I don't just color. I can draw too!

More and more often, people ask me if I can draw. Yes. Yes, I can. Here's a short I did a few years back. Pains me to admit it's been that long but coloring and family have taken priority over drawing. Hoping to change that soon. Until then -- I wrote, penciled, and inked this and would love to expand upon it. Enjoy.

HAPPY STAR WARS DAY

NEW DESIGN!

Obviously, it's live! I know this site isn't as "designer" as the last (no white space?! oh no!) but it felt really bland to me. I needed something that worked for me better. You'll welcome the fact my face will no longer be on the site. It's going to be science fiction based from now on. This change also mirrors my transition from illustrator to comic artist. It doesn't mean I won't be doing illustrations but that my focus has shifted to where my heart really is. That's what's most important.

There is one bug on the blog (can you find it?) that I'll iron out when I get the time but the site is 100% go. The links from my site have been moved to the blog for easier updating and tracking. I'm also planning on making more use of the blog showing process and WIP.

Now I'm going to get back to that Star Wars series for HEROES. If anyone would like a print you'll find me at the SCAD table this year. I may also be hanging out from time to time to see how my students (Pat Bollin, Allen Spetnagel, Doug Dabbs, and Cara McGee) are doing at the Temple of Cartoon Mojo table in artist alley.

*insert '50s space sounds, beeps, and whines here*

YOUR DAY IS COMING. 8th DAY.

The first of three spot illustrations visually defining the majority of cast and important locations for 8th Day. They'll be collected with a synopsis to pitch for publication.

G'bye 2008!

Walt (Clint Eastwood's character from Gran Torino) is a great vehicle for expressing just the tip of the frosty iceberg on how I feel 2008 went. Bring on 2009!

The Incredible HULK

So there's a Movie Tavern in Tucker now. (Kinda like a McMenamins theater for those of you in the NW.) I tried a burger and it was pretty decent. The screen was nice and big and seats were quite comfy with loads of legroom under the tables. Figured I'd try it out while seeing "The Incredible HULK". It was pretty good! No "Iron Man" but very good. Thankfully, it wasn't an origins story but they did re-do the origins from the previous HULK film in flashback sequences. It does continue where the previous one left off, the previous one just didn't happen the same way. It's still not exactly the classic origins but no more stupid nano-bot crap is involved; pure gamma radiation as it should be! It was actually nice to also see a super villain equal to a super hero in a movie again too. Lue Ferrigno does his guest appearance (Stan Lee has a nice one this time) but Lue also did the voice to the HULK which was really well done. I like the fact this is a talking HULK. No long lines but he speaks from time to time. Lots of little tips-of-the-hat to the television series and all well done. Overall, if you like comics I'd recommend seeing it. It's got some great Bourne Identity inspired scenes at the beginning, hints to Captain America (yay!), we see the creation of another HULK super villain (can't remember the big brain's name), the fight scenes are well done, and plot stays on target. The ending with Tony Stark was really cool too. Avengers movie here we come!

This is the second week I've been on "vacation" and I've been moving my lady in with me for most of that time. New kitchen appliances, plumbers, seven trips to Goodwill as we merge our things, upgraded my storage unit and made six trips (not counting the two redundant ones I made yesterday), lots of reorganizing, more efficient furniture purchases, veternary visits, a nephew staying with us as he goes to camp during the day, and cleaning cleaning cleaning. Going to the movies made it actually feel like a vacation finally.

Next week I'll have to focus on prepping for summer courses and my workshop for HEROES Convention next weekend. I hope I have fun and it's not a drag having to deal with people again. I've enjoyed being a hermit and working alone for all this time on home projects and renovations without politics, egos, or policies getting in my way.

Happy Star Wars Day!

If you didn't know, it's "International Star Wars Day" today. May the 4th Be With You!

And if you've not seen Iron-Man, GO NOW! 5/4 Stars... and that's not a typo.

Spring Break, Gaijin, and Tornado

Winter quarter is done! And right on time Shawn took me over to the new Giajin Studio space for their house-warming party. I've never been one for socializing but wanted to get to know the guys a bit more. They were really nice last time I met them and all but one are PC-lovers. How can I not have a soft spot for that? Shawn wanted to nail down a time for intern interviews too. Gaijin wants interns. Our students want internships. We're super close. It's the perfect situation.

