2010 Sketchbook

I got this thing done this past spring for Chicago's C2E2 comic convention. Since then they've been sitting in my office waiting for me to get a storefront up on my website. Well, it's finally done. It wasn't even difficult. I felt slightly not-stupid for being able to figure it out and get it done, but slightly stupid for waiting so long.

So anyway, if you have any money left after SDCC, and have an interest, head on over to my website here and pick up a copy.

It's sixty pages of black and white work covering stuff done in the past ten to twelve years. The majority of the drawings have been redone this year to bring them up to my current level of skill (or lack thereof). They are mostly done with Photoshop and my Wacom Cintiq. Here are a few pages giving you an idea of what's inside. They're flying off the shelves like sleeping turtles, so hurry!

Yeah, I know. I'm not famous. I'm not even moderately famous. I am full blown unknown in the world of comics - well, in the world of everything really - but one day, when that's all different, this first volume will become invaluable. Just think about that. Granted, all of us might be long dead, but your great great great grandchildren will love you for what you've left them and they'll think of you when they're smiling to the cameras on "Antiques Road Show". And yes, for some reason I think that show will still be around then. Hopefully our frozen heads will be able to lean back, relax, and still watch it.

Tweeting

It should be obvious from my posts here that I'm not short_winded. That should make life through Twitter fairly difficult. I don't even have a clue what to say. So why am I doing it?

Hmmmmm...

I think I'll have to get back to you on that one. You can follow my confusion @luxuryninja

Generation Text

That's the name I would give the generation that includes current high school students.

I was on the train a few weeks back and noticed a teenaged girl across from me texting away. I called a friend of mine. We talked for a half hour. Yeah, that's a long phone conversation for a guy, but whatever. We were talking creative stuff. At one point I thought "that's the difference between my generation and hers: if I want to talk to someone for that length of time I'd rather just call," which I was doing. The girl, meanwhile, kept right on texting. Finally, off the phone, I started reading a magazine. I didn't pay attention to the girl while reading but when I got up to get off the train the girl was still texting. Could she have taken a break while I was reading? Yeah, but somehow I doubt it. So that's like an hour of straight texting.

A week or so later I was on the train (aaagain) with my wife and in front of us sat a couple of teenaged girls. Across from them sat three of their friends. Five girls, together, talking away. Yakkity yak yak. And texting. Texting texting texting. Nonstop. That was impressive. I watched the girls in front of me and was further impressed with their texting speed. It seemed like they were texting as fast with their thumbs as I type with all ten of my fingers (and I know how to type).

And then, as if all this weren't enough, I came to the most startling revelation after about forty five minutes: these girls? They were texting each other!!!!!! I kid you not. One of the girls would type something and another of them, across the aisle, would laugh and say "yeah" or something. That blew me away. Sitting together on the train yakking it up isn't enough? Apparently not. Wow. So is this generation just that ADD or or they just that adept at multi-tasking?

And why is it always the girls that I see texting so much? Do the guys do it too? To that extent?

Manga Studio 4 EX

I picked this up recently because it was on sale for a very good price. I've been using Photoshop since sometime around 1997. I'm used to it. I know ten ways to do anything I need to do. Why try something else? Well, it's good to keep your brain sharp and up to date with what's going on in the digital art world. It's also good to constantly experiment; good for your art and, hopefully, good for your productivity.

It's been a slow process but I can say at this point that Manga Studio is worth every penny.

It's not a perfect program by a long shot. Worst part about it to date: the manual. Ugh. It takes some significant brain power to understand what their intentions are. They leave stuff out and half of it's labelled wrong. "New Special Ruler: Speed Lines"!? No such thing, but there it is in the manual. "New Special Ruler: Radial Lines"? Yes, but you have to figure that out. And the fact that you have to create a new Ruler layer, then select the type of ruler you want to create, then click on the layer you want to draw on? It's mentioned once, way earlier in the chapter, then never repeated. It should be repeated for each set of ruler layer instructions, for boneheads like me.

I know, I know, gobbledygook.  :-)

Yes, I still do a lot of my comic work in Photoshop (under drawings,  sometimes"inking", putting together pages) but I'm starting to do more and more in Manga Studio. It's so efficient. Panel borders, word balloons and captions, and now, as of tonight: speed lines! These tasks are all tasks that have traditionally taken a fair amount of time in either Photoshop or on an actually piece of paper. With MS I cut these tasks down to minutes instead of hours, and for a guy who's slower than he should be, that's a significant change. Worth blabbing about for a minute? Obviously.

Okay, I said I'd post art next time so here's a sneak page from Recovery Incorporated.

