My Brushpen Sketch

I read all the content. Really all enthused for the idea of the French Brushpen, all warm glow about what a great book this is and how great the next one would be, and I turn to this final image of me all flustered and bothered about how mortifying it is to find drawings of myself. Loved it.

Giant Robot Sighting @ WonderCon

Jimmy! I didn't have a chance to scan yers. You can add it to this post if you think it is worthy....

WonderCon is officially HUGE. Really great to see Jeff and the Ranjo Children. And JM Gorham puts the "FUN" in "Funion"!!

And check out Jeff's new comic anthology "Where Is Dead Zero?" (click it to buy it!). Great stuff--and Jeff not only contributes a story, but he's Editor-in-Chief, too!

Marty does it again. JMG

More Flash game characters

Here's a few more characters for that game I'm working on. My part is almost done, thank God, I'm getting burned out. Juggling two gigs has been tough

PB Modok

March Modok Madness is upon us!  I was inspired to do a version of PB as Modok, complete with is cool bowling tube.  Don't know what MMM is?  Then go here:  http://marchmodokmadness.blogspot.com/I've also posted it on the WildTangent Studios Tumblr feed:
http://wildtangentstudios.tumblr.com/

Beata said I could post these...

A drawing for the back of HER Brushpen Breakfast book...

OOPS! I wasnt s'posed to post THE OTHER drawing. Sorry!
UPDATE: Got the greenlight. Here's the drawing for Peter, Beata's brother. He liked it, too!

It's still Tuesday, right?

Not much to show this week. I'm enjoying my first GDC and seeing the sights of San Francisco.

Failed Dog Drawing

I'm going back to the drawing board with this one. Just not funny. But I had to put something up for Tuesday--and I can't post the drawings I did for Beata or Ellis's BPB books until they get a chance to see 'em first!

UPDATE: Here's the redo. And no jokes about dogs-as-food, dogs-as-cannibals, etc.

Wondercon, SOLD OUT. for the most part

3 Day passes are GONE, Saturday SOLD OUT, Fri and Sun are still available but are GOING fast. May sell out tomorrow, who knows

The Unholy 3

Bunch more grabs on my Tumblr Fun flick. Most chilling moment was the midget and Victor McLaglen (Hercules) laughing it up about killing a rich guy that begged for mercy. The midget really thought it was funny. It also features a giant chimp. They use misdirection and have kids in scaled down costumes to sell the giant chimp. They don't do it as well as this video from the silent Thief of Baghdad I added the how it was done info as an update to the clip. Because the only reason I posted the clip was the awe I felt for the size of the chimp.

Good for what ails you

Literally Unbelievable.

Reactions on FB by people that believe Onion articles are legit

Desolate Road - It got made

Facebook page The page has lots of stills. Two points in the scroll down, they've set aside a spot for mention of my boards

Behold the Awesomeness!

Look what came in the mail today... about the nicest thank you I've ever received. We are all super impressed! Marty, thank you so much for this. You should go onto Facebook and see all of the comments and "Likes" this is receiving! 

Teen Moloch Ellis

Done in illustrator. There's a silent film I have in my Netflix queue that features Moloch from the Roman times. Cabiria (1914). The scene involves our two reluctant heroes trying to free the royal child from the line up for sacrifice to Moloch. Moloch is this big statue whose belly opens up as a chute to a bright oven. Good operatic lighting. But the movie has no sense of its audience. How they might react to seeing 8 prior child sacrifices before our heroes finally get away with the kid they want. Almost funny. Little kids wriggling gruesomely (real kids) then dropped onto the chute where they disappear in the smoke. That link to the Unholy 3 in the comments allows for downloads. I now own a copy. And it is NOT flopped. Unlike what they stream. The little Midget from Freaks was probably also the midget in the Spanky and Our Gang with the gangster midget. Stymie is, of course, the only one wise to the situation.

Nice, Neat. Color Coded Arm Anatomy

on my tumblr

March Modok Madness!

It's time once again for March Modok Madness!  http://marchmodokmadness.blogspot.com/

Send in your pics now of the oddest of all Marvel villians! 

Back of Book Drawings

Been keeping busy drawing in the back of these Brushpen Breakfast books....

Surly Bird Production Update

Here's a little progress update:

I painted the maquette in 3DCoat  for a basic color breakdown that will be a guide for the final material set-up in Messiah. Still playing around/learning Messiah's material system which is quite powerful. It's node-based, has awesome procedurals and, as the Doll Eyes tests show, is really fast and fun to use. I've gotten some interesting results using displacement in Messiah and I will probably rely on that for wrinkles, furrowed brows, etc.

I've also retopologised the mesh so that it can be animated properly. 3DCoat has probably the best retop tools I've ever used and it was relatively quick to rebuild the sculpt. The whole build took about day-and-a-half.

