New Family Tree

A lot of the designs for the Crogan family have changed somewhat.  Sometimes this is a result of learning who the characters' moms are, sometimes it's finding their personalities as I do the research.  Either way, I figure it's time to do a full revision. 

CROGAN'S PRIZE paper figure set

In just a couple of weeks, the second Crogan Adventures radio episode from Decoder Ring Theatre will air, featuring the return of Catfoot Crogan!  In the meantime, here's a paper figure set featuring a few of the characters from the show!

(click the image for the paper figure PDF file)

p.s. Bear with me if the link behaves differently from previously posted sets.  I'm working to transition everything away from my SCAD web space, which I previously used to host files. 

Crogan Adventures Radio, episode 1: The Heart of Mabel Cottonshot

Oh, my! The first episode of the Crogan Adventures Radio Shows went up and I forgot to blog about it! My apologies. Between school and projects, some things slip my mind.

Here it is... The Heart of Mabel Cottonshot!

Starring
Robert Westgate as Benjamin Crogan
Clarissa Denederlanden as Mabel Cottonshot
Gregg Taylor as Charlie the Bartender
Kevin Robinson as Henry Scrugg
Christopher Mott as Earl
Hans Messersmith as Harold the Barker
and
Scott Moyle as Hatteburg
with additional voices by Ryan Sero and, well, me. That's right! They were nice enough to let me do a few voices. In this one, I play a few of the customers in the bar scene from just after the commercial in the middle.

The modern Crogan family starred Michael Booth as the dad (whose first name is revealed in episode 2, I think), Hero Van Harten as Eric, and Shannon Arnold as Cory.

The show was directed by Gregg Taylor, who did a darn fine job of things as he always does.

It's free to download, and it's free to listen to it online!  You can also subscribe to Decoder Ring Theatre in iTunes.  get listenin'!

Bill Toomy

Here's another character from Crogan's Vengeance: Bill Toomy. 

Captain Dunwell

Another Crogan's Vengeance character: 

Captain Cane

Here's another character from Crogan's Vengeance: Captain Cane! 

"Catfoot" Crogan

I've been posting these labeled drawings of my interpretations of other people's characters for like two months straight, and I thought, "You know what? Maybe I should post my own!" So here's the first of a bunch of figures from Crogan's Vengeance: the book's protagonist, "Catfoot" Crogan.

As with the Sherlock Holmes figures (sets of which I'll begin selling on Monday), I plan to make these into sets of paper figures. I may make them available as papercraft downloads that you print yourself, but the downside with that is that these colors are too similar to each other to have good definition when printed on an inkjet, I may print them up professionally and have them available at shows and for sale online. I'd love feedback on that from whoever has a strong opinion. The other question I have is one which I hesitate to ask, for fear that if I end up deciding to go in a direction other than what someone suggests I'll end up alienating that reader, whereas if I just did it and gave no options then no one could be bugged. Ah, but I'm on the fence. Here's the question: If I were to make these Crogan paper figures available, would you all want them with the names serving as a stand at the bottom, as is currently the case, or would you want them absent this text? I feel like the text does a good job of giving them all a similar element that ties them all together, but I don't really know. Thoughts?

Free Comic Book Day Crogan Story!

Anyone who didn't get a chance to go to Free Comic Book Day, don't worry - the Crogan Adventures story is up for reading in the "comics" gallery!

Click the Pic to read!

New Interview - and Some Reviews

First, I have an interview with ACME COMICS, a store in North Carolina at which I'm doing a signing in March. Give it a read! Secondly, the reviews of Crogan's March have been popping up.  Give them a read, too! School Library Journal Kleefeld on Comics Newsarama Graphic Novel Reporter Innocent Bystander Geek Girl on the Street Also, here's a drawing, so that this isn't too boring a post! 

 (click on the picture for a bigger version of the same picture) One of the Crogan Adventure Society agents requested a drawing of Matthew Crogan, a character whom I haven't done much sketching with.  After finishing his, I was warmed up, and decided to do a drawing of him standing next to Sir Harry Flashman, the main character in George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman Papers series, the reason I'm doing historical fiction in the first place.  Since both characters are in India at the same time, I figured, aw, heck, why not draw 'em enjoying a drink together?

The sketches I do when I can't do work

Sorry for the slowness in keeping this up - I'd resolved to be more regular, but circumstances threw a kink in my intentions pretty quick. We had a large plumbing problem (really large, necessitating a nine-foot-deep, seventy-foot-long trench to be dug through our yard, which cost us the entirety of what I'm getting as an advance on the new book, and THEN some) that flooded our garage and storage area, meaning that everything was moved into the studio for the week it took to fix everything. Our first major issue with home-ownership, but one that will hopefully negate any major plumbing issues for the next ten years. Anyway, while I couldn't get much done in the way of work, I DID do a lot of sketches upstairs. Here they are, somewhat annotated: 

Professor Moriarty, with his rounded back and big head. After I was finished, I realized he looked a lot like Adam Schiff, the old D.A. on Law & Order, though that might be the expression of impatience with Jack McCoy's crazy courtroom antics.

A presumably early design for a character in the fourth Crogan Adventure book. In the post-Arnold age, most strongmen are depicted with strongly defined musculature, but real strongmen (think the guys who pull semi trucks) tend to be just a big mass with a low center of gravity. I like the idea of my big strongman character being somewhat shorter than most of the major characters, just because it's something you rarely if ever see. 

Another character from the fourth book, the captain of the tramp steamer, as yet unnamed. The ship, not the captain. Though she doesn't have a name yet, either.

Drawing of a character for a Star Wars comic I've been kicking around - who knows if it'll ever see the light of day, but anyway... he's blue.

Anne of Green Gables - one of my wife's favorite book series, and movies. She roped me into watching it a few years ago, and I loved 'em.

Another 4x6" warmup drawing. No story to this one, just a guy on a boat.

Since my work is almost exclusively intended for pure black and white (i.e. no gray), I generally do all of my sketches and for-practice drawings in pure black and white, too. But I've been going over Guy Davis's sketchbooks a lot lately, and love how his gray marker work looks, so I've been toying with them from time to time. This drawing was done a little bigger than usual, about 10" square. My hands are generally too big for most revolver handles, and I have an unconscious habit of extending my pinkie finger when holding one, as if I were drinking tea or something. So I drew this guy doing that.

Captain Nemo. I think in Mysterious Island he said something about his wife and kid dying in a bombardment by the British, or something - it's been a long time since I read it. I don't remember whether he was on hand or not, but I gave him a few bombardment scars, just in case. My white ink was still packed and under loads of stuff when I drew this, otherwise I'd have drawn in some bubbles in that window.

Nemo put me on a Victorian Science Fiction kick for the rest of the evening, so I did this guy, some sort of military guy patrolling a British colony on Mars, complete with ray-gun (plus I got to draw another pith helmet)...

...plus this guy, a Martian. I think the Edgar Rice Burroughs martians had four arms and tusks, so here ya go. I dressed him kind of like a 1930s Mongolian with a metal space-vest. That's it! The plumbing problem is fixed, and the studio is operating at about 65% efficiency (lots of stuff still packed and stacked), but I'm working on a short Crogan's story for free comic book day. I'll post some thumbs sometime over the next couple of days.