A thousand limbs.

Hey low,

One of the books I’ve been working on got solicited last week.

I’ve been working on an Empowered one shot written by comic book hero Adam Warren.(Due out on March 26, 2014)

It’s been a huge deal to me to be able to work with an artists whose work I’ve been a fan of for so many years. 

I was looking at old Kung fu posters for ideas on the cover. I love those orange tentacles on the far left. I also too some of that one for the logo style. I eat posters and steal their power. 

and my roughs:

And some pages

I don’t like working off of text scripts so I asked Adam to do layouts for me. Here’s his layout of the above page:

along with typed out text so I can letter everything right.

I had to get a new pen to do the bolding in the lettering. That is a new and alien thing to me.

Warren’s layouts for page 6

and my (almost) finished take on the page:

One of the things I was having fun doing in the first couple pages was drawing background characters based off of Adam’s first Dirty pair issue.

Like sooo

I like pulling from the work I saw of Warren’s for his newest work.

And that new Empowered came out this week. It is a realllly good one.

——————————–

Here’s some sketchbook stuff:

and my Mom wrote a new book that I did a cover for: (my mom writes books)

You can get it here. 

—-

I read some comics this week:

I really liked Connor Willumsen’s Treasure Island. It’s online to read  ( here) but I really liked how well the printed version of it works.

It starts with 3 two page spreads showing how each of it’s 3 main characters spend their days.

I like how well these give you a visual map of the kind of people who they are, especially in relation to each other.

I like how he shows this Skype call, a later a movie the characters are watching in small distant boxes. With the panel becoming the dimensions of the screen it’s on. 

and the same when he shows email conversations. The whole book has such an impressive use of space. It reads like something taken from experience. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about my own work lately, and how past having an agenda to tell a certain kind of stories or to come up with things that I find fun –I feel like it’s important to me to leave work that captures the feeling of moments of real real life. I think this Treasure  island book does that well. It makes me the best kind of jealous. The kind of book that makes me want to try harder.

—

Also I got a newer color version of Buichi Terasawa’s Cobra! ( that was serialized in Super Jump in 1995 )

I find the colors on this stuff really interesting in that it tries to look like animation.With cell shaded characters in front of more rendered backgrounds. It’d be cool to see more western books attempt that 

This book has some fun ideas in it.

There’s these arm missiles with their own guidance systems .

Guns with faces.

A lazer hammer:

This creepy harem guard that’s just a head on a flying saucer:

This castle with legs on wheels:

and (drumroll..) glass tits with fish inside of them.

 

good night!

 

Properly pushed pens.

HellllOOoooo.

Stuff’s been good. I’ve been nicely busy. Making myself draw a lot.

I’m so used to typing about whatever I’m up to I’ve got a bunch of projects that I’m laying low on. A couple will be announced at the Image expo con. but yesss I am so many secrets wrapped in so much mystery.

Here’s a couple drawings I did this earlier this month:

This one was a collaboration with mr Simon Roy and Adam Warren. for The upcoming Emerald city convention. With nods to a couple Cyberpunk novels in it.

and a print I did for Gosh comics in London:

Here’s a picture from the signing. Me between the nice nice Fiona Staples and Image overlord Eric Stephenson (who is also nice).

While I was in London, I drew the hotel room I was staying in. I started every morning in England watching a music video channel.

I was so confused by the hotel’s Shower that I drew a diagram of it for further study– It had these weird robot nipples on it that were all about shooting water straight out at you no matter what god or demon you prayed to to end it.

I assume it’s that I learned American shower but not the Queens shower proper.

————————————————————————————

Back in Canada I had a birthday and sketched things in coffee shops in between pages.

—————————–

Also, I’ve been reading Kaoru Shintani’s Area 88. Who apparently started as an assistant to Captain Harlock/StarBlazer’s Leiji Matsumoto –I feel like you can see it in the hair he draws.

