I'm not done...

...so don't get too excited pointing out all the things that are wrong with it. I also have texture to add. There will also be a more Greek version of this one coming before I color the other two. I think.

Wondy inks

My brush decided to get a couple of wild hairs...literally and it felt like I was inking with a mop. (That gives me an idea for a project on a much larger scale. Note to self: remember) Anyway, I'm not super happy with the inks, but they'll do. I had intended to color them this weekend, but I spent most of my time eating and watching television. Good times.

In her satin tights, fighting for her rights...

...and the old red, white and blue!

Mr. Jim Lee redesigned Wonder Woman's costume and while most agree it's high time for an update, not everyone loves the new look. I don't necessarily hate it, but I feel pretty iffy about it. You can read normal, smart person commentary on the new costume here and a crazy, conservative spin by Jo Piazza at Fox News here. Read and cringe as Piazza tries multiple times to uncover some sort of anti-American flag, Communist comics agenda. "New Wonder Woman Loses Patriotic Costume in Favor of 'Globalized' Duds." (cough...bullshit...cough)

Jemma Salume, however, loves the new design so much so that she did this lovely illustration. Kayla Cline also loves the new look and pays homage here and goes further to create her own redesign. I also dig this very nautical Wonder Woman by Marie Provence.

So with all that talent throwing their respective hats into the mix or throwing their names into the hat or whatever it is people say...I decided to jump into a hat as well...or something.

My thoughts:

Left Wondy has a red leather/armory cuirass with a gold chest emblem and dark blue pteryges held on by the gold belt. She has slightly lighter blue leather/armory pants and Brown (maybe red) lether boots.

Middle Wondy is all casual with her ringer-T. The gold emblem rests on either a white shirt with red sleeves or a red shirt with blue sleeves. Simple jeans and boots. The first jacket option is red with a white collar and white sleeves. The shoulder pads are blue, each with a white star and the cuffs are red. The emblem is gold and a white stripe runs down the center. The second jacket option is my favorite. It's the same design, but the sleeves, sholder area and collar are blue.

Right Wondy sports a red war cuirass with gold emblem, gold belt with blue pteryges, solid boots of a color I've yet to decide and a leather/armor body suit beneath. The body suit will be either, white, black, red, blue or a light gray. I should note that when I inked this one I got rid of the shoulder pads, the accented collar and I changed the lines of the pteryges to allow for less restricted leg movement.

I've inked them, but haven't scanned or colored them yet. Check back for an inky, colorful update and as always, I look forward to your input!

Playing card box template information...stuff

Wanna make some boxes? Try this template. I've yet to find a PDF, but you can trace these in Adobe Illustrator and all will be right with the world. Don't like this one? Google something like "playing card boxes" or "playing card box template" and see what happens.

Card carrying card makers

Hey all you Illustration 4 kids! Want to know more about making playing cards? Check out the links below for some neat-0 information on rounded corners and actual playing card cardboard.

How to make your own playing cards

corner rounder or kardkutter

Blank air-cushion playing card cardboard

The fruits of Spring Break...thus far

Nautical, steampunkish fruits anyway. A good friend of mine is an art director for a company that produces collectible card games. I created these characters for a game that will come out sometime in the near-ish future. He said I could come up with absoultely whatever I wanted. When left to my own devices this was all I had. A mermaid with a jet pack and a water tank so she can breath in the air is the hero. The villain is a Davey Jones-inspired, squid-headed, robot-bodied pirate. I inked the mermaid and then digitally painted her beneath the line art layer because I was scared I would do a craptastic job of painting her on top of the sketch. I struggled with the right mix of visible line art and painty aesthetic. So...I scrapped that technique and just painted Squid Vicious on top of the sketch and I like it TEN times better. I have, however, spent far FAR too much time on these already and my sleep schedule is so off that I'm going to bed at 8 in the morning and getting up at 2 in the afternoon. It is now Thursday and I have 4 days to get back into a normal routine. Wish me luck.

In an effort to redeem myself

I offer this snazzy illustration of two tigers...um fighting and stuff. Or at least they're about to fight. This was a sports illustration (and we all know how sports illiterate I am) about two different schools competing in the Southern Heritage Classic. Both School mascots are tigers and both use blue and white. So...I had to fudge the blues a bit to make them different enough. Don't ask the names of the teams because I can't remember. Someone remind me to find the PDF of the broadsheet and I'll post that. Are you listening? That's all 3 of you. Good deal.

Big Ass Cat

This is the crappy example of a postcard I gave my students. Poor class. It's a pretty big cat as you can see, but not nearly as large as this guy.

Yes, that is a MATA bus.

Many moons ago (and by many I mean a few and by moons I mean months) I did a pinup for Under Pressure, the first volume of the fantastic web comic Let's Be Friends Again. It's pretty BOSS if I do say so myself. I'm talking about my pinup, but the comic is pretty freaking boss as well. It features quite a few fancy pinups by some really talented folks including Maestro Joel Priddy. Because I like those guys (Chris and Curt) so much and because I think their comic is so great I decided to get a little crafty. Stay tuned for more news on said craftiness. ;)

photos of crafty fellows by Lindsey Ninja Turner

Flying Reindeer Paper Craft coming through!

