Toy's Dream

Happy New Year!

2012-01-22T19:05:00.000-08:00

It's been a pretty hectic year, and Julie and I are really late sending out our holiday cards this time. But on the occasion of the Chinese New Year, here's a virtual greeting from us to you. Gung Hay Fat Choy, everybody!

Superhero Costume Carnival

2011-12-06T13:24:00.001-08:00

Now this was a ton of fun! This Sunday, the Academy of Art hosted a Superhero Costume Carnival, masterminded by Matt Harding and the AAU Comic Book Club. Even with finals coming up, there were still about 25 students and teachers in attendance, and a great lineup of models. It seemed only appropriate to sketch these larger-than-life characters in color.

Sarafina as Catwoman. That alone would have justified the price of admission, if it wasn't already a free event.

Liz Ramsey as Poison Ivy. Next time we'll have to find a Harley Quinn for her to hang out with.

Whitney Mccabe as a very elegant Scarlet Witch.

Ashton Warren as an '80s-style punk rock Storm. She'll cut ya!

Plus Richard Jao as the indispensable Stunt Ninja. Alas, poor student models, they'll be feeling those pulled muscles the next day!

Quickie Color Demo

2011-11-30T21:06:00.001-08:00

Here's a stray page of art that I turned into a quick-and-simple Photoshop coloring sample for my comics class. This is from Viral, a collaboration I started with wife Julie that may yet see the light of day if I somehow get the time to finish it...

Bunny Cards for Everyone

2011-11-27T21:36:00.000-08:00

I've really been looking forward to Thanksgiving these last few years. Several of my favorite family members have birthdays over the previous weeks, so when we get together for the holiday, I can gift them with a bunch of personalized artwork.

This year, there was a common theme among all these birthday paintings. My parents just took in a trio of adorable bunny rabbits, and we're all totally smitten with them. Here's my dad, in a slight reversal of the usual daily routine.

Dad's constructed an amazing multi-story hutch/pen complex for the little guys. For my nephew, I visualized an alternative origin for the mega-hutch. The scan is a little blown-out, but you get the idea.

And for my niece, something sweet and sentimental.

May friendly bunnies fly you all away to snuggly dreamland!

Hello Halloween!

2011-10-30T16:57:00.000-07:00

To greet my favorite holiday of the year, here are some sketches from yesterday's Halloween-themed Costume Carnival at the Academy of Art. I was teaching a Saturday class during most of the event, but I brought my students over for a little while, as an object lesson in something something reference something. Since Dax Santi thoughtfully tagged most of the models in his photo album of the event, I'll credit them here as well.

To start with, here are Little Red Riding Hood (Simone Eakin), a friendly wolf (Jonathan Bowling), and a nice ghost lady.

Everybody loved the business zombie (Frank Wollesen).

Angela Marie Hutchins, vamping it up.

This misunderstood loner (Pierre Isaac) just wants to play with his pet crow.

And finally, some graveyard hijinks with a monster priest and Liz Ramsey as a hot ghoul.

Planet Of The Demos

2011-10-26T22:43:00.000-07:00

A quick inking techniques demo from today's comics class. A little bit of dry brush, a little bit of spatter, a little bit of ink wash, a girl, a gorilla...

APE Sketches, Part 2

2011-10-04T00:30:00.000-07:00

As threatened, here are some more of the doodles I did while I was table-minding at the Alternative Press Expo this weekend. These ones are all animals and monsters, and I let Julie pick the selection. This first one is probably her favorite.

This bear is concerned that you've seen what he was writing in his secret diary.

I think this one was probably inspired by the excellent Norwegian mockumentary Troll Hunter.

And that's all, folks!

APE Sketches, Part 1

2011-10-03T11:39:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend minding a table at the Alternative Press Expo, accompanied by the fabulous Julie Davis and the amazing George Cwirko-Godycki, which gave me lots of free time for doodling. First, here are a few views of the APE show floor from our vantage point at the far end of the exhibit hall...

This next one was from early on, when there was a massive line for a Craig Thompson signing. The artist is represented here as an out-of-sight nimbus of brilliance, which unfortunately appears to be emanating from this one dude's pants. I considered moving the arrow digitally, but it's funnier this way.

And here's our neighbor Angus Oblong, in full clown makeup.

The gang at Lee's Comics, during one of the rare moments when they weren't swarmed by attendees. (See Glowing Nimbus of Craig Thompson, above.)

I also spent a lot of time doodling animals and monsters. Here are a selection of cryptids and bestiary creatures; there'll be more of these in the next post.

36 Hour Comic: Our World

2011-09-27T18:44:00.000-07:00

Here's this year's long-awaited 24 Hour Comic! This is a pretty special one, scripted by the wonderful Julie Davis with art and song lyrics by yours truly. Welcome to Our World!

Bonus: Browsable version created with the Issuu reader! Click in the middle of the page to enter full-screen mode, press "esc" to escape.

Open publication - Free publishing - More comics

To my shame, this marks the first time I've failed to complete all 24 pages during the actual marathon. Admittedly, I was working on large pages from a fairly complex script, with lots of setting detail and a bunch of characters, so I don't feel too bad. I finished the first 18 pages during the official 24 hours, then spent another 12 hours the next day finishing up the remaining six, so let's call this one a 36 Hour Comic. Here are the individual pages in JPEG form...

