Thursday, December 24, 2009

Busy Bees Knees

Over two months!

Since my last post!

Truant! Truant! Alright so while I haven't updated in a while I can confidently say it was with good cause. School, plus the band, plus some illustration gigs on the side have kept me right busy. I totally intend on posting some of my first year work (the few rare good ones that is) but first I figured I'd show some pages from my recently finished (and very first) children's book, HARRY GOES FISHING:

The book is written by first time author Kathy Sue Modesette and contains the very powerful message of recycling to keep the oceans nice and clean. The book should see release early in the new year.

In other news, I finally finished an online portfolio of my work, something every working illustrator needs in this biz. It's a wonder it took me so long to set it up...

Here's a shot at me doing some fancy design work:

It's just the gig poster for our latest show. I will say, however, that I am getting very interested in the Design portion of my education. I figure, if I can develop a really keen sense of Graphic Design and Typography, I could use them to create strong visuals in my comic work, really create something original. That's the dream anyway.

Anyways, back to work for me.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Monday, October 19, 2009

On Devil's Night...

Here's the latest poster for Me Three's upcoming gig at Vern's on October 30th. Just had to finish this one before I went to bed tonight.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

High Concept

For a year or so, my fellow VA chum, Chris Peterson, has been slaving away on an exciting new comic project for Arcana Studios entitled DRAGONS VS. DINOSAURS. It seems like he's nearing completion on the beast (I can't wait to see the final product) and he was kind enough to let me do a pinup for the book.

I'll be adding color soon. The overall jam-packed-craziness of the pic can be attributed directly to the rest of the artists (Fiona, Conor, Steve, Neil) egging me on at 24hr Comic Day, which I used to complete my new profile pic and a lot of homework.

Yes, that Dragon is attacking a volcano.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Yar-tee-tar-tee-tar!

Here are the detes for our upcoming show next week! We had a jam tonight that went so awesome.

Damn, I can't wait! Hope you can make it.

He's Alive! Ali-i-i-i-ve!

...barely :)

Art school has been keeping me supremely busy as of late, which shouldn't be a surprise, but still managed to surprise me. I'm learning lots though, especially about design fundamentals, perspective and contemporary art.

Oh! and this just in: I suck at painting. But I'm learning.

I just wrapped work on a program for a local dance production of West Side Story. I didn't get to see it, which really bums me out. The program was supposed to contain a full comic story, but ended up being 2 pages of intro with some character designs. There just wasn't time in the day to do the whole thing, but I'm still disappointed in myself for not pulling through. Anyway, here are some choice pics:




These character profiles were all based on real folks so it was nice to flex my portrait muscles.

In other news: My brother and I are now part of a rockin' musical trio known to the world-at-large as ME THREE. We're a punk band with fast and heavy beats, screams, growls and harmonies a plenty. Something for everyone! My bro is guitar and vocals, while I play bass and back-up vocals. Our drummer is one Bayan Sharafi and he's fantastic.

Here's our kick ass logo, designed by me and my bro:


So be sure to drop by our MySpace page to hear our first two tracks and find details of upcoming shows. Our first one is Thursday, the 15th of October at the Shamrock Inn!

I just read Jeff Lemire's ESSEX COUNTY by the way. It's very good. It may very well have been the first comic to bring a tear to my eye. Powerful, evocative stuff, here people. Take notes.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Pull Up Your Knickers! School's In!

Yes, my first year of a four year Bachelor in Design has begun at ACAD. I am brimming with excitement and ready to get down to the nitty gritty of arts. I might post some of my work on the blog here, as long as it is kinda good in some regard.

Anyways, here's the inked Archie piece for the Art Show at Happy Harbor:


Also, thanks to my online presence, I scored a gig doing some drawings for Bic at Sunridge Mall this September, the only shitty thing being that it will conflict with my drawing class. Here's hoping my instructor isn't too cross with me right off the bat. Here are some press releases with the details (the second one claims that I am smooth. I shall not argue this:)

Friday, August 21, 2009

I Wanna Be in a Gang, Too!

Happy Harbor Comics will be hosting a Comics Art Show in October. I have decided to submit two pieces, the first being a gig poster for the Archies. Here are the pencils:

Now, I've never been a huge Archie fan, but there's no arguing that him and the gang are comic icons. And I never would have thought I'd have this much fun drawing them!

