THE BRILLUSTRATOR: November 2012

These were a small story sample I did to send to whoever was publishing the comic based on the original TV version of TMNT. The whole style and layout is fun and accessible; geared toward a younger audience. As you can see, these aren't inked. They were meant as penciling samples. the bits of lettering were just guides for me, not meant to stay either.

This was a sample piece I did as a pitch for doing a comic book based on the TV series, "Jim Henson's Dinosaurs!" It's meant to show the art style and general feel I wanted to bring to it, but also to show that I could render accurate versions of the established characters. Don't forget to click on the images for a larger view.

The next three images are the cover art and two pages from "The Power Within", which was a critically acclaimed anti-bullying comic book project I did with Northwest Press publisher/writer Charles "Zan" Christensen. It started as a 24 Hour Comic Day project, but quickly expanded into a full color project published through Kick-Starter donations. I used a youthful, very accessible style for this book, hoping that a fairly wide range of readers would find it enjoyable.

Also, because he was able to get the publishing costs almost entirely covered, Zan has been able to send much of the inventory to schools and youth programs all over the country at NW Press' own expense, which I thought was a really amazing gesture!

This page was done for one of the CLAW (Cartoonist's League of Absurd Washingtonians) comic 'zines. The theme was for CLAW members to draw each others' comics. I chose to draw my own version of my friend Mark Monlux's "Comic Book Critic" pieces. Mark creates cartoon reviews of movies, so I did my favorite movie and drew it in a style similar to his with a format of relating the movie to my childhood that he might have used. Many of his reviews use elements of his life to personalize a movie-going experience.

Here are a few of the 24 pages that were drawn for a defunct project that was going to be a fictionalized story based on a B-list celebrities' life, written by that celebrity. The project was not to be, but at least I have some sequential page layouts to use as samples...

This was a poster design done for Egghead Software, waaaaaay back in the day! We did a series of them with different themes including this one based on Casablanca. They were colored in flat cartoony style, but I made a photostat of this one and hand-tinted it in a more appropriate mono-chrome.

Here are a few random pages of sequential work, including a storyboard for a commercial, three pages from my "Madman" project for CLAW, a page from a personal project called "Dogwood Tales" and finally a comic strip I did entitled "Reptile Disfunction".

Here are a couple of sample pages I did for a project I was working on several years ago. I was inspired by the old "Sword of Conan" comic magazines and wanted to have a similarly illustrative style, since this was meant to be in black & white.

This piece was our family Christmas card last year. Each year I pick a theme, and for 2011 I wanted to do "Star Trek". I based my art style on Mort Drucker's "Mad Magazine" ST parody since the card would be caricatures of us. I, of course, am Captain Kirk! I'm posting it here as an example of an inking and coloring technique.

This pin-up piece was done mostly as a sample dealing with using established characters.

These two color pencil/watercolor pieces were projects I did at Sun Sportswear several years ago. They held a number of licenses to do shirts using characters ranging from Luney Tunes to Garfield, and even Disney! The "Lion King" piece I did was one of the designs we took to the Disney offices in Burbank when we were trying to get the license--which we did! The other was a Christmas card I was asked to create for the company.