Coloring Eric Canete's "Amazing Spider-Man"

I do too much when I color. This is something I'm currently fighting. Sure, the results are really nice and I love the way it looks but I believe I can make pages look just as good without rendering to this degree. Alot of it is ten years of retouching where you'd spend days on a single image, sometimes more, so you fiddled alot. Alot of it is my anal retentiveness and extreme attention to detail. It's just something I need to get over and I will over the next few months as I concentrate on my color portfolio like I've never done before. Expect to see streamline color from me for pages but until then here's a few pages from Eric Canete's Amazing Spider-Man featuring Deadpool clubbing.

Christmas Card for You

Sweaters = Borrowed from Parents, $0
Backdrop = Sears inspired Cloud Filter, $0
Pleading Cats = scuffs and scratches, $0
Lame Smiles = If you didn't know we're dorks by now, $0
Wishing you a Happy Holiday = Priceless!



I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year, and whatever else you may be celebrating this season.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have so so much to be thankful for it's rather ridiculous. A lovely, intelligent, silly, supportive, and understanding wife. Far off friends, who despite the distance, have remained close and dear. Local friends who support, inspire, and help me in my personal goals. Parents who taught me responsibility, work ethic, and the difference between right and wrong. Brothers who help define "blood is thicker than water". Family that gets me and enriches my life. Cats who bring joy to me daily. A roof. A job(s). A working car. I could go on and on but I may be jinxing myself here. However, I do have one more specific. Since I'm looking to expand my career as a professional colorist in comics I am very thankful to the friendly and talented professionals that I have met who are currently helping me in that endeavor. Some by passing my name on to editors and others who give me pages to color to use in my portfolio. Matt Wilson, Shawn Crystal, Sean Murphy, and Eric Canete, I am thankful for your helping hands! (Edit: Add Chris Brunner to that list! Thanks!) Below is my color on one of the many sketches and pages just Canete has sent me. There will be more to come! I hope you enjoy, have just as much to be thankful for, and have a great Thanksgiving!

Ted.com: Ken Robinson

Been watching Ted.com alot recently and came across this one. It really hit home with me. Amazing.

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity | Video on TED.com

Star Wars: The Clone Wars DVD/Bluray release

With the release of Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Season One on DVD and Bluray, my sketchcards are now out there somewhere in the world. Sadly, the chances of you getting one of mine are slim; something like one out of every 1,000 decks. So I've posted them up in their entirety on my portfolio. Go to my Illustrations page and click on the thumbnail with Captain Rex!

Fullmetal Alchemist

During life model sessions in one of the courses I'm teaching this quarter I allow music and sometimes play what students bring in. One student had us listening to lots of music from anime shows. Most of it is pretty horrendous. No surprise there. However, it did remind me of Fullmetal Alchemist. It's a strange balance of kiddie and mature. Leave it up to the Japanese! Anyway, I needed to draw something for myself so took the opportunity to do the Elric brothers from the show.

Class Demo

This is from a class demo on achieving a James Jean appearance (it's a demo so not particularly pretty) but making the file editable rather than destructive with some retouching tricks thrown in for good measure. The first image is the original drawing I did and the second is the digital processed one. Approximately two hours including explaining each step in detail for this. Needs lots of polishing but not bad for it being so quick.

Vamp

Between the Star Wars: Clone Wars sketchcards and my home computer dying I've not been able to do much digitally lately. This has been good for me! Anyone that becomes to reliant on anything is one who welcomes weakness to breed in themselves. I'm happy to see my old, old marker skills aren't completely gone. For years growing up this is all I would use to draw and it's been a nice revisit to the medium.

For October the Temple of Cartoon Mojo is doing all Halloween themed sketch challenges. Here's my vampire! Not my usual monstrous version but a '50s, well-to-do, housewife vamp. The combination works rather well I feel.

Star Wars Sketchcards

It's been a long time since I've been this happy about any work I've done, large or small, client or personal. And I am so freakin' happy! I hope I get to do more. This has also solidified my decision to go after a Star Wars comic title and see what happens.

Star Wars Sketchcards

The fall quarter at SCAD-ATL started up this past week so that's kept me busy but I also received materials for a little freelance job. I'm doing "Star Wars: Clone Wars" sketchcards for Topps! Specifically, it's tied into the release of "Clone Wars" season one on DVD and Bluray in widescreen format so the cards are also widescreen, which is pretty damn cool. This also makes me an official Lucas Arts artist and a little dream come true. Here's just a hint at a few but no details for you! Go buy the cards if you want a chance to own one.



