A Friend In Deed

This year during our Great Yearly ceremony, The C.L.A.W. will be awarding the lovely Carmen Melendez her very own "Friend of CLAW" fez in recognition of everything she did during 2012 to help us with venues and and events that featured CLAW involvement!

I was asked to create her invitation to the ceremony and decided to make her a fun little paper sculpture of her favorite character, DC's Harley Quinn, the Joker's main squeeze! Here are a few pics of me making the presentation and of the final piece itself.

Congratulations, Carmen--but most of all, thanks from all of us in the Cartoonist's League of Absurd Washingtonians!

A Super Christmas for Da Boys!

Just wanted to share the pin-up pieces I made for three of my nephews as Christmas presents. I did them on actual comic boards with all the blue lines, to give them an authentic feel. My sister was able to tip me off on which hero each of the boys particularly idolized.

I thought it was interesting which characters they picked. In a way it gives a bit of insight into each of their personalities. It just seemed that each one's choice was perfect for him. Makes me wonder about my own favorite comic characters...and what that says about me. Mind you, my favorites change from time to time, and I suppose theirs do too. I remember, though, how much I used to like Captain Marvel--a kid who could speak a magic word and become an invulnerable and powerful adult. And I always liked Spiderman, a guy who always felt torn by his secret life and guilt about his inability to be everything he thought he should be in both of his worlds.

Oh sure, I liked the Flash and Superman and Batman and many others. But there was always something about Captain Marvel and Spidey that really spoke to me growing up.

Hobbity Holidays to all, there and back again!

OK, it's finally here! My new Brill/Stockham Christmas card for 2012. This year's theme is, obviously, The Hobbit! I had initially thought about doing one based soley on the designs of the new movie, but since it was going to be caricature-ish and cartoony, I thought perhaps I should base it more on the old Rankin/Bass TV movie. You know, the cartoon one with John Huston as Gandalf and Orson Bean as Bilbo. Thats why the cutesy cartoon version of me is wearing that particular outfit. But when working on the sketches of Bel and Edmund, I realized I preferred the new movie designs for their costumes. Although, in deference to the cartoony style, I gave Bel fantasy comics/games elf ears instead of purely LotR ones. Sorry Bel! Also I liked the movie gollum better for our dog (whose name is actually Gandalf) than the REALLY creepy TV one! I put our other Husky, Luna, in the background as Smaug. Our cats Merlin and Gallifrey are portraying Thorin and Elron respectively.

In any case, it's a bit of an amalgamation of the two, which works for me because I LOVE the old Hobbit movie! And as much as I enjoyed the Peter Jackson movies, I still have a soft spot for the style and watercolor wash elegance of the Rankin/Bass version of middle Earth.

Anyway, happiest of Holidays to everyone and hopefully an even happier new year!

PS: Here is the black and white line art.

Honorable Rabbit-san!

Recently I saw a drawing challenge posted by a site called OzComics on Facebook calling on artists to post their own interpretations of Stan Sakai's beloved comic book character "Usagi Yojimbo" and I just had to toss one in! I love Usagi and have a collection of the books (not quite all of them yet, but working on it) which are wonderful tales told by a master storyteller.

This was the drawing I did for the challenge. It took about an hour and a half...and he turned out looking too much like the Grinch to me, but all in all, it turned out pretty well. I even received a kind compliment form the samurai rabbit's creator, which was a real treat! Thanks Stan Sakai for giving us over 25 years of Usagi's adventures!

Brillustrator Artwork Samples

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.

Please browse through other pages of my blog to see my comic book sketches and other art projects such as chalking and paper sculpture.

Election Day 2012

Sorry about this, but I am a man that likes puns and when I saw the viral video of the little girl who was "tired of Bronco Bama and Mitt Romney", this is the image that popped into my head and I've been dying to do this sketch ever since! So late last night I decided to get it out of my system.

Whatever your political persuasion, please just sit back and enjoy the power of the pun!

Hop, Hop and AWAY!

Decided my sketch from The CLAW's last Open Swim meeting, of the long defunct "Hoppy, the Marvel Bunny" needed to be inked. It came out pretty nice, I think. If only I could get someone at DC to do this as a kid's book! ^0^

Meanwhile, next to the inked version, here is my original sketch done at the event. I used red pencil to represent the main color component of the costume, since I knew I wouldn't have time to ink it properly at the event. I used an actual comic book page board because the event was about comic characters and I felt it would give my presentation an air of authenticity.

Cheers!