June Brigman's Wonder Woman

I'm lucky enough to work with some amazing artists. June Brigman is a fellow professor at SCAD-Atlanta in the SEQA department. When she posted this sketch I knew I wanted to color it. She was kind enough to send me a high res scan of it so I could do just that.

Pencils by June Brigman. Color by me.

Coloring Shawn Crystal's "Deadpool" 896

I'm now blessed to post up pages from Shawn Crystal's "Deadpool" issue which comes out this Wednesday! He's been an amazing help during this entire adventure leaving advertising giant Wieden+Kennedy to follow my love of comics as a professor of Sequential Art at SCAD-Atlanta. This has since bloomed into opportunities which would have been much harder for me to come by without Shawn's help and introductions to other amazing people. I can now also proudfully say I am an artist at Oni Press on an upcoming graphic novel entitled "Lion of Rora" and colorist at BOOM! Studios on Farscape: Scorpius. If you've not worked with Shawn, you're lesser for it. If you've not met Shawn, you're lesser for it. I left behind tons of beautiful friends in Portland but found a new one here in Atlanta. So I present you Shawn Crystal's pages for "Deadpool" 896 with colors done by yours truly. This is not the color you'll see in the issue, mind you, but my color for my personal portfolio in the hopes one day I'll be coloring Shawn and other fantastic artists' pages for publication. Check out more at Shawn's blog, INKPULP, the official CBR review, and pick up your copy at comic shops everywhere this Wednesday!

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.

Temple of Cartoon Mojo Header

This is what I'll be throwing in the ring for the Temple of Cartoon Mojo's banner challenge. So far the only one other person has done the challenge. Hope more do it this coming week!

'Tis Over!

That was the most hectic quarter yet. Five courses with two TAs is a bit much and who is crazy enough to do it again next quarter? Me! But we did have many successes this past Fall including two very big events: 24-Hour and the Publishers' Forum which may lead to even more of our students finding professional work! Get this, 12% of our current SEQA students are working professionally on some level. 12%! That's unheard of! Speaking of work, I've two really exciting jobs coming up I'll post more about when production begins.

But now I'm technically on "holiday break" until January but that won't last. I'm reworking or building six courses and doing some personal work for family. With luck I'll be able to focus on 8th Day a little. After discovering M-theory, and how it goes beyond string theory, the story is going back to its roots. You see, I could never find a vehicle to make the original concept work so I had to change it but I never felt it was as powerful or as surreal-science-fiction as I wanted. M-theory changes that because it gives me an ideal vehicle from which to work from and now can tell the story I always wanted without compromising it. Exciting!!!

And with that I leave you with my entry to the last Temple of Cartoon Mojo sketch challenge for Fall quarter: John Constantine from Hellblazer. It's one of my all-time favorite books but it's mainly due to the main character's personality and how he handles himself in situations rather than the situations themselves.

Gearing Up for the Publishers' Forum

Fall quarter is usually pretty damn busy but, wow, there's alot going on. One of those things is the Publishers' Forum which I put together a poster for. The five people at the bottom are my coworkers and myself. They're a great set of guys. I seem to always luck out with kick ass coworkers! (Love to PDX!) The poster contains a silly gag on the five of us to make the work a little more fun. Threw in a nod to the Temple of Cartoon Mojo at the bottom too. I'm actually rather excited about the event myself. And while I may have to sugarcoat elsewhere, I don't have to on my own blog so you know I really mean it!

"The Damned"

It's sketch challenge time from The Temple of Cartoon Mojo yet again! I decided to draw Alphonse Aligheri, one of the crime lords in the book "The Damned". I read it over a year ago but with the recent challenge theme I re-read it. It's an amazing book! And I believe it's been optioned for a movie. Let's hope Keanu Reeves isn't in it and they do the book justice!

Jedi Master Qui-Gon Shawn

I've posted about this before. Every Friday the entire Sequential Art department (or as many as possible) get together for something we've come to call The Temple of Cartoon Mojo! Every Friday Shawn Crystal and I determine a sketch challenge theme. Last week was "Jedi" so, of course, I had to do it. This is my tribute not only to the Temple group but to Shawn himself; the man, the legend, the SEQA-ATL department work horse. Behold, in all his sandal wearing, Guess-jeans-belt-buckle, art-supply-whoring glory: Jedi Master Qui-Gon Shawn! The Force is strong with this one.

Iron-Man

If I've ever drawn Iron-Man before I don't remember doing it. He's grown on me a little here and there (strangely, I liked him in "Civil War") so when I decided to make him the weekly sketch challenge for The Temple of Cartoon Mojo I figured what the hell, I'd do a sketch with the students and post it along with their's sometime this weekend to show support.

It was also a really great way to test out my new mechanical pencil! For some reason I've always gripped my utensils like I'm trying to throttle the life out of them. Well, in order to prevent my fingers from cramping I put padded grips on everything I draw with. This pencil comes with one built-in and it's soooo comfortable for me to hold and use! And what's especially nice about it? Shawn bought it for me from JetPens.com! You can't beat a good friend. He's got a free lunch coming his way.

And now time to get back to work. No one can't tell me I dunno how to have fun on Friday nights.