To fix: Veronica's ham fist. Give Juggie a bit more space on the left.

Oh, and the Bingoes and The Madhouse Glads were both bands featured in the comics. That'd be the best show ever! Right?

Monday, August 10, 2009

Drinken' and a-Drawin' and a-Postin'





Here's a collection of Drink n Draw sketches over the past few weeks. I just realized there's a whole lot of guns...

And you can blame Derek Mah for the guy with the razor. It was all his idea, I swear.

San Diego was awesome. Now working on comic strips for Science Alberta Foundation. Just registered for classes at ACAD today. 2009 is pretty rockin'.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Reliably Unreliable

URGH! So I just spent, like, 4 hours coloring page 1 of No More Parents and then I accidentally saved the reduced version of it. It should do for a rough print out, but not when it comes to actual printing. (mutters various inventive cuss words under breath, all directed at himself.)

Anyways, bitching aside, here it is:

I decided to stick to flat colors, no shading, just to speed things up (San Diego is less than a week away) but I did have to add a shadow in panel 2 because the script called for it, so now it's kind of inconsistent...

And here are pencils for Page 4 as well:

This page is a little sloppier than the previous 3, as I didn't spend as much time tightening the pencils and greying in the areas that will be black (in the interests of saving time, of course.) After finishing the rough pencils for page 5 today, I had to wonder how many more times I could draw Britney angry in a different way. I counted a total of 12 so far, some of them rather similar.

Here's hoping she cools off a bit.

So yeah, SD next week. Holy Canoli!

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Slowly But Surely

Feels like no matter how much I get done, I should be getting more done. And faster. And more. You know what I mean?

I can't seem to get the hang of the Sheriff's face yet, which is funny, because it's basically mine.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Behold...le Backgrounde!

Here's page 2 of No More Parents. Get a load of all the stuff in that first panel!!! There's room for words, right?

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Ju-Ly Peep Show

After making a mockery of sorts out of "Post-every-day-in-June", I've crawled out of my rock with some tantalizing treats for your rods and cones. . . well, at least some of them are tantalizing.

COMIC WORLD

The Comic World exhibit is in full swing at the Creative Kids Museum and things are going great. If you've got a couple of rugrats, you should definitely drop by and say hello and make some comics.

NO MORE PARENTS

I've been working on this all ages tale during my stay at the CKM and here's the first page of pencils so far:


DRINK n DRAW

And here are a few Drink n Draw pics to throw into the mix (the first one, this dumpy-looking, sad-sack Batman, well, it's an experiment gone horribly awry and I wasn't gonna post it, but Chris J demanded it be so. So here he is in all his glory...)







I'll keep updating with No more Parents as it gets completed. Till then, see ya!

Monday, June 29, 2009

June 29: No More Parents - Final Pinup

Well, the Comic World exhibit starts this Thursday so I had to wrap this right up:


It goes without saying that there's a lot I would fix up (like adding an actual ground for these cats to be standing on, and the actual composition, etc...) but the final piece does give a good idea of the characters' designs, personalities and the energy that this comic will have.

Oh, and I had the pleasure of reading the first seven pages of the script, provided by the amazing Mr. Andrew Foley, and they are great! This is going to be a lot of fun.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

June 23: No More Parents - inks

Les inks!

June 23: No More Parents - pencils

Here's a pinup I'm working on for the Comic World exhibit (which starts next week by the way!) I'm going to be posting and displaying this piece in three stages: penciling, inking, coloring.

Because I didn't thumbnail this beast, my composition is way out of whack. I'll be fixing that up before I splash some color into it. The roster (starting clockwise from the top):
  1. Ghost Boy
  2. Chinchilla
  3. Bossy Beth
  4. Fisthead
  5. Can-Do
  6. The Sheriff
I'm half way through ON THE ROAD, by Jack Kerouac. It's getting me accustomed to the idea of not eating much or having a lot of money as school approaches and it's making me excited to meet some more budding young artists. Really excited!

Thursday, June 18, 2009

June 17: Chinchilla Justice!