Quick Studies

2011-09-23T16:30:00.000-07:00

A few sketches from Thursday afternoon's Quick Studies workshop. I could only stay for an hour or so, but it's always a super fun one. Now to gather my strength for this weekend's 24 Hour Comics Day marathon!

Asking Elves

2011-09-22T12:07:00.000-07:00

By the way, here's something I'm currently doing with the inimitable Jake Forbes. Over at Ask An Elf, all your burning questions about Christmas and Santa Claus will be answered by sources of impeccable credibility.

Dark Age: Tuan the Hermit

2011-09-14T01:28:00.000-07:00

I've been intermittently posting character designs from this story, and since this particular project seems to be back on the shelf for the time being, I hope you'll indulge me as I share a couple more of them...

Little Monsters: Final Cover!

2011-08-31T00:32:00.000-07:00

At last, here's the new cover illustration for the completed edition of my Little Monsters comic anthology, which now features seven different short stories. I'd better hurry up and place my book order if I want to have these ready to sell at the Alternative Press Expo in October!

Sketchbook Monsters & Robots

2011-08-15T11:49:00.000-07:00

A few recent sketchbook pages for your amusement. I've been playing around with an idea about giant robots fighting enormous H.P. Lovecraft monsters, and after briefly trying to make the monsters weird and non-humanoid, I decided to go to the other extreme and visualize them as stuntmen in rubber suits. As it turned out, I really liked the visual of Cthulhu as a Godzilla extra. Some of these are also touched up with watercolors, which is a nice way to fill time while scanning images or watching Project Runway.

The heroic super robots are supposed to be thousands of years old, and so I played around with some ideas based on ancient cultures. This raises the prospect of a hundred-foot-high monster-smashing Venus of Willendorf, which strikes me as a long-overdue direction for the tokusatsu genre.

The Learning Cycle

2011-08-11T17:49:00.000-07:00

Julie's always asking me when I'm going to post this, so let's make the magic happen! This is a poster I created for an assignment in my Teaching Principles class a couple of years ago, which was supposed to dramatize the Experiential Learning Cycle. Longtime readers of this blog will no doubt be shocked to see that I threw in spacemen, cutesy rocketships, and tentacle monsters.

Huh, I guess PlayStation buttons are the universal cosmic language.

Do As I Say, Not As I Demo

2011-08-10T19:30:00.000-07:00

Just for filler fun, here are a few demos and examples I did during for my comics classes this summer. First, I did this for a quick in-class exercise where you're given the first and last panels of a story, and you need to fill in the story in between...

And this for another in-class exercise, where you have to include at least one example of every type of "camera angle."

Finally, this was a quick demo of using black and white shapes to create simple backgrounds. There was much discussion of the ominous owl pinata featured in the last scene...

Red Space Suit Again

2011-08-08T23:35:00.000-07:00

I'm so torn! As much as I love the lurid yellow-orange I originally used for the shape-changing Space Wolf, it seems like I'm setting a bad example by using every crayon in the box. Just to ease my conscience, here's a modified version with a more subdued monster color scheme.

For comparison purposes, here's the Red Riding Hood lineup that Scotland Barnes did for his class. If we can just get George to post his lineup, we'll have a complete set!

9 Hour Comic: The Black Cat

2011-08-01T02:18:00.000-07:00

Truth in advertising: This 8 Hour Comic actually took me nine hours. But hey, proportionally speaking, I'm closing the gap! Please enjoy The Black Cat, which in time-honored fashion has virtually nothing to do with Edgar Allan Poe.

Or does it?

Update: New browsable version created with the Issuu reader! Click in the middle of the page to enter full-screen mode, press "esc" to escape.

Open publication - Free publishing - More black cat

More Red Space Suit

2011-07-30T21:55:00.001-07:00

Working a little more on this Character Design class demo. This time, the lineup in color, and a turnaround for Little Red Space Suit herself...

I think I'm going to use these guys for a storyboard sample, too. There will be spaceships.

More Demos

2011-07-26T23:29:00.000-07:00

Here's another in-class demo. This one was a quick sketch for my comics class, to demonstrate a few inking tricks.

Little Red Space Suit

2011-07-13T14:22:00.000-07:00

I'm teaching a Character Design class again, and we're just finishing up the traditional "Little Red Riding Hood" assignment. To me, the main point of this one is to arrive at a wide range of character types - young and old, male and female, nice and nasty - and so I give my students a lot of leeway in interpreting the story. Last time, I did a cute Halloween-themed lineup as a demo, so this time I thought I'd do something with a (slightly) more realistic aesthetic:

This, of course, would be a Little Red Space Suit version, in which our heroine is taking a payload of oxygen to Grandmother's asteroid only to find that she's been replaced by a shape-changing alien. "What a lot of eyes you have, Granny!" "All the better to see you with, my dear."

Here's the rough draft, before I cleaned it up, reshuffled the characters, and redesigned the Hunter character. In the real world, you could do all this with Photoshop, but we're keeping it old-school in the classroom.

A few alternative candidates for the shape-changing Space Wolf.

And here's me working out a new design for the Hunter, including a high-tech laser axe for slaying monsters.

Scotland Barnes, who's teaching another section of the same class, posted his own awesome development drawings over on his blog. Go admire!

Dark Age: Labraid Revisited

2011-07-12T04:47:00.000-07:00

This blog is looking a little monochrome at the moment, so let's pull up another color piece from the archives. Here's an updated version of Labraid of the Red Hand, previously featured in this 2009 post.