And lastly, I'm beginning to develop rigging strategies for the head using a combination of morphs and bones. Have to say that Messiah really shines in this department. Rigging is relatively easy and non-destructive. You can make a ton of tweaks without having to start completely over. Still, this is a test rig and I will probably have to make some changes to both the mesh and rig before I can really sit down and animate the character. The current upper eyelid mesh set-up does not accommodate extreme positions as well as I would like, but that's the whole point of testing. I'll make some changes and fix the problem.

Anyway, have a great Tuesday, everybody! Cheers!

First E-Pub

Used Caliber to convert my Albino Story Into a Proto EPub
Sharing it with google docs.

PDF VERSION

That link allows to you to download a copy. Very small file. Uses a placeholder -non related "Cover"

The Epub was a quick run through using the caliber software. This is the unedited, archive version. What I transcribed.

Thoughts about over thinking storytelling.

I understand to a casual reader, this little malformed fantasy borders on unreadable. But I couldn't get over how much I got right, 30 years ago, when I really had no idea what I was doing. Things like - always want more, enter late, meanwhile back at the ranch, getting the senses regularly involved.

There is a lot that works.

I'm going to clean the passive voice out of it and be happy with it. Sell it as a "lost" oddity. A supernatural love story.

Watch out....

Playing around with a special eye shader in Messiah Studio. Ridiculously easy to set up and a lot of fun to play with.

Edit: Here's another test with some tweaks to the iris color, pupil shape, etc. There's a lot of power here and it's pretty easy to get some wild combos.

The Kali Star Trek Show

All the art- Here And she has a KICKSTARTER for an album.

Cork 65

Okay, here's the last new one until I make more.

Doing some research in bookstores I realize if I'm going to make a book of collected Cork strips I'm going to need a lot more pages, so it might take awhile until I have enough content to make a substansive book.  I currently have 65 strips, plus about an estimated 10 pages of filler which will leave me with about 75 pages.  I noticed with other books on the shelves I'll need at least 85-100 pages worth of material to make it comparable to other books on the market.  I don't want to just have a thin book that would seem unworthy of a bigger purchase price.  Plus it would just feel insignificant and without the heft of a real collection otherwise.  So I have a lot of work to do.  Don't know if I'll have it ready by the SD Con... but we'll see.

Transcription-Page 90-Finish on Thursday

Whew. Glad this task is coming to an end. I don't like marathon sessions of typing. When I finish tomorrow, I'll have 106 pages in a continuous rtf document. Any recommendations for the next processor to drop it into for corrections and e-book formatting. Some of you guys have probably researched this. Comment is the last page I typed. You know what, I still don't remember how it ends. I'm going to celebrate when this is done with a drawing or two.

Surly Bird - The Movie

Happy Tuesday, TAGgers.

Here is a quick screenshot and turntable of a digital maquette of Surly Bird, the star of an animated short I am going to make.

The maquette is a revived model I started in Maya back around 2001-2002 and updated in Modo. Then I refined it a bit in Zbrush. The final sculpt and proportional changes where done in 3DCoat. I'll retopo this maquette in 3DC and probably work on textures in Substance Designer. I'm going to rig and animate in Messiah: Studio. I'm working on a plot and storyboards right now. The story will involve his obsession with coffee and how it almost became his undoing. I did a teaser in the TAG Sampler using an alternate character design. I liked the original version of his beak and head.

Edited to add some pencil tests (one regular, one color) of Surly Bird done in ToonBoom Animate. Love that program.

Ronnie & 'Romi (ECCC 2013)

Because I just had to share this one....

Let us honor that surly bird and his lady love.

(They seemed to like it well enough)

Cork 64

Thanks for the comments!  Glad you're happy to see more Corkin's again.  I'm also coloring alot of the previous strips that were never colored (7-29).  I'm moving toward making a big full color Cork book at some point.  In the meantime, here's Gloot.

Page 70 of transcription will be done today

It is beyond weird to be reading something like it was a story I had never seen when in fact I sweated blood writing it . Every page surprises me. I've decided I'll make a PDF of the archive edition and put it on lulu. Also as a free download. I'll get a couple of hard copies and mark up my re-write copy. It's going to take a ton of rewrite before it can be called a passable e-book. I suppose things are written as ineptly every day. I've just aware of the very basic Strunk and White improvements it would be inexcusable not to make.

Cork 63

Hey,

I have three new Corks which I'll put out in the next few days.  As you remember, hopefully, Cork was getting the sniffles in the last strip and she turned Sam's head into the size of Ellis' left butt cheek.

e-Comics platform

http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/6/4072136/comixology-launches-online-self-publishing-platform-for-comic-books

ECCC 2013- mini assessment

This was mostly meant to be a learning experience, to see how this Artist Alley thing works and perhaps do more in the future.  Here's a quick survey of my observations...