Here's a redesign for Chinchilla that I'm much happier with. Foley suggested something a little more thrown together. Even goofy. I realize I totally missed the mark on goofy, but I'm sure a confused "wha!?" expression on his face instead of a bad ass one might help that.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

June 16: Ketchup

Okay, so I've definitely fallen behind on my "post-a-day" attempt, though I did do a bit better than last year. But stuff happens.

Webster's Dictionary defines Stuff as :
-heinous computer problems and internet troubles
-writing a short prose story for submission to a local anthology (that feels nice)
-all around laziness

But here's a bunch of character designs for the upcoming No More Parents (which I get more excited about with each passing day:)

Chinchilla! I did this with a brush pen, which is why it looks so sloppy. Maybe I'll stick to the regular pens when I ink the book...

The Sheriff is based on me and a costume I wore to Pure Spec last October.

This is Bookworm and I just realized I forgot to draw the straps of her huge back pack full of books. I think she'll need a bit more tweaking anyway. Looks a little too conventional.

Bossy B--(etty or Bertha or whatever we decide to name her) is my fave design I think. The dress is modeled after one that this lady used to wear at the insurance place I worked. It was so mod and so Kirby at the same time. It was a bizarre thing to wear at the office but I thought it was pretty sweet and I knew I would use it eventually.

In other news:

The Manga I was working on for Zeros2Heros has been posted and you can read the entire volume of stories online right HERE.

My story is called A Day to Remember. I think it's quite obvious that this was my first attempt at Manga, as my work doesn't really fit in with the others (which are all very solid) and just ended up looking a bit too kidsy I think. Ah well. Learning! It was great working with Nick, the writer, and Morgan, the editor. I hope to do so again soon.

Been reading a lot of books lately. Like actual written books. Which is partly why I was so hell bent on getting my short story submitted to the local anthology. I've been bit by that writing bug and it's consuming most of my daily thought. Here's what I've read in the last two months that has my mind a-buzzing:

The Crying of Lot 49 by Pynchon
Animal Farm by Orwell
1984 by Orwell
Brave New World by Huxley

All very awesome. Next on the chopping block:

The Alchemist by Coulho
V. by Pynchon (with more to follow from this guy, I'm sure.)

Saturday, June 6, 2009

June 06: Topless

This is sorta cheatin' but it is still artwork I guess...

Day Six: These are the final inks for the project I'm working on with Robert Burke Richardson: Top*L.E.S.S.. Now, the powers that be are not too fond of the pencils at this point, so we agreed to fully ink, color and letter the first two penciled pages. If the verdict is still no, then I'll try re-penciling. No problem.

Thing is, I've been staring at the first 2 pages for more than a month (put on hiatus as I finished a contracted assignment) so now, I'm sick to death of them and wondering if I even like them anymore. Ah well. Typical artist reaction, I suppose. We'll give it our best and see what happens.

June 05: Lenny the Lineman

Alright, I'm a day late posting but it was Friday!

Day Five: Lenny the Lineman is a cartoon character I created for Fortis Alberta (where I currently hang my hat as a Xerox contractor nowadays) and will probably be making his debut at the Birds of Prey Centre...wherever that is. Lethbridge maybe?

This is a unique piece in that, after I inked it, it was vectored and colored by my friend Sean Rice, making it suitable for embiggening on posters and it's my first official work that's been vectorized. So this is definitely a collaboration.

After the drawings had been inked and colored, the powers that be were originally concerned that his sleeves being rolled up would be a potential safety hazard for this cartoon character. Regulation states that lineman can't roll up there sleeves.

In protest, Sean declared that if we had to change this drawing to pander to this request, we would pull it and replace it with a purple dragon. Lenny was then approved.

HUGE NEWS!!!!

I put in my three weeks notice at Xerox to prepare for a stay at the Creative Kids Museum (at the Telus Science Centre.) Here I will be the resident artist for a limited stay, manning a small exhibit called COMIC WORLD! More details to follow, but basically, it'll be a little place where I will display the history, process and magic of comics, along with my comic work.

Even more exciting, is I will be working on the spot to complete a brand new all ages story called NO MORE PARENTS! Based on an idea I had last year, this exciting romp will be written by Andrew Freakin' Foley and drawn before your very eyes, at the centre, by myself.

