My friend's new project is out

Hey, everybody. I'm currently hammering away on Crogan's March, trying to get this scene finished by the upcoming weekend so as to have it to show folks at Fluke, and in the meantime I wanted to steer you toward a title you might want to pick up. Shawn Crystal, a good friend with whom I share an office at SCAD-Atlanta, has started a run on the Marvel series Deadpool, beginning with a pretty sizeable stand-alone story called Deadpool: Games of Death. For those unfamiliar with the character (like I was), Deadpool is a sort of rogueish, smart-alecky assassin, and the stories tend to be action/comedy. This paticular story plays very heavily off of old martial movies movies, with Deadpool infiltrating a last-man-standing reality show/death match. It was great fun watching him work on this project, and I'm excited now that it's out. The colors are great, and play to Shawn's aesthetic, which is this nice mix of cartooning and traditional super-hero style comic art with meticullous inkwork.

 (some images from the comic) Shawn's an incredible professor and a great comic artist, so if you're curious as to what some of the other faculty at Scad-Atlanta are up do, this is a chance to check it out. I'll have more updates soon, I promise!

First Page; Signing in Decatur/Atlanta

Woo! I'm FINALLY working on pages. The first scene ended up being a little bit longer than I expected (16 pages), and the first three pages or so I had to get used to not being able to "fake" a composition by throwing rigging into the empty spots. Composing shots this time around without clouds, ropes, masts etc is a real pain, but it'll hopefully make me better at what I do. I'm spending a lot more time on the inks. Here's the first page - click it to be able to actually see it. The modern dad just told his kids that "it all started with a sandstorm..."

 On another note to anyone in the Atlanta area, I'll be doing a signing at my favorite kid's bookstore in the world, Little Shop of Stories, which happens to be just down the street from my house. If you've had a hard time getting a hold of the book (I know that a few places in town have run out occasionally) then this would be an ideal time to pick it up. I'll be doing sketches, too. Friday, March 20, 3:30-4:30.

Interviews and Sketches

Hey, everybody!  It's been an extremely busy couple of weeks.  We at SCAD-Atlanta just had our annual Comics Art Forum, which this year featured Matt Kindt, Stewart Immonen, and Cameron Stewart.  All three guys were incredibly gracious and lots of fun; I sat in on two workshops, Matt's and Cameron's, both of which were just great.  We had heavy snow this weekend (in Atlanta!) and Cameron was stuck on a plane for hours, and Matt had to stay an extra day and a half, so the ending wasn't ideal, but we had lots of good food and drinks and the whole thing was great for the students.

In personal news, a couple of interviews I've done have gone up, so if you want to check them out, feel free! 

Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources

Indie Pulp: Sketchbook Spotlight (outlines my process and tools), among other things

WKMS (NPR) Audio Interview

I'm nearly through with my thumbnails for the first scene (12-15 pages) of Crogan's March, and I plan to go to pencils today.  My goal is to have it inked by the end of the weekend!  Liz is going out of town, so I'll be able to keep crazy cartoonist hours and, with luck, crank 'em out.

In the meantime, I've been doing lots of prep sketches for the as-of-yet-unnamed fourth book, which I've decided will feature Daniel Crogan, the Lion Tamer/Escape Artist.  Here are a few - enjoy!