The first time I met the studio I talked Stelfreeze's ears off since we had both had similar experiences with advertising and illustration jobs. This time I wanted to pop around and just briefly meet everyone without being a pain. Cully's drawing board is an old, wooden model just like my own. Very cool! Never seen another like it before last night. But I was drawn to one office: Karl Story's. It's decked out very similarly to my own home studio and so immediately felt at home. He was finishing up a page and allowed me to watch his Photoshop technique in channels. His wife was super nice too and their kid a cute Star Wars fan. I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's one thing to meet an amazing artist. It's another to meet an amazing artist that is also a really nice person. I left very tired but happy to meet some great people last night.

My plans were to go home and crash watching tv; a luxury. That didn't quite work out. I was still wide awake when my lady called to ask if I were ok. I hadn't realized a tornado had hit downtown Atlanta! I had been mesmerized by the History Channel's new show "Battlefield 360". So I turned to CNN and local stations and watched the reports until 3am. It had been raining really hard and lightning etched the skies like a lava lamp at high speed but I hadn't been concerned about a tornado. There were no news warnings, no emergency broadcast, no sirens, no nothing. Apparently it was a "rogue cell". So any family or long distance friends reading this, I'm fine. It'll be awhile before downtown Atlanta is ok though. Glad I got all my paperwork completed before this happened or I'd be forced to go downtown to finish it up today.

Today begins my Spring "Break". I'll be working on a couple personal projects and prepping for Spring courses. It'll be the first quarter I don't have to teach a foundations class! Wonderful!

SNAP!

After six years of use my frames finally died over the weekend. Superglue, epoxy, boat anchor glue, plumber's putty, etc. hasn't worked kept them together more than a few hours at a time. (I know it's cliched and dorky but I have to be able to see!) They've snapped twice just tonight so I've broken out the old frames from seven years and one prescription ago. It's the perfect recipe for a chronic headache.

R.I.P.

The new pair I ordered Saturday won't be ready until mid-next week at the earliest. I have to get heavy duty 1.74 material so they aren't as thick as coke bottles, which is no exaggeration, but it takes forever to manufacture them. I'm hoping I like my new frames but have mixed feelings about them. This all sounds very lame but after twenty-five years of wearing glasses they are an important part of my self-identity and matter a great, great deal to me.

Perspective

Time for a personal note on astrophysics and astronomy cuz I'm a geek like that.

Found a science thread worth reading called Space: Final Frontier! I actually like it more than io9.com because it's current news but, sadly, it doesn't update as often. I've added RSS feeds in the right sidebar to both.

"Sunshine" was never released domestically (in the US) but I'm hoping it's because American audiences are too pop-culture driven and not that the movie sucks as bad as I fear. I added it to my Netflix so we'll see. (UPDATE - Wow. That movie was horrible. Scientifically inaccurate, characters and personalities are consistent for a dysfunctional family not a team of elite scientists and astronauts, and somehow it turns into a horror slaughter-fest. Lame. Avoid this movie. It's crap. The type of crap that makes me hate Hollywood.)

Peter F. Hamilton's "The Dreaming Void" comes out March 25th! If you've not read "The Night's Dawn" trilogy you're missing out on over 5,000 pages of pure brilliance.

Alastair Reynold's "The Prefect" comes out April 10th in paperback and "Galactic North" is out now! His "Revelation Space" novels are mind blowing.

NASA posts a new picture each day here. RSS feed now available on the sidebar!

And if you've never been to the Hubble Site Gallery you are missing out. I want to cover my arms to look like the cosmos with the Drake Equation on my left but couldn't quite figure out what I wanted on my right. Then I found this animated GIF below. I think a scale chart would be ideal. It shows perspective on how small we really are. Nothing man ever does will change, alter, effect, or even temporarily dimple the universe. God, I love this stuff.

Finally, check out this awesome shot my little brother took while driving through central Florida. Lucky bastard got to see it live!