So here he is in all his paper winged reindeer glory...the reindeer you've all been waiting for...Comet. He is NOT up at the CA site yet, but he will be soon-ish and as soon as he is I'll post a little linky here.

Goblincycle

Let's get digital...digital. I wanna get digital...digital. Let me hear your digital painting talk...your digital painting talk. Let me hear...um...that's a real stretch so I'ma just stop. This is my first stab at digital painting in a long time...and I'm rustier than I thought I would be. Done a couple of weeks ago for a friend who works in the collectible card game industry. Goblins aren't really my strong suit, but it was an educational piece I suppose.

More Illustrations with fun page design!

Not much to say about these other than...from time to time I like to think outside of the box...which means drawing outside of the box...and all over the page. Plus, it gives me the opportunity to collaborate and that presents more challenges...and as we all know from after school specials...challenges can be rewarding. You get a gold star!

A little collaboration?

Why not! Let's face it...I don't post that often and you were all seven of you probably tired of looking at zombie Shane. So why not look at this? This was a fun piece for two reasons. One was that I got to break out of the drawing norm and play around with something a little more...playful. I bought some hotwheels and that leads me to the second reason it was fun. I was able to collaborate with my good friend/co-worker the lovely and very talented Lindsey Turner. She takes awesome photographs whether or not she admits to it and she shot all the hotwheels for me. I like typing "hotwheels." I took all her pictures in to photoshop, cut them out and then placed them on a little drawing of a road and an inspection station. The story is about shelby county merging their inspections with the city of Memphis. The car at the very top left is a Plymouth barracuda. I want the big people version of this car and I want it now. Look at how nicely the photography and illustrations are playing with one another...cough cough...NPDA participants...cough cough. sigh. Maybe next year, NPDA. Maybe next year.

Testing...testing...one...two...zombie shane??

I'm taking a stab at zombie artwork for a possible zombie-related project. I decided to suit up, zombie out and take some photos of myself. I haven't nailed down my process yet, but it starts with photos and involves some xerography and then inking with a brush...and then some coloring with le photoshop. Have a look. Tell me what's working and what's not. This piece is still in progress.

The Graveyard Girl

I don't normally post images for print BEFORE they print, but this time I'll bend my rule. The N.I.E. (Newspapers in Education) folks at the C.A. are adapting a children's story called "The Graveyard Girl" as a serial starting in September. The book has 11 chapters that will be broken down into two chapters per week with two illustrations each. That means I have to get busy.

I don't want to give anything away...so I won't. I will tell you that the story centers around 3 children who meet at Elmwood Cemetery during the yellow fever epidemic in Memphis during the late 1870's. I've been once this week just to get a few rough sketches of the caretaker's cottage, but I'll be going next week to spend a few days getting more detailed sketches of the interior as well as landscapes and headstone references. I love research! I've found very limited photographs of 1870's clothing, but if anyone has access to images of late 19th century clothing give me a shout!

Jupiter Jonah is my hero

Shobo and Shof are hard at work on some really awesome Jupiter Jonah stuff so I thought (as per Shof's recent request and Shobo's request from a fabillion years ago) I'd dust off the old sketchbook and post some of my Jonah sketches. When I couldn't find them I did this one! I can't quite place my finger on it, but Jonah looks real familiar. Hmmm.

Call Centers = Customer Service Nightmares

So...I don't really feel like writing at the moment so...I'm not going to. Read the title. Look at the image. Pretty self explanatory.

What do you get when you cross Luchadores, the 4th of July, and a Newsbot?

Give up??? THIS GUY! Just in time for Independence Day I'm releasing the very colorful and festive Independence Bot all bespangled and starred. Bestarred and spangled? Starred and Spangled? Be...spp...st...whatever. The templates will be up for a short time sometime this week and this little gem assembled and signed by yours truly will be available for the winning in some sort of contest super soon as well. I'll post a link to it when it's all set and stuff. I know I'm riding on the coattails of previous newsbots by simply redecorating them, but gosh-darnit if it isn't fun to do! I have quite a few more newsbots planned for the rest of the year. Maybe a back-2-school bot (thanks, Ashley) and some sweet-sweet newsbots in Halloween costumes just in time for...Halloween. I think I'm even feeling a festive, Holiday Newsbot or two and maybe...just maybe I'll go out with a bang with a Happy News Year Bot. That might be a stretch. We'll see. Maybe if everyone's good...at the end of the year we'll collect them all in a book...that you could buy on our online store. It's an idea.

Also...I have a sunburn.

photo by Lindsey Awesome Turner

The Iron Giant or Wordy McWordsalot

So...this post is a little bit on the long-overdue side. I don't know if long and overdue are supposoed to get a hyphen or not, but we're going with it...partly because I'm a rebel when it comes to grammatical rules, but mostly because I'm a rebel when it comes to grammatical rules because I can't remember grammatical rules.

