From Angels to Demons

A few weeks ago, I finally saw some daylight in my schedule. I got it in my head that maybe I could start doing some Disney villian art to post here. Just something to stretch my skills, mess around with the Cintiq and maybe some try working in Painter or Manga Studio again. That lasted for all of 48 hours when I was hit by the Work Hammer. Now, there's little chance I'll be drawing another bad guy until sometime in the New Year. Them's the breaks, I understand, and out of all the problems to have, too much work is the best.

But, there's no reason I can't share this one in the meantime. It's Chernabog, my favorite Disney villian from one of my favorite Disney films. He needs to be on more stuff… and more cool stuff. (I did get a lovely Chernabog Pop figure, and a Christmas ornament featuring him from my special lady this Christmas, though, so maybe he's making a comeback.) In fact, all the villians need more cool stuff. I can't tell you how much I want some Hades stuff. I just love that design.

Okay, let's cut this short before I go into my rant about the Disney Villian shop at Hollywood Studios turning into a candy shop. But come on, as Stan Lee once said, bring on the bad guys!

And, click to embiggen!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! I hope you're where you want to be, with who you want to be with, and are having a great day.

As is tradition here at the Thom Zahler weblog, we show this year's Christmas Card art. Also, in case any of you are wondeing, this was put into production long before December 14th.

Have a wonderful Christmas!

(And obey all your local traffic laws.)

See you in the New Year!

Moon Knight Commission

Here's another commission off the list. This one is one of the Kickstarter rewards I owed a backer. He picked Moon Knight, which was an interesting choice. I like it when people pick a more obscure character because there's so much new to play with. As always, click to embiggen!

Love and Capes Goes Hawaiian

Among other things I've been doing, I've been catching up on my commission list. This one was one of the rewards for my Rhinos Bowling Kickstarter project. (Which, by the way is finally in the United States, no thanks to my printer.)

The task on this one was to draw the ladies of Love and Capes in Hawai'i. I really like this one because of the characterization. Amazonia is looking for action, Abby is reading a book, and Charlotte is drinking. Each of them is summed up perfectly.

I've got a couple more I'll be showing soon, too.

Click and embiggen!

Also, not for nothin', but I am available for Free Comic Book Day, comic shops of Hawai'i.

That's a Wrap For This One

Love and Capes: What to Expect #6 is off to IDW. That's the last issue of this miniseries.

At this point, I've written, drawn, inked, lettered and colored 25 issues worth of superhero romantic comedy. I say "25 issues worth" because it's actually only been 24 issues (thirteen issues of the original series, five of Ever After, and six of What to Expect) but the wedding issue was double sized so I'm counting that as two.

However I do the math, that's a lot! I'm kind of proud of that.

I can't imagine that I'm done with Mark and Abby, but I know I'm taking a break from them for a little bit. I threatened to do that after the last issue of Ever After, but that didn't quite happen. I've got some other projects running, including the My Little Pony book and something else that you know the name but I can't talk about yet. I'll announce that as soon as I can.

Con Piece: Brave

Last piece before Heroescon!

Brave comes out this weekend, which I'm very much looking forward to. Pixar consistently knocks their movies out of the park, and it seems like each movie raises the bar on the last. Water's hard to render? Let's do Finding Nemo. Hair is hard? How about Monsters, Inc.? Let's make our protagonist an 80-year old guy. Up. Every one does something new.

It's at the point where if Pixar said they were going to do a black-and-white movie about paint drying, I'd be there opening night. Their track record is so solid that I just assume every movie is going to work until they prove me wrong.

So, I've drawn Merida from Brave, as well as her brothers. It was a challenge, since I don't know the characters or the movie yet. But it was fun, especially drawing her hair. And I tried to make the archery accurate.

And you know where I'll be Friday night. No, HeroesCon. I won't see Brave until Tuesday when I get back. But that's because I put my fans and convention appearances over even my movie schedule. The things I do for you.

Gettysburg!

Author, friend, and San Diego and Seattle boothmate Ben Thompson is a the author of the awesome Badass history books. The third one will be coming out sometime soon, and he was kind (or, arguably, drunk) enough to ask me to illustrate one of the sections for him. I pulled The Battle of Little Round Top at Gettysburg.

I got to tweak my style and do a very different subject than I normally do. I'm pretty happy with it, too. I'll be sure to let you know when the book is on the stands.

And be sure to read more of Ben's Awesome Writings at his site.

Con Piece: MJ and Gwen's Tug of War

When I was at FanExpo last year someone commissioned me to do a Mary Jane vs. Black Cat piece of them fighting over Spider-Man's uniform.

I liked it a lot and decided to revisit it for my portolio piece. I thought Gwen was a more natural foil, especially since she's prominent in the new movie.

I guess I have a running theme of Redheads vs. Blondes going. Tomorrow's post won't be that, I assure you.

Again, there's some nice body language here. They both look like they're really yanking on that uniform, and they've both got different poses. I scanned the pencils, too, so you can see what it started out as.

This, too, will be in my portfolio at HeroesCon and available for purchase at table AA230. It's the standard 9x12 brstol, colored with Copics.

And I'm not doing FanExpo this year, but its never far from my list. Hopefully next year they'll bring me out.

Con Piece: Queens Black and White, in Color

The newest piece in my con portfolio is this duel of wills between the Black Queen and White Queen from X-Men's Hellfire Club. Originally, it was going to be a Scott and Jean piece, and then it became Scott, Jean and Emma, and then I decided Cyclops was superfulous. I love Cyclops, and I'm still bothered that he ever dated the White Queen, but I thought he got in the way of the duel of wills here.

I think drawing one of these nearly every day, along with drawing a page of Love and Capes close to every day, is helping push my drawing again. I love the poses here, particularly the White Queen's body language and the Black Queen's hands. It's nice to see things start to click. That doesn't always happen, so I'm riding that wave.

I scanned the pencils so I could reduce them to transfer them to board. Pencils always have a little more life to them, so I wanted to share them, too.

The final piece is 9x12 on bristol with Copic color and will be for sale at my table, AA230, at this weekend's HeroesCon.

Project Revealed: Kitty Ditties and Pretty Ladies

I can now tell you that I'm one of the the artists for comics powerhouse Katie Cook's new sketchcard set, Kitty Ditties and Pretty Ladies from 5Finity. I'll have some cards in the set, and will be getting some artist cards that I'll have with me at shows later this year. The cards are scheduled to come out June 15. Each card features cats and pin-up girls, and I contributed eighteen of them.

I'm thrilled Katie asked me to be part of this, and hopefully it'll be the first of many sketchcard sets.

And this totally justifies me buying those Copics!