Matsumoto even based The Harlock character Yattaran off of Shintani. Soo flattering.

 

I like that the series was serialized bi weekly. That seems like a good way to put out an ongoing manga. But it is dense enough that it could be read as just single issues– it’s all 20 page self contained stories for the most part.

In it our hero, Shin is tricked by a rival and forced to join a mercenary army and fight for his life in order to return to Japan to be reunited with his lost love and soo much revenge! DO DO DOOO!

I really like how well the series mixes the serious tone and accurately drawn machinery with cartoony characters.  and the 70’s manga stank on it all is fantastic– like Shin’s disco Unicorn logo on his plane.–and McCoy has a really good nose.

the serious machinery extends beyond just planes– later on when a photographer shows up his camera gets the same treatment. I like this spread:

Yup. something balances nicely about cartoonish art mixed with a serious subject.

Here’s a scene where a child is being told that his Grandfather/king is dying by his Bloom County eyed-noseless mustached Uncle.

Something interesting is how Shintani plays the character’s ethnicity. Here’s 2 Japanese characters meeting that I would never guess were Japanese unless they said so:

Then when he has this Italian meeting a German — They seem to look much more Italian and German.

He draws a really good crew of dudes.(Mick is the American Nam vet and the#2 best pilot at Area 88)

Deadly serious killers every one.

I like those back ground dudes– what’s up with this guy? Bad dude Raccoon! “Keep your hands clean out there Roberts!”

Something I like a lot in manga–is when they bring you in by teaching you about the focus of the book. I like when reading about Football (eyeshield 21) or the game Go(Hikaru No Go ) they hook you by teaching you about the subject as you read. Here’s a page describing the difference between a Red out and a Black out.

also 88 does something I’ve been trying to teach myself more about– ways to use sound effect lettering as storytelling and panels as story beats.

You can read all the Area 88 manga here. 

another artist who does that sound effect trick well is this dude  (f4u) He did a porn manga about a woman who has sex with a giant penis that has a penis and also feet.

I like how he uses sound lettering almost like they’re part of the action lines.

Or here when the penis monster shows up — how well the sounds along it work– also I like the weird black bars that cover nothing.

and and on this page where the blank panels act like beats– I like the last one on the page that acts like a blank narration box.

———————

Also I was reading about how Kondom (of Bondage faeries fame) has a live action version of his Keyhole short. (that you can read here) 

I was always really impressed with this story –just on the level of what a smart idea for a porn comic I think it is– I dunno how I feel about it going live action. I don’t know how they’ll make the key work.  owch.

————–

also I was just reading how Area 88’s creator went on to make Young miss Holmes, about Sherlock Holmes niece. I might have read that soon. Bad personal space Holmes!

but Watson still approves.

Hellooo.

Someone on Tumbr was asking about the Happy little workshop comic about how Johji Manabe and his crew’s process in making Outlanders.

Here’s the cover for the issue it ran in.

 

And the back up comic:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Manabe also put out a lot of Dirty pair fan porn comics (as we all have)  Here’s the cover of one.

 

I love the idea of fan comics being done. It’d be interesting to see where American comics would go if we had such a fan comic community of companies characters. Ah the Bozz Chronicles or Excalibur fan comics I would do. should do… hmm

Also there’s this:

 

Anyway, Adam Warren also did a great How he does his comics comic around the same time as the Outlanders issue. It ran in the 2nd DP trade. Here’s the cover:

 

When this book came out in issues the Pair were wearing rabbit ears to sneak aboard a ship but they took the ears off by the time it hit the collection. (I think it was at the insistence of that limp airbrush Playboy)

 

And here’s a Manabe rabbit costume fan comic. (I’m not even sure if this one was pre or post the Warren stuff)

 

I assume it might’ve been something that Warren put in for fun since he has some other nods to other Dirty pair costumes in it. Here’s some panels from a brief scene where they show up in the same clothes as a poster from the DP anime. (I had this on my wall when I was a teenager)

 

Another nice nod in the book is the Ono Sendai decks from Gibson’s Neuromancer.–niceee!