6 Hour Comic: My Rise And Fall

2011-07-11T00:26:00.000-07:00

Wowzers, here's my second comic for this week! This was done for a "6 Hour Comic Day" at the Academy of Art, but it took me about an hour and a half just to script and thumbnail it, so the total elapsed time was actually seven hours. Lots of tiny panels in this one, plus cameos by a duck-billed platypus, a naked mole rat, and a couple of dodos.

Perspective Primer

2011-07-06T15:54:00.001-07:00

I'm currently teaching a bunch of introductory comics classes, and I just discovered that I'm pretty bad at explaining perspective in lecture form - and downright terrible at drawing intelligible diagrams on the board while I'm at it. Comics to the rescue! Taking a cue from David Chelsea and Scott McCloud, I've put together this quick and simple Perspective Primer in an attempt to de-confuse my poor students.

Update: Here's a printable Acrobat PDF version.

Ben's Beard

2011-06-11T20:34:00.001-07:00

Another quickie micro-comic, this one a special going-away present for my buddy Ben Jelter. Ben wants us all to know he doesn't actually wear turtlenecks, which casts the documentary authenticity of this story into question.

Formori Filler

2011-06-03T03:43:00.000-07:00

Haven't posted here in a while, so let's see what I have sitting around that I can put up. From the character design files, here's the latest version of the Formori foot soldier previously featured here.

12 Hour Comic: Labyrinth

2011-05-03T06:02:00.000-07:00

I started this as a project for the Academy of Art's "12 Hour Comic Day," but I had to bail before the time was up, and so I finished a day later. Total elapsed time was actually fourteen hours, but in my defense, I was working larger and in a fancier style.

Unlike my previous 24 Hour Comics, this one's not so family-friendly. It's kind of an existential slasher flick by way of Greek mythology. Consider yourself warned...

Update: Here's a convenient Acrobat PDF version.

Goblin Party

2011-04-16T13:06:00.000-07:00

Hey, I just realized I never posted these. These were done as tryouts for a comics thing posted on Jon Schindehette's Art Order blog. I really want to do something for Jon's new Eowyn vs. Nazgul challenge, too, but we'll see if I can find the time...

Inheritors

2011-04-13T11:30:00.000-07:00

This week in the comics class I'm teaching - did I mention I'm teaching a comics class? - we're starting the final semester project, and next week's assignment is to bring in a couple of pages' work of thumbnails, rough layouts, and value roughs. So last night I whipped up a few pages as a sample, based on an idea that just popped into my head. Working title is Inheritors, which is probably one of those Aristocrats-style titles that works better if you don't try to explain it.

First, crude character sketches - just enough to get started with layouts.

Then a few pages' worth of rough layouts. I'll spare you the indecipherable horror of my thumbnail sketches.

And finally, sample value roughs. It took me a couple of tries to get these into workable shape; there's a reason we normally don't plot and lay out comics stories in overnight binges.

In the penultimate panel of page 2, I might shift the figure leftward and move the balloon to the right. Easy enough to do in Photoshop.

Big Cats

2011-04-12T20:19:00.000-07:00

Today was Big Cats day at the Academy of Art's fabled Bradley Hall. What fun!

The cheetah pretty much stole the show. Amazing proportions, very mellow, and purring constantly the whole time we were drawing.

The caracal turned out to have a serious fetish for the rough carpet covering the model stand, and spent most of its time rolling around on its tummy in a state of feline bliss.

The Siberian bobcat was awful cute. Just a big fluffy kitten, panting because of the unaccustomed heat and, according to its handler, because it was excited.

And finally the serval, apparently a champion mouser.

Robot Monster

2011-03-11T16:48:00.000-08:00

Seeing as how I'm a working artist and a giant robot expert, it's high time I drew some giant robots. By way of an opening salvo, here's something I've been playing around with for a while. This is my interpretation of an incredibly obscure 'bot from the Mobile Suit Gundam universe.

Red Riding Hood

2011-02-28T19:51:00.000-08:00

Here's a little sample I made for a character design class I'm teaching. It's a quick and simple cast lineup for a Halloween-themed "Little Red Riding Hood" story, which would explain why our "hunter" and "wolf" characters are essentially cross-dressing.

Motorhog!

2011-02-07T05:50:00.000-08:00

Here's something I whipped up for the Concept Tuesday challenge on Jon Schindehette's ArtOrder blog. You can check out the other thirty entries on page 1 and page 2 of the ArtOrder blog post.

There's actually a whole model sheet for this guy, including a cute baby boar mutant.

More Workshoppery

2011-01-31T14:19:00.001-08:00

These are from a Saturday workshop hosted by the Academy of Art's Illustration department. The idea was for the faculty to get a head start before the students came flooding in, but it was mostly just me and Lisa Berrett.

The footwear seem a bit anachronistic, and strictly speaking I should have changed it up a bit, but I can never resist drawing a cool pair of boots.

So when a horde of students showed up, I'd already been drawing for about three hours, and I think the fatigue was setting in.

By this point Bill Sanchez was gently correcting my hand anatomy, which I took as my cue to pack it in for the day. :-)

WorkEasy Again

2011-01-30T16:49:00.000-08:00

Some drawings from the occasional workshop hosted by Omari Barron. This time, no model, just artists posing so other artists can draw them...

Umbrellas (and wrestling masks) are great all-purpose props.

Last page of the sketchbook! Time to fit these in any way I can.

Knights 3

2011-01-26T19:19:00.000-08:00

Still plugging away on these. First, sketches for Tiram, who's managed to lose those humongous force field widgets on his butt. Perhaps these could be optional add-ons.

