(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