Through the Wormhole

I've got a couple of funny stories to relate but I wanted to post new artwork before doing that. All three have been put behind the need to say "I love this new series - Through the Wormhole - with Morgan Freeman." Can't help it. I'm a super geek. I draw stuff and love science. I loved Cosmos as a kid and I think this is the next generation of it, exploring the universe and how/why it is the way it is. Science has come a long way since Cosmos originally aired (late 70's, early 80's?) and this show is really up to date with current theories and the work scientists are doing to gain further understanding of our world.

The official website is here and you can watch the first episode, if you like, on youtube. I don't know if it will stay up on youtube (different channels have different attitudes about having their material there), but if the link's still good, you can start watching it here.

Okay, I'll post some new artwork next. Then relate more weird stories from life on a commuter train (which I don't even take regularly anymore but have been on a lot recently for one reason or another).

Press

Not sure how long this will stay the headline, but the first press is finally out for a magazine I'll be a part of. It's called Strip Magazine (no, it's not a sex thing - think "comic" strip) and the first issue will be hitting the English market in November. That's English as in England, not all places where English is spoken predominantly (too bad). Click  here to see the article.

My story, created and written by me and my buddy Dean, is called RECOVERY INCORPORATED. Mia Raven is the main character and I'll leave it at that. I lie. I can't help it. It's an action packed kind of story. How's that? More? Okay. She's an American immigrant from Portugal with a troubled past and an addiction to risk taking. Here's some character studies I did of her.

Note to Commuters

This is mainly aimed at guys, but if there's any women out there doing this, you're included.

You're on the train, you forgot to bring along things to keep you occupied, and you're bored stiff. Because of this you can't seem to ignore the booger lodged up your left nostril. You try but it is a powerful thing and compels you to get it. It's okay. It happens to the best of us. Get it. Don't, however, forget this fifteen minutes later when you're still bored and you look at your fingernails and think "huh, I really should trim those," because when your fingertips go in your mouth and the biting begins, well that just crosses a line.

Either one is less than ideal when in public, but we're all human. It happens. But combining the two, specifically in that order? That's a no-go, as we used to say in the army. Just sayin'. People are watching. ;-)

Otherwise, happy commuting!

Sketch Cards

After C2E2 this year I decided to start doing a sketch card a day. The daily bit lasted a whopping three weeks. I'm not the fastest artist in the world so sometimes I really have to buckle down and work on actual work without distractions. I like doing the sketch cards though so will try to keep up with it the best I can.

The reason? During C2E2 I was asked to do a few commission sketches and I hadn't drawn openly in public like that since college. I work quietly in my office, often digitally or on marker paper where I can redraw things over and over (using multiple sheets of paper or layers in Photoshop) until they're 'right' to my eye. These methods allow me to redraw and edit very easily. Sitting in McCormick Place and drawing 'one shot/one kill' was waaaay more stressful than it should have been and I was disappointed in the results. I said to myself, "self, that's not going to happen again."

So that's the reason. To try and stay true to the 'working live' conditions I set up a couple of simple rules for myself: have no idea what I'm going to do before sitting down to do it and then finishing it in 45 minutes or less. So for better or worse, these are my results so far.

Easy Come, Not So Easy Go explained

More pages from The CORPS!

Jobs come and go. It's a part of life. This one wasn't so easy to let go, unfortunately, because of the 'not getting paid' part. That's hard. So there, now my stupid title has been explained. Not that anyone was wondering. It was bugging me, I admit it.

Design A Character

I love coming across new things, especially fun ones. I found this group over on DeviantArt called "Design A Character", link ,and thought "this should be good, fun practice". The first challenge in progress since joining the group (earlier today) is called "Drop In". You take a picture and add a character that would seem to fit.

I went to a website where I knew there would be interesting pictures, link , picked the first picture of interest I came across, and this is what my brain produced. Fun, and not overly time consuming.

Easy Come, Not so Easy Go

So way back when I posted pages for a comic I was working on with Rick Remender. Devil's Due was the publisher. The book: The CORPS! (pronounced "core"). It was a G.I. Joe kinda thing. I got an issue and a half done and the book got cancelled due to DD's money problems. I have yet to be paid for most of the work. That money's pretty much gone now, as is Devil's Due it seems. Oh well. Such is life.

Since I'm pretty sure these pages will never be published I'm sharing a few of them here that I can still stand to look at. That's how it goes with most of us artsy fartsies - we rarely like our own work. So here are a few pages from issue 1. I'll post some pages from issue 2 next time around.

Okay, so I made a small reference there to farts but it was really by the way side, therefore I'm considering this a fart-free post. :-)

Patience with the Elderly

So when we're young it seems we are constantly annoyed by older people slowing us down. That was me anyways. As I've grown older though, I realize that I will one day be one of these people and they're doing the best they can. How arrogant I was to think everyone was out to get in my way.