With that taken care of, we can start playing with colors for these two.

So now the lineup is starting to look something like this. From here on, I think the main task is going to be making these guys look like they belong in the same story. That may come down to the balance of curvy and boxy shapes...

Fraggles

2011-01-21T21:04:00.000-08:00

To mark the release of Fraggle Rock Vol.2 #1, a comic anthology which includes a short story written by Jake Forbes and drawn by me, here's a little bonus extra. These are the character and set drawings that I submitted to Archaia Studios and the Jim Henson Company when I was auditioning for the job.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, Cory Godbey, who illustrated another story in this issue, has posted his own audition samples. Lovely drawings, and his finished pages are gorgeous! Check 'em out!

Speaking of exceptionally talented comic artists: I'll throw in another plug for the awesome Rahsan Ekedal by noting that the second issue of Echoes comes out next week, as well as a reprint edition of the sold-out issue 1.

Knights Round 2

2011-01-18T01:50:00.000-08:00

I haven't had a chance to work on these for a while, but let's seize our windows of opportunity as they present themselves. Having nailed down the silhouettes, I've been working on the interior details for my cyborg robo-knights. Lots of scribbles, details, and ideas for design gimmicks...

Which is nice, because now I can play around with color schemes. Here are a few for Lamok. Almost done with this one!

Knights in Question

2011-01-04T23:06:00.000-08:00

For various reasons, I've been thinking about character design recently. As a New Year's experiment, I've decided to revisit one of my long-running pet projects and see what happens if I apply a more orthodox design process to the cast of characters. If you check the King of Mars tag on this site, you can see just how long I've been fooling around with various permutations of this story idea!

In a nutshell, it's a sci-fi fantasy story which takes place thousands of years in the future on the planet Mars. As part of the back story, I've posited a glorious Golden Age in which the deserts of Mars were policed by an elite cadre of four cyborg warriors, all but one of whom have since been destroyed. These legendary guardians are based on the three great knights of the Arthurian era (as per Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur), plus the also-ran Palomides who constantly tries and fails to best Sir Tristan and join the elite top-ranked tier. Each one also corresponds to a playing card suit, and its associated Tarot suit, so ultimately they're nothing but a pack of cards.

First up is Gahad, the Lancelot analogue. He represents the suit of Diamonds/Coins and the element of Earth, and so naturally he needs to be massive and solid. In these silhouette-style thumbnails, he gets progressively more bulky and tank-like, but I wanted to leave his legs fairly mobile so he can run around and fight. His signature weapon is a hammer.

Next we have Tiram, the Tristan stand-in. As the Knight of Hearts/Cups, he represents the element of Water and has a fickle, unreliable temperament (just like his Arthurian prototype). Having envisioned him as having a flowing, unpredictable fighting style, I immediately thought of the wiggly flexible swords featured in Chinese wuxia movies, and the rest of his design followed pretty naturally from there. The crescent shapes on his back are force-field generators.

Lamok gave me fits. This character is based on Lamorak, an utterly forgotten Arthurian character whom Malory nonetheless ranks as one of the top three knights. He's the Knight of Clubs/Wands, corresponding to the element of Fire. His signature weapon is a spear, and he's an aggressive fighter who rushes into the fray of battle. I actually had an earlier design for him that I really liked, but in all honesty it was better suited to a different character, so I switched them around and started Lamok over from scratch. After several pages of dead ends, I finally looked up some traditional Korean armor designs and found they were a perfect fit for what I had in mind. Saved by research!

And finally we have Palom, templated on Palomides the Saracen. As the Knight of Spades/Swords, he represents the element of Air, and like his associated Tarot suit he's an ill-fated troublemaker who sows strife wherever he goes. As the sole survivor of the Four Knights, he's a major antagonist in the story. In this case, I simply swiped Lamok's previous design and grafted it onto Palom, since its spiky shapes are a perfect fit for the character. The only element of Palom's original design I've retained is that groovy sword.

So there's the lineup. These four knights, and their characteristic shapes, will be serving as templates for a lot of other characters in the story; you could consider them to be the Platonic ideals of their respective suits. Having nailed down workable silhouettes, I'll now get started fleshing out the design details...

Publications!

2011-01-02T13:03:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, everybody! Just to get things started, let me plug a few recent works by people I know and/or owe favors to. :-)

First, Vera Greentea and Ben Jelter have published a single-issue, standalone version of their comic To Stop Dreaming of Goddesses. This was previously featured in the SIREN anthology, which is now sadly out of print.

Meanwhile, the first issue of the horror/suspense comic Echoes, from the awesome Rahsan Ekedal and the perfectly nice Joshua Hale Fialkov, shipped last week and immediately sold out. Find it, read it, and weep!

Finally, the second volume of Archaia's Fraggle Rock comic anthology kicks off ~~next week~~ January 19 with the release of Volume 2, Issue 1. There's a four-page story in there written by Jake Forbes and illustrated by yours truly, and you can see a preview at ToughPigs.

Holiday Cheers

2010-12-25T01:05:00.001-08:00

It's time for this year's seasonal greeting! As usual, Julie and I are sending out two flavors of card this year, and here are both of them for your amusement. If you didn't get one by e-mail, dear friend, consider yourself hereby greeted.

Birthday Cards

2010-12-04T00:58:00.001-08:00

Here at last are a few birthday cards that I did for relatives over Thanksgiving vacation. First, something for the nephew...