It's overdue because I'm something of a procrastinator and by procrastinator I mean lazy bastard. It's also overdue because I didn't really know how to approach blogging about it for fear of sounding like I'm bragging. Now, we all know bragging is something I'm not opposed to, but in this case I really don't want to come across that way.

Here's the deal. Two of my (now former) illustration students who shall remain nameless have left my tutelage. They won't be taking any more classes with me and they decided to do something special for me...something really special. They got me the sweet sweet Iron Giant toy you saw above all my words. That bad boy was in the original box for the last 10 years so I did the only logical thing...I opened it and played with it.

It all started when they wanted to meet shortly after the semester's end under the pretense of me looking at some of their work and discussing projects they might want to tackle over the summer. I should have known when I showed up and the previously mentioned artwork to be reviewed was nowhere in sight. Ultimately, the second student arrived and they proceeded to say wonderful things about me as a teacher and how much they appreciated the ways I helped them this past semester. It means a lot to me that they feel this way because there are times I really wonder whether or not I'm helping students. I have no formal training as a teacher and I can only hope that the knowledge and experience I pass on will help propel them further into their careers as students and artists. I know students like me because I'm funny, but I hope they like me because I challenge them and they learn from me. There are days I feel like I'm just a badass and I'm on top of my teaching game and then there are days I feel like a total hack and a fraud. It's esepecially scary because you find yourself caring about each and every student. They become peers and friends and you want to see them succeed. Not to mention I find msyelf learning from them as well and I think that's just fantastic. As I write this I feel myself wishing I'd waited another week to try and plan out something that flows a little more smoothly, uses fewer words and ultimately just sounds a little more eloquent, but one week will turn into two and this big giant thank you will remain unsaid for far too long.

While I didn't cry in front of those guys..I did well up a little. I'm an emotional guy. What can I say? They both worked overtime at their jobs so they could afford this thing...this thing that you can't just get anywhere anymore...because they don't make them anymore. I feel touched and completely unworthy, but not so much that I'll give it back. It's totally mine now. What's so awesome is that I never knew these toys even existed. I LOVE the Iron Giant.

So...I didn't cry in front of them at R.P. Tracks over my barbeque tofu sandwich...but I did cry in my goggles on my way home...on my motorcycle. Have you ever ridden a motorcycle wearing watery goggles? I don't recommend it.

At any rate...for what it's worth, you two, thank you from the bottom of my heart. You made my day. And to all my students who work so hard and bring so much enthusiasm to class...thank you as well. There's a bumper crop of really hard-working and talented students in the illustration/comics program at MCA right now and I'm fortunate to be a part of it. May the force be with you all.

Ghost sketches

Howdy Gang,

I realize it's been quite some time since my last post, but really...isn't it always? So two things...no, three. Actually, there may be more than three so I'm just going to get into it.

One: Me and Ashley have a house now and we're in the process of rendering the kitchen...less-wood-panely. That's a word. I looked it up. We're almost done...and by almost done I mean we need to repaint the kitchen AGAIN because we don't like the blue...and there are several cabinets left to be painted and put back on their magical hinges. You'll all have to come visit soon. I'll post pictures when the work's all done.

Two: I will be posting later tonight pictures of a sweet sweet gift bestowed unto me by two students who I will no longer have the privelage of teaching and who will be returning to the legendary tutelage of the legendary Joel Priddy. I'll save all the sappy verbal goodness for that post...but trust me when I say it's sappy and full of goodness...and ROBOTS!

Three: I've decided to try my hand at some pencil submissions of the Dark Horse character GHOST. She dresses all in white like a ghost and carries twin handguns like a ghost and goes around shooting up bad guys in a vengeful way like a ghost. I've only read a few of her comics, but I'm pretty sure that was the general plot...that apart from her cleavage. I'm pretty sure the comic was mostly about her cleavage. My GHOST is a bit more conservative...at least in dress. I got rid of the little lacy window on the chest/abdomen of her suit because really, what purpose does it serve outside of reeling in 12-year old male readers? I think it would be nice to continue to show her shoulders so there's a moment of contrast when the scarf thingy...at least that's what I think it is...drapes across said shoulders, but I may still end up covering her clavicle and upper chest so that when the cape/cloak is down she's completely white. A word on that cape/cloak/hood/scarf thing. I cannot for the life of me figure out the mechanics of that thing. I have no idea how it stays on. I'm guessing at it's construction in my sketches. I think the scarf attaches to the cloak and that's how it stays on...because it sure as $#*t doesn't tie on and it isn't like your average hooded cloak. No sir. It's like some sort of modified nun's habit or something. Anyway, to make a long post short (too late) these are my sketches. Just warm ups and screwing around mostly. I've downloaded the 8 page sample script from Dark Horse's website and am going to pencil it up and take it to Wizard World in Chicago this summer so as to get feedback from some industry folks. I'd love to snag myself some fill in work on a book and maybe get the proverbial foot in the door.