SILENCE

Here's my final submission for the 2008 SCAD Sequential Art Anthology. More than likely it's too "space" to be selected as the official cover but I loved working on it! If they do select it there's lots of room for copy on the back cover though I would hope they'd ask me to add it myself since I'd need to create an FPO so the stars don't interfere with legibility.

Anthology Cover Submission

Earlier this week I found out that the SEQA 2008 Anthology didn't have a cover yet! It's kind of late in the game but since the deadline is still open myself and a few students are submitting cover designs. Mine is über simple because, well, my plate is currently too full and I can't spend a hell of alot of time on it. So my goal was to make simple elegant and beautiful. These are just the inks. I didn't even bother penciling it. Tomorrow I'll get the color done and throw it into InDesign and design the title and copy. I've a feeling SCAD Printing is going to wonder where the hell I came from once they see my files. They were rather surprised I asked for bleed and spine dimensions to begin with! Those things matter! Anyway, here it is.

Temple of Cartoon Mojo

This quarter teaching has been as extremely gratifying as it's been busy. Fantastic students. Fun classes. It's the best! Just this week Shawn Crystal and I announced the spankin' new department blog "The Temple of Cartoon Mojo"! Student blogs, student work, upcoming events, spotlights, and sketch challenges for the SCAD ATL Sequential Art department can be found there. Check it out if you get a chance. This is only the beginning!

"D'You Think They'll Believe Us?" completed

My short story for the 2008 SCAD Sequential Art anthology is complete! "D'You Think They'll Believe Us?" is about an archaeological "dig" in space where two scientists are given a glimpse of the galaxy by the very artifact they are studying and a hint as to what its true purpose is: a map. The problem is they have no hard evidence as to what they've seen except for their momentary disappearance. Will their story be believed? That's for the audience to say.

To see the story from the beginning in a new window from my Portfolio click here.

SCAD ATL 24-Hour Art Challenge

Check out the video shot at last Friday/Saturday's 24-Hour Art Challenge here at the Atlanta campus of the Savannah College of Art and Design! Great work, all around!

24-Hour Art Challenge

Last night was the 24-Hour Art Challenge at the Savannah College of Art and Design and it turned out to be a lot of fun and very educational! I wasn't able to attend until about 6pm on Friday (it ran from Friday 10am to Saturday 10am) so my 24-Hours was more like twelve, not including a couple of hours helping students. I took on the animation department's challenge and tried my hand at making a maquette. I've never done one before so it was rather hard at first. The armature was difficult to match to what you wanted the final product to look like. I believe my biggest mistake has been on the kneepads. The legs are proportional but due to the placement on the kneepads they appear skewed. I'll know better next time. Using sculpey turned out to be the easiest, but most time consuming, part of the maquette. I plan on finishing it this December once Fall quarter is over. Take a look at where twelve hours left me on the project! It's the main character from my "8th Day" storyline... or will be.

"D'You Think They'll Believe Us?" inks five

This was the weekend I did not want to end. Tomorrow is going to feel like Monday^3. I didn't get to spend as much time with my lady as I wanted (though we got sushi tonight mmmmmm) but I was sooo productive otherwise! The only things I didn't get done were cleaning up the flower bed in front of my place and making duplicates of my office key for coworkers in my department. Not too bad! My place hasn't been this clean in a month and I was able to get two pages of inks done on top of everything else. That means only one page of inks to go and I'll be ready to send my pages in for the SCAD 2008 anthology!

"D'You Think They'll Believe Us?" inks four

I'm trying to take advantage of the weekend since I'm free to do whatever I need and get some inks done for the SCAD 2008 Anthology. It's due just before Halloween so the sooner it's complete, the better. After some thought I will be changing the title back to the original: "Do You Think They'll Believe Us?" It just has a more human feel to it which the story needs.

Otherwise, I gotta say having 55 students is tough. That is a hell, a hell, of alot of grading! And I've been feeling the need to just hang out. Working full-time teaching, doing illustration work on the side, and wanting to spend as much time as possible with my lady has left me with a very little social circle here. That's the only part of my move that has been tough.

"D'You Think They'll Believe Us?" inks three

I've had a good run of inks on this project but it's going to need to sit for awhile now. Nike got back to me on the latest illustration and gave me the green light! So I'll be focused on that for the next week and a half. The only exception being this weekend I'm going to focus on the concept B Clay Moore and myself are working on. Ought to be fun!

Here's page three! I really like how he is floating in the center of the page completely alone and isolated.

"D'You Think They'll Believe Us?" inks two

Here's page two for my antho story. My lady thinks the new title makes it sound like a cheesy romance novel so I may have to rethink my rethinking. Again, the stars are done digitally. No point in wasting so much time and ink with frisket doing it when I can do better in Photoshop in five minutes. Gotta love my large format Epson 1640XL scanner! I love my home studio.

"D'You Think They'll Believe Us?" inks one

After some thought, the title really stopped working for me. I've renamed my short for the SCAD Anthology simply "D'You Think They'll Believe Us?". Here are the final inks! Space and stars are actually digitally done. It was too much ink to lay down and I hate frisket. Besides, I have complete control over the number of star, their density, and size in Photoshop. I'm rather happy with the way it turned out!