Night of the Life Zombies

Whoop... got your nose!

Staying in the Halloween-ish theme, here are some sketches from last Thursday's Zombie life drawing session at The Catalyst art space. They did a good job with make-up and got some folks to play victims too. I'm usually not much of a gore fan... but it would be an interesting exercise to employ some anatomy memory and draw exposed muscles and such too. eh.

Wish I knew about this impromptu session earlier-- I know a few aficionados of the zombie craze.

Drawing on toned paper's something I haven't done much of but I'm getting to appreciate it a bit more. White-out helps a bunch to make it kick... or bite.

Great expressions from the model and "victim"

Fun with watercolor travel kit and my new parallel pen. Great way to make thin lines and fill in blacks quick.

The guy w/ dapper 'stache dreaming about r2 wasn't there, just needed to fill sketchbook space~

Portraits of Melancholy Mansion

I sea nothing wrong with my new pet...

Portrait of a Monster as a Hang Man

It's that time of year when all things wicked walk about-- Halloween! These were for AmericanGreetings as one of their new line of Halloween e-cards.

I did storyboards for another one which you can check out on the storyboard side of things here.

For this card, you can upload your own picture as part of a spooky hallway of creepy characters with a hint of misfortune ala. the Haunted Mansion. Moving to the tune of "The Addams Family" theme, the portraits animate to life to the ::snap, snap:: Try it out for yourself here !

The General: May he rest in hair piece

Lady Dashwood is a fan of sharp wit

One of them didn't make the cut and only passes by as a blur, but was one of my favorites...

...so here's a little spotlight on the painting process for the "Guillotine Twins":

You can see I referenced a combination of Thomas Gainsborough, Mark Ryden, and Asaf Hanuka-- one part classic and two parts contemporary~ The twin on the right actually loses his head in a step not because of any nod to the deadly contraption, but because I was trying to make them look alike ;]

Going back further in the design timeline and more process goodness, the above is an initial sketch of ideas done in one of my go-to mediums for art and drink: coffee

Hope everyone carves and paints themselves a fantastic Halloween~!

24 Hour Geeky People

"24" (without Jack Bauer)

This zany event happens every year to test the wits and limits of comic creators everywhere. Challenged by sometime collaborator and sometime nemesis Ralph Miranda, I decided to join in to make a 24 page comic in 24 straight hours, even with a late start last Saturday.

Originally, I was planning to just be a 'spectator'-- even so far was calling the folks [admirable] nuts on the Twitters~ I was just going to hang around and work on other pending projects-- but being around that many people working so hard on comics, I couldn't help but at least try.

The event, started as a challenge by Scott McCloud, is now held all over at comic shops and venues throughout the world. I was at Manhattan Beach's The Comic Bug, publishers of the Infected anthology I was in.

I also had the privilege of sitting near the original organizer of the day Nat Gertler, who had a copy of his soon to be published retrospective on Schultz's "Peanuts". A beauty of a book with lots of cool inserts and behind the scenes about the legendary catoonist.

Below are the first three pages from my story. The little narrative was cobbled together from random bits of funny thoughts over dinner with my girlfriend at Carney's Restaurant in Hollywood-- a diner built inside of an old Amtrak passenger car from the 1920's. [It's likely their website was built in the same era too... :P]

The story is called Dream Destinations and I'd summarize it as "like Inception: but for little kids!" The fantastical stuff comes later with rockets and hamsters and cat food... o my:

Though I wish it had more polish to it, I'm pretty satisfied that at least it's one complete story and actually spans the full 24 pages. There's a few more episodic adventures for the trio to go on in my head and I'd like to add some splashy color fitting for this all-ages genre. First things first though because it's nearing time for....

A.P.E. (without Monkeys)

This happens Oct 16-17 at the Concourse Center in San Francisco. I'll have all eight of the posters from the Nouveau Robotica series as well as one extra large set for the "Aceite Fino" design. I'll also have buttons, screenprints, a mini-comic, and the Infected anthology story too. This will be my third time attending, second time as an exhibitor so I'm really looking forward to seeing some familars and seeing and meeting some awesome indie talent.

Here's more info about the Expo. I'll be at table with #629 with Mirando Calrissian [Ralph], Yan Solo [Stephen], Grand Moff Parsons [Jeremy].