And something for the niece, combining a couple of her current favorite subjects. :-)

Finally, here's one I did for my dad, featuring characters from some of the stories I've done over the last year or so. I've knocked out the background on this one, and I have a notion to use it for a special project in the near future...

Many thanks to wife Julie for helping piece together the fragmentary scans I made with our wonky travel scanner!

Caliban and Prospero

2010-11-30T12:18:00.000-08:00

Hello again! I have some new greeting card art to post soon, as soon as the scans are pieced together and cleaned up. But in the meantime, here are some sketches for a story idea that occurred to me over Thanksgiving vacation...

The story, obviously, is a riff on Shakespeare's The Tempest, one of my less favorite of his plays. When I outlined the plot to wife Julie, she suggested that it would make a good long-form comic. It occurs to me that, if I can complete a 24-page story in one weekend, I should be able to do a 100-page story in four weeks. Anyone up for National Graphic Novel Month?

(As it turns out, there's already a NaGraNoWriMo, but that challenge is for weenies - their target is a 48-page comic script, never mind a completed comic. I'm contemplating something a lot more hard-core.)

Halloween Flyer 2010

2010-10-15T18:29:00.000-07:00

Here's this year's flyer for our annual video party. Not as fancy as last year's, but right now I'm a lot more pressed for time. Plus, the minimalist black-and-white treatment kinda suits the theme, which is obsolete VHS tapes exhumed from the video vault.

Party date has been set for next Sunday afternoon; art peeps, let me know if you need location info!

Trucks Again!

2010-10-12T16:20:00.001-07:00

Last year I had to skip it because it was on the same weekend as 24 Hour Comics Day, but fortunately this time I was able to check out the "Touch-a-Truck Day" and crafts festival hosted by the school across the road. (Literally across the road. Like, you step out the door and there's a fire engine and a sewer maintenance truck. Sweet!) No petting zoo this year, but we did get a cute robot.

24 Hour Comic: Young Nick Part 3

2010-10-06T09:23:00.001-07:00

And now, the final finale. This is the point at which I suddenly remembered I needed to provide the hero with a fiddle, and resolved the problem with what Julie accurately identified as a Mary Shelley-style "I found a suitcase full of books in the road" solution. Hey, maybe that's why Young Nick is quoting Milton.

Part 1 here, Part 2 here.

One last thing: A few people have asked how much of this story I planned out ahead of time. I'm ashamed to admit it's quite a lot. Since I've spent the last six months working mainly on other people's stories, I wanted to take full advantage of this chance to tell one of my own, and so I went with an idea I'd been kicking around for a few months and pondering in earnest for a couple of weeks. However, I refrained from actually putting anything down on paper until the 24 hour clock started running, and about half of the plot and rhyming text was cooked up on the spot.

Speaking of which, the rhyme scheme employed here seems to have been borrowed from the "Vicious Cabaret" sequence of Alan Moore's V For Vendetta, which just goes to show you can't escape your influences.

24 Hour Comic: Young Nick Part 2

2010-10-05T11:05:00.001-07:00

The legend continues. I was starting to lag behind schedule as I got to the courtroom scene, so here come the dramatic black backgrounds! There always seems to be one panel that stands out as my personal favorite; see if you can guess which one it was this time.

Part 1 here, Part 3 here.

24 Hour Comic: Young Nick Part 1

2010-10-04T23:23:00.000-07:00

If it's October, it must be 24 Hour Comic Day! Well, that or Halloween. Or "Touch-a-Truck Day." But let's take one thing at a time.

Once again, I did this on site at the Academy of Art, alongside forty-plus current and former students who collectively worked their butts off and made some really amazing comics. I finished mine up with two and half hours to spare, so clearly I need to raise my ambition level next time. But let's roll out this year's model, in the first of three installments...

Part 2 here, Part 3 here.

WorkEasy I

2010-10-01T15:19:00.001-07:00

A few life drawings from last week's WorkEasy workshop. Two models this time (not counting Omari), but it was really all about the boots! Sadly, I'll have to skip it this weekend because I'll be tied up with 24 Hour Comics Day. Poor me.

Wielding the baseball bat here: The lovely and talented fashion designer Cecilia Aragon.

On the floor: Our lovely and talented host Omari Barron.

And a couple from the toned-paper sketchbook...

They say it's bad luck to open an umbrella indoors. Fun to draw, though.

Development Hell

2010-09-22T14:54:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note: My comics writing debut, Wolverine: Development Hell, is now up on Marvel's Digital Comics site. Pristinely penciled by Mike Ryan! Indelibly inked by Victor Olazaba! Consummately colored by Marta Martinez! Lithely lettered by Dave Sharpe! Excellently edited by Mike Horwitz! Written by me! An epic in eight pages!

Historika Teaser

2010-08-20T11:42:00.000-07:00

Guess I can talk about this now! Here's comics writer Martin Conaghan previewing a project that we've been working on together, in an article titled Making Historika.

Self Portrait

2010-08-08T00:25:00.001-07:00

Finally done with teaching for the summer, and about to get caught up on my storyboarding and comics work. The long spell of silence may soon be over!

In the meantime, I just had to whip up a self-portrait for a book credit, so let's share that with the world. Can you tell I'm a little frazzled right now?

