popo

Play the cards you're dealt

Storytime!

The first time I heard the name Nathan Fox was at the Heroes Convention maybe 5 years ago. I guess Chris and I had just started really showing our work together or maybe it was as Chris' Batman LOTDK run started coming out, I can't remember for sure. Either way, our mutual friend Jim Royal told us that our stuff was kind of reminding him of Nathan Fox's stuff. When I got home from that weekend I got online and checked around and found Nathan's work. I was pretty blown away by what I saw. This crash one is the one that really burned itself in my mind, I'm not even sure if it was one of the first things I saw or if it came later but it really stuck with me. Needless to say I was an instant admirer of his work.



Fast forward to a few months ago, I'm getting files on press for printing at my day job. I see all these files labeled "nfox" and think..."naaaaah". I opened them up and it was unmistakably Nathan's work. I was crazy excited to be printing this stuff! I checked the order form and saw that the order was placed by Paolo from Cadence Comic Art. I'm pretty friendly with Paolo so I sent him an email to ask him what the deal was. He said Nathan would be sitting with him and his gang at the upcoming Baltimore Comicon and I should come by their table and he'd make with the introductions. Then, a day (or a few hours) later Paolo emails and says he has a couple pin-ups by Nathan that he'd like to get colored...for free. Now, my friends and family all know better than to ask me for free stuff, I guess Paolo didn't know my rules yet. I'm kinda glad he didn't because I said sure I'd take a crack at the art but asked if I could just do one of them. Turns out they only needed one colored (that was the Kade thing I posted a while back). So, I did the spec job hoping Nathan would be into it and would lead to more stuff with him. (I didn't really think it would since he does such an awesome job of coloring his own work.)
I met Nathan (he's a gentleman) at the Baltimore Con and it turns out he liked what I did and he said he might have a magazine job coming up that I would be right for. I guess he sent some stuff to the art director and we were on it! So yeah, did anybody read all that stuff I just typed? I hope it made some kind of sense because there's no way I'm reading it! Yeah, here's some of the art, buy the magazine it has metallic ink (not where I planned for it to be for the most part but ah well, what are you gonna do right?) You can find the whole 6 pages at the WIRED magazine website here.

truffle shuffle

wanted to have these up one at a time, but somehow ended up working on them all at the same time. which was absolutely terrifying; to whatever degree they function, comparatively each was its own little trainwreck a half hour before its finish. happy with a couple, some had an idea i didnt measure up to, and some im thrilled to survive. take care, cb.

bzzz

still buzzing from last week....wow....
...at the tail end of a chunk of pages i can't show, here's a panel (again, just grey until rico goes to town) and a couple of thumbnails. aiming for these to be real claustrophobic, trapped in an 87 crown victoria with atlanta police. always start losing my nerve when it comes to obscuring so much in shadow, once things get to the full size page it can be hard to resist deviating from a simple solid plan. but ive tried to be cagey so far in choosing when/what to show of faces and eyes, no going back. anyways. plenty more posting in the next couple weeks, have a bunch of marvel cards to do and then back to comic pages i can share. lots more on the way from rico as well.

Why is all this stuff black and white? Isn't Loose Ends a color book?!

Hey folks, it's me, the coloring half of the Kickstand Kids. I've had some non Kickstand stuff going on that I wasn't going to post on the blog but I've had some people ask what I've been up to, so here ya go!

I still color Perhapanauts every month. This image is a cover drawn by guest artist, Jason Armstrong. You've seen Jason's pulse-pounding pencils on his own Ferro City and Lobster Johnson. Fun stuff! Jason did interiors on this ish too, I'm working on those now.

In other coloring news, I met Nathan Fox through mutual friend Paolo Belfiore. They asked if I had time to color a pinup (pictured right) that Nathan didn't have the time to color himself and I said, "SURE!" Nathan liked what I did and now we're working on a 6 page comic for a major magazine! More fun stuff!

Anyway, with the help my childhood pal, Kheang Kho, I am building a blazing fast super computer that will allow me to color as many books as Dave Stewart and have time left over to take up knitting. Loose Ends colors coming soon!

One last note of congratulations to our friend Mike Capprotti, he's now the proud papa of little Sophia Capprotti!!

coffee, nicotine, draw, eat, repeat

despite appearances here,much has been produced since the last post. just hitting the final few pages of the first issue of Loose Ends, will be done at the end of the month. downside blogwise is these final nine give away a lot, so cant show much till i get to issue 2 beginning nov. argh, it hurts not to show the new batch of pages, dont seem finished til theyre out there. ten marvel cards on the way though, have artist proofs and am open to requests if anything comes to mind.
as far as whats here, all over the map, like usual. still working out how to draw some characters. the larger headshot of the fellow with glasses in the second of these two trailer/tree pages, that was intended to be the tiny silhouette in the first of the set. but then i never got the original large headshot to look right, and meanwhile hated to cover up the little one. for whatever reason i have draw out the insides of every silhouette, even though it always feels goofy doing so. at the same time couldnt be bothered to draw trees ;p guess thats half true, also just wanted to insure they were native north carolina trees, and had spent waaay to long researching trailers already ( the quest was over when i found the "nomad" model- perfect name). ah, the last double page thing is just an ad, all collaged from pages already posted here, just with zip-a-tone! i feel about zip-a-tone now the way i did about ketchup when i was a kid- improves everything.

jedi mind tricks

these'll be in zip-a-tone, still gotta cross the i's and dot the t's

ps shoot, i just noticed a continuity snafu

dang...impending doom?

