Home Brew

Giant thanks to Steven Foundling for the excellent edits and the kernel of it, without which none of this would have existed at all.

MoCCA and Homebrew

I've been working my fingers to the bone on the final project for school here (now called Homebrew). I've included a preview of the first page at the bottom of this blog post. Things have been going well on it, I've got 14 pages inked, with 6 to go. Those six are pencilled pretty tight, though, so I don't think they'll take too long. I want to go back through it all and heap on the fine details once I know it's in the bag, though, so I won't be idle!

I'll also be at MoCCA Festival in New York City this weekend, selling comics and tabling with fellow CCS'ers Melanie Gillman, Dakota McFadzean, Nate Woottersand Bill Bedard. If you're in the city, it's Saturday and Sunday from 11 am to 6 pm. I put together a collection stuff from CCS, and earlier.

I've also got a few things on the walls of the Nisus Gallery in Portland, OR. The show runs until the 30th of April.

Character Designs

I'm working on my final project for school (name still up in the air). Here's the first round of character designs:

Amanda and the Monster

We've had a bit of a warm snap up in White River, and I'm done with the children's book project. Joe Sacco is here right now, and some classmates and I had a drink with him at the bar. Also, my parents survived the Christchurch earthquake. Life is... good.

The assignment that the images below are from was to create a pitch ready copy of a children's book in 2 weeks, with two finished spreads, a finished first page, a completed cover, and readable sketches for the rest of it. I'll post pictures of the actual book I made once I get it back. For now, here are some excerpts from "Amanda and the Monster." Click on any image for the blow up!

Curse of the Sea Hag (part 2!)

The first big project we've had since the semester began is The Golden Age. We were split into groups of six, and had to finish, script to color printed issue, a facsimile of a 1940's golden age era genre comic under the eye of an editing member of the faculty. My group was High Seas genre themed under Jason Lutes. Our comic was called AVAST!: Curse of the Sea Hag. I wrote, thumbnailed and inked the following excerpt (part 2, pages 9 through 20). Bill Bedard pencilled, Nate Wootters also wrote, also thumbnailed and colored the ever loving hell out of it. The other people on my team (Amelia Onorato Donna Almendrala and Sean Knickerbocker) also had amazing section, and the whole thing turned out pretty great.

Portfolio Update

Mea culpa, mea culpa for my disappearance from blog-landia. I was on vacation from school, caught up in work, and seeing both my and Kathy's families!

Of course, sitting still isn't an option for me, so I took the opportunity of the time off to update my illustration portfolio with a bunch of stuff I've done over the past year since I last stuck things up there. A lot of that stuff has been up on the blog, but not everything. Take a peek!

O Death, Hello Operator & Breaking the Ice

First off, here's a drawing of the terrible car wreck that almost swallowed me up whole:

I also did a couple design/illustration jobs for The Bold Italic in the past few weeks (click on the images to link to the stories):

The first was "Hello Operator," a piece about the bizarro calls 411 operators get in San Francisco

The second was "Breaking the Ice," a really hilarious story about a guy conquering his fear of ice skating

It was really fun to do because I got to draw that little guy in red in all kinds of ridiculous situations. Here's the cream of the crop:

Behind the Stars

Fwed, Romance and Living Statues

Diary comic from this week is about Fred, the cat I grew up with. I realized that when you're drawing comics all the time, writing diary comics can become a feedback cycle from hell. So I turned to that gold mine that every artist delves into at some point: dead family pets.

This will be the first in a pretty long series (we had a lot of animals), hence the title of "1. Fwed." I'm still working out a title for the whole thing.

Next up is a fun assignment we had doing mock romance covers.

I came up with the title "Teenage Tears" and had a blast. The original artists working in romance comics in that era just didn't know what the heck those kids were up to, but sales were slumping and they were desperate to appeal to the youth culture. The results were hilarious.

I also did design for a neat little story on living statues that the Bold Italic published last week:

Evocation

Here's the project I've been working on for a little while: Evocation! It's actually got jokes and not just sadness and death. But still demons. I had a lot of fun with this one. It's really the first time I've brought spot blacks into the faces and figures in my comics. It took some learning, but I think it's a good direction for me. Click on the pictures for larger images and enjoy it!

Monsters!

Diary comic from last week (click for bigger size):

And some sketches for demons in a comic that's due next Thursday.
Both of these were so fun! I should just draw monsters all the time, I think.

Masked!

New diary comic: Masked! I spent my Halloween being touched by children. Click on the image for the bigger version (when I've got a bit of time over Christmas break, I'll redesign the blog to post bigger images, I promise!).