that mid-next week after I finish the Rangers roughs! Also this weekend, I have to finish a new Alfie cartoon and layout the new issue of DCM Magazine! We got a great interview with James Bond actor Daniel Craig so I have to lay that out as well.

POWER RANGERS JUNGLE FURY - "The Force Of The Elephant" Kids Book Final Art!

Here's a bunch of spreads for the 3rd Power Rangers Jungle Fury book called The Force Of The Elephant! This was just finished the first week of October and it came out great! Very happy with the work here though it was a mountain to climb as well to get it done on time. Candy did a great job helping me again to get this thing done as I got the manuscript for the 4th book (and last of the series) in the middle of finishing the job. I'm doing the tight pencils for it this coming week (I did the thumbnails and layout this past week and it features the Purple Wolf Ranger in the story)! This 3rd story has the Power Rangers getting help from Master Phant to help them defeat the Pangolin and the Dai Shi! Enjoy!

POWER RANGER JUNGLE FURY - More "Fangs And Fury" Kids Book Final Art!

Here's some more final spread art for the 2nd of four kids books I'm doing for Power Rangers Jungle Fury! It's called Fangs And Fury! These came out great! Candace Bell was a big help in getting these colored and done on deadline, which was tight for it! I strived to keep it as accurate as possible so that even a hardcore PR fan will like the work and see that we did it justice! There will be text boxes over certain parts of the art to tell the story. Enjoy!

It's A POWER RANGERS Year At The Neely Studio!

Well, it's been a Power Rangers Jungle Fury year so far, and will now continue on till the end of the year! These are some pages from a second young reader Power Rangers storybook that I've worked on and there is a 3rd book which is in final inking stage and recently a 4th book was greenlit to this series and is currently being written! I'm quite happy with the art on this projects and I think little boys and girls will really dig these books! Go, Go Power Rangers!


The Dai Shi throne room scene came out looking great though drawing a lot of Ren Shi Warriors over the course of the year has been time consuming. The end result is worth it though!

POWER RANGERS Colorist is...!

Well, it's been a good busy summer so far. Better to have too much than too little! Feast or famine as any contractor knows. So busy in fact that I have to get help to finish the Power Ranger storybooks I'm doing. First time in 17 years, I needed help to get everything all done. It seems to be the year of the Power Rangers for me so far. Been working on the Jungle Fury stuff since mid-February and still going. So I had to get help and I had an audition test to find who would be the best and match the style of the first book that was done and whom Disney would like and approve of in the end as well. A large task to fill. There were about 24 actual final samples submitted and the winner was Candy Bell! She did a great job on it and everyone liked what she did, so I'm posting her sample here...

The second place artist (I wanted to get another artist in place just in case Candy had an emergency or couldn't do it, as I always like to have a Plan B to go to) was Jon Alderink. He's a young guy with a lot of potential and he matched Candy's style the closest. So good job to Jon as well! Jon is also now helping me with a side project coloring a thing for my voice actor friend and Hollywood Hal himself, Scott Innes. Scott wanted an photo of himself with all the cartoon character voices he's done such as Scooby, Shaggy, Scrappy, Yogi Bear, etc. to have for events to sign for people so Jon is coloring all 20 characters I drew that will be arranged around Scott. I'll post it when finished! You can go to http://www.jonalderink.com/ for more of Jon's stuff! Onwards and Upwards!

GO, GO, POWER RANGERS! More sketch art...

Here's some more Power Ranger sketches for the main three Rangers that I'm mostly drawing. The Red, Yellow and Blue Rangers are the main Rangers for the Jungle Fury show and they're pretty cool in their design so I'm glad I have a chance to work on this material than the previous incarnations of the Power Rangers where I though the costumes were less than interesting. These sketches, as the other PR art I've posted here thus far, are what I submit and wait for approvals from Disney before I do the final art. These poses will be in the Jungle Fury style guide when finished and also the poses will be used in the second storybook I'm doing as well, so I'm doing as many poses as I can to keep the look fresh without reusing art over and over and it's nice having enough cool action poses and static poses of them just standing heroically to do more with for a layout.

As an aside, that's one of the things I hated about the Bratz work I did in 2004 was that the poses and character art were so limited in the beginning that they were reusing and flipping the art to get the maximum use out of every piece of art and it got really boring seeing the same exact art used all the time. Luckily they got new art for the Bratz during the second year of licensing but the first year was brutal. I wonder what the Bratz fans thought though...

More POWER RANGERS prelim sketches!

It's still a Power Rangers world over here and looks to be for a while more which is fine by me. These are some new poses of the main three Rangers I did which will be in a a second PR: JF storybook I'm working on right now. These sketches will be final inked and also be a part of the official PR style guide as well which is why I drew them separately and with a full body. They will be cropped in the storybook. Anyway, enjoy!

POWER RANGERS: JUNGLE FURY - sketches approved!

Got an email today that I was looking forward to getting! The sketch art I drew (and posted some of here) for Power Rangers: Jungle Fury was finally approved by Disney today!! It took three weeks to go through the process since there was a lot of pieces but there were more people who had to approve it than normal. In an exciting moment, ALL of the art was approved with NO changes needed! Kind of an amazing thing considering how many pieces were drawn. I was happy with that (as was Disney) since now I can move onto doing the final artwork without having to redraw some aspects of it and getting it approved again. I'll be plugging away to the final art for the next few weeks.

POWER RANGERS: JUNGLE FURY...the rough sketches!

Here's some of the rough sketches for the huge new job I'm working on for Disney's POWER RANGERS: JUNGLE FURY line. These are all for future style guide art, which will be used on all kinds of products. There was nothing in terms of real reference to work with since it's still kind of new, but Disney has been easy to work with on this since they aren't being over-controlling on the tweaking of the art. There is a lot of leeway they are allowing. There are about 83 pieces in all that I'm doing. I finished all the rough sketches on Friday morning and they have left for official approvals right now. Took about 2 weeks to do them all. I know there are Power Rangers fans out there who will know the stuff better than I do so my labelling of the sketches I know is way off in most cases. As when I worked on Handy Manny for Disney, it was the same case of just drawing the job and not knowing the relationships or dynamics of the characters or story elements...or even their names for that matter! Just draw it and get it done on deadline. Still, it's been a fun gig even though I'm not looking forward to doing the final inked art since it will take longer to do it. This is the more creative part of it. Should all be wrapped up by the end of March.