ComicConfidential

OK, one week away from ComicCon and the pressure is on. These images are actually from a children's book I'm working on with the woman I did my first book with. Our first collaboration was a pirate book for children, entitled "Prissy Pink and Pirate Purple". This new book is about an elementary school girl in the 3rd grade with a bunch of monster children training to be witches and warlocks. She becomes upset because the other monster children have two eyes and she has only one. The first image is from the line in the story, "Kati is a little shy and hides her head in books, because she only has one eye, she is bothered by her looks".   I spent more time on the book titles than I did with the illustration. I'm pretty proud of "Witches are from Mars; Warlocks are from Venus". 

This second image is supposed to be a class photo. I really didn't want to come up with an entire classroom of monster kids, so this became a photo of the kids mentioned in the poem. "All of Kati's other friends have so many things, all eyes and legs and tentacles some even have three wings. Bella has a skinny tail that she swings around the room. Leon has six tentacles that glue him to his broom. Feta has a slimy tongue; it drags down to the floor, and instead of having two wings, Spindle she has four. Kati always felt so odd and very out of place. Why is she the only one with one eye on her face?"

Off to San Diego in one week. I promoted this on Facebook and I thought I would throw it out to blogreaders. These two pieces below will be something I will be handing out as a business card at ComicCon. Come by the SLG booth, buy an autographed issue of Sanctuary, and get a model sheet!

And of course, Cleo has to have her own. I have some big plans for Cleo in the next story arc....

I will be in San Diego for ComicCon from Thursday, July 12th until Saturday, July 14th. Please come by and say hi!

Unnecessary Cosplay

 I've only been to 2 comic conventions in my entire life. Both in San Francisco and both have been wonderful  experiences. Part of the great experience is seeing all the people that come out of the woodwork and  parade around in costumes. The second wonderful part is seeing the aging celebrities signing autographs at the booths and finding out whether they've aged well. Most of the time, they have not. One of the celebrities I encountered at my first show was Erin Gray, who played Wilma on Buck Rogers (aged well). Recently, I started watching Buck Rogers on Netflix and was horrified. I have fond memories as a child of watching Buck on Sunday mornings and loving every second of it. Now when I watch it, the scripts are terrible, the acting is terrible, the special effects are laughable, and since the show came out in the time of disco, all the actors wear disco outfits! Please don't Google Gil Gerard, who played Buck (did not age well). Remember him as he was. (Pictured left)

I had come up with an idea a few months ago to do a "people waiting in line to see a celebrity at a comic convention" illustration and had sketched out some ideas. When I was asked to sign copies of my comic Sanctuary by SLG for Free Comic Book Day, I was excited. I try to do a brand new illustration for every themed show (see previous posts) and decided to dust off this idea and make it work. I had to have a Lord of the Rings person in there. I had to have inappropriate cosplayer and an old guy wearing glasses over his costume. By the way, Cosplayer is a term used to describe someone that dresses up for comic conventions. 

   

Of course, there are some Cosplayers with no shame. Some that do not have access to a mirror or anyone that can tell them that what they're wearing is not appropriate. That was when the idea came to me. The illustration would be "people that should not dress up for comic conventions" or "Unnecessary Cosplay". 

 

The gentlemen above must not have anyone in their lives that can tell them to stay indoors, when dressed up. They can't possibly. This is what it would look like if Spiderman's worst enemy was all-you-can-eat-shrimp-night at Hometown Buffet. When I started sketching out ideas, I drew a fat man in a wonder woman costume first as a tribute to Lynda Carter (aged well) and went on from there. The poster in the back is clearly an homage to actors and TV shows of the 80's. Although the actor on the poster looks like Chuck Norris, it was more of a reference to Gil Gerard or Tom Selleck. The Viking woman in the background was inspired by a book I recently purchased that was about the art of Jack Cole, who was an artist for Playboy magazine back in the 60s.   

Below is the completed version. Sorry, I didn't put in any thumbnail sketches. I think it turned out pretty well and many of the people that purchased copies of Sanctuary on Free Comic Book Day received a postcard-sized version of this. If you're interested in a print, contact SLGcomic.com. 

While searching for suitable images for this blog post, I saw this unsuitable image of Buck and couldn't resist.  Can you?

Pirate Arrrrrrrt.

To all the artists in the audience:  Have you ever been drunk and playing Uno with friends and came up with what you thought might be great idea for an illustration?  Allow me to present... (**using your best pirate voice**)  "Draw fourarrr!".

Ninjas in Love

OK, OK. I know this is a hot-button issue. Do ninjas fall in love? And, has there ever been a story told of two male ninjas falling for each other? This illustration came to mind while I was watching the horrible 80's movie American Ninja, last week. A predictable plot, horrible actors, terrible dialogue, and only two scenes with actual ninjas in them. You know, it's so bad that it's good. While watching, I was trying to come up with ways to turn this movie around. Space aliens, cowboys, or even if the two ninjas started making out. Anything. 

