The show was inSANE.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Our show experience started off with dinner Friday night with Dan and Dawna of SteamCrow, and Rebecca and James of LunaSea Studios. It was a fun night, good food lots of laughs and lots of great info. After dinner, the 4 of them headed back to their respective roosts and I proceeded to get lost in DT Seattle while trying to get back to the highway to go to our hotel. LOL.

The next morning, we got to the show a couple of hours early to set up. During set up, we had a lot of fellow artists and vendors swing by to look at and comment on the prints and hats we had out. So, that was cool. One of my favorite con moments came during set up, too; As we were putting the finishing touches on our booth, figuring out sign placement, etc., a woman and her young (like, 4 yrs old) daughter came into the hall from the loading doors. Right next the the loading door is where the show’s organizers had placed Stan Lee’s signing area. As the little girl passes this area, she spots Stan’s picture on the curtain behind the table and says, “That’s the SPIDER-MAN guy!!” That’s a kid that’s being raised right.

After that, the show starts. Now, I’ll admit – at this point the show floor becomes a bit of a blur. There were people everywhere. We were down at the end of the hall where the guests were, so there were tons of people near our booth. And it stayed that way pretty much until they closed the doors. We sold out of both of our Star Wars prints by the end of the first day (the Resist print ran out by noon!). Zombie cards were popular, and Ashlie’s cute hats had a lot of attention. At the end of the show, I did a Blue Beetle commission sketch (for which I had to go buy a JLA comic for reference. I never can remember how the lines of his costume go!). After the show, Ashlie and I got some noms (Tasty TASTY Indian food at Pabla Punjab Palace in Seatac) and went back to the hotel, where I did another sketch commission of Crow T. Robot from MST3K. Now I, of course, forgot to get pictures of these pieces, so if you own either of them and a scanner, I’d greatly appreciate you sending me a scan or picture of them.

Sunday started off badly when Ashlie and I went to breakfast at the Pancake Chef in Seatac down the road from our hotel. It was disgusting. We were both queasy and ill feeling afterward (and I love me some greasy spoon breakfast food!). AVOID! Anyway, when we got up, I had to place an order for more Star Wars prints to be picked up that morning. After I dropped Ashlie off, a friend and I went on an odysee to get our prints. Once again, Seattle’s aggressively hostile roads proved to be a foil to my plans and we ended up taking way longer than I wanted to getting back to the show. Oh well. Once back however, the show kicked back into gear. While it wasn’t as busy as Saturday, it was still pretty steady all day. I did a commission of Moon Knight, which was cool. Moony is a character I don’t get to draw nearly often enough. Sunday also found me getting interviewed by Shannon at SeattleGeekly, which was fun. I geeked out over her microphone/recoder gadget for a good 10 minutes. Good times. I got a chance to go wander on Sunday, tho, and I picked up some art books and a batgirl sketch from an artist from Singapore, a hand-pulled screenprint from Steamcrow, and a shirt from dresden codak (who I had never heard of until then).

So all in all it was a great show. Big thanks to Jim, Brian, George and all the rest of the Emerald City Crew. And of course, thanks to the fans who came out and made the show great!

First up for all my Portland People, this Wednesday is Draw Night!! We’ll be at the Original Hotcake House once again, starting around 5:30. Come as you are whenever you can, we’ll be there for a while. I might not be doing much drawing,as I still have shit to get done for this weekend which segues into my next topic:

EMERALD CITY COMICON! It’s this weekend!! AHHHH!!!! As some of you may know from my twitter feed,  I had planned to debut my new (and first) book at ECCC10, but due to some unforeseen printing errors (and my general lack of planning), we’ll not have any copies for sale this weekend. Sadpants. However, I’ll have a bunch of new prints, greeting cards, buttons and art. My wife will be with me to cater to your every geek hat, wallet, and button need. I’ll also be doing commissions at the booth. They’ll be $20 for an inked Bust (waist up) shot or $30 for a grey marker version. I’ll have all my copics with me and we can negotiate if you want color. If you bring me a bound sketchbook, I’ll do a quick pencil head shot for free.

