Perfect Love... Gone Wrong

Page 3 of the 4 page Cloak & Dagger Marvel sample.

I've worked and reworked that 3rd panel far too many times. In fact, I was working on that panel while in Chicago. I had to run down to the local Jewel Osco at roughly 10 PM to buy a pencil, a pencil sharpener and some invisible tape so I could do a quick fix on the left hand figure before showing it to CB on the Sunday of the show. I've reworked it again, since getting home from the con. It's not perfect but it's soooo much better than it was before.

More con recap on Monday. I promise.

Symphony No. 9 in D minor

This is page 2 of the 4 page Marvel sample I showed to a few people. There are supposed to be images in the monitors/holoscreens but I ran out of time to draw the scenes that Stuart had asked for. They were to be shots of destruction and death as a result of superhero battles. It was Cloak's very own "A Clockwork Orange" moment.

Sorry Charlie

I know. This was supposed to be part II of my C2E2 wrap up. What can I say. I suck at writing real copy. But, for all the interested, I'll be posting pages of my latest Marvel sample that I showed around at C2E2 until I can get the recap post written. This page is the first of 4 pages I did from the recent Cloak & Dagger one shot.

That makes up for my tardiness, yes?

Good + Bad Times

These pages are from the Marvel Age Team Up #4 script by Todd Dezago. Big shout out to Todd for sending me the script! I had a lot of fun doing this and I hope that it made me a stronger artist. There are definitely things I would change. No page is without some need of tweeking, that's for sure. But, as promised, here are the 5 sample pages I took with me to the Emerald City Comic Con... warts and all. Feedback is always welcome. Good or bad, as long as it is constructive, it's all good.

page 1

page 2

page 3

page 4

page 5

Emotional Weather Report

I'm back from the Emerald City Comic Con and I must say I thought the show was excellent! Good crowd, good mix of artists and publishers and the event was beautifully managed. Smooth as glass... not like the clusterfrick that is SDCC. Anyways... my ECCC report:

I saw CB Cebulski first thing Saturday morning and showed him my Thor/Spidey sample pages. For the most part, he thought they were strong and offered to supply me with more scripts to draw from. I'll definitely take him up on the offer and give another Marvel sample a go.

I also got an excellent crit from Erik Larsen, of Savage Dragon fame. He's notorious for giving brutally honest crits, so I was a little worried about being destroyed in public. Either I caught him on a good day or he actually thought I did a pretty good job because I left his table feeling good about my work. He gave me a few good things to lookout for, which was exactly what I needed to hear.

My last portfolio review of the show didn't go as well. Editor supreme, Bob Schreck, was doing reviews so I thought I jump in line and see what he had to say. Getting a chance to show work to someone with that amount of experience is an amazing opportunity that I couldn't pass up. But, man, I should have just continued looking for deals on Kirby Fourth World hardcovers, instead. He was very friendly and engaging but boy did he hit me hard. I won't go into the gory details but he definitely tested my resolve to draw comics as a professional.

The rest of the show was spent talking to wonderfully talented people like Dan Cooney, Jay Faerber, Jimmie Robinson, Ed Brisson, Steve Niles, Brian Churilla, Chris Moreno, Chrisian Beranek and Kris Simon.... Oh, and shopping for comics.

All in all, an excellent show that I look forward to attending next year.

I'll post the entire Marvel sample on Wednesday... worts and all.

Eraserhead

Work on the Thor sample pages has commenced! Friend and writer extraordinaire, Todd Dezago, stepped up big for me and sent over a script he wrote for Marvel that has Thor in it! It's a Marvel Age Team Up script, so I get to draw Spider-Man, too! Here's a rough of one of the panels from it. Pay no attention to the floating head in the upper left... that was a failed first attempt which happened to be just nice enough to not warrant erasure. I'll Photoshop it out when I make my rough layout to pencil from.

And here are a couple of Thor villains that I love to draw but aren't in the Dezago script. Oh well, maybe next time, Hela and Loki.

Open To Ideas

Warm up Thor and Thor related drawings to get me going. Still working out what exactly I'm going to draw for my sample pages (as I don't have a script) but I think I have some ideas.

Just Between You And Me

I haven't started my Marvel sample pages, yet. I'm still trying to decide which character to showcase. It's between Daredevil and Thor... but I think I'm leaning towards the Asgardian.

Underwater Rimes (remix)

Work on portfolio page continues. Here are a few of the rough panels I've worked out for a couple of the pages. This scene takes place underwater (I hope that fact was already evident or I didn't do a very good job!) which is something I don't think I've ever had to draw much of. If I have, I've forgotten about it. While I'm pressing forward on these pages, I am also starting to work up some Marvel sample pages for a portfolio review with C.B. Cebulski. He'll be at the Emerald City Comic Con looking though portfolios and it's a great opportunity to hear what he thinks of my stuff.

Unfinished Sweet

click images to see them bigger

I've begun to work on some portfolio pages to show around when I'm down at the Emerald City Comic Con in April. These drawings are me working out a few panels for one of the pages. Normally, I would consider these my finished "pencils", meaning I would ink from these, but I think I'll have to tighten them up more for the sake of showing them to editors. Or should I? I'm planning on inking the portfolio pages, too. Maybe I should be showing editors exactly how I work, even if it is from pencils as loose as these? I'm new to this showing a portfolio around thing so any thoughts from people would be helpful.

Here's a quick sketch of Eury, from Braids of the Gorgon. It seems that even when I'm done drawing a project (for now), I still end up drawing characters from it when I should be drawing other things.