makers mark

well, as much as this leia commission was a struggle, im a little happier with the results and starting to know how to attack with markers. kinda. somewhat. more than the previous post anyways. one of the awesome artists i worked with (and learned a ton from) at upper deck, chris ortega (see link) used to always talk about his struggle with line vs my struggle with form. his natural mode is more on the painting side, and he'd stretch a bit to find the line in comics werk. according to him the bulk of a painting you dont have to decide on the specific contour, you can kind of blur shapes. and of course id always be marveling at his painted work precisely because mark making with lines feels natural, could never wrap my head around how he defined form with chunks of color. anyways, this recurring discussion was on my mind alot with this leia, because i didnt think i could get a likeness for her, or round out R2 without pulling off this trick. even though theres line, it wasnt enough. not real successful overall, but what i started to notice was how much better the line looked when the color bled out and around it, the fuzzier the line the more i liked it. so, i guess thats the first tool or trick or whatever ive come across in trying to figure out markers.
just moved to charlotte, nc, and got eaten alive by mosquitoes- other than that its nice. i missed living somewhere with a skyline. it means there have been a couple weeks where i couldnt draw, so the hand doodles are just warm ups. mid doodle there was a guy on npr talking about "texting", and he referred to it as "the revenge of e.e. cummings" which brought out a chuckle. look e.e. up if youre bored, hes one of the few poets that got through to me in high school, and prolly the reason im an aggressively lower-case typer. chris be don't text.
enough rambling, there's a Loose Ends page on the table right now......

rough stuff

just some commissions im trying to soldier through. still dont know what im doing with prismacolors, the paper is pretty unforgiving, but the only way to figure it out is keep on keepin on, be willing to look bad and learn somethin. couple more left, then back to pages.

Dark Knight

Let me tell you a little story. First, my day job at Indigo Ink Digital Printing is nuts because we print a lot of stuff for people that will be going to the SDCC. I've worked a few 12+ hour days in the past week. Wednesday my plan was to leave at a regular time to spend some time with my wife and little girl. However, on the way home, my wife calls me, " My friend has a friend that has some free passes to see that Batman movie tonight, do you want them?" Huh?! "Where's it playing?" I say. "It's down in D.C. at the Uptown at 8:30." What?! My favorite movie theatre on the face of the earth?!

This place is a beautifully restored theatre from the 30's with a huge curved screen and a sweet balcony! Anyway, now I'm going to see Batman (my favorite superguy), at the Uptown (my favorite theatre), and for FREE (my favorite price!)! So we plan to get down there an hour and a half early so we can sit together. I'm all geeking with the butterflies in my belly, I've heard this thing is an awesome crime drama, an interpretation of Batman that I enjoy. We arrive to a line wrapped around the block! We hop in line, I'm all excited, an hour goes by, and some spokesmodels come out and let us know the theatre is full and we should shove off. Yeah, that was one sad walk back to the car and an hour drive home.

That's where the sad story ends, I got to see the movie last night. 3 hours well spent friends!! If you haven't seen it yet, get to it! It made me feel like this!

I'm sure you've all seen it but I don't want to spoil anything so we can talk about it more later.

Lisa, Angela, Pamela, Renee

Hey folks-
The kids are back and recovering from our adventures in Charlotte, North Carolina. Heroes Con was a blast like always. Shelton, Dustin and the gang put on my favorite comic convention. It was great catching up with old friends and making some new ones.
We unveiled the Loose Ends preview book at the show and I've heard positive things from people that picked it up and from our peers, so that's encouraging. We met Swain from my favorite podcast, SiDEBAR, very cool guy. I love that show! Check out the link over on the right.

Anyway, I know you guys come here for pictures and not to read my typing, so, here ya go...20 years in the making...

gone fishin

hey, yeah, sometimes there'll be a lot of posts, sometimes, not so much. anyways, heres some pages thatve been posted before, just lettered now so they look all for real an sh*t. i always get a kick out of seeing the finished comic, its really not done until the word balloons and logos are on, and even then not as much as when it gets folded or develops coffee stains. god bless comics ;p the writer for the comic, jason latour, is really a comics dynamo and in general a one man supergroup. anyways he did the letters and because latour draws like a mug they came out with a great dose of personality that locks in with the story. the other good news is that since i finally did the grey tones, we'll be able to follow ricos process thru the colors, if you're allright with seeing these pages again. we spend a long time staring at em too ;p
there was some other jibber jabber i wanted to put out there. working on the string of marvel cards was so much fun i couldnt stand it. having done 3 dud paintings in 30 years, working wih prismacolor, bic and crayola let in a lot of fresh air. that so many other folks worked on them as well brought back this heavy drawing-in-study-hall buzz. although overused, yellow highlighter covered up with whiteout pen always shined, the ink must mix cause they glow together. an india ink really grounds everything, and the scan (even adjusted) did no justice. will have another set to do before november, and a list in a drawer is growin (black cat, black widow, lilandra, beta-ray bill, forge, winter soldier, gwen stacy.....open to suggestions) ive stacked up 7 blank Camel packs to do Loose End color drawins on at HeroesCon in Charlotte NC, so ill be up to the same tricks soon enough. Rico ran up a bunch of Loose End Demo's for the show, 16 BW pages+ color cover, along with some other good things- polaroid prints on thick plastic-y type paper! and another print that we started in like 2003 and finished last week. David Williams and Ed Brubaker canceled, dag, but looking foward to seeing Dusty and the rest...

touch of grey

hi! had wanted to jibber jabber about this stuff, but ive been up since yesterday and am incoherent. will blah blah blah tomorrow, take it easy.

PS the converse are andy warhol and the ruby shoe photo is of pj harvey.