Can't wait to get started. The exhibit opens in July, and I'll be posting pieces throughout the month as the date draws closer.

Huzzah!

Thursday, June 4, 2009

June 04: Daredevil (surprise, surprise!)

Ugh. I almost didn't even get anything today but here's a DD. Can't say I'm too fond of it...

Ah well. Onward and upward:)

On a side note, I saw Drag Me To Hell tonight. Scared. The. Shit out of me! It's awesome. Check it out.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

June 03: The Preacher and His Posse

Alright, so technically this is a little late, but I have a very good reason.

Day Three: This is Jesse, Tulip, Cassidy and The Saint of Sinners from Preacher. I absolutely fucking loved this comic when I first read it. I liked it a little less the second time (as Garth Ennis' voice became a little clearer/preachier on second reading) but I will still acknowledge this comic as one of my favorites. Especially considering the awesome dynamic of the two dudes and one chick and the study of a super strong bond of friendship. And the sheer beauty of reading a modern, truly epic western.

I'm a little tipsy from my night of Drink n Draw n...

But I like this piece I think...

We'll see tomorrow:)

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

June 02: Green Man!

Here's a quick one for today as I'm heading off to the Evil Dead musical tonight.

Day Two: It's Green Man AKA Charlie Kelly (my fave character) from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, a contender for my favorite comedy series of all time! If you haven't seen the show, then you've never truly known laughter.

Monday, June 1, 2009

June 01: Jet Pack Mike

I finished my Manga project last week and in typical Nick fashion, haven't done fuck-all since then.

So!

I have decided to try my hand at the "Draw Every Day in x" challenge that my home fry Cognoman always does, partly as incentive to get off my lazy keester and keep drawing. So every day in June, I'll be posting a new pic her on Nick Soup. Sometimes it'll be black and white, sometimes just pencil, sometimes a full color force to be reckoned with. Regardless, something new will be here.

Day One: Chris Johnston's Jet Pack Mike. I've been meaning to do fan art of this guy since April. Visit Chris' blog if you love your eyeballs and be sure to pick up his first comic (JPM) because it's a great read. And I believe it's his first comic ever to boot! (What a bastard...)

Wish me luck. I almost regret it already:)

Oh! And feel free to make requests if you want to see any particular characters drawn. I'll probably run out of ideas pretty quick.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

"We Will Not Join Your Ballet."

Yes, so my blog has been rather truant, of late, so here we go. Update, ho!

After this evening, I'll be over halfway through my Manga project! Yes! And I double checked with my editor and he said I could post a small preview of my stuff. Double yes!


It's a cute little story, full of cute, adorable things. It's quite sweet and pretty fun to draw. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't have the urge to depict some horrific violence to compensate. So on that note:


This is a fresh idea I loved two weeks ago that I only sort of like today. Basically, if humanity took a different evolutionary turn and ended up a bit more predatory, what would office life be like? Life or death, baby. You could get eaten by the boss for fucking up those TPS reports. Or maybe just because he's hungry! . . . I'll work on it.

Free Comic Book Day was last weekend. I went to Edmonton with a coupla the VA guys and Fiona as well. And it was freakin' AWESOME! Thanks to Happy Harbor for throwing the legendary bash! You can get a taste of the wickedness by reading Stephanie Chan's report here. Sketching all day with Steve G., Chris, Fiona and Steve R. was so much fun and the party at HH v1 that night was outta control! And then I lost a buncha laundry money to Steve R.'s horse race game. Take my advice, kids: Quit while your ahead! :) Here are a few more pics of the madness:



That's right. Ladies Roller Derby.

Oh and the week before was the Expo! Rocket Juice debuted to a smashing success! We're nearly out of our first print run already! And the VA Dance Party was also tons o' fun. You can actually see a clip that was posted by a dancing fan on the YouTubes. Damn ghetto blaster was malfunctioning but fun was still had.

Well, it's been crazy busy this Spring, but most of the madness is through. I do have an awesome project in store for this July but I'll have to hold on to that mystery nugget of wonder for another month or so. But rest assured, Comic World is coming.

Here are some unfinished pics from yesterday's Drink n Draw:



Thanks for stopping in.

PS Hey, Fiona. I won the blog-update-race that you didn't know we were playing.