Words and Pictures

2010-07-17T22:09:00.000-07:00

Hey, nifty! C.B. Cebulski's Tips & Tweets: Advice for Writers, Part 2 includes some preview pages from my Wolverine story, as illustrated by the wonderful Michael Ryan. Ironically, I may end up making my comics publishing debut as a writer. :-)

King of Mars Part II

2010-07-13T02:26:00.001-07:00

The rest of the page roughs from the webcomic that could have been. I don't think we've seen the last of thse guys, though.

King of Mars

2010-07-11T23:57:00.001-07:00

So busy! So little time to post! But in the meantime...

Now that DC has shut down its Zuda webcomics site, I may as well share with you the contest submission I was working on. These were pretty far along before the deluge of actual paying work began, but now that Zuda is history, I don't know if there's going to be much demand for comics in this charming landscape format. So I can't say whether I'll ever complete these pages in their current format, but the story itself is very near and dear to my heart. Here are the first set of page roughs...

A Guest Villain

2010-05-30T17:38:00.000-07:00

Long time, no post! I've been so busy working on other people's projects for the last couple of months that my own stuff has pretty much stalled, not to mention the effect on my blogging frequency. In the meantime, Colin of Too Busy Thinking About My Comics has nominated me for a Kreativ Blogger award, which entails a bunch of responsibilities I'll have to discharge in short order.

In the meantime, my back-and-forthing with Colin over on his blog has got me thinking too much about comic-book cliches as well, and a new story idea has been taking shape in the back of my head. Here's a little sneak peek...

The fabulous Omni-Beast is part of a cabal of supervillains who've taken over the world and ushered in a new golden age of peace and prosperity. Now who could possibly object to that?

Secrets of the Death Dragon

2010-04-28T02:49:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to do a followup post to get some more mileage out of all the work I put into that Death Dragon serial, but things have just been too busy!

In the meantime, though, I'll share one little tidbit and point out that the illustrations for Days 18 through 20 (our hero's phantasmagoric journey on Komodo Island) were designed to fit together into a single large-format picture.

Komodo Island isn't anywhere near this lushly forested, of course. You might think of it as an allegorical jungle, a color-keyed extension of the malevolent lizards themselves.

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 21

2010-04-13T01:49:00.000-07:00

So as not to spoil the ending, let's hide the final installment behind this clickable link...

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 20

2010-04-12T05:24:00.001-07:00

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 19

2010-04-11T04:33:00.001-07:00

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 18

2010-04-10T03:03:00.000-07:00

Only three days left to go...

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 17

2010-04-09T06:47:00.001-07:00

Fun fact: The Komodo airport is actually at Labuan Bajo, on a totally different island.

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 16

2010-04-08T02:06:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe I've done sixteen of these daily installments in a row! I don't think I knew what I was getting myself in for, but there's only five more to go, so it's too late for second thoughts now.

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 15

2010-04-07T01:09:00.001-07:00

And now, the final week begins...

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 14

2010-04-06T07:44:00.000-07:00

Wait, now what's going on?

Meanwhile, thanks to everyone who paid a visit to the SIREN booth during WonderCon! Perhaps you'll be intrigued by Ben Jelter's sneak preview of a hypothetical second volume.

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 13

2010-04-05T01:27:00.000-07:00

And check out this awesome Death Dragon fan art by the one and only Ben Jelter! Fantastic!

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 12

2010-04-04T02:26:00.000-07:00

So you know how, in a horror movie, there's usually that part where the protagonist goes to the library or the municipal microfiche depository or something, and finally gets around to doing a bunch of research? Well...

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 11

2010-04-03T02:03:00.001-07:00

This is starting to feel weirdly metaphorical. I swear the original premise of this series was a simple sight gag!

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 10

2010-04-02T00:54:00.000-07:00

And now the stalking has truly begun in earnest.

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 9

2010-04-01T00:27:00.000-07:00

Oh my gosh, there's a plot -- and it thickens!

Speaking of which, did anyone notice the Starbucks Bold Pick of the Week? Everything's coming up lizards...

Con of Wonders!

2010-03-31T11:42:00.000-07:00

Couple bits of business I should mention here. The annual WonderCon comic book convention will be held in San Francisco this weekend (from April 2 through April 4), and there are a few related things I'll be doing...

The SIREN Comic Collection will be on sale at booth AA 130 in the Artist's Alley. Assorted SIREN contributors will be flitting in and out of the booth like beautiful butterflies, and I'll probably put in a stint on Sunday.

Comics writer Brian Schirmer will have a table at SP 07 in the Small Press section, where you can pick up his self-published anthology "Worlds Apart," featuring a five-page story illustrated by yours truly. I'll be hanging out there at some point on Sunday, too.

Also noteworthy: Thursday evening, the Academy of Art University is hosting an Alumni Comic Book Panel with various grads-made-good, hosted by Marvel talent scout C.B. Cebulski. The panel runs from 7:00 to 9:00 PM at the Morgan Auditorium, 491 Post St., and is open to the public. Cebulski will also be reviewing student and alumni portfolios earlier in the day.

Speaking of which, here's the WonderCon Portfolio Review Schedule.

And finally, the lovely folks at the Cartoon Art Museum are throwing a weekend party on Friday night, from 8:00 to 11:00 PM. The party is a benefit for artist Ed Hannigan and co-sponsored by The Hero Initiative, which provides a safety net for your favorite comic creators in times of medical or financial crisis. Not sure if I'll be able to make it to the party, but it's a great cause and I wanted to give 'em a plug.

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 8

2010-03-31T00:01:00.000-07:00

I think our hero is finally starting to suspect something.

