Guest at Seattle's Emerald City Comic Con!
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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!
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!
Stribefeber 2015
So I’ve been a little quiet recently because I’ve been traveling a lot– first I was in Atlanta, GA for about two weeks for Dragon*Con, and then Stribefeber Comics Convention in Kristiansand, Norway directly afterward.
Talk about a lot of flying– getting from Los Angeles to Norway took me about 24 hours of travel or so. My body had absolutely no idea what day or time it was! Stay up until 4:30 AM, you say? Sure! It’s only midnight somewhere!
The convention invited me to be a Guest Speaker, and I was honored that they’d choose me for the job. Stribefeber (sorta translates to Comic Strip Fever) is a small show located in the city of Kristiansand, which is on the southern coast of Norway …which means that I wasn’t completely freezing, so hooray for that!
The show lasted Friday-Sunday, and during that time I got to meet a lot of talented European artists and exchange work with them: Chris Stonehill from the UK, Silje Camilla Pilla from Norway, Mathias Dønnestad, and so many, many more. I took part in an interview with the fantastic Michael Prince which was quite challenging and fun, helped Nicolas Villareal out with his weekend-long Visual Development workshop, and also talked a bit about role models for girls/women to introduce the documentary WONDERWOMEN! The untold story of American Superheroines.
Outside of the convention, I got to do a bit of sightseeing, and visited the fantastic Artist Island just off the coast called Odderøya. It used to be a military defense island, but in recent times it’s been given by the government to local artists to house their studios and art projects. Street artists’ work can be seen absolutely everywhere. The island also features some old WWII bunkers (which were REALLY cool), one of which has been transformed into a secret library.
We also visited a district of Kristiansand called Posebyen, which houses the only remaining wooden buildings in the city from before a big fire many decades ago. I think it was 1920 something? Jetlag Brain could not remember the date. Whoops. Anyway, they are considered a treasure so there are many restrictions on painting and remodeling. All of their backyards are butted up to one another too, which creates a lovely interior garden!
Norwegians are an extremely friendly bunch, and I felt completely welcome and comfortable during my entire stay. The country itself is beautiful, and I was quite shocked at how much they support and foster culture and arts.
I had a wonderful time at the convention, and made tons of friends. I look forward to going back to that beautiful country again someday soon!
THANK YOU, NORWAY! (And a special thanks to my friends Ingunn and Charlotte for housing and caring for me all weekend. They are delightful hosts!) <3
Sketchbook Story for OALive
in Comics
So for the last month I’ve been part of a Beta Test group for Chris Oatley’s and Lora Innes’ new course Oatley Academy Live (OALive, for short). It’s an online course that is meant for storytellers who want to create and launch their own serialized personal project, whether that be a webcomic, novel, an animated short, a kid’s book, or even a story-fied portfolio.
The course has been chock full of fantastic information, and one of our assignments was to do what’s called a Sketchbook Story. Basically, we had to crank out a fully finished, beginning to end story based on a prompt– but done in our sketchbooks. It was meant to let you feel the process of creating an entire story and, without polish, waffling, or endless hours spent trying to make it perfect, just get it out there. Just scribble in that sketchbook. Cross things out, tape in post-its, make mistakes.
It was a rather freeing experience. No one is perfect, and neither is any project, which was an incredibly meta takeaway for me, once you read my story.
UPDATE: I ended up turning this story into a fully completed comic! Check it out here!
Free Comic Book Day 2015
Saturday, May 1st is the day that everyone in the comic world has been waiting for– Free Comic Book Day! It’s a day where you can go to comic stores around the country and get free comics. What could possibly be more exciting than that?
… a free Comic Con, that’s what! The folks over at The Comic Bug are hosting a one day free Comic Convention at the Culver City’s Teen Center from 12-5 pm! They’ve partnered with LA Weekly, there will be food trucks, comic vendors, an artist alley, and of course there will be FREE STUFF available!
I will be there and I’ll have Corgi Mini-Comics and buttons for FREE! (Limit of 50 mini-comics and 50 buttons, first come first serve!).
I also finally have more Corgi #1 and #2 back in stock!* They will be available for their normal $5 each, and I’ll be doing sketch requests for $10 (Limit of 5). I hope to see you there– it’s gonna be a blast! A hearty thanks to Mike Wellman at The Comic Bug for putting this event together, and inviting me to be a part of it!
*The fine folks at Ka-Blam Comics Printing really pulled out all the stops this time. I got caught and didn’t reorder my books until too late, but they hustled and I got my order within THREE DAYS of ordering! They’ve been really wonderful to work with so far, and I recommend them for all your comic printing needs!
Interviewed By the Tweeks!
As you can imagine, we bought a lot of stuff at WonderCon. And if you know anything about tween/teen YouTube viewing habits, you know hauls (shopping show & tells) are key. - Tweeks!
The Tweeks reviewed my comic, Heavenly Kibble Guardian Corgi! Check it out at 2:40 in the video.