This weekend I will be in Long Beach for the Long Beach Comic-con hanging out with my pals at the Atomic Comics booth, #555, it will be the big gigantic one right near the entrance. I'll have copies of Hurricane Kids and the Fata Obstant 24-hour comic available as well as a couple copies of Villains left over. I will also be doing sketches and full blown commissions for anyone who is interested. Prices for original art will range from $10 to $50 depending on what you want. Email me @ hurricanekids(at)gmail(dot)com if you want to get on the list early. I don't know how much time I'll be allowed at the booth, but if you're looking for me, you should be able to find me. My pal Ben Glendenning will be there promoting his upcoming book Tin Star Tex with a set of limited edition Tex' postcards. One of which I drew. Check it out, and I hope to see you all there. This piece is actually the first I have ever doen 100% digitally. Pencilled, inked and colors were all done in Manga Studio, with some tweaks in photoshop. I'd love to hear any thoughts on how the inks held up compared to my regular work.
Also, my good friends Scott Godlewski and Matt Bennet are premiering the newest issue of Mysterious Adventure Magazine at the convention. It is a fantastic book of adventurey pulpy goodness, and features a pin-up by me as well. They will be at table #96.
I had a long post typed out and ready to publish about the rigors and demands of freelancing on top of everyday work and responsibilities, but once I re-read it, I realized that nobody wants to read that. We all have our ups and downs and in the end, hard work will be rewarded. Anyway, here is a character design I did last night for an independent film that's currently in pre-production.
Sort of a cool Han Solo Wolf-type character. I added the boots and gloves on the second image for budgetary reasons, it's probably cheaper to not have to costume wolf feet and hands. I also posted a cover layout over on the Sketchjam.
I've written in the past about my affiliation and friendships with several retailers and how those friendships have helped my "career". I put career in quotations because it isn't much of one and I think I still have along way to go. There's Mike Malve of Atomic Comics who has supported me and gotten me involved with the Hero Initiative, which has gotten me as much or more recognition than anything else I have done in the past and he's the man responsible for my appearance at the Long Beach-Comic Con next month. There's Mike Banks from Samurai Comics who I have done classes with and done signings at. There's Shawn at Spazdog Comics who carries my Super75comics titles. I have done classes at Spazdog as well as being my 24-hour comics home. Shawn is a great supporter of local comic artists. Brian Meredith is a small press creator and also runs The Comic Stop in the Seattle area as well as being part of the Emerald City con. Today's post though is about my friend Brian who runs online comic specialty shop www.khepri.com.I'm not sure if I remeber how I met Brian, but he has been supporting my work for years. I always run into him at cons and we would chat and lately he has been a regular at the AZ Drink & Draws. He's a great guy to talk to and his appreciation for comic creators always is apparent. He's not just about the books, or the hype, he is about the Creators, and as a creator you could not ask for anything more. His site specializes in indie comics and creator exclusives. Big name creators like Brian Wood, Becky Cloonan and Fabio Moon & Gabriel Ba' give him exclusive items and trust his work. I recently shared with him my desire to do MY book, the type of book I want to do with no intereference. His support and enthusiasm for that really means alot to me and helps keep me fired up. He recently added my rather small body of work to his site under his Creator Boutique section and I am humbled that he believes in me enough to put me alongside the other creators on there. In the future I hope to do exclusives through him as well. So go check out his site and pick up some gems and support not only Brian, but also the hard work that creators put into their work. If you see him at a convention, be sure to say hi, he might look like a skeletal Viking, but he's really a nice guy.
Here is another character design for a super-hero story I plan on doing next year. I may have touched on this before, but in small press comics, it is incredibly hard to get any publisher interested in a super-hero story. I have even had a couple publishers tell me they liked a certain pitch or loved the art (on a pitch I did with Scott Godlewski on art) but because it involved someone with super powers, they passed. I guess I really don't see the difference between a robot who fights scientists and nazis and other robots (the fantastic Atomic Robo) and some guy in tights who fights scientists and robots and other guys in tights (like the fantastic Invincible). I'm no Cory Walker or Ryan Ottley, but if Invincible is consistently one of Image's top selling titles and there are books like Savage Dragon, Jersey Gods and Firebreather (all books I really enjoy), I can't help but wonder if maybe it's me and not the fear of superheroes after all.Either way, next year I am doing a project just for me, a lot of action, some spy intrigue and with a little big government thrown in for good measure. I'm doing the project I want to do. If a publisher likes it and wants to publish it, great. If not, I will put a couple chapters on the web and then self-publish. I'm very excited right now and can't wait to get started in a few months. I'll keep posting tidbits about it when I have time. Also, I've reached 100 posts on the Sketchjam even though only 90 are labeled, but check them out if you have time.
Thanks for reading, all I want to do is draw some guy getting slammed through a building.
I'm going to be a guest at The Long Beach Comic-Con October 2nd-4th. If anyone is interested in getting a commission or a sketch I am always open for doing them beforehand as I get to spend more time on them and hopefully make them look a little nicer. So email me hurricanekids(at)gmail(dot)com if you are interested. I should be sitting at the Atomic Comics/Golden Apple booth, people in the know say it's right by the entrance. I'm really excited to squeeze in another con this year.
I didn't do a lick of drawing this weekend as I spent the weekend taking a little vacation with my girlfriend. We spent two days up in Flagstaff at the wonderfully charming Grand Canyon Hostel and spent one day bar hopping and the next sight-seeing. I have lived in Arizona for 14 years and have never been to the Grand Canyon so we saw that and also hiked the Lava River Cave. I highly recommend the Lava River Cave for anyone who is not claustrophobic or scared of the dark. It was a blast. Here are a couple shots from my cell phone, I think I was only person at the Canyon that day without a proper camera.
Instead of drawing funny books last night, I watched two movies. Have no fear though as I woke up 3 hours early this morning to work on some pages, deadlines have to be met. There will be spoilers but both movies are pretty old at this point. 28 Weeks Later was first up, and while I knew it probably would not be as good as it's predecessor, I have to say how disappointed I was. Robert Carlyle had an amazing opening scene and was brilliant until he became roid-raged. The way the military was portrayed was really my biggest problem. I don't have a problem with them laying waste to the whole city, because that is believable. But that fact that they had a patient they knew was infected and they didn't even have a guard watching her so that she could then infect her husband. Then they herd hundreds of people into "safe areas" and lock them inside, with no military guards? Ridiculous. Then it just gets worse when the dude from Lost uses the blades of helicopter to chop up a couple dozen infected. He must be the world's greatest helicopter pilot to be able to get his blades within a few feet of the ground and not crash. The worst part was how they made Robert Carlyle the villain. After becoming enraged he hunts down his family? Really? Where in either movie did they explain that the infected are capable of thoughts like that? It was a lame way to create an emotional scene when the daughter has to kill the father. I can already predict 28 Months Later will focus on the infected making their way across the pond and into the US. A quick IMDB check shows the movie as "in-development".
After that we watched A Guide to Recognizing your Saints. A coming of age story based on the writer/director's biography of the same name. This movie was very well acted and the story was heartbreaking. As someone who grew up in a relatively safe environment and as a pretty happy kid, I have a hard time with movies that show the hardships of growing up in the inner-city. They really make me think about how shitty a life that would be, and how powerful it must be to break free from that. Channing Tatum was fantastic in it, leading a wonderful cast. I recommend it highly, I can't really say anything other than that. Here is character design I just did...
