It's kind of fun to do the impossible.

Make your own fake band cover. Saw this on Brent Schoonover's blog which is some thing going around on Facebook apparently but I try to avoid those things. This did look like fun though, so here is my version. Do it yourself following these easy to follow directions. (Oh yeah, my quote is by Walt Disney and I love it.)

1 - Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to “Random quotations”
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

5 - Post it to FB with this text in the “caption” and TAG the friends you want to join in. (you can untag yourself if you don’t want this photo up)

Harry Potter

click for full size. The pencils and inks for this are available at the sketchjam!

I've mentioned in the past what a big Harry Potter fan I am. I know some of the writing in the books is geared toward the younger reader and it can be a bit derivative, but I am hooked on them like crack. I've probably read the first five books three times each, the other two only once and now I am making my way through all seven audio-books as I work at night. I will probably go through a whole series of characters over the next few weeks. One of my dream projects would be to work on a comic or cartoon based on the mythology of a group of Aurors. I would call the book The Marauders and it would feature some of the more adult characters from the book.

Going back to my previous post about my lack of geek, well here is where I totally geek out. I caught the last movie on a midnight showing and I'll probably do the same for the Half-Blood Prince.

Modern TV and Geekery

I had an epiphany earlier tonight regarding modern television and my thoughts on geek culture. I've missed the last 3 episodes of LOST and I missed 2 episodes of HEROES over the last few weeks. I could have watched them as they were recorded to DVR, but then I thought, "why bother?" My girlfriend and her brother do not understand why I don't want to go back and catch up and I realized tonight, I really don't care. Out of the dozens of characters across both shows, I honestly do not care about any of the characters or find them the least bit intriguing. Despite everything that goes on in Lost, none of the characters make it worthwhile, and they keep adding new characters instead of developing the old ones. My friend Javi won an Emmy for writing on Lost, and I did enjoy it in the past, but it doesn't hold any sway anymore. Heroes is just silly and pointless to me and rips off comics for the mass market and makes me cringe. I'll watch it, but I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. In contrast to that, I am only 8 episodes into the first season of Deadwood, and there is not a character on that entire show that I am not involved with and interested in watching their stories unfold.

This takes me to another point about how much of "geek" culture I am not interested in. I don't care about Star Trek and have no desire to watch Battlestar or Dr. Who. I want story and character development, not just nonsense and mystery and confusion. I'm not saying those shows don't offer that, I just have no compelling need to watch them.

My current "watch" list, other than sports, is really just Life on Mars, Batman: Brave and the Bold (which is just flat out fun) and catching up on Deadwood and The Wire. I just don't have time for the commitment of modern television.

Commission & Sketch drive.

In an effort to help with costs of going up to the Emerald City Con in April I thought I would offer to do con sketches for those of you that can't make it to the con. $20, including shipping within the continental US. Black and white on around 6.5x8 bristol board. Here is an example of a convention type sketch.



These are a little simpler than a full-on commission and include 1 character with minimal background. I'm also still doing $50 dollar commissions (a more finished piece and ranging in size from 9x12 and up), for 2 characters with the minimal background it is $60.

Email me @ hurricanekids(at)gmail(dot)com if you are interested.

The Long Road

One of my back burner projects that I want to do some day is tell the life story of a character from age 10 until his last battle as an old man. I've had the character and stories in mind for years and decided to sit down last night and rework the first page from the first book.



It will be a lot of fun to do, but it will be a slow process. Something else that is an absolute blast and fun to work on is a story I am writing for a pitch with art by Scott Godlewski. I won't announce anything here or talk of it much until it is official, but I wanted to drop a sneak peek because he is so insanely talented.



Pencils & Inks by Scott, colors by me. He is so good it makes me think that if I could get this project off the ground, I may be happy just being a writer down the line, as this has been so much fun to work on. Also, hop over to this post on the Den of Geek website where I am listed as a creator to watch out for and Scott is mentioned in the honorable mentions paragraph.

Doc Savage 2

A commission for my friend, I threw some quick colors on it.
Click for full size version.

Doc Savage

clickto enlarge

My friend Scott Godlewski (and amazing artist in his own right) asked me for a Doc Savage commission, this isn't it, but it was a warm up to the fun character. I posted a step-by-step process shot of this on the Sketchjam!

Doc Zombie!

click to go big

A cover I did for Microbrew Comic's The Adventures of Doctor Zombie #2 in which I drew an 8-page short story. Check out their website here for ordering information. The stories are written by an 8-year-old girl and edited and put together by her father. It was fun little project for my friend Brian over there.

TM 2009 Microbrew Comics.