 

and at the back of the trade:

 

These 2 How to shorts were huge to me as a kid– along with some Antarctic press info on how to make comics.

This is how we do it.

 

Sup bra,

 

I just sent off the (slightly late) Multiple Warheads downfall book. It should be out pretty soon. 

 

& the back cover with a box drawing by my pal Sarah Horrocks

Here’s a  Moontoone and Sunshine I got my misses Marian to draw for it –and a comic about me dealing with me I did.

I also did a new Warheads short for the book. I was playing around with what to name it and ended up giving it a none sense name with made up letters. I hope I never lose that giggling feet kicking feeling of doing some bullshit just because you can. 

Also, I did a fun collaboration with Mr Cameron Stewart for the Thought Bubble anthology.

And I’ll be out for the convention in Leeds, England from November 17-24. 

So page 1 was drawn by Cameron:

and I did page 2

It was a fun process making these. We talked over some ideas and then both did layouts of what page 1 could be.

Here’s my roughed out idea. (the Cap. guy was gonna be a Caption box in a trench coat) 

And Cameron’s

Cameron certainly put in more thought to the lady spy’s look than my just pulling a photo from google.

He mentioned that it was influenced by the Japanese movie Prisoner 701: Scorpion 

and a band he likes called the Black Belles

 

Man, That is one rough looking Hogwarts gang.

—————————————————————————————————-

And here’s some recent sketchbook pages I did:

S

That’s EK Weaver’s TJ and Amal on the bottom of that page– such a good comic.

———————————————————

Also I was reading online about how they aimed to base some of the Star Wars Droids cartoon after the Moebius Airtight garage comics. I remember being really into the look of the show as a kid. And you can defiantly see a French BD look to the stuff:

 

It was animated by the Canadian company Nelvana who also did the awesome movie Rock and Rule. So it was cool to see this Image with some R & R on the holo tooobe

Here’s some especially Moebius looking designs from the show.

This one credited to Elliot:

and these by Kevin Davies off of his site Here.

 

I also ran into this thing showing a Droids shot getting realllly close to a Moebius Incal panel:

 I’ve heard a lot about how they wanted to hire Moebius on Blade Runner but ended up using hisLong Tomorrow as influence for it. I wonder if the Star Wars guys made many attempts to hire him considering how much influence he seemed to have on the dudes working on it. –like that tiny background robot they made into the Probe droid in Empire:

‘

And here’s some actual Moebius Star wars:

Star wars is weird for me, I remember it being huge to me as a kid but as an adult I wrote it off. It’s even hard to get past the newer shit movies to remember how I felt about the old stuff. In contrast Moebius has been an artists who I’ve gotten more and more into as I get older. 

Also here’s some Ted Bastien art from a Doctor who cartoon that Nelvana was trying to make in the 80’s.

Look at that K-9 with feet! Life in the future. 

and a battle Dalek! I like how it looks like a pod body that the tank treads pop out of the side of.

More of that stuff here.

——————-

Also, also I really liked this Grim Wilkens Love story: (you can read the whole thing here)

Pretty stuff huh?

Also this morning I’ve been reading some City Hunter manga from the 80’s. Here’s a page of the main character getting his boner stuck in a wall that I first saw untranslated in Shonen Jump when I was a kid:

 

I think we’ve all been there before.

 

And here’s some aran rei art:  his weird version of Iczer one. from here I have no idea what’s going on with that pose.

and some other Iczer one art: I like her hair design.  Iczer-2 looks pissed that the tiny Iczer-1 wont stand on the back of her hand.

 

and here’s a book cover I liked the look of:

 

and these guys. The Zaku with the headphones is the best.

 

OK, I’m gonna go make some coffee now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

did you really know what live was?