I've been inspired to do a comic short on gravity. Sounds dry, right? Then you aren't thinking hard enough. Stay posted.

My Cartoon Kicks Your Dictator's Ass

I've been going through my old work to find materials to show in classes this winter and I just kept thinking, "This should be in my portfolio." So there will be a rather large update coming up with tons of new work from comps for Starbucks' 2005 Rose Parade float to product shot comps for Diet Coke Spark to logo designs for Nike to Alta Vista storyboards to... this. Yes, I drew this, among another couple dozen others, for a pitch to Warner Bros. when they announced they were going to redesign the Looney Tunes. (I believe it became "Loonatics Unleashed".) I don't recall the context of how Bugs strangling Hitler was supposed to sell the concept but there you have it. Hitler never stood a chance against that wascally wabbit. Enjoy.

Happy New Year's!

Batman sketch

I've been rather excited about Dark Knight coming out later this year so I drew a quick sketch of Batman. He's not a common subject for me so it's interesting to see, even for me, what he looks like from my pencil. I really prefer the armor-clad version of Batman. It's more realistic than the spandex bs we've been asked to swallow for decades.

This holiday was alot of fun. I got to spend lots of time with my lady's family. They're good people! Hope everyone else had a wonderful Christmas and are looking forward to New Year's too!

*cough*

Often I am asked, "What do your cats do while you are working hard at your drawing board?" The same thing they do all day, of course!

I'm a freakin' Patron Saint, yo!

Someone at my old office at Wieden+Kennedy has dubbed me the patron saint of permalance. But what the hell is "permalance" you ask? See below... and God bless you cuz I'm a freakin' patron saint now, you mothers! I wonder if that means I can charge a "holiness" fee?

I also "achieved" my own employee jacket! But for now, back to comic work for me.

Space Ghost

I've been feeling like crap all night (might be a pun in there) yet I'm not tired in the slightest. So I checked out a forum Shawn had told me about awhile ago. He's been doing these great sketches of Toth characters and when I saw the official thread on the Image Comics Forums I figured it would be a nice distraction from Nike.

If you can't view this PNG below then here's a JPG for you.

Retouching is Destroying Women

And giving men an unrealistic view of them too. Been meaning to post this for awhile and thought I should do so before I forgot again.

So many times when I did retouching I was asked to fix little imperfections on people who didn't need it. Beauty is the state of BEING HAPPY WITH WHO YOU ARE not having your image artificially altered by some computer geek sitting in the dark (retouchers, you know who you are). You know how Hollywood is. Thinner thinner thinner... blah. Sure, heavy isn't attractive but heavy is also unhealthy. Unhealthy is what should be unattractive! There is nothing wrong with a beautiful woman who is at a healthy size. And by healthy I mean in-health and not as a nice word for fat. Fat is unhealthy. Focus on health! And more often that not it's the celebrity or athlete that asks for the retouching. Their egos must be sated. Their images must be solidified. Napoleons. All of them.

Then there's advertising. Tighter, smaller, thinner, more glowie! It's bullshit. The average person knows this logically but when did that ever matter? The average teen girl gets sucked into the mindset that people actually look the way their promotional photos do. I randomly came across some lame TV show called Makeover America or something rather. They were going over the ten top ways celebrities get in shape. Do you know what was their "secret weapon"? Retouching! I love doing the work. I love color correcting. I love making something more visually appealing. But retouching has gotten out of hand when it comes to portraying people.

Let's take Faith Hill as an example. She is stunning as is! Sure, she's not a young chick anymore but whoopty effin do. There are some wrinkles and age has begun to show but consider it a patina on a beautiful piece of art not something to be shunned. We need to change our mindsets when it comes to beauty. Paris Hilton-types can bite me. Anyway, my girlfriend showed me this. It made me sick. Click on the image to be sent to a "distort by the numbers" guide to how they altered the photo.

Here's an example I've known about for a few years. It's a campaign about what I'm writing. I hope you have Flash installed because it's a nice little presentation. Click on the image to view.

Life is too short not to be happy with who we are. Be healthy. Be happy. There's more to life than a size zero.

End Rant.