Superhero Costume Carnival

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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...