Duck & Cover Studios Website Launch

My friend Chris has gotten his official studio website up and running - stop by and check out the first issue of his new book Mere Mortal. It's good stuff - pimp it to your friends and help support up and coming talent.

Happy (Early) Halloween!

Mummies, man - they totally steal all the pizza too.

An Unposted Girl

I was flipping through my sketchbook and noticed the above - for some reason I don't think it ever made it on the blog. So here it is.

Hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Halloween Decor

One of my co-workers asked me to spice up her office white board with a scary Halloween drawing. I choose to do it in that old horror comic style:

Edited to fix image cropping problem

Sorry for the bad cell phone pic. The text at the bottom says "How A Mother's Love Saved Her Son ... FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE." Presumably the opportune motherly resurrection is waylaying the wife's murderous plans.

Lastly - my advice for anyone considering a career in the field of white board art: don't. Horrible things to draw on.

Half A Week To Go

Like most aspiring artists, it's my ultimate goal to grow up to be Adam Hughes. He's approximately 9 years older than me, so I suppose I still have a shot - providing, of course, I fly too close to super-penciling cosmic rays or am bitten by an artistic radioactive spider. Otherwise I guess I'll just sit and dream.

Monday Quick Shot: Wonder Woman

A little something for the new week

KaPow!

Okay guys - I'm off this weekend to a wedding. Just a reminder: if you have bring it, bring it like Spider-Woman would. That's totally my new motto.

Updated: Now with color!





And by Spider-Woman I of course mean Jessica Drew. No one else comes close.

Working on dynamic poses obviously.

Sick Day At Work

Haven't been getting a whole lot done the week since my last post thanks to this bug I've caught. Here's some sketches I squeezed in before retreating back to hiding under the covers. I drew on what was closest rather than using my sketchbook - laziness and sickness go hand in hand:




And a little something for the ladies:

Slow Day At Work

Slow day at work, which means some drawings for you guys.

I've been reading the Catwoman trades, starting with Darwyn Cooke's genius revamp with Ed Brubaker. Seriously - Catwoman is hands down my favorite comic book character - I don't think anyone else even comes close.


A little layabout:


So true:


Midway through the week - hope everyone is making it okay!

Mr Moto in 30 Minutes or Less, Part I

Continuing on my 20 Minute Time Limit Cartoon theme, I wanted to try for a longer storyline. Unfortunately I didn't have any good ideas off the top of my head. Deciding that not having something to draw should never stop you from, you know, actually drawing, I grabbed an unread book at random off my shelf.

It's "Right You Are, Mr. Moto" by John P. Marquand.

So here's the deal - I'm going to draw this book as I read it. Since I have no idea what actually happens in the story I've allotted myself an extra ten minutes per page to try and figure out what's important.

The rules:
1. Maximum of 30 minutes can be spent drawing and inking each page.
2. Scanning and erasing pencil lines doesn't count in the 30 minutes.
3. Photoshop manipulation is prohibited except for panel borders.
4. Keep going until either (a) circumstances prohibit doing more or (b) it becomes evident the story's pretty lame.
5. Produce at least a page per week (hopefully more)

To keep things informal, I'm not doing it on my 11x17 boards - it's going to be done entirely in my sketchbook.

I devoted an hour to getting it up and running last night, which means two pages. I discovered two crucially important things:
1. If I'm going to do this in bed I really need to keep a ruler in my bedside table
2. I stink at drawing word balloons.

Beyond that I'm reasonably happy with what I got. Not perfect but finished stuff.



I ran out of time, leaving me with a rather lame title script - I was too busy dreaming of my pseudo-Kirby crowd shot on page 2.



Also, the building tilts to the left on both pages. I'd blame this on my lack of a ruler, but instead I'll just surmise San Francisco fell victim to a horrible left-leaning earthquake right before the story started. Yeah, that's it.

Sheesh.

Quick, quick, quick

It's no great secret that, while extremely productive in quick sketches, I am unable to get larger projects done due to over analyzing every pencil line, inking, and word. This internally manufactured need to make everything perfect results in painfully slow progress and, eventually, project death.

In an effort to combat this, I'm trying new tactics - specifically a self-imposed time limit. If I'm racing against the clock then I have less time to worry about character positioning, drawing perfect window frames, etc etc. I draw fast so I set the time limit a shade under what I can comfortably do to keep me from dwelling on things. Result: some lines not ideal but, by jove, an actual finished product!

Here's 20 minutes on a scratch pad at work with my ol' reliable Pentel and a thick/thin point Sharpie combo.