So I'm walking out of the grocery store the other day and I get behind an elderly fellow, easily in his nineties, and he's slower than molasses in January. I don't get frustrated though. See? I'm a grown up now. Good for me. The old man peddles along, holding onto his shopping cart for dear life. He raises a shaky hand and waves to an employee he recognizes outside, dutifully watering plants. I think "how nice. What a nice fellow." Again I'm proud of myself for my maturity. I pat myself on the back once more for my personal growth.

Then, after a full minute of patience, the old man lets one rip. FRRAAAAPP! Loud, full-bodied, and full of stink. He doesn't flinch. I'm not sure he even knew he did it, but I sure knew. And that's the thanks I get for being more mature.

No, not all of my posts are about farting. I can't help it if my life revolves around such things. It just happens - there's no reasonable explanation for it. I'll see if I can't post on a different subject matter next time.

Overheard on the train

The METRA commuter trains to be specific.

A young father holds up his infant son and says the following between spurts of giving the child rasberries (putting lips to stomach and blowing):

"Are you gassy like daddy? Are you gassy like daddy!?"

Mixed in were other great lines like "Did you fart? Did you fart!?" and "Did you drop a duce? Did my boy drop a duce!?"

Truth. I Swear.

That was easy.

Thanks to blogspot for the export/import tool! Now I've got way more extra time on my hands than expected. What to do, what to do...

Explaining the impossible

So a couple of years ago, give or take a year, I moved to a new blog. Why? I have no idea. I didn't keep up with it very well anyways. So now that the stupidity has worn off I'm moving back. I'm going to copy and paste all those posts to this blog so that they're not lost. Why? No idea. Just feel like it. I guess the stupidity hasn't totally worn off. Oh well...

Midnight Men

My blog is falling behind compared to my deviantart page. Too many sites to keep up with. Here's a couple of two page bio stories done for The Midnight Men. Their blog: http://midnightmen.blogspot.com/ and their website, newly up and running: http://www.themidnightmen.net./

Fun characters to work with; would love to do more.

America's Army

Well I'm finally getting around to posting some of the pages from the comic book project I'm working on for the US ARMY.

Time to kill? Bored? Can't sleep? Well boy do I have a time waster for you! Follow the link below to the America's Army website and have a read. The cost? A few minutes of your time. Once you're to the page, click the "read now" button in the upper left corner to get started. Some find the controls a snap. Others want to beat doorknobs with baseball bats after about sixty seconds of trying to figure them out. I hope you're of the first variety. Unless you don't like me, in which case I wouldn't feel too bad if you're in the later category. Said controls are not of my design. Just keep that in mind.

http://www.americasarmy.com/graphicnovel/

Yes, it DOES come across as a sales piece for the Army. At times. The Army pays (as in, you know, like, they're the client) so it gets what it wants. Zack Sherman (the writer) and I think there is still plenty to like. We're both veterans - he was a Jarhead and I was in the Army, and yes, we poke fun at each other constantly over it. We've got special forces operatives verifying the accuracy of our work. Put it all together and what you'll get is a military story that is very accurate in the details. Maybe not Tom Clancy accurate, but maybe so.

Thanks to anyone who reads it. If we are considered a success it is because of you. Issue 2 is in production (I'll share a little from that soon) and 3 looks like it's close to approval (everything with the Army is about approval - it's all part of the process). 12 issues is the current goal, so basically I need to shut up and get back to work.

If it is to your liking, enjoy.

SANDYeggo comicon 2009 report: FROM THE FRONT LINES...

So, the show is bigger than ever. It's more hollywood than ever. It's more crowded than ever. Is it more awesome than ever? Well let me tell you...


I don't know because I didn't go. Missed it. It just slipped by. Passed me right up. Stayed as far away from me as it possibly could. I thought about it, tried to wave to it, but I got nothin'. No love. Maybe next year... Or the year after that. Or sometime after that.

Looking for Spring

I think the cats have finally found it, and it's right outside their window! The paper clippy thing was a cheap tactic to get them up in the window, har har, and it worked like a charm.

It's February already!!

Zoiks! 2008 involved a lot of thumb twiddling. 2009? Looking better. During the thumb twiddling I managed to work on a few things, so here are a few of the few.


Yeah, it's a bird. Riveting, I know.


This one? A little more fun. Far from perfect but good practice.


More fun. I started coloring this one and got busy, so colors at some later date.

I snagged a fun gig doing a comic book for the US Army (yes, that's fun for me. Go figure), so I'll share some of that soon.