Guest at Seattle's Emerald City Comic Con!
in Comics
Clarence: Rest Stops
in Comics
I am pretty excited about this! My first coloring credit with BOOM! Studios! It’s in stores now, and it has two variant covers. I’m about to head over and grab some copies for myself!
Happy New Year!
So 2015 was quite an interesting year for me. There were fantastic ups and some truly awful downs. I had some money woes, drama, health issues, and intense career frustrations… but I’d rather not dwell on the negative when I had so many positives, too!
This was my second year as a full time freelancer, and I managed to significantly expand my client base. I did another album cover, worked on two different card games, a miniatures games, and a classic tabletop RPG. I painted backgrounds for an animated short with a long distance studio, and that was fun! I also got my first licensing deal (it’s jewelry… and it comes out next year! Squee!)
In education, I spent most of the year enrolled in Chris Oatley’s OALive class, now known as the Storyteller Summit. I learned quite a lot about storytelling and writing in general which led an amazing chance to pitch in writing a movie script, too! I made a lot of awesome friends in OALive, including the amazing comics group, Team Space Bear!
I revamped my website, and launched an entirely new comics-centric one, which was exciting because I’ve always wanted a place to focus on my cartoon work. It also helped me solidify my online branding.
Comics-wise, I published Guardian Corgi #2, and have two more comics in progress currently (one’s a 22 page one shot, and the other is a longer format). I finally got my first comic onto Comixology, which means I can now sell comics from three different platforms! I also have a brand new webcomic, Clucked, that I work on with Joel. It’s gonna launch in about 2 weeks!
I was a guest at the Norwegian comics convention Stribefeber, which was AMAZING! I absolutely LOVE that country, and really hope I can return again in this year.
I also became part of the amazing community that is The Comic Bug. It’s fantastically supportive and full of fun people. The Los Angeles Womens Comic Creator League is also now a group I’m a part of, and I contributed to their anthology that comes out this year.
Rounding things out, I’ve started adding more Pro notches to my belt– I’ve started doing colorist jobs for BOOM! Studios, and my first job was coloring an OGN that comes out in a few months!
I’ve got some solid goals figured out to shoot for this year both for leveling up my art skills, and expanding my business. Plus, I’ve lined up some conventions I’m REALLY excited about, including a of Pro Table at Emerald City Comic Con! My main goal is to create tons of comics! I am SO ready!!
In my personal life I got to go on some fun adventures including going to Mexico, spent a good amount of time enjoying Oregon (including Portland), had my bestie Prentice visit me in LA, and got my mom out to the West Coast. I also saw Weird Al and Tim Minchin in concert, and I finally got to the Getty!
Oh and I turned 30, I guess.
I made new friends, and had insanely good times with my current ones. I moved across LA, and in with Joel. It’s been a real wild ride.
So here’s to 2016! Happy New Year! I’m excited to see what adventures it holds! May your new year be amazing!
Draw This Again: Howl-o-ween Part 2!
in Illustration, Animals
Before!
After!
Just like with Zombcorg last week, I decided to go back and remaster my old Pumpcorg piece I did back in 2011. This remastering wasn’t quite as extensive as Zombcorg– I didn’t want to change the original thought of the painting too much.
Draw This Again: Howl-o-ween Part 1!
in Illustration, Animals
Before!
After!
The Zombcorg is one of my more popular prints at conventions and shows– I guess everyone loves a good Undead Stumpers.
I don’t typically go back and rework old pieces of mine. But, because I’m going to be adding more to the corgi series, I wanted to revisit this piece and give it some love. I’ve learned quite a bit and have much better equipment from when the original piece (left) was created in 2012!
- The original piece was only good for a 4x6 print, but now it’s been embiggened up to an 8x10!
- Because I have a Cintiq, my line quality is now infinitely better than my Intuos days.
- I improved on the corgi’s anatomy, having drawn corgis about 800,000 times at this point.
- I smoothed out and revisited bits of the background in an attempt to improve it while maintaining true to my original intent and brushy rendering.
Topexx Dominions
in Illustration
Lately I finished working with Space Monkeys Down on their new tabletop card game called Topexx Dominions.“Topexx Dominions is a tactical combat card game where you, as the General of your army, are pitted against other armies in a battle for supremacy.”