So, I’m a little late. Sorry. This convention season preparation is kicking my ass. But, I’m finally starting to see a little light. We’ve gotten the books done, and will order them soon, I think we have some great booth set-up ideas, and I have some great new prints and products coming down the pipe. Which bring us to today’s art. You’ll notice that today’s work is significantly more finished than a ’sketch’. These are some Star Wars propaganda posters that I worked up last week. I had the idea for the Vader poster months ago, but could never get the image to click in my mind’s eye the way I needed it to to make it work visually. Last week, though I had a brain worm and bam, this came out. So many times, I’ll have a vague idea for a project, and by sketching and reworking I can force the finished piece into some kind of visual appeal by sheer force of will. But not Darth, oh no. I had to walk away from him for months before he’d resolve himself into a coherent form. Bastard. The rebel one was a bit easier. I had the basic concept down in the sketch. I knew who I wanted in it and where I wanted them placed. I came across this coloring technique kinda by accident, and knew that I wanted to use it for this piece.

Anyway, so that’s that. These 2 will first be available at Emerald City Comicon in a little less than 2 weeks (!) time, so be sure to swing by and pick yours up. After that, I may put them on the website and in the etsy store, but it probably won’t be immediate. I’ll also have new buttons, a new zombie print and of course, the new Book, Zombies Next Door. I’ll also be taking art commissions, so stay tuned and I’ll post info about that soon.  Ashlie will be there as well, upping the visual appeal of the booth as well as as selling her awesome hats, wallets and other geeky goods.

Almost directly after ECCC, we’ll be at Planet Comicon in Kansas City, KS. I will also have these there. This is going to be my first show in the Midwest (the home of my forebears), so it should be pretty awesome.

Anyway, sorry about the delay on this, folks. As you know convention season is starting up and one of our biggest shows is coming up next month: Emerald city Comicon in Seattle, WA. The past month or so, I’ve been so wrapped up in finishing our book that I’ve let some things slip. But good news! We’ve received the first proof of The Zombies Next Door, and it looks great! Can’t wait to get final copies! Emerald City will be the debut of that book, so if you’re coming be on the lookout for us!

Also, hopefully in the coming weeks, I’ll be adding some of our button designs to our stores here and at etsy. So keep your eyes peeled.

I included the images of the original shapes. Wanted to see how close I kept to the provided shapes.

So today, I took it upon myself to do a quick sketch of what I think Skeletor should look like. Gone is the “Barbarian Smurf” motif of yesteryear. To me, Skeletor should be scary. He should be the thing that Eternian Parents use to scare their kids at night. The dude’s supposed to be a sorceror, let’s play that up. The tattered robes, the staff, the chain made from animal bones, the snake skull cloak pin all say “mystical scary dude” to me. I also think that the dude should be thin. Like skeleton thin. I think that in the western world especially, it’s scary when you look at someone and can see their bones through their skin. Like it reminds us of our own mortality. That should be Skeletor all over. His name is Skulletor, after all.

Agree? Disagree? Do it in the comments!

On a related note – If you’re an artist that like to draw with pen, you owe it to yoursef to check out the Pentel Stylo Sketch pen. I drew this with one of these and it was awesome. Variable line widths, easy to control and it flows smooth like buttah. Do it, you’ll thank me later.

This is my version of He-Man. I always thought that He-Man looked a little too much like a wuss. Maybe that’s why Skeletor was always giving him trouble? If He-Man had looked like a proper badass, maybe Skeletor would have behaved himself.

In an unrelated turn of events, the Seattle Geekly  Podcast did a feature on our line of Valentine’s Greeting Cards! Click the link to check them out!

Man, what a day for a geek!! Steve Jobs announced the new Ipad personal electronic tablet. This thing looks SWEEET!! and it inspired today’s sketch blog. I drew this in about 10 minutes during my lunch break. (Scanner’s fixed, woo!)

I may work this up digitally eventually.

I see the iPad as the next big evolution in personal electronics. This thing is going to re-set the paradigm in regards to what we do in the electronic medium.

And I can’t wait. Welcome to the future, everybody!

D