Good afternoooon,

 

I’m getting ready to head to Seattle for a Walrus signing, Sooo buy one there or show up with any aquatic dude you want signed. (it’s my newest art book thang dawg) 

 

It should be fun.

I remember being a teenager and trying to bring my art to the Fanta offices and not being let in. My adult life is all about dealing with the so and sos of my youth.

Also, I just sent off Prophet #39 with 9 artists doing pages in it. Here’s what the contents look like-

0- Giannis milonogiannis (Joseph Bergin III colors)

1-Joseph Bergin III

2-5 Matt Sheean & malachi ward

6-10 James Stokoe

11 Aaron Conley (Joseph Bergin III colors)

12-14 Lando

15 Ron Wimberly & Brandon Graham

16-20 Simon Roy (Joseph Bergin III colors) 

And a nice Back up this issue by Paul Bohm

———————————–

I’ve been drawing more these days, or working to draw more. The new Warheads is puttering along.

Here’s a page I’m working on from it.

 

My sketchbook has become a mess of story notes and layouts but here’s some recent drawings out of it. (some Lady gaga–she has smooth videos, Empowered THB annd DB) 

 

 

yup.

 

Also I don’t think I put this up here yet. I did a variant cover for my pal Sina Grace’s Burn the Orphanage.

I wanted to do something like this:

So my pencils looked like this:

and then the final thing:

 

Also, here’s some more Prophet stuff  Dave Taylor did:

and a cover by Ludroe,

——————–

Also I ran into this site of Takashi Matsuyama’s work who assisted Akira Toriyama of Dragon ball fame. He has all these great car drawings on there:

 

Also, I read Shigeru Mizuki’s newly translated Gegege No Kitaro manga. Such fun stuff. I loaned it to Simon but managed to scan these panels that hint at it’s greatness:

And I’ve been looking at these super Moebius inspired Dragon’s heaven pages that someone posted on 4chan’s mecha page:

I think this page is interesting in how it shows such a Moebius mountain rip off on the right ,but on the left the artist is doing something uniquely Japanese with an armed mecha:

And here’s another manga page I ran into on this internet that got me thinking of the possibilities of panels. I like how the window is broken up like panels. I imagine you could do a whole comic with the window showing the past of –or even another entire story from the characters in the forefront:

and some other pictures I thought were cool:

 Lookie alien:

and here’s some dumb stuff I made with the magic of photoshop. I always feel like I should point out as cool with people doing weed as I am, I don’t actually touch the stuff myself. It puts me to sleep. but I am a fan of pot based humor. 

 

 

 

I do however, both like to make Care bear jokes and also like Care bears. I think some of my early bad memories were other kids giving me shit about having care bears. But now we all know what a not to fuck with dude Grumpy bear is so no one talks shit.

yes.

yes.

I

 

 

 

And an early Shirow drawing I thought was cool:

annnnd I’ll leave you with a Thanos I did on a blank comic cover to give to the dudes at RX comics here in vannncooouver.

 

 

Grand central

 

the Jules Coutan designed statue of Mineva, Mercury and Hercules outside Grand central in NYC. The first time I saw it I was amazed, not because I knew for what it is but because of seeing it drawn by michael golden and later by Paul Pope.

Here’s the Golden 80’s Marvel picture. I like the Daredevil doing that multiple actions in the same panel I always think of as the daredevil.  

and Pope from Heavy Liquid #1

 

Lucky’s this Friday.

I’m doing a book signing for my new Walrus book in Vancover this Friday. You guys should show up.

That elephant rumble

HellooooOOoooo

I’m a little caught up on deadlines so here’s some photos from the recent Gallery 33 show in Amsterdam I drew with my misses Marian.

That’s us working on the giant long necked bear.

The show was really good for me, I feeling like I wasn’t drawing enough so a couple weeks of doing nothing but drawing really reminded me how much I like doing it. Plus I got to collaborate with Marian, she draws soo good.