A coworker, Roy Richardson, asked me if I had ever considered doing Star Wars comics. Initially I said no but I'm having so much fun with these maybe I will indeed throw my hat in that ring once "Lion of Rora" is done. Would you read a SW comic drawn by yours truly?

MAD MEN

I don't like shows about people doing stupid things and knowing they are stupid but do them anyway. This removes a LARGE portion of television from my interest. Mad Men was one of them. Plus, it's all about advertising which I worked in for ten years. To quote the show, "Been there. Done that."

However, my wife was watching it so I gave it a chance. It sure has lots of stupid shit but much of it is due to the rules of society in the '60s. She tells me that the amount of smoking and drinking on the show is very accurate to the time period and I can tell you the amount of drinking and adultery in advertising is just as accurate. Yuck. I've become fascinated with how the hell could people live/act like that and think it's okay?

But this fascination isn't enough to keep me watching. Joan Holloway is. My God. This is what women should look like. (My wife being one! RAWR!) Move over twigs! Go eat a small truckload of ice cream! Now I just hope the character doesn't turn into the back stabbing bitch I think she is. At that point, no amount of curve will make me want to watch. For now though, if I can ignore the smoking, happily. *cough*



UPDATE: Just found out she went to the high school I was supposed to go to if we hadn't moved away from Fairfax, VA, and was a goth girl. Be still my... heart!

Thumbnails, thumbnails, thumbnails...

I've got thumbnails coming out of mah brains! I'm officially 1/3rd of the way through the screenplay. I was hoping to be more like 2/3rds at this point but breaking up a screenplay is a ton more work than thumbnailing a script that gives you page breaks, panels, etc. Still, it'll all be worth it in the end!

Lion thumbs

My To-Do List has been put on the back burner for the foreseeable future so I can focus on "Lion of Rora". I'm working from a screenplay so there's no telling how many pages the comic will be in the end. That's both good and bad. Good: pacing and storytelling are mine to control since there's no script. Bad: no concrete deadline can be made since the page count is undefined and I'm estimating it to be much larger than planned. That means I'm focusing on a balance between keeping the page count down and doing what the story needs to make it successful. That's not easy but, to use a marksman metaphor (bows and arrows on the brain), I feel like I'm clustering nicely around the bullseye with few stray shots.

Here's a couple of thumbs. So far, this is the only scene with royalty in the book. Lotsa dialog. Say hello to the Dick... errrr, Duke of Savoy.

Lion of Rora

This summer has been really busy so far at home. There have been numerous home renovation projects I've completed so I could finally focus on my latest project. Since the beginning of May I've been doing research, as time permitted, and collated a three inch binder worth of materials as reference. The project is Lion of Rora, a graphic novel written by Ruth and Christos Gage and will be published by Oni Press. It takes place in 1600s eastern France/northern Italy and is historical fiction about the Waldenses. If you know me, I'm anal-retentive to a fault so the time researching was to make sure it's as historically accurate as I could get and to familiarize myself with the time period and people. Now that I've quite a considerable amount of research done I'm starting the pencil, ink, and tone. I'll be able to post more as time goes on but for now here's a peak at the look and some characters from Lion of Rora. Enjoy!

HEROES sketches

I really didn't have all that much time to work on drawings at HEROES. There were so many people interested in going to SCAD that I ended up promoting the college and the ATL campus more than anything else. It was really successful and I had a blast. Looking forward to next year when I have my own table! But I did manage to get two sketches done.

New SCAD-ATL graduate Dominike Stanton wanted to see what Spider-Man looked like from my pen. So here he is. I've decided it's not done. He needs Jack O'Lantern throwing flaming pumpkins at him from the background.


Found out Dick Grayson, the original Robin, is the new Batman now that Bruce Wayne is "dead" and Bruce's son is the new Robin. It's an interesting reversal of personalities in the roles and considered what I'd do with that. As always, I like seeing the gear worn by superheroes and not just a slicked down muscle man costumes.

Colossus color

Since school is out for the summer I have done quite a bit of home renovations that I've been wanting to do for my lovely wife. Knowing me, if I didn't do it first thing this summer I'd get caught up in writing "8th Day", thumbnailing a graphic novel for Oni Press, and polishing my computer coloring textbook amongst the other 30 things on my to-do list. Those things just had to be put on the back burner for a few weeks. Now HEROES convention is fast approaching and I need to get some last minute things done for it. One of them is the color for the Colossus splash I did last month. Enjoy!

And a detail shot, though still not full resolution.

I'll be helping at the SCAD table at HEROES con. If you'll be there come on by and say hello!