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 7

2010-03-30T10:40:00.000-07:00

Running a little late today, but here we go.

And in a very closely related vein, I just saw Michael Buble Being Stalked By A Velociraptor. Looks like this series launched a day after mine, so clearly there's something in the zeitgeist about people being followed around by carnivorous lizards.

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 6

2010-03-29T01:24:00.000-07:00

OMG, so much to do! But my commitment to the daily updating of the Death Dragon serial is as tenacious and implacable as the komodo dragon itself.

And thus we have our first eyewitness account, courtesy of an anonymous artist who's probably going to have a hard time explaining this to his parents.

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 5

2010-03-28T02:21:00.000-07:00

Digital colors this time, since Ben was taunting me about it. Once again I'm drawing what's right outside my window...

A little bit Coleridge, perhaps. "Because he knows a frightful fiend / Doth close behind him tread"...

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 4

2010-03-27T01:38:00.000-07:00

Nice and simple this time...

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 3

2010-03-26T00:57:00.000-07:00

Man, these old markers are really on their last legs. Might be time to go digital with these, or switch to watercolors or something. In the meantime, here's day three!

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 2

2010-03-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

The pursuit continues. The movie, in case you're curious, was Hot Tub Time Machine.

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 1

2010-03-24T00:12:00.001-07:00

Day One: The hunt begins!

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 0

2010-03-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

This isn't the webcomic project I've been working on for the past few weeks, just a wacky idea that popped into my head this afternoon. With any luck, you can expect a new installment every day for the next, oh, three weeks. Real time webcomic is GO!

Critters Galore

2010-03-12T23:45:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of watercolor roughs I did as demos for an "Intro to Illustration" class I'm teaching. I did these step by step, with the students suggesting the colors for each element, and I think they came out quite nicely.

I probably had animals on the brain because I'd just been to the zoo a few days earlier. It's tough doing location sketching there, since the critters are always on the move. Maybe I should concentrate on sleepy koalas next time.

Of course, you can always draw people instead. Here's feeding time at the giraffe house, or at least as much as I could fit in alongside the turkeys and polar bears.

Drawing with George II

2010-03-11T13:29:00.001-08:00

A couple more from Sunday's sketch-a-thon, in color this time.

Drawing with George I

2010-03-10T09:10:00.001-08:00

New day, new post!

So Sunday afternoon, I was hanging around with the amazing George Cwirko-Godycki doing some freestyle drawing. We ended up doing a lot of monsters. Boar plus Moray = Boaray...

And then there was this guy.

Don't ask me what these are supposed to be. Haven't the foggiest.

Quick Studies

2010-03-09T23:01:00.000-08:00

Whew, just scanned a bunch of recent sketches and whatnot. Looks like I'll be posting this stuff all week!

For starters, here are some pages from that Quick Studies workshop that Ben kept nagging me to attend. Hope you're happy now, Jelter!

From The Rent Files

2010-03-03T16:02:00.000-08:00

Although it feels like I haven't been getting much art done lately, my wife keeps reminding me that I've been doing more than I think. Here's one example.

Back when we first moved into our current apartment, we were paying the rent by mail, so I threw in an illustrated cover letter each month rather than leave a naked check rattling around in the envelope. Pretty soon we switched to hand delivery, but I kept doing the cover letters, and now our landlords have an archive of about ten years' worth of cartoons covering whatever happens to be on my mind that month. Lately, that's been the unseasonably rotten weather, and at this point it's become kind of a meta-narrative...

More Teasers

2010-02-25T01:24:00.000-08:00

A bunch of things suddenly came up, and I haven't gotten as far with the webcomic project as I'd hoped (to say nothing of commenting on other folks' blogs, or updating my own). But now that I'm about to start on the actual pencils, I drew up some more detailed character designs, of which I'll share a sneak peek right now.

Sketchbook Filler

2010-01-26T15:57:00.001-08:00

Still tinkering with the thumbnails for my webcomic. But in the meantime, here are some character sketches...

Since this is a sci-fi story of sorts, I figure it's high time I threw in some giant robots. There's an obvious beetle motif here, but in a sense these are actually very distant descendants of the Mars rover.

And meanwhile, on a completely different note: Monkeys.

Dark Age Teaser

2010-01-21T17:21:00.000-08:00

From the department of sneak peeks, here's a quick cover sketch that I did for a recent story proposal. Coming soon, some actual comics work in progress...

Tooth Theory

2010-01-10T15:53:00.000-08:00

Here's another birthday card, this one for my six-year-old niece. Since she's just started losing her baby teeth, this illustration reflects a couple of rival theories about the nature of the Tooth Fairy, including my wife Julie's hypothesis based on pack rats and their habit of trading random objects (i.e. teeth) for other random objects (i.e. coins).

Dino Rally!

2010-01-06T15:42:00.000-08:00

Welcome back, and here's hoping your 2010 is off to a good start!

From the tail end of last year (no pun intended), here's a birthday card I did for my two-year-old nephew. Sounds like an occasion for dinosaurs, and soapbox derby racing...

The wily Deinonychus, of course, gets the win. But who's minding the eggs?

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-22T18:10:00.000-08:00

I'll be signing off for the moment as I concentrate on holiday stuff (and impending deadlines), but before I go, here are this year's virtual greeting cards. As per last year, I did two versions, one of which has a Chinese New Year theme to welcome in the Year of the Tiger. If you didn't get one via post or e-mail, Julie and I hereby wish you all the best!

