Uncanny X-Mas

a drawing for my niece, Zaria, but the Z on the sub could also stand for Zissou

a panel from Loose Ends, eventually will be full Zipatone

yep.

four provinces

when Rico and I took the assignment for the Nola mini, I promised up and down to draw the simplest possible covers.....it didn't work out that way, but the one was the closest to that, change by degrees.....

horse with no name

Nola #2 is out today from Boom! Studios, with cover A by the kids, and cover B by Erik Jones (link right). Rico's been working at print shops for at least 10 years now and has really mastered coloring specifically for print. At the risk of being super-obvious, color works much different on a screen (made from light) than it does in print (made from ink), something Rico is really tuned into. White and saturated colors pop onscreen while black and mute colors gain strength in ink, blahblahblah. All a way of saying that that I get an additional "wow!" outta Rico's work on paper, hopefully you'll see what i mean. Really happy with the logo here....

Dr. Katz's couch

from the last of four covers for the book NOLA from Boom! Studios, messin around with scales again....skipped the pencil stage and did finishes over the thumbnail at a little over 5 inches tall. then the pattern on Nolas scarf was finished in pencil at about 10 inches tall. we'll see what happens. BTW the second cover should be out soon.......?

this is a desktop screen shot of reference and what i was listening to, Dr.Katz Professional Therapist (top right corner in SquiggleVision TM). In this episode Laura got a label maker and hijinx ensued.

40 day

jade, alexander

sighting

Nola#1 came out yesterday! There's been 3 different dates I'd heard, but I've actually laid eyes on the book proper. There's a 50/50 cover split between the kids and Erik Jones (see link), so you should buy two ;p

should have new Loose Ends pages in the next few days

NOLA

allright, this is the allllllmost finished cover for Nola #3, which we turned in awhile ago but have since been asked to make a small change on. never got fully on board with the original thumbnail, but had to ride with it just cause it got approved and there was a deadline and whatnot. downside of working in all these separate pieces is that i end up pretty tied to the thumb, changing mind mid-stream is not always possible. never tried to work the shaft of light trick before, Rico killed that along with the mirror, which he just has an incredible knack for. it's a difficult thing to get that effect across with just a few colors, he makes it look easy.

11th dimension

inks for the third of four NOLA covers, from Boom! Studios, issue #1 out on wednesday. maybe 2 years ago i'd done this tiny 2 inch size sketch for a poster, inked it and scanned at 1600 dpi to see what'd happen. it printed allright, at around 3 feet tall the lines were real wobble-y but kinda cool, like a blown out photocopy. so, messing around with that still, the figure in bandages and the background here are inked at print size, hopefully they look out of focus as compared to the figure in the mirror. noticed this in Gorillaz, where if a character moves up close to the camera the lineweight is scaled up accordingly, instead of being the same thickness. ah, we'll see how it goes.

Boom! BAM!

here's pencils for the third of four covers Rico and I have done for the Boom! Studios book NOLA (first issue out Wednesday) (!!!) . folks that like seeing process stuff tend to say so, and i'm ambivalent , so if it's annoying, holler.

this was drawn on both sides of the paper with a lightbox. the lil X's are "bullet holes" which they use in animation to line up foreground/background when those elements are done separate, same goes here to merge the drawings into one PS file. hadn't got the hang of her head wrap yet, and didn't mean for her to be so foxy either (see bad ass-ed-ness of previous 2 covers), but it happens. clearly, i didn't fight it. BAM!

hadnt drawn wreckage in awhile, good times. (http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/awhile.html) guess who doodled through english class.

Nov 5, 1955

a red letter date in the history of science

crescent city connection

when's mardi gras?

(what's the story) morning glory?

it's getting better (man!)

definitely maybe

so before i mentioned that there was an anatomical snafu in the ruff that made the pencils a bit dodgy- snafu being a giant left leg, with boots the character just doesnt wear. ended up having a huge impact, couldnt get the leg angle id wanted, and the boots were all off. the figure was not what Rico and i had our bullseye on, after awhile people with guns stops being interesting- my bad, we got it right next cover. here i am sweating it out



threw some green lines to show even when perspective is right it can be wrong. Brian Stelfreeze taught me that you have to be spot on with a horizon line, but the rest is up for fudging. outside of skyscrapers and malls, i like buildings with sag and slouch


still mourning.

champagne supernova

been working on some covers, Loose Ends pages too (jes can't share em), these are the roughs from the first of four from the Boom! mini-series NOLA. Rico and i aim to get the colors worked out ahead of time, as they set-up for inks. went the yellow version, it hid the body underwater and held the silhouette. big anatomy snafu at this stage, hurt the finished shot. shit. will post process thru to the final in short order.
......meanwhile, looks my all-time favorite band, oasis, broke up. aye, you're not here for the ramblings of a superfan. aside from their stellar tunes, the series of albums and singles they put out had a great overarching design sense. like the Pixies and the Smiths, the chunk of pages they owned in my CD book stood out based on look alone. art directed by Brian Cannon with Noel Gallagher. just a few...

