Just got back from San Diego and the comic convention. It was a beautiful city which I saw practically none of, spending all day in the convention center. Still, it was a dream to get out there and even better that I met so many great publishers and artists. More work to come.
The Philadelphia City Paper is having a call for comic submissions and spurred on by my friend SM Vidaurri, I thought I would give it a shot. The format is odd, 9.875x4.875, so it makes for very long and short segments. Here's a very rough sketch for my idea- that Prometheus stole fire from the gods and, worse so than in the myth, the fire is misused and carelessly treated, and things don't go well for anyone really. It was a really natural evolution of the storyline and I was kinda surprised by the end myself. Maybe a little worried at where such a dark resolution came from. Must be in there somewhere. But certainly not from my living arrangements. I'm surrounded by kittens at the moment. And yes- it's adorable.
Here's a sample of what will hopefully mean more work to come. It's a collaboration for which I provided to coloring. I was hesitant about how I could do when coloring another artist's work, but it went surprisingly smoothly, with the exception of that bear and all the color changes. But even that got under control after a little while. Maybe I should do an Avatar piece soon..
Here's a few sketches for projects coming up shortly. The first is a pin up for a volume of the Teddy Scares comic that APE Entertainment puts out. This bear in particular slept himself to death and I thought it would be pretty appropriate to have him clasped by a skeleton, deep in a crpyt. The panel of skulls is a bit of a homage/graciously borrowed tip from Mike Mignola. I've always loved the way he controls the way you look at a picture by keeping secondary elements within a very small color-value range.
The next one is a personal piece and really just something I've had on my mind that I'll finally get the chance to do. I always love odd juxtapositions and the bird, a grackle, is something I've wanted to draw and color for months. Hopefully it'll be as fun to do as I've hoped it would be.
Here's a picture of my studio as it is in my new place. Probably the largest dedicated space I've had to date and it's great to be able to sit down at work at it.
This is a pseudo-finish done on spec for a client I'm hoping to get to work with. Their AD had made the comment that fantasy work is akin to technical illustration. It's very straight forward, pretty much based on what is "cool," and that there's not a lot of room for interpretation. I think that on one hand, he's right. Most of these illustrations are really to show the mood and tone of the world, or to demonstrate the specificity of a character, beast, or place. It's definitely not the type of editorial process that I enjoy, where I'm the one who's more in charge of the interpretations that the piece can have. As the AD said, "It's an orc. Not a metaphor for an orc."
