clucked

WonderCon 2017

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WonderCon was a smashing success yet again! This is seriously my favorite show of the whole year: the fans are great, the staff is helpful, and not least at all because I don't have to travel for it!

Testing a display option

Testing a display option

I of course had Corgi #3 available, and came very close to selling out! I'm also happy to report that I sold out of all of my copies of the MANthology. I also had a few new pins, and finally launched a few food art-related items. Wine-o-clock, naturally, sold the best.

I also finally caved and found a new way to organize my pins. This reduces the headache of digging to find whatever pin a customer is requesting off the display board!

When we first arrived, we were disappointed to discover that we were jammed directly behind a giant pillar. This made traffic around our booth extremely tight and difficult to navigate, and it impact our sales in a huge way. Luckily the WonderCon staff was helpful, and they allowed us to move to another vacant table that faced an aisle.

The fanbase that turned out to support Corgi #3 was extremely heartwarming. The amount of times I was scolded for not having the new issue last year was practically uncountable. Point taken, I will make sure Corgi #4 is on time for WonderCon next year!

LA Comic Con!

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This Halloween weekend, I tabled at Stan Lee’s LA Comic Con, otherwise known as “The Con Formerly Known as Comikaze.” 

I was part of the wicked cool Comic Bug Pavilion alongside a bunch of my Southbay comic buddies! Walking into a show and exclaiming “Ooh! I know them, I know them, and yay them!” all the way down a row really changes the experience. I felt like I was nestled inside of a little family!

I was directly next to the Ladybugs and across from the Sketchy Bugs which was great because we had early copies of our new Secret Anthology. It turned into a little signing tornado.

Photo credit Amy Wagner

I was also on my very first panel ever! “The Business of Art Presents: Build Your Audience Even If You Don’t Have a Product” (longest name ever) hosted by Russell Nohelty. We discussed branding, business infrastructure building, and networking, which are all Really Important Things ™ that they don’t teach you in art school. So if you want to “Do Art as a Career,” best learn ‘em! Get on it! Russell’s podcast is a great place to start.

Russell ran a tight ship, and kept the information coming. As someone who has been frustrated with attending panels that ramble off topic, I particularly appreciated him keeping it on task.

I spoke alongside MOM Comics who founded the Ladybugs, Lynly Forrest of Hex Comix, Neo Edmund who has a new novel out, and Bryant Dillon of Fanbase Press. All of these people have achieved so much and are fantastically inspirational to me!

My favorite part of the panel was talking to the audience members individually when they came to my booth afterward for more advice. All of you are awesome, and you go ON with your bad selves and amazing dreams! Kill it!

Photo credit Amy Wagner

I got to catch up with a few Press friends of mine too, including The Grand Geek Gathering, and NerdSoul! Also a post featuring my booth has popped up, written by the delightful Amy Wagner, who I had the pleasure of  meeting. Check it out here!

I had a complete blast at the show, and sold out of Heavenly Kibble Guardian Corgi for the third time! The people asking for #3 finally inspired me to get off my duff and work on it. I mean, I haven’t been busy with a messed up ankle, moving, and getting married (with two parties on opposite coasts) or anything. Not busy at all! Nope!

And work on it I did: I wrote the entire thing during downtime right there at the table! 

Boom! Done! 

Since Clucked is still on hold for pitch development, I’m going to roll Corgi 3 into my workload this month, alongside my new 8 page piece for the upcoming Manthology.

Basically, it’ll be like a NaNoWriMo for me, but NaCoMaMo– National Comics Making Month. Which is a thing I just invented! I like inventing things.

That’s all for now, keep an eye on my Twitter and Instagram for snapshots of my comics in progress during this month!

Indie Comics Day

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I did a video interview about Clucked and Heavenly Kibble Guardian Corgi at The Comic Bug’s inaugural Buy Indie Comics Day. Thank you so much for the interview, NerdSoul! 

It’s really odd seeing myself onscreen– even moreso than hearing my own voice when I do podcast interviews. “Buy Indie Comics Day is an international, annual event to celebrate the indie, local, and small press creators pushing comics into the next millennium!”

It was an amazing event– I got to catch up with a lot of my SoCal indie comics maker buddies, and meet new ones as well.

Special thanks to Russell Nohelty of Wannabe Press for organizing the event, and thanks to Mike Wellman of The Comic Bug for hosting it!

Animated Chickens!

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Animated Chickens!

For this week’s page of Clucked, I made a super cool animated gif of the entire process. If you’re one of my $2+ Patrons on Patreon, you get access to a cool behind-the-scenes blog that explains How I Did the Things, and if you’re a $5+ Patron, you can download the PSD and poke around in the file!

See the finished page live on the Clucked website!

Clucked: Meet the Characters!

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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.