I've done a lot of commissions this year. Below are all the ones I had on my computer. This doesn't include things I drew at my artist alley tables. One of my New Year's Resolutions is to better capture those and make sure I can display them, too. These are ones that I worked on at my studio and either colored on computer or scanned the original before I sent it out. There are 55 pieces here. That's more than one a week!
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Let's see, I put out the last (for now, at least) issue of Love and Capes, and Mark and Abby finally had their baby. I wrote and drew the first issue of the first My Little Pony micro-series, which ushered me into the Ponyverse and has completely changed how I've done conventions. I lettered Taran Killiam and Marc Andreyko's Illegitmates, I wrote and drew some Gutters strips, lettered Jeremy Dale's Skyward, worked for First, Lone Star, drew some book covers, and continued my relationship with Learn It. And I did an insane number of conventions: WonderCon, Emerald City, Comicpalooza, Denver Comic-Con, HeroesCon, Comic-Con International, DragonCon, Wizard Ohio, Baltimore Comicon, Cincinnati Comic Expo, Fax Expo, Akron Comicon, C2E2, GeekGirlCon and New York! I did almost a dozen store signings, too. I wrote a couple more Pony stories which will see print in 2014, and I even wrote one more thing… but I'm not sharing that publicly until next year.
I drove across the country, made new friends in LA, walked around Vasquez Rocks, wrote in coffee houses on two coasts, saw a ton of Thrilling Adventure Hours, experienced the magic of Disneyland (including Club 33!), watched my not-Godson fight Darth Vader, took my Goddaughter to her first musical, and watched my brother Robert get married. I met a ton of fans and got to spend lots of time with my friends and family. Best of all, I got engaged to the lovely Amy Ratcliffe, who despite her obviously questionable taste in men, is a pretty amazing. I love her so much.
So 2013 was pretty amazing. Here's to an even better 2014, and I hope yours is fantastic, too!
(Photo by the talented Rachel McCauley)
I wanted to do something special for the last one, so I knew I'd do color. More than one character seemed natural, too. The Fantastic Four seemed the perfect fit.
And this was hard. I drew and redrew this one over and over. The Thing was the toughest nut to crack, since I was going for that Kirby/Sinnot/Byrne look. Also I like the classic flaming Human Torch before computer color made things look different. I started following the book shortly after the
Ironically, I think I used every technique I picked up on this one. Custom rulers were used to ink Mr. Fantastic's stretching. There were multiple layers, lots of resizing, and a ton of brush work.
Thanks for being part of this project. I'm debating putting these together as a skecthbook, either digital or physical, for the 2013 season. Let me know what you think.
I always liked the Seventies Catwoman uniform. It's not the semi-practical cat burglar outfit she currently wears, but this one is just more fun to draw, with the cape and the skirt and the flowing-ness.
I did tweak my settings on this one. I'm learning to modify the Cintiq as well as the Razer. I now can control the brush size from the pen buttons on Manga Studio, something I couldn't do before. And it's similar to how I change
Tomorrow is the last day of this Advent project. I may go off the board and pick something on my own, but I want to finish this thing in a big way. It's been fun. I've got an idea to keep it going in January, but I'm not positive I want to do that yet. What do you think?
Oh, that wacky Silver Age. Everybody had a magical imp
Tomorrow, another Bat-character.
If it's a Saturday, it must be color time. And what better color this Christmas season than green and She-Hulk.
I have two tones for my shadow layers. I have a brown I use for daytime scenes, and a blue that I use for nighttime scenes. Most of the color pieces I've done have been the default brown, but here I used the blue. I think it plays well with the green skin tones.
To my mind, She-Hulk's best uniform was when she was with the Fantastic Four.
The current one didn't really speak to me, as it looks mostly like a swimsuit without much character, though the colors are good. But the costume she wears on Agents of SMASH with a biker short cut I think suits the character well. I just picked a purple closer to her current comic book incarnation.
No, I haven't seen the new film, so don't ask. I might catch it on cable or Netflix. But I'm a fan from way back. I used to get the radio shows from the library, and I watched a couple of the shows
And I loved how Clayton Moore never showed his face in the show. I borrowed a little of that when I created Ben, the mysterious leader of the Benefactor Agency in my Raider series. I never let him show his face unmasked either.
Nothing bold or new in my process here.
Here is this year's Christmas card. If you didn't get one from me this year and you usually do, I had some problems with my address list. These things will be fixed next year. Also, they went out late, so you may not have received yours yet, either.
Inside it reads:
Hope you have a Merry Christmas!
(and we'll know if you don't)
Today I offer this two-fer… meaning, I've drawn characters for today and tomorrow, so you won't get a #tzadvent drawing tomorrow, sorry. But it's in color. It's a Christmas miracle!
Frank and Sadie Doyle are characters in the excellent Thrilling Adventure Hour, a new-time show in the style of old-time radio. It was one of the favorite things about being in LA. The show was always delightful, frequently hysterical, and I've had the chance to meet many of the cast. I love this thing so much. Hey, they have a graphic novel out
Download their show on iTunes, too. The Christmas special is up now. You'll get to hear Paul F. Tompkins and Paget Brewster as the Nick and Nora of ghost hunting. These two loveable lushes get into all sorts of trouble, all while being madly in love with each other. Other installments include Sparks Nevada,
It was also one of my first dates with Amy, so it's got that going for it, too. You meet someone who loves that kind of thing as much as you do, you've got a keeper.
There were some techie things on this one. I drew the martini glasses on a separate layer, making it really easy to make them glass colored. And I used the perspective rulers to draw the box in the background. That perspective ruler is a powerful tool. I need to learn to use that better.
Hope you have a great Christmas Eve!
Not all these grand experiments work. This drawing is maybe 80% of what I wanted it to be.
I was less successful with the arm and leg bands. What I did was ink the figure without those bands, and then create rulers to put them on a second layer. I had a hard time creating the right shape rulers.Years of working in Illustrator make me expect pen tools with bezier curves to work a certain way. They don't. I know I'll figure it out eventually, but three iterations of this drawing and I just said "Let's do what I can with what I can work."
That's partly a failure, but it's also a decent work habit, I think. I could have spent another co
uple of hours or more figuring it out, but I decided to use the tools I did have in my toolbox to finish it. You don't always have the the luxury of infinite time. Sometime deadlines don't allow that. So you have to figure out a way to finish with the things you have and still make it appear in your acceptable percentile of professional.