Mermaid Illustration

This illustration was done for a book of poetry by Alex Ness. I have been doing Robotika by this time for about a year or so and trying to do a single illustration felt weird...but it was fun!

Prom Queen (part 2)

Here is the conclusion to the story. I think with a tweak here and there it could have been something like an Eerie or a Creepy short:




Around the time that this story was done, I was thinking of trying to be an inker. Funny enough this is the only panel-to-panel story I ever inked...not too good for someone who aspires to ink for a living. I found out that I just don't have the right head to be an inker. I can't really "read" what the penciler wants. To me it's all about what I am using at the moment. For this story I used a brush for just about everything (because I was practicing with the brush and felt very good about handling it) and looking at it now I think it's a real shame. This could have been so much better if I used a bit more variety of line.

I also remember talking to Leif about the story and I believe he was in talks with someone at Dark Horse about submitting samples for their Buffy comic book. He thought that drawing teenage girls in this story would be a perfect try-out to send to the editors. However, he told me, that by the time he was done with the story, he had his fill of drawing high school boppers and that was that.

Prom Queen (part 1)

At one point, White Wolf Games, were printing short comic stories in front of same of their role playing books. I did a couple and Leif Jones did a couple (which are totally worth looking up just for the awesome art) and than Leif suggested that we should do one together. I thought that was a great idea and agreed right away. Leif penciled and I inked. I thought Leif did an outstanding job storytelling and I still believe that it is just a cool little horror story. Here is the fist 4 pages:






On Friday, the conclusion and some trivia about this short story :)

One-a_day #72...and Amazon pre-order

-How are you feeling Dr. Stephen Strange?
-Just fine thank you.


Placing a pre-order with amazon is so sweet. They don't charge until the books are printed and shipped. So I get to hit the "buy" button a few times and get it out of my system for free...of course there will be a time when I will have to pay for the books, but I'll stress about that later.

So in the last 6 months I have placed 4 books on my pre-order list:

Winterworld by Dixon and Zaffino.
The original 3 issue series "Winter World" knocked me out. Here was the guy whose art was pure energy and anger. It was not as "messy" as Salmons or Sienkiewicz, but it sure was not pretty. I loved it and when I heard that he and Dixon completed a sequel called "Sea Wolrd" I started waiting for it....15 years later (!!) IDW is reprinting "Winter World" together with never released "Sea World" in black and white. The shame of it is that Jorge Zaffino has passed away and even though his art will be "discovered" by a whole new generation of art fans, he won't know it.

Rocketeer by Dave Stevens.
A whole new collection by IDW collecting all Rocketeer stories re-colored by Laura Martin (the colorist who started Adam Hughes on his road of digital color). I have some of the original material, but not all of it and after reading last year's Dave Stevens book I can't wait to sit down and read this collection.

Rip Kirby by Alex Raymond.
I have no idea what this will look like, but I have seen some panels from "Rip Kirby" and I thought they were amazing. The only "Rip Kirby" reprints I could find on-line were Italian collections and they cost an arm and a leg to get shipped over here, so I passed and I hope this will be as good as what I have seen on the web.

And last (but not least) I placed an order for Robotika: For A Few Rubles More collection that is now listed on Amazon. Mostly I did this because "if you wish it, it will come true". Maybe if I place an order they will actually print the book (and also because it was in the 4,000,000th place...it is now somewhere in the 200,000th)

One-a-Day #71

Another piece of "fan art" for teh Dreadstar series. I finished reading all 32 issues and totally enjoyed them. My one regret about this piece is there is not enough..."cosmic" in it. I believe I needed more experiementation with scale of things and the deapth of space to get the right effect.

One-a-Day #70...Strangeways

"Strangeways" is a horror western by Matt Maxwell set in the post Civil War period. Matt does a great job telling a gripping story that puts a new twist on the werewolf mythos, and the art harkens back to the black and white glory days of Creepy and Eerie (with undertones of Jorge Zaffino). "Strangeways" is available through amazon.com and I very much recommend it.




Another shout-out goes to Brian Churilla, who on his blog states that his new book, "Anchor" from BOOM!, has sold out and is going in for second printing. A well deserved success!

One-a-Day #69

A sketchbook page with a bunch of stuff: a couple of sketch ideas, a try out at lettering for the future Robotika collection (that will not be used thanks to Dan), a costume idea, and a study of an ancient city...something that might be good to use as a background someday :)