Gravity Bomb

Viewer: Jon, what's a gravity bomb?
Me: I dunno, but I want two. One for up and the other for down.

I guess this is a one page comic. I wonder if there are rules or a definition as to how much content a one-page comic has to contain. "Use the gravity bomb" and then the other guy does... I suppose it falls under the 'Conceptual Product Demonstration' comic genre.

So I did this in my sketchbook, and liked it, so it got a bit of a Photoshop treatment and Voila! Now it's online for the world to see. Enjoy World!

Litterboxx

Well it's been a while since I've done some real comic pages, but this looks like the project that's going to get me going again. I've been getting more comfortable with my inking approach, so I think these are going to be some really solid pages.

It's for a submission to an anthology called SIDE B, and even though it's not due for a while, I figured I should get going on it... especially since my schedule has been a little unpredictable lately.

These are the thumbs for it. The basic story is theres a band of cats called LITTERBOXX that fly around in an octopus space ship and play music for their fans... and theres a anti-music robot that tries to stop them... but the power of rock is just too strong.

Hoard, Illustration Friday

Well, I enjoyed doing this last week, so I'm going to try to get in the habit of it. The theme this week was 'hoard' and as I started to sort out ideas I kept thinking of the definition for 'horde'.. which is different.. Anyways, I looked it up to be sure.

I did a 3 page comic with this 'piggy-bank-for-a-head-man' character a while ago. It just seemed to fit for this idea. If you're interested check out the comic pages here.

Drawing Words & Writing Pictures

I got a nice little surprise in the mail, it's the new comic textbook from all-star cartoonists Matt Madden and Jessica Abel. I was an intern for Matt and Jessica while they were writing it. I did a character construction exercise that they included in the book, which is really cool.

I mostly saw the outlines and some rough drafts, but I could definitely tell this was going to be big. They've really covered the art of comics from all angles in this book. I'll enjoy going through this in depth and I can already tell it's going to be a great resource.

It's published by First Second and available at Amazon (among other places I'm sure).

Punchline

So theres this thing called Illustration Friday and I've been meaning to participate the past few weeks, but I've been so busy that it's close to the following Friday before it's getting close to finished. This time, I kept it a little simpler. The theme is 'Punchline'. This makes sense to me, but comment if it's too vague. I'm curious if it comes across like intended.

An Effing Foodie

I have posted about this project before, but hadn't put up the final web banner. The first draft was more of an illustrated cartoony style, but the client was thinking of something a little more elegant. This style works a lot better with the layout of the site. See for yourself at http://www.aneffingfoodie.com/.

Mangia Mix

I was browsing through my past work folders and realized I never posted this project online. Theres a few that slip through the cracks now and then, but this is one I especially enjoyed. Rich has made a business combining two of my favorite things: food and music. He does great music mixes for restaurants in the NYC area. I designed his logo, business card and some miscellaneous stationary.

This is the front and back layout of the business card. I had them printed at overnightprints.com because they're good, cheap and can do those nice rounded corners that I wanted.

Evil Bird cover

One day I'll have time to actually get some finished pages done for this comic. Still slowly working out some kinks to the story and it's still pretty much on the back burner. But I had a hankering to work on this cover image, so I put it together. The bird was fully inked, but I decided to crop it for design purposes. I played with some photoshop stuff that I hadn't really messed with much before and I'm happy with the results. I was unaware that there were two methods of achieving 'halftone'. I like this one much better. It's filter>sketch>halftone pattern. Although it doesn't seem to be available in CMYK mode. No biggie though for this piece. I also worked with illustrator for the logo, played with gradient and layer options and pulled in and manipulated some grunge textures.