EA: NBA Live '06

I was just cleaning house a little and came across and old comp I did for an EA NBA Live '06 spot called "Mech Warrior". It's posted below but can also now be found in my portfolio.

Sith color

Monsters like Sith shouldn't ever be completely attractive. The longer I worked on this one (only about 3-4 hours) the less I liked it as a pin-up. I think I stayed a little too true to the subject (so for that I really like it) and didn't pull it back to the series enough. That's ok. Just means I get to work on another Sith at some point.

NEW DESIGN!

Obviously, it's live! I know this site isn't as "designer" as the last (no white space?! oh no!) but it felt really bland to me. I needed something that worked for me better. You'll welcome the fact my face will no longer be on the site. It's going to be science fiction based from now on. This change also mirrors my transition from illustrator to comic artist. It doesn't mean I won't be doing illustrations but that my focus has shifted to where my heart really is. That's what's most important.

There is one bug on the blog (can you find it?) that I'll iron out when I get the time but the site is 100% go. The links from my site have been moved to the blog for easier updating and tracking. I'm also planning on making more use of the blog showing process and WIP.

Now I'm going to get back to that Star Wars series for HEROES. If anyone would like a print you'll find me at the SCAD table this year. I may also be hanging out from time to time to see how my students (Pat Bollin, Allen Spetnagel, Doug Dabbs, and Cara McGee) are doing at the Temple of Cartoon Mojo table in artist alley.

*insert '50s space sounds, beeps, and whines here*

Re-Branding Preview

Going full-geek with this one. May have to pull it back. We'll see once I have a completed site design. Here's a small preview.

Jedi Twi'Lek Color

Upon waking, the arm on the Twi'lek I had drawn really wasn't working for me so she got a new one. I went a little variation happy on the color too. This is only half of them. Now I'm seeing what works and what doesn't for this series so don't feel this is as successful as the TD. Still, it was fun enough.



Mandalorian, Clonetroopers, Sith, Nobility, Rebel Soldier, Imperial Officer, KOTOR, Biker Scout, Space Pirate, Stormtrooper, X-Wing Pilot, and more are on my list of to-dos for this. Can you think of more?

The Series Continues

I've been needing some completely brainless, fun work to de-stress a bit so these Star Wars pin-ups (cuz what could be more brainless and fun?) were just what I needed. I'm not going for overtly sexual. It's just shy of classic too. I just want them to be fun and so far it's working. This Jedi Twi'lek will have multiple colored versions to play around with all the differing shades of skin they can have. Stay tuned for that.

TD color

Everybody loves a dirty girl! YAY, innuendo!



PS - I am now inspired to do some brainless work on a series of Star Wars related pin-ups. Probably sell prints of them and much more at HEROES and see how that goes.

May the 4th be with you!

Happy Star Wars Day! It's my favorite day of the year for many reasons and this is just one of them. I decided to make a fun Star Wars pin-up for it. I'll have it colored in the next day or two as time allows. This is one Sandtrooper those Rebels only wish they could hit! HA!

Colossus inks

Just got "Colossus: Origins" in the mail and am happy to see my concept for a new Colossus one-shot is very complimentary and the "Origins" actually would lend weight to my idea. Yay! And the all important inks for your enjoyment.

Colossus pencils

Once again, my favorite comic character: Colossus. After Axel Alonso came by the campus last weekend I've wanted to pitch a Colossus one-shot. His growth as a character is a little stunted especially compared to other ones. I'd like to see his portrayal match that of his age which, even in the dilated comic book time, has got to be mid to late twenties by now. Take him back to his roots, let him reclaim his own identity as a person, not an X-Man. Let him grow and let him live up to his name in more than just appearance. His heart and will are his true powers. More people in his life have died than Batman's! And look at what it did to him! So who is Piotr/Colossus now? More Bourne Identity, less Star Wars. Would love to see/do that for him. High time the character found new footing.

Colossus

This is from SEQA 326 Conceptual Maquette Design class I am teaching. I did the first project along with the students. The job was to create a bust of a pre-existing comic book character. Since Colossus is my all-time favorite I worked on him. Not wanting it to be an "X-Man" maquette I decided to go with the old hammer and sickle to play off him being Russian. I'm pretty happy with it all things considered. Overall I spent about 20 hours on the bust.

Alien

Another sketch challenge from the Temple. Alien this time. Great frakkin' movie! I've a wonderful memory of watching this movie with my brothers in Florida when we were little.

I do these full-color sketches around 8x10 at 450-600dpi and am wondering if anyone would want to purchase a print of any of them at conventions. Just curious.

The Tick

Another Temple of Cartoon Mojo weekly sketch challenge met.