Going To Lowes For Krystal Klear Tomorrow

I Enjoyed painting directly into a toned xerox on card stock. I'm going to use krystal Klear on the next one and see if that's a better way to work. Harder to cover the xerox than it should be. I also want to try one where I come back and darw into it again. The clear coat will help that. It's on Ebay with all it's flaws. Added some changes to the painting. Put Batman's feet behind a random curb plane. Changed the break of the Monkey Wrench (pipe wrench actually) arm so the anatomy was closer to right. Couple of more dabs here and there.

Would need a lot of work but a good head start on something to digitally paint into. Got the colors from that Mickey Video game that was done in Austin.

Rick & Son Visited Me In Portland....

...and I forgot to post this drawing.

Trying out one of Rick's cool brush pens (I think?).

Tuesday WIP

The idea is that Batman really has his hands full with a giant berzerk ape. Bloody, ripped to tatters. Could really use a hand from someone with super strength and invulnerability. And who zooms by over head without a look his way. Sumbitch Superman. Going to spin the Earth backwards or something. It's going in Batman's book Superman.

From the Cork/Lil' Okie Ellis Crossover

...Because it's Tuesday.

Lil' Okie Ellis looks about five years too old here. Think I'll have to re-do it.

Sanders-Croods-More

On His Blog

Comic-Con San Diego Pro Registration

WOW! Pro-Registration opened at 10:00 this morning.  I registered at 10:15 and got a free guest pass for my son-in-law. At 10:30 there were NO MORE FREE GUEST PASSES! No telling how fast the Pro-Registration slots will fill up.  Recommend signing up quickly.

Groan! Peer Pressure... Too Great... Must... Contribute...

 

Well, these really weren't intended for black and white, so I just de-saturated them.

Last call for TAG book

Okay Gang, this is the last message I will post pestering you for art for the TAG Sampler art book.  I’ve started putting the book together, but there’s still a bit of time to submit art for the book.  I’ve got a lot of great work in the book so far, but there’s still room for a bit more. 

As a reminder, any piece of art will do.  It doesn’t need to be something you made specifically for the book or even something you did at TAG.  There’s a lot of really terrific work submitted so far, and a cfew of actual comic stories to boot. 

If you’ve already sent me something for the book-Thanks!  It’s a great, diverse collection of stuff.  If you haven’t contributed yet, please do!  I would love to include your work. 

The deadline is January 28^th!  After that I will submit it to Lulu.  Once the book is available there I will post a message letting you know where to go to get your copy(s).  Thanks again!

Update:  I've added color and whatnot to the TAG Sampler cover... what do you folks think?

 

 

Beautiful! But Raymond's complexion is more of a warm, pasty white.

Notes on Cover

I selected everything but the characters and header (actually selected the header and had to fix it later) Darkened all the bkgd elements and desaturated them a bit. Reversed the selection and super saturated the other bits Just going for pop. Try to ignore the bad register on the mask

Will Disney Crush This Guy?

Does he deserve crushing?

Probably an actor, not the director. I think he was mainly a DP and writer.

Chris Sander's Xtra Croods Boards

Good Stuff

Interesting-Checkpoint Sudios? XSeed?

I had a ground floor opportunity with this company. I assume they are still going but as XSeed. Sounds like the main guy suffering semi-freeze out was Brian, who started the whole idea. Lots of me reading between the lines. I don't really know anything. The art is some residual crap I did for them that is still haunting the machine in Google images.

And I just read that THQ is defunct. I assume that affects my old company, Heavy Iron. They primarily got their funding from THQ.

TAG Annual Sampler Cover?? (Line Art)(UPDATED)

Submitted for your approval. Always takes longer than I expect. Inspiration from those Golden Age covers where the villain plays with the hero/heroes as if they're toys in a sort-of fantasy tableau (I'm thinking old Batman and Robins). Dunno if the translation to our TAG ouevre is satisfying for you guys. Please comment!

If you guys like it, it's all ready for Rick to color and font-ify.

(UPDATED: Rick thought the last word balloon was overselling it...and he hates bad words like #@*%.)

Illustrator Tracing

Illustrator really does a nice clean up job on felt tip pen inkings

A 73 percent cheaper alternative to the cintiq reviewed

Learned another edit trick for clean up

This flick was BAD ASS!!!!

Rented it on Redbox a week ago and was so impressed I bought it. Makes up for the Stallone mess (Cheesy and fun as it was) but this was like watching Robocop and getting that same rush I did with that in 87.  It's violent,  brutal and very stylish. Worth the $$$$. I want a sequel.

Ron Pages (Opinions Needed)(UPDATED)

(UPDATED with final images...unless you guys have any suggestions)

Fellow TAGsters, what do you think of this as a 6 page Ron Thompson layout? Ron was kind enough to leave one of his sketchbooks in my care, and I've scanned these and tried to lay them out in a compelling way. I'm still in the process of cleaning up the scans (lots of smudgey detritus clouding the images). But what do you think? Would 6 pages be overkill? Which pages do you like the best?
(and the yellow/red matting is just the comic page guide.)

Talk to me, you all!

The Teen Ellis Lives!

Yes. Done. Five pages detailing an unknown episode of a certain Oklahoman's education (unknown even to him!).

I welcome suggestions!

Tuesday Bit Of Illo Brush

I'm thinking I need to do some re-writing tomorrow. Work on a script and polish it up.

Polar Bowler 1st Frame is now available!

Polar Bowler 1st Frame, our first game out of WildTangent Studios, is now live for download from iTunes!  I'm pretty happy with the result... the game looks good and plays well.  Go download it onto your iOS devise and have some fun!

One of my TAG book conrtibutions

One of the pages submitted from various past sketches.
Set to Greyscale.

Just Because Tom Asked

I'm no good at fancy fonts and such...everything begins to look like the Peachie folder doodlings of some middle-school girl.

But hey--perspective! And tonal coloring! I feel very proud of myself.

Y'know, I don't really know what possessed me to do this story, other than it makes me laugh.

And of course, a love of all things ELLIS.

1971 US Grant Yearbook Research for Marty

Hey! What Happened to Not-Quite-Teen-Ellis?

Just felt like adding a cool image.

Frazetta and Kirby get their share of love.  Wally Wood needs some attention too.

I've discovered a Wally Wood Tumblr.

Tumbl-in with Wally Wood as the search criteria gives great hits. Mid 50s on. Wood Tumblr

Enjoyed the desolate shot of Wood. A spartan type of living arrangement that Wood was totally used to from his rural life, military, dive apartments etc I read most of a bio book on Wood. I went to the location in Van Nuys where Wood shot himself. It was also pretty grim. Health issues made him decide it was time to shoot himself not grim surroundings.

Another no frills shot of Wood at work. Simple table, drawing board in his lap, straight back wood chair for posture.

Looking for Dok

I've been trying to get a hold of Dok without much luck... does anyone know a good email address or phone number for him?

Quick doodles from last night. Experimenting with tracing up imported bitmaps. It stiffened me up a bit. But I think I can get a groove established on it. The tentacle drawing wasn't traced up.

Brush Tool in Illustrator

Sketched up the same way you'd use a ballpoint pen. I need to get a lot closer to illustrator. I understand a lot of its vector goodness, but I'm still novice level.

This is getting fun. Got a brush doing some very expressive thick to thin and got something loose like I like. And of course the illustrator illo is totally scalable. Just exporting high rez JPGs for the blog.

It's official now. I'm having too much fun

I thought this post could stand one more dollop before bed time. It's 11 where I am. It's 9 in my beautiful California. I weep.

I Know It's Bad

But I'm going to try and sell it anyway.