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The Coolest Thank-you

I signed a bunch of spiderman issues and with them I did full figure sketches of the eponymous hero to go with the comic as a thank you to those who supported me. In rare cases I get stuff back. This awesome drawing was done by a kid who is already far ahead of some industry professionals in his willingness to incorporate crazy visual non-sequiturs. I like the robot with the exploding head, the equations, the kanji and the phrase "see you next episode."


I love it.

I also Love Science

Here is a wonderfully geeky musical tribute to great ideas, thinkers and phenomena; a tribute to SCIENCE! I think it is the best thing humans ever devised. I wish more people had an appreciation for how fantastic and important it is.

The Poetry of Reality

Thus this is my pick of the post.

Life Imitates Art.

Periscope studio (where I've worked as a freelancer for the past year and recently been promoted to 'float member' status) started the planned expansion today and before they knock down the wall my friend Rich Ellis did a bit of a fitting artistic ode to our new found destructive zest.




This is extra enjoyable for me because Nathan and I just started a sequence of pages on Tales From The White Pony where one of our characters is knocking down walls. Some of our regular readers evoked Kool aid Man as well. He is everywhere. I can't get away from him. Perhaps spring brings these notions of expanding, smashing free to the forefronts of our minds.

There you are people: my drawings and my life have collided in a mind blowing parallel.

I Do Commissions!

I just did a 'wolverine' for my friend Clinton down at A Better Cycle Shop (where you should go for all your two wheeled needs here in Portland) and here it is:



If you like what I do on the White Pony comic, or any of the comics you've seen published with my name attached, now would be a good time to get a commission done because I'm starting to get busier and my rates are currently dirt cheap. I like doing them as an exercise. It could be a good investment if I'm able to make anything of myself in the industry and a cool doodle even if I'm a total flop!

50 dollars gets you any singular character you like in any setting
(like the Wolverine shown above)

100 dollars gets you just about any set of characters or small team you like.

For 200 bucks the sky is the limit (including color) outside of obvious abuses like "Draw the entire Marvel Universe Fighting all of the DC Pantheon."

Just send an email to Nathan or I at Melee and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Hero Initiative: Josie Rocks!

Hello all. Yesterday Jeff Parker asked me to draw a character from the world of Archie Comics as a variant cover for the Hero Initiative. The H.I. is an organization that gives grants to (generally older) cartoonists that are going through rough times. I don't know much about all those archie characters or stories but I love to draw guitars as a result of the enjoyment I get from playing them. I was looking up drawings of Josie and company and they never got the instruments right. My friend Ben Bates suggested that I 'show them how it is done' or something to that effect. Thus I drew this:



Maybe The Pussycats have specific gear and I've gotten it wrong but I think that a flying v looks cool in any circumstance and it would be a nice upgrade for Josie. Val has a sweet Jazz Bass and I drew a nice full kit for Melody. In any case tell your friends about the Hero initiative, this blog and read OUR COMIC if you please

This should be up on the HERO INITIATIVE EBAY AUCTION PAGE at some point and if you like the ladies I rendered or you know a rich guy who does tell them to give big money for it so that some old cartoonist can get surgery for his cataracts.

On another front I'm currently obsessed with this AMAZING REVIEW of Star Wars Episode I: the Phantom Menace. I don't really consider it actual starwars (or any of the subsequent movies.) I consider it to be fan fiction with a ludicrous budget. This reviewer nails it but he also throws in a ridiculous and awful subplot during the review wherein he is cast as a psycho. That part could be eschewed entirely but the rest of it is gold.

More Thumbnails and Reference

Here are the latest thumbs. One thing I forgot to mention last post is that for certain things in the comic I like to assemble a sheet of reference to use in constructing the images.


In the case of page 97 I wanted some actual wolves while I was drawing the fire wolf.


Here is the final frame. It isn't a direct swipe which would be lame but more borrowing bit from the pictures that lend a bit of believable realism.



PS check out AXE COP if you haven't yet.

White Pony Thumbnails!

Nathan suggested I post some of the original thumbnails I come up with in the process of developing finished pages for our web-comic. Here are the thumbnails along with the originals.

Page 94:





Pages 88 and 89:





Page 95:




And here is a preview of page 96:



If I don't have a clear idea of what I want to draw then I tend to do more elaborate drawings in the planning stage. If I have already done a nice little thumbnail but I'm unsure of the panel order than I occasionally try a quick full page rough like page 94: the first image is just a structure guide to see how it will look laid out. I also sometimes have cause to design a prop and you can see that on 94 as well. I drew a couple of grapple guns and then I drew a model that was similar to what you ended up seeing.

In the case of these recent pages I've been plotting the story and coming up with a rough script that I then send to Nathan for tweaking. I occasionally drop in a bit of dialogue just to drive him nuts as I did on page 95 with "onward to adventure and beyond." He will call me and when I ask him what he thinks of that line I get a whole host of wonderful responses. I love to annoy him with my dialogue and then have him fix it.

I hope you enjoyed this peek into my brain.

As a side note My pick of the post is a charming Web-strip I found called Hell Has Found Me. I discovered a business card sitting on the lunch table, that must have been given to one of the studio members, and I had a look at the URL for myself. HHFM is a nice, light-hearted, Fantasy strip if you like blue-collar Monsters, paintball, talking corpses and other odds and ends found in frequent over-lap with the world of RPGs, fantasy, Comics or any other context where nerds are in great supply.