And for more holiday cheer, don't forget to check out ArtOrder's Krampus Challenge!

360 Minute Monster

2009-12-20T03:15:00.000-08:00

Update: And here are the results of ArtOrder's Krampus Challenge, with a whopping 67 different interpretations of this festive fiend!

This one's a special holiday monster, created for the seasonal Krampus Challenge on Jon Schindehette's ArtOrder blog. For the occasion, I did an actual pencil drawing and a detailed color painting rather than the usual 60-minute quick sketch, so let's call this a 360 Minute Monster.

This is, of course, the Krampus, a classic Christmas character who's well known in Germany. I have a lovely book of weird vintage Christmas cards called Christmas Curiosities, which devotes an entire chapter to this delightful fellow, and my rendition stays pretty close to the traditional Krampii showcased in the book: He has a lolling tongue, at least one cloven foot, cuffs and chains, and a basket for carrying away wicked little children. To complete the effect, here's a Christmas card version with a cheery "Greetings from Krampus" inscription.

Weekly Workshop IX

2009-12-13T15:27:00.000-08:00

The end, for now! Here are some drawings from the final alumni workshop of the season. Thanks to Eric for hosting these, and to all our models, and to Ed and Josh and Mike and everyone else who dragged themselves out on Wednesday nights to keep me company.

First, the customary five-minute sketches.

Tens and twenties. These represent the last gasp of the ink cartridge in my gray brushpen.

And then one last stab at finger-painting on the iPod Touch. Clearly I need a lot more practice before I get the hang of this, but I'll share my feeble efforts with you anyway. Until we meet again, I hope you'll all remember me by my good drawings!

Return of the Sixty Minute Monsters

2009-12-09T17:35:00.001-08:00

Here's a must-see for fans of screaming, tentacled madness: An H.P. Lovecraft art tribute on Tor.com. Together with the ongoing Hurakan challenge on Jon Schindehette's ArtOrder blog, it got me thinking about giant monster gods, and so I decided to set aside an hour to reviving my old Sixty Minute Monster series.

So here's my take on the ever-popular monster god Cthulhu. Usually he's depicted as all eyes and no mouth, but I thought it might be creepier the other way around. My strongest recollection from the classic Lovecraft story is that, for all the intimidating PR, Cthulhu actually turns out to be made out of some kind of gooshy ectoplasm and the puny human characters are able to escape by driving their steamboat right through him. Kind of like a sea jelly, perhaps.

Weekly Workshop Extra

2009-12-08T15:55:00.000-08:00

While I'm posting workshop drawings, here are a bunch from the all-day drawing event that the lovely folks from the Academy's Fine Arts department hosted last Saturday. It was a bit of a challenge applying the technique I've been using for figure studies to what were essentially all-white and all-black costumes:

The cockatoo's name is Chinook, and he pretty much stole the show. He also appears in the next set:

And then we ate cake.

Was there cross-dressing? Oh yes, there was cross-dressing.

Weekly Workshop VII

2009-12-08T13:35:00.001-08:00

We're reaching the end of the workshop season, so there'll only be a couple more of these posts. But if nothing else, they've certainly given me plenty of post-ready blog content!

This week's wrinkle is that all my beloved brush pens ran out of ink, so I was forced to bring in a gray brush pen as a backup. I think I actually like the gray ink better, so naturally I've gone and used that one up as well. C'est la art supplies. Let's see some five and ten minute sketches...

Now a couple of twenties. I tried softening my trusty Liquid Paper correction pen with some white pencil, and I think it's working pretty well.

Weekly Workshop VI

2009-12-01T15:57:00.000-08:00

Time for me to post a selection from last week's Wednesday night alumni workshop! One of the nice things about going to these workshops is checking in with my former fellow students, and you too can share the magic by checking out the latest workshop sketches from fine folks like Josh and Mike. (And here's some stuff by Mónico and Ben from workshops I wasn't at, boo hoo.)

Speaking of workshoppery, I saw a notice about an event that may interest other Academites and alumnoids. According to the flyer: This Saturday, December 5, there's an "all day drawing event" with models and costumes and whatnot at the Academy of Art's 701 Chestnut building. Fond as I am of marathon drawing exercises, there's no way I can pass up an event that threatens to run from 10 AM to 10 PM.

Anyways, onward to the past! Last week's workshop got off to a bit of a slow start, as I was woefully undercaffeinated. Once that problem had been solved, we did a run of jazzy two-minute sketches with which I'm rather pleased.

These ten minute poses came out okay as well:

The twenty's not so good, but I'll share my shame with you and swear to do better tomorrow.

When Punch Attacks!

2009-11-26T16:21:00.000-08:00

Whoo, just got a mention in the Academy of Art Newsfeed! If you've come here looking for my 24 Hour Comic, here are the links:

Commedia Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Critters!

2009-11-25T16:54:00.000-08:00

Just did these as samples for an illustration job posting. No idea if it's what the client was looking for, but it does the soul good to draw baby tapirs.

Aaaand putting them all together...

Weekly Workshop V

2009-11-24T11:58:00.000-08:00

Coming soon, stuff that's not just workshop drawings! But first, some more workshop drawings.

Let's start with a few five minute sketches. Eric, our workshop meister, revealed his inner nerd by suggesting some superhero poses.

Now some tens and twenties. I think I'm getting the hang of working on toned paper again; thank goodness for those Liquid Paper correction pens.

And one more supervillain pose for the road.