Ewok Week: CHIEF CHIRPA

Today's Ewok:

CHIEF CHIRPA!

Ewok Week: TEEBO

I was going to do some EWOKS for theis week's 20-minute color sketches... But they ended up taking like twenty-thirty minutes apiece to color. So I can't classify them as being 20 minuters, but I can show 'em anyway! None of those weird tv ewoks, this stuff is straight up ROTJ, yo.

First up: Teebo!

Crogan's Loyalty is ALL DONE

Well, my most recent book, Crogan’s Loyalty, is all finished and uploaded to my publisher’s ftp. Woo! Here’s a panel from it. It’ll be out this summer. I know the release date but I ain’t sure if it’s been announced, so I don’t wanna jump the gun until I know for sure.

Click image for the full-sized version While you’re waiting for the new ones, consider buying the old ones, Crogan’s Vengeance and Crogan’s March.

Starting tomorrow I’ll get back to posting my 20-minute color sketches. I’m thinkin’ EWOKS.

Too Many Trees

Ungh. Pages like this are why I'm having trouble meeting my six-a-day quota. Leaves, ungh. I shoulda set it in the desert.

20-Minute Color Sketches: Robocop

This will probably be the last 20-minute sketch for the next week or so... I'm doing 13-16 hours a day of inking, which doesn't leave the half-hour (which includes doing updates like this) required for 'em. On the plus side - I'm still on schedule to be done at the end of November! 34 pages to go!

20-Minute Color Sketches: Some Old Cowboy

Another 20-minute sketch, this one an old cowboy. I threw a color hold over the line art because I like the way that looks when Dan Hipp does it, and I figured ‘d give it a whirl.

Speaking of old cowboys, I watched the second episode of AMC’s “Hell on Wheels.” The first episode was truly awful, but the second one was not too bad. I’ll give it four episodes, I think - if it continues to improve, I’ll likely keep watching. I’m a sucker for Westerns.

20-Minute Color Sketches: Watchmen

Another 20-minute color sketch: Watchmen! Or as many of them as I could do in 20 minutes without reference. Alan Moore's basic thesis when writing Watchmen was that if superheroes existed in a "real world" they'd all have to either be delusional or sociopaths, and it would be impossible to escape the adult themes that, once introduced, would tear the narrative's world apart. Everybody reads it and thinks "hey, let's write superheroes as if they existed in the 'real world' and introduce adult themes!" It's like when Upton Sinclair wrote that book to get people to concern themselves with the horrible working conditions for children in the meat-packing industry, and everybody was like "ew, look what's in a hotdog," only worse.

20-Minute Color Sketches: He-Man

Today's sketch: The Master of the Universe...

Today's the last day of school for the year. I love teaching and I love working with my students, but I also love uninterrupted studio time and wearing shorts, so these breaks are always welcome.

20-Minute Color Sketches: Wolverine vs Sabretooth

When I was a kid, I had Marvel trading cards and some of 'em depicted "famous battles." This is like that, only quicker. 

20-Minute Color Sketches: Abe Sapien

Here's another of those quick sketches. Drawing and coloring both, I'm putting a cap at twenty minutes max for these. That'll ensure that I can produce at least one a day without infringing on my CROGAN ADVENTURES work. So know that you can check in every morning (barring the ones where I'm out of town at cons and the like) and there will be a new drawing up, like this one, ABE SAPIEN:

Abe is, of course, from Hellboy and B.P.R.D., hands-down my favorite serialized comic.

MAD, MAD, SCAD Weekend

I went to Savannah, Georgia for our National Cartoonist Society meeting this month. It was quite the big to-do, as it served as a big reunion for pretty much all of the original MAD MAGAZINE guys - Al Jaffee, Jack Davis, Paul Coker, Nick Meglin, and Sam Viviano - plus current MAD caricature guy and NCS president Tom Richmond, in addition to all the great Southeast chapter folk and the ones who flew in for the shindig. It was great seeing some of these old dogs again, and even greater meeting the folks who I hadn't yet had occasion to.

I did a couple of sketches during a workshop that Sergio did, and figured I'd post 'em up. 

Gambit and Rogue

Another colored sketchbook sketch - Gambit and Rogue, from the X-Men. Given Rogue's hair, Alabama upbringing, and general all-around 80sness I thought she should look like she stepped in Spandex out of Steel Magnolias, so she's halfway between Julia Roberts and Dolly Parton. 

Justice League, HO!

While most of my comic work is done with a brush (and most of the stuff I post up here, for that matter), I generally sketch with fixed-line pens. I even do my "pencils" with them. It's much more intuitive and quick for me to work that way, but I've always been hesitant to try it with actual pages. But you know what? The brushy stuff automatically gives my stuff a cartoonier look, atop already cartoony designs. I love it for the Crogan books, and will continue to use it there, but I'm thinking about trying to use this for other stuff, which I feel might be a little more "mainstream friendly." I don't know, maybe I'm crazy. So I figured I'd color one of my classroom sketches from today, these justice league guys:

Either way, it takes me like ten minutes to color something like this, which took five minutes to draw. That's a BIG difference from working with a brush, and I kind of like how it turned out. Since I sketch a ton each day, I may color 'em and post more regularly. What do you guys think? Like it? Hate it? Also, Liz Enright brought bacon brownies in to school today and THEY WERE SOOOOOOO YUMMY

Halloween's a MENACE!

I know it's late, but HAPPY HALLOWEEN!