What worked:

-Square card reader and phone app. Pretty awesome to be able to take credit cards!

-Finding a niche... I figured out Sat. morning that my little cartoon books could be sold as an "All Ages" book since I didn't depend on sex jokes or explicit language for my jokes.

-Having a spiral bound batch of samples that people could easily flip through. Marty brought a small portfolio with some prints of Teen Ellis and his Black Flag pages. These drew people in to the table and gave us a reason to start a conversation... "These are pages from a story that appears in this book" etc. It worked well enough on Friday night that I brought a sketchbook in of my stuff on Sat. morning and it helped drive more drawing commissions. Heck, I even sold a page from the sketchbook!

-Marty! Marty was an awesome tablemate... super personable, chatty and fun to hang around. Every con table should have at least one Marty at it!

-Taking the bus into town. It's the way I commute every day and the bus made for a stress free morning and probably saved us about $50 of event parking we'd otherwise have to pay for over the weekend.

-Signage. I made little signs telling convention goers in brief terms what we were selling. I think it helped.

Things that didn't work so well:

-Anthology book. I don't think Anthologies sell well. I think people want a narrative and they want the product to be consistent in nature. I suspect that although a lot of folks could find something they like in the TAG book they probably wouldn't want to spend $15 for a few pages that they dig.

-Missed getting a lock on a table for next year. They had a sign up for it all weekend long, but I didn't find the paperwork until late yesterday.  :(

- Single panel cartoons and sketchbooks. My little Nearsighted comics books sold pretty well as did Marty's sketchbook, but I think if we had comic books with stories in them they would have sold much better. If we had a web comic with a following, we could have sold a lot more.

Marty, what did I miss?

 

ECCC 2013, pt. 2 ("Crayon Love")

In a desperate attempt to drum up some business, I lowered myself to doing crayon drawings.

On commission.

Actually, it was pretty cool.

This girl asked for Sailor Moon...like I know how to draw Sailor Moon?!? After some epic internet research on the proper old school costume ("...I want the original, b&w manga version--with the goggles."...oy, vey!), we got it done, and she immediately demanded another.

Crayons! Kinda goofy, but these ladies went away impressed. I think I've found my Comic Con schtick....

ECCC2013, pt. 1 ("A Most Unusual Resemblance....")

Emerald City Comic Con 2013 was a fantastic experience on every level--personal, professional, informational. But the most significant event of the weekend may prove to be the discovery of this young man:

Born to play The Teen Ellis.

ECCC - Darth Maul on Pogo Stilts Playing Star Wars on the Bagpipes

Ellis, you will be sorry you missed ECCC.  It can't possibly get better than this.  I was taking his picture in the lobby when he suddenly said, "I want more people in here," and he unslung his bagpipes.  And sure enough, when he started playing, scores of people gathered 'round.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGY2LG3V8aM&feature=youtu.be

King Kong Musical

With a Giant Puppet! Still going Silverback unfortunately. My Gorilla love and Kong love are two totally separate things.

The Albino - 1982

I had a couple of friends that had a big success back in 1982. They sold their first novel. The pictured OLD FEARS. Really pre-saged the Freddy Krueger idea on nightmares coming to life..
Inspired by their success I decided I needed to write a book. So I did. Toiled my butt off and came up with THE ALBINO. Had it typed by a professional . Had it submitted , had it rejected, and have lugged it around with me every place I've lived for the past 30 years.
Now I'm transcribing it. Ten pages a day. And I have no idea what's coming up every page turn. I enjoyed the first 10 pages. We'll see how the rest goes. It's 107 pages long. That's a week and a half of work. Nothing to it.
Nice having a first draft just laying around. I want to see if I have some script doctor in me. I'll do everything with it once I do a re-write. Try e-books, put it into Final Draft for script formatting. Learn a lot. Have a product to show for it.
It will take a lot of active voice corrections. But I'm transcribing, not re-writing. I want it all down in 1982 archive form as well.
The comment to this post will be the first page.

School Punk Humor

The best kind. Reminds you of why you laugh. Because at heart, you are cruel.

ECCC post-con dinner!

Didn't make it to the con, proper, this year, but I did get to the most important part which is seeing my friends. Sorry for the blurry photo.

Monitor Tablet -DP10U

Has the Amazon links for it. If I had mad money I'd get one for the mac mini. 400 bucks Tumblr review What's cool about it, the only power cord is a USB connection. Vs the multi-snarl of wire for my cintiq.

ECCC Table wares-Via Marty

Marty asked me to post this photo he sent via email. Message was... El! Here's a pic of our table @ ECCC. Can you post it to the TAG blog for me?? I don't have easy Internet access. Having fun--wish you were here!!

Looks like a good set up.  

Rick's let himself go. Marty sent this saying "He abides."

Cool armbar reversal for Tom Moon