Yes, that movie poster says, "The deadliest art of the Orient is now in the hands of an American". Classic. Later that week, I sat down in a coffee shop with my wife and began sketching. Sometimes I felt bad because she was working on her dissertation (boring) while I was drawing two ninjas making out (interesting). These images below are some of the originals that I drew at the shop that night. Then something strange happened while I was putting it together. It actually started looking good.  I was just as surprised as you!  Things began to take shape and it wasn't bad, from a technical/composition perspective. I even drew them in a heart-shaped embrace, which was unintentional, but I liked the effect. 

Ok, let's really put them in a passionate embrace. Masks on. The cloth of their costumes still over their mouths. All the ninja weapons should be in view (Katana blade, throwing stars, quiver). Maybe they've never seen each other's faces before. Maybe it's forbidden, but they can't help themselves! I sat down to paint it pretty quickly after the final sketch. This was going to be a Valentine's Day illustration for the show coming to the SLG gallery on the 1st of the month. People already thought I was strange for the romantic zombie illustrations in November's show so, what the hell. The final piece was done in about 2 hours in Gouache with colored pencils. It is currently hanging in the gallery. Yes, I used very warm colors to accentuate their passion. 

Actual dialogue from the movie American Ninja:

Shinyuki: The Black Star Ninja has betrayed the code. 

Joe: Then... he must die. 

How did the Academy Awards miss this gem?

Romantic Zombie Comics of the 1950's

I had been working on ideas for this project for a few months. SLG (my publisher) had announced that they would be having a zombie-inspired art show to accompany their annual zombie walk. People get dressed up like zombies and walk the closed-off streets. SLG even offers to make you look like a zombie by having makeup artists come in to zombify you. I love putting artwork up on their gallery wall, so I started coming up with fun ideas using zombies. The first thought I had was replacing the people in the romance comics of the 1950s with zombies and I ended up sticking with it. These images were a big inspiration. I love the bottom image. In case you can't read it, it says, "If we don't stop now... we'll be living a lie!"

                                             

These are the beginning sketches. I came up with two ideas that I liked equally. The first was a woman zombie opening up her door for a blind date and finding a zombie nerd waiting to take her out. She says, "Oh great, my first blind date in months and he's a nerd. Sigh!"  I decided to leave her as a zombie, but thought it would be better to change the man at the door to a regular non-zombie nerd. She is still upset. The woman's look is kind of a June Cleaver from Leave It To Beaver / Barbara Bach from Mission Impossible-type look. Very Mod. 

The second illustration (on the right) would be a teen romance cover. The boy on the right is a zombie and the girlfriend is not. I thought it might be funny to have both of them using thought balloons. She is very enamored with him and all he can think about is eating her brain. I didn't do any sketches of this one which is unusual for me. I just sat down and started drawing.

These illustrations are post-lettering. Again, I went with logos that might have been found in the 50s and then added the SLG logo for fun. I switched some of the ideas around after consulting with Dan and Bryan at SLG and these became the final pieces. The woman is still upset, but it's because she wants to eat the brains of an attractive man. The teenage boy has already eaten the brains of another girl and now he wants more. He's running out of girls to date! I tried doing some versions in watercolor and gouche, but I found that the color studies I did in markers ended up looking the most like the 50s versions. 

Zombie Afterthought:

In one of the Treehouse of Horror episodes of the Simpsons, Bart and Lisa raise the dead with a book from the local library. Homer grabs a shotgun, goes outside, and meets the zombie Ned Flanders. Homer shoots him dead. 

Bart Simpson to Homer: "Oh my god, Dad! You killed the zombie Ned Flanders!
Homer: "He was a zombie?"

Anatomy of a Wedding Invitation

When I was told by Tara that I would be creating our invitations, I started thinking about making an illustration with us in it. I wanted something that would look like us and maybe be a little old fashioned. Something that you wouldn't normally see as a wedding invitation. I was very influenced by this illustration from Dicken's Christmas Carol. This was from the Fezziwig Christmas party that the Ghost of Christmas past brought Ebeneezer to. I really enjoyed the festive atmosphere and wanted to bring that to our wedding invitation. I was also curious about what I would look like in knee socks. I love the fiddler playing in the left corner. 

I started off with some simple sketches and even watched Gone with the Wind to see some dancing styles. I paused the DVD player a few times and tried to catch some dancing moves from that time period. This was the result. Then I noticed how much my butt stuck out. The two images below are without the background. B+W and color study. I wasn't crazy about the shadow cast over Tara's body in the color one, and although I like the idea of two people dancing alone, we were going to need some background friends. 

I changed the light source to the back of the image to take the shadow off the front of Tara. I added some fun dancers and even managed to keep the fiddler in the background. The couple to the left are Fezziwig and his wife.  I saw in Gone with the Wind some garlands that were used as streamers in a dance number, and I thought they would be useful to occupy the upper space in the image. I then did more color studies to get the right faded background that the Dickens' illustration had.  

These were the final images. You can see that the light source becomes more of a yellow tint. I darkened the bottom of the image and lightened more of the back. When we took it to the print shop, they cropped it with an oval shape. That became the final image. We complained that, after cropping, they had cut out the fiddler in the back. They took the piece back and moved the the fiddler, digitally, to fit. 

"A small matter, " said the Ghost, "to make these silly folks so full of gratitude. "
"Small!" echoed Scrooge. 
                                             -A Christmas Carol