Here’s a pin up I finished last night for Damon Gentry and Aaron Conley’s Sabertooth Swordsman.

butts.

I really like the work Damon and Aaron are doing. The digital version of the book is up on the Dark horse site now. Here.

And here’s a quick Prophet drawing I did the other day.

Oh who’s this? Princess Irulan of the Imperial House Corrino. Whudup Girl!

“Know then that it is the year ten thousand and one, ninety one. The known universe is ruled by a sock lord… The sock lord god emperor of the planet Arrakis, also known as BranDuneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

(some sketchbook stuff.)

The drawings of Pope are from when we were hanging out in Oslom Norway. That show was really fun.

Also, he drew this nice drawing of Lollie from THB in my sketchbook:

Another drawing I got in the mail as soon as I returned from my Comic book hero, Fil Barlow. needless to say both of these drawings are a huge huge deal to me.

—

Last night while looking through an old 1986 National geographic magazines I recognized some photos from a (also 1986) Moebius, Major Grubert 2 pager.

Page 1

and the photo

annnnd Page 2

I love that almost the whole visual basis for this story was taken from one article, it makes me think that he was working really spontaneously–“yes that, I’ll do a story about it”

Something I heard Michael Deforge talking about in Oslo was the idea that he just takes dumb ideas and works them into something better. I like that idea it’s freeing in that you don’t have to wait to be hit by some lighting strike of inspiration but that you can just take whatever is in your head or in the case of the Moebius short –even whatever is just in front of you and make something great out of it.

—

Also, I was thinking how much the Robotech bridge bunnies or SDF-1/Macross operators — Vanessa Laird, Kim Kabirov, and Shammy Milliome ( They’re called Vanessa Leeds, Kim Young, and Sammy Porter in Robotech) are the same archetypes as the The Chipettes from Alvin and the Chipmunks. 

I guess the Macross ladies aren’t just lady versions of already established male characters like The Chipettes are. Unless it’s Zentraedi defectors Rico, Konda and Bron, (who are maybe just male alien versions of the SDF-1 ladies)

and here’s some designs of the adult Chipettes from a movie that was never made:

Seeing these makes me want a patrick nagel style Chippettes painting. You know, for my den.

—–

I’ve been reading some comics.

When I was at the Oslo show I met some of the artists who publish books under the name PEOW! Their site is here I’m really impressed by what they’re doing.

NAVA by Mikael Lopez & Ollie Forsslof is a damnnn pretty book.

There’s this cool part in the book where a woman is hit with a wave of sand.

and her soul comes out from under the sand in a different color ink.

—

I just started reading Time capsule, but the first story is by British Artist Lando whose work I’ve typed about on here before. I love his stuff.

His story, Algal bloom has these 2 women in a floating ball who suit up and go to a planet where they’re attached by flying furballs that produce spikes.

I like this classy future hang out ball ship.

I like this part, after one of the women has escaped under some glass/ice where she takes out this cube of gas/air. Lando does a mean Sci fi.

and more PEOW!

Elliot Alfredius sketchbook SWORDFIGHT! I like this duck throne.

Watch the Throne…. DUCK!

and I like this over head shot and make out scene in Hanna K’s New Frontier

And more PEOW! Patrick Crotty’s Internal Affairs, and (not PEOW! but also good) Andrew White’s We will remain.

Internal affairs is about an Onion guy who gets sent out for coffee in a future version of Stockholm. It’s really fun stuff, it kind of reminded me of the kind of fun comics my pal Corey Lewis makes.

I like how Crotty draws it in this really cartoony style but with these kind of Giannis city scapes and mechs.

He also does some cool stuff with the color in it–like this 1st panel here where the part of the building the characters are in is highlighted in yellow.

