In the Dark and TipJar - Projects to knock your socks off!

Hey all!

I know I haven’t been updating much recently, but that’s because I’m hard at work!  I am proud to announce that I’m part of two awesome Kickstarter projects right now! They are both very cool, and if you like comics, horror, or just art in general, at least one of these projects is for you!

Here’s the low down and dirty -


IN THE DARK ANTHOLOGY

In the Dark is a brand new horror anthology featuring some of the top and up and coming talent in the comics industry today, and is a great chance to get an anthology full of unique voices doing really cool horror tales. In the vein of the old Tales of the Crypt, Creepy, and other classic horror anthologies, you aren’t going to want to miss this!

The project is spearheaded by Rachael Deering, and she was great enough to pair me up with James Tynion IV, a talented writer and all around nice guy who has given me one of most terrifying monsters to draw. Our tale is going to blow you away!

Pledges for In the Dark start as low as $10 for the full version in PDF, and more for the hardcover. There are still some really cool donation reward tiers open, so it’s WELL worth your time and money! Take a look at In the Dark here!



TIPJAR SKETCH COLLECTION


TipJar is a really cool project masterminded by my great friend Nicky Soh and organized by the rad Jen Hickman! This project is a chance to get to support fresh talent, and get to know new artists(and great people) in a very intimate way- Through their sketchbooks.

Every artist knows that for every good drawing, there’s countless sketches and process work that goes into it’s creation. This is a chance to see some of each artists unique work process, as well as a chance to see experimental work that wouldn’t typically be shown portfolios, or even sketchblogs! Each artist has selected the best of their sketchworks, and contributed at least 50 sketches to the project.

Donations for TipJar start at $1. The more you “tip” the more art you’ll get. Even $1 will get you 300 awesome images, and for as little as $10 you can get the full Megabook - 700 pages of awesomeness. There are also increased reward tiers as well, and for $75 you can get the full package, 4 prints, and an original sketch commission of your choice!

Check out TipJar here! $1 isn’t much to ask to support awesome art and keep us going!


Opportunities like this aren’t going to coming around often, and trust me, you’ll want to say you were there when it happened!


Please support these projects by donating, and if that’s more than your situation allows, please share, reblog, and spread the word to your other art loving friends!

Thanks!

You Never Know: Page Process for Playlist Kickstarter

Zoom in for Full view!


As you may know, I'm currently working on a project called "You Never Know" for an upcoming comic anthology called Playlist , which is being Kickstarted right now!

All of the comics in the anthology are based around songs by different musicians or bands, drawn in different unique styles. This is something awesome that you'll definitely want to be a part of, so check it out!

The song is a sort of Supernatural Horror/Noir tale that is inspired by and based on the song You Never Know by the band Brazil! Here is a breakdown of the page process step by step.

It's pretty self-explanatory but let me just give a little bit of clarification here.

1 - Concept Art
----------------------
After getting the general idea for the story from reading the song I do a rough concept design. This gives me a solid visual for what to think about when I'm drawing the thumbnails and finished pages.


2- Song Analysis
----------------------
This is one of the more exciting parts for me as a storyteller. Since the story was originally written as a song with verse rather than as a comic script, it's up to me to break down each page and panel. This gives me a LOT of freedom and makes the process really enjoyable.


3 - Thumbnails
----------------------
Once I know what's going on each page as far as the song is concerned, now it's up to me to break it down into individual panels. This goes hand in hand with the script analysis part. These thumbnails are VERY rough. If I was working with an editor or published house I imagine they might be a little frightened about these almost illegible scribbles, so I would have to tighten them up more. I probably should anyway, because coming back to these a few weeks later I even had to discern what I was drawing a few times. Regardless, when it's just for me I don't feel the same need to make these totally definite, I want the freedom to play with the layout and panels just a bit when I get to drawing the page.

4 - Pencils
----------------------
Rough pencils. I ink my own work so I'm not as concerned with having a final line, black placement, or rendering as I would if I were handing this off to another artist. This saves me time, as well as makes the inking more exciting for me as I usually do it the same day as the pencils. If I made finished pencils and then inked them it would probably take me close to 15-20 hours, and there's just not enough time in the day for that. These pencils are darkened up significantly in Photoshop so that you can actually see them onscreen.

5 - Inks
----------------------
I think I'm with a lot of artists who ink themselves in that this is my FAVORITE part of making comics. I love coming up with the storytelling and figuring out how to draw the different parts of my story, but the feel of the pens and brushes on the board is really awesome, as well as the variety of marks I can make with them. After inking I erase the pencils, scan, crop, and threshold the inks to get just black and white.




Hope you enjoyed and for all of you interested in making comics I hope this is helpful!


Please check out the Playlist Kickstarter page! We currently have 10 days left to go and it's going to be a tight squeeze for funding! If you found this useful, like comics and/or music, please share it with your friends and back us if it' something you think is cool!

Thanks again!

I use -

Strathmore 500 Series Semi-Smooth 11x17
4H Pencil core and mechanical lead
Micron, Brush, Rapidograph, Marker

Playlist! Brand new Kickstarter project!

I have an announcement to make! I'm excited to say that I will be collaborating with one of my favorites, the super cool band Brazil, in creating a comic for an awesome kickstarter project called Playlist!

This is the cover for our tale, entitled You Never Know, based on Brazil's song of the same name.

This project is featuring 200 pages of awesome comics from a bunch of great, talented and super nice comic illustrators! Every story will feature a song interpreted by one of the artists into comic form. There will be a wide variety of artistic style and voice, all bringing music by some great musicians and bands to life!

Please take a look at the project and help us bring this amazing project to fruition!

You can check out some of the great artist's on their dA sites here!

Our editor and awesome artist!





And many more!


Really excited to see this project happen! It is going to be totally unique and something really special that you'll want to be a part of!

Our success will be because of you! Enjoy, spread the word, and donate!

Thanks!

ArtBook - Sixty Shades of Blue - Nicky Soh Kickstarter

Recently my good buddy Nicky Soh started a Kickstarter for an art collection book called Sixty Shades of Blue! It looks like an awesome project, and I highly recommend donating to it, or in the least sharing the project with friends who enjoy this kind of stuff as well!

Let me just give you a little background on the project!

Last spring, Nicky started creating small illustrations in his free time as a way of relieving himself of any pressure from his other projects. It was a way to both experiment with style and drawing techniques, as well as cathartic means to draw unusual content. I am lucky enough to own one of these drawings, and I gotta tell you, they are all beautiful.

After amassing an amount of these, and having enough interest from friends and family, Nicky decided to put them into a compilation art book, and share them with the world! He also will include 20 pages of process and preliminary sketches, and has asked myself and 14 other super talented artists to do our own interpretation of his drawings for the book if the project gets funded!

I'm really excited about this project, and I think you should be too!

Here are some of my favorites of his blue pencils drawings that you could expect to see in the book!

Crazy Robot

WTF!?

SmokeHead

Bang!Bang! I'm lucky enough to have the original for this one!

Aren't they great! There are 56 more to be seen in this awesome collection! Take a look, check it out, and share the love!