Oasis - New Music - More Music Videos

Chris and I recorded an interview for the Sidebar podcast a couple months back. It was an honor to speak into the esteemed Sidebar microphones and hopefully we thank the guys for the opportunity. Dwight and Swain are a class act and hopefully the interview was as much fun for them as it was for us. They've given me and Chris hours of informative talks with guys we admire and respect and I hope we payed a little bit of that back.

Standing on the Shoulder of Giants

Cover for the eventual Boondocks Saints II comic prequel from 12 Gauge Comics, tied to the sequel for the flick of the same name. It was a freaking bear, even if you don't go to the San Diego Con deadlines crop up around it and make for a hectic time regardless- this got brutal. Did 30 hours straight on it at one point, slept 2 hours, got up and went again for another 12 or so. AND did another cover directly following in the same week. blahblahblah, nother post.

Percolated watching the movie, going thru reference, drawing other stuff a while before diving in here, wanted something symmetrical. Stanley Kubrick uses symmetry in a way that knocks me on my ass constantly (usually kind of "meh" on it), an in this book "Stanley Kubrick-A Visual Analysis" he refers to it as "the face of god" (if im remembering right, think he also says its "the void staring back". sorry, great book, no index to check). Anyways, the Boondock Saints obviously have a religious thread to the story, between this and Kubrick, was set on a symmetrical, stained-glass window sorta cover. Then the assignment morphed into a wraparound cover/poster, and I got really stuck on how to pull off symmetry in on the right half of the layout (what would be its own cover) when the whole of it had to hold together. Seemed pretty impossible, then found this "Italian Job" poster. hallelujah. Kinda bungled the cross shape I was going for near the bottom. And that guy screaming. ah well, strikes and gutters.

Rico could've colored this about 3 different ways at least, tho still had to juggle his ideas wif a movie studio approval process that tends to favor literal colors- sky is blue, grass is green, etc. I really liked the Bros bottom right all blue. Want to jump in here sir?

Thanks Chris, I'll toss in my two cents. My general allergy to local colors makes me think this movie tie-in stuff may not be for me! It's a shame too, the checks are always a bit better. I wish the seated/smoking guy made the cut, I LOVED him! Anyway, I had the luxury of getting to color Chris' rough layout on this, it's our preferred way to work but it doesn't always work out time-wise. So, I did a couple of different takes on it. It's a good thing I did because we didn't end up using the one I wanted to use, we had something to fall back on, an ace in our pocket. Chris had a few things he wanted the viewer to be able to focus on, the brothers and the geezer with the guns on the front, the cross behind them and the pennies on the ghosts' eyes. It can be a lot to juggle so I tried to keep the rest simple so it didn't turn into a big mess.

Here's what I thought would be the final but the client didn't dig it so we went back to the drawing board. -rico.



my awesome niece, zaria! not a staged photo! she picked FF out herself at the library. and does the spider man web shooting hands w/noises. and kung-fu chops. :)

HeroesCon- whew!

it took awhile to get back to normal post-HeroesCon but things have finally settled down. Shelton, Dusty and the Heroes Aren't Hard to Find crew put on a top show like always; much beloved, appreciated, and never taken for granted. Thanks to them and everyone that stopped by the table, for all the folks we got to catch up with there are even more who i missed in the mad rush trying to finish sketches ("sketches" ;p). only downside was not getting to be there like a fan i am and nerd out at all the amazing artists who attended (and were tough acts to follow- Paul Azaceta, Andy Kuhn.....grrr).
was a spastic 24-7 art factory here at Casa De Gavel during the month leading up, outside of unfinished commissions and the beautiful and shiny golden sketchbook Rico put together at IndigoInk, there've been 5 new pages of Loose Ends come and gone that i can only share in clipped form. sorry.

Rico painted these based on a group argument over whether Wonder Woman could fly ;p and they sold before he finished


salvaged this from an old email rounding up stuff for the sketchbook, the full size file died with the hard drive, but it prints pretty good for a jpg

finally, started up a Deviant Art account: http://kickstandkid78.deviantart.com/
aye, enough babble, have a good one

HeroesCon- nice!

Chris and Rico will both be sitting at the 12 Gauge Comic tables (BOOTH 630/729) at Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina this weekend. It's our favorite show, so come out and say "hi". We have a new art book for sale (pictured above). We also have prints and we'll even draw for you people (for a nominal fee) if you ask.
(drawin for 70's soul singers/dc comic heroes sketchbook. its not done)


(chris draws tiny)


(rico paints)