Sounds like fun, right? There’s steampunk and crystals and all sorts of interesting material in this game. I would assume it’ll take a ton of strategy to play… which sounds hard to me because strategy games are possibly the thing I’m worst at. What, you want me to THINK and PLAN? I spend all that energy on my freelance career, kthxbye.
The kicker is that the cards are in a hexagon shape, which sort of blew my mind. Planning a composition for a half hexagon (with symbols on top of it) is a particular challenge, especially when you’ve got to create art that can be reused for things like banners and promos.
Check out the rest of the illustrations in the collection below (click to enlarge):
Clucked: Meet the Characters!
So today I've got some Clucked concept art to share with you to get you excited for the start of the comic!
Sanders comes from a distant solar system known as the N.E.S.T, and is, as you can see, a chicken. His planet is plagued by war, and he has journeyed to Earth in search of his chicken brethren for aid. He finds out very quickly that while they’re all extinct, they also are the most sought after snack in the entire Universe.
That makes Sanders “Public Eatemy #1″ and he’s gonna have to hustle tailfeather to survive and save his planet!
Sanders’ wings and how they work! It’d be really hard to have a protagonist who doesn’t have hands, so I took some time figuring out how feathers could also double as “fingers.”
I took some inspiration from how Disney did this with Wilbur in The Rescuers Down Under. They made some really interesting choices with how they’d deform his hands based on what he was using them for.
Some of this is meant to be orthographics/geo notes for 3D model possibilities, and some is showing their capability to deform a bit in-comic. You can really “cheat” reality with illustration! Hahaha you can’t force me to conform to the rules of reality, you tyrant
Kah'la’s a girl from an alien species named the Reptaas. Her kind is reptilian, and can sport horns, gills, fans, scales, or claws depending on the individual. They also have a particularly strong affinity for any Chik-E-Nugz snacks, moreso than the rest of the universe! When chicken went extinct, her species was left hurting for its next fix. Despite her kind going back to their own planet after the Chicktinction, they still have a decently sized population on Earth.
Luckily for Sanders, Kah’la swore off chicken years before they went extinct– she’s a vegetarian! Problem solved… right? RIGHT?
Here's Butch and his son Nom, the butcher team who have their eyes on the prize– the prize being our hero, Major Sanders, of course. They don’t want to eat him, no no! Rather, they recognize the insane value of the last chicken in the known universe… and will do anything to get it.
Comikaze 2015!
Alright Comikze, let's do this!
All set up and ready to go at table F16 at Comikaze! Don’t forget that Clucked will have its exclusive preview here this weekend! Get one while supplies last.
The crew is at Comikaze this weekend at the Los Angeles Convention Center– check us out at Table F16 to get your very own exclusive Clucked Preview Comic and a promo button. We will also have plenty of other fine comics and prints for your perusing pleasure– plus CANDY because it’s Halloween, of course!
Be there or be… chicken?
Convention Evolution
in Illustration, Comics, Career
Well well, my convention prep has grown significantly since I started doing this. The first pic is an example of my convention gear back in 2011– I could carry everything in one box. The box in the picture, to be exact.
The second pic is what my living room looks like this morning doing last minute prep and pack for Comikaze tomorrow.
New Comic: Clucked
The egg finally has hatched! Announcing Clucked, a new weekly webcomic by and Joel Foster and I that’s coming in January 2016!
When a chicken lands on Earth in search of kin, he discovers that not only is his kind considered the tastiest thing in the universe… he’s also the only one left. Can he survive the hungering hordes, cosmic chases and entirety of the Galactic Federation long enough to save his homeworld?
We work together to incubate the story. Then Joel writes, and I create the art. It’s been in production for a few months, and they hope it’ll tickle your funny bones (or chicken wings… so to speak).
What’s even more exciting is that there’ll be an exclusive printed preview of the comic available for sale at Stan Lee’s Comikaze Expo Oct 30-Nov 1 at the Los Angeles Convention Center! There’s a limited number of copies, but you’ll get to read the beginning of the comic a full two months before anyone else!
Hold onto your nugz, because it’s gonna be a wild ride!