I’m still reading We Will remain but one of the shorts really impressed me with it’s concept. He has this story that focusing on the history of a rock that’s carved over the course of thousands of years. from 10,000 bc to 4019 AD

I like how he overlays images here, showing the passage of time.

I also read some of the comics I got at the local Vancaf con, here in Vancouver.

  Renee Nault’s Witcling (her site here) is the kind of book that I feel like in an ideal world Vertigo would have put out. It’s about a woman who lives in a castle (talks to cats) and is having nightmares about the nearby forest.

I really like Nault’s painted pages.

I also like the fat dude cats she draws.

I like the colors in this Parents are dead by Tara Williamson. It’s about kid’s fantasy worlds. Good stuff.

Annnd Bell and Hazel’s Always raining here was a web comic that I really enjoyed and then picked up the printed book of it when I saw them at the con. It’s a gay romance high school comic. I like seeing what happens when you take that genre of gay dude romance made by women that Im used to seeing in manga and see it done by westerners. It’s hella charming comics.

 You can read it here.

———————–

Also I’ve been reading this Kobo Abe, Secret rendezvous. where a man’s wife gets taken into a huge hospital and goes missing– It’s really bizzare and good so far, everything is recorded by the paranoid hospital and there is a guy in charge who claims to be a horse.

I like the cover design a lot.

and here’s a manga cover I liked that I got off an Otomo site. it doesnt look like his stuff but that hands kind of do.

 

And I still haven’t gone through half of what I brought back from Europe. (I’ll try to type on here again soon) I am hyped about this comic medium.

Eurotrip

Some of us are in Amsterdam.

oh hellloooo

Oslo was a blast. (I’ll type about it more when I can scan stuff) anyway I met some amazing people, got to visit a museum of ancient Viking ships with Mr Deforge, and got seranated by Paul Pope in an apartment full of Gremlin toys and Kiss posters- quite a trip.

So now Amsterdam, city of canals, lamp posts wearing crowns and endless bikes. Here’s a  bicycle birth defect.

Since we’ve got here and my misses Marian are mostly just working on an art show at Gallery 33. Everyday we’ve been walking the length of the city up to the top and painting until night.

We got to use this giant machine that beeps when it moves to paint up high.

Here’s a blue bird god that Marian has been working on.

high up

A wrecked car

Marian mountains

A mountain climbing wizard/robot:

And here’s the Sexica shirts we’ll have at the party, along with copies of Walrus, King city, Prophet, Warheads, prints buttons etc.

Also in line with the show I did these Kuvva wallpapers

Also also, Melissa Gomez’s just sent me photos of the amazing King city stuff she made.

And me and Melissa at the Emerald city con.

—

ok, now to head off to a cafeee before getting this show finished. And if you’re around on Friday please stop by. Gallery 33

distant lands.

It’s 7 am and I’m getting ready to go to Europe for the first time in my life. soo that’s cool. My misses Marian is even coming with me.

I’ll be there for the Oslo comics Expo

Here’s a poster that Mr Deforge did:

 

I’m also going to be doing an introduction to The last unicorn, which was a big deal to me as a kid. Here’s the cover of one of my first comics, if not my first:

 

And here’s a death scene:

 

I’m going to be showing slides too. Here’s a cool image I ran into of Lester Abrams character designs for it. 

Thursday 6 June: Mangapolis presents anime movie The Last Unicorn

 

Saturday 8 June at 15.00: Michael DEFORGE and me are doing a panel.

and then onto Amsterdam!

 

That’ll be a whole show with me and Marian drawing on a wall. and speaking of Marian. She just did a new Hchom birthday list: you can read here:

 

and here’s some new stuff from a Sketchbook I’m starting on this trip. I don’t have a name for it yet, maybe something like Tetrahedron or Barnacle. It’s important to name sketchbooks.

And I made buttons for the Tusk show:

 

 

annd a shirt.

 

Ok, I should find my toothbrush now and maybe find something to read on the flight.

hmmmmmm