Crusaders (Cutie Marks and Mine) for Comicpalooza!

Here's a commission that I did in advance for Comicpalooza this weekend. He wanted Scootaloo from My Little Pony's Cutie Mark Crusaders flying with my Crusader, from Love and Capes, obviously, in a kind of Can You Read My Mind kind of way. It's not the kind of combo I would have thought of at all, but I think it came out really well.

This is probably a fine time to mention that I've updated my commissions page, too.

Doctor Who Commissions

My friend Jesse Jackson has an awesomely cool Doctor Who sketchbook. You see, he commissions DW art and has those pages, rather than promo photos, signed by the actors at shows. I think it's a great and more personal way to celebrate the show. I've been fortunate enough to do more than a few pieces for his book, including a new Colin baker Doctor, Madame Vastra, Captain Jack Harkness and Paul McGann Doctor. I thought I'd share them here.

A New Print for Comicpalooza

For a bunch of reasons, I did a new illustration of all the Doctors Who strolling out of the Tardis, clown car-style. I'm going to be selling these at Comicpalooza. They're 18" long, about 5" high, and will be $15.00 each. There are going to be three Doctors at the 'Palooza, too. Coincidence? Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey? Who knows.

Commissions from C2E2

I wanted to share my commissions from C2E2. Disclosure: The Twilight Sparkle/Applejack one was done after the show because it somehow slipped off my list. But that let me color it digitally, too. I'll be at Comicpalooza in a couple of weeks, too. My commission list is open. Interested? Shoot me an email and we'll get you set up.

Day 08: Plastic Man #tzadvent

Day 08: Plastic Man

Today's drawing is a mixed bag for me. I think it looks pretty good, but I wasn't able to do the thing that I wanted to with it:

I wanted to make custom curve rulers to ink the arms here. But I couldn't figure out how to do it, it was getting late, and I just decided to handle it traditionally. I did tweak some of the brush settings to make the arcs a little slicker. I'm not sure how well that worked.

I dig Plastic Man a ton, but stretchy characters like this are hard for me. Sure, it seems like you could do anything with them, but it's that freedom that makes them a challenge. If they can do anything, what do you have them do? And trying to get the right mass to stretch ratio isn't as easy as you'd think, either.

I'm sure I'll use the technique I didn't on this on something else, or someone will suggest Mr. Fantastic or Elongated Man or Metamorpho. It's just delayed for now.

Day 07: Shade the Changing Man #tzadvent

Day seven: Shade the Changing Man.

Did I say I might be late? I don't miss deadlines.

(I say that and who knows what will happen tomorrow.)

I had an awesome time at Alter Ego today, and I'll write about that more later. For now, let's do some drawin'!

I've arbitrarily decided that every seventh one of these will be in color. This was a perfect one to start with. The distorion field surrounding Shade was inked in Manga Studio as per usual, but on a separate layer. This made it easy to convert the whole thing quickly to the green color.

Not a lot of program or Nostromo experimenting here. Mostly I wanted to see how I would handle a transparent layer like the field around Shade.

I read a few issues of the original Shade: The Changing Man series when I was a kid. I kind of liked it, even if I totally didn't understand it. And I didn't. I really liked the Vertigo series that came years later, too, but I'd love to see the classic version revisited.

Sketchbook Art: Electric Ice Skater Superman

This version of Superman, which I like to refer to as Electric Blue Ice Skater Superman, is one of the weirder artifacts of the 90's Superman. In truth, I like a lot of the idea. In the story, Clark's powers changed and he got electric abilities. Part of the trade-off was that he lost his invulnerability and other powers. It was fun to see him have to watch what he ate because he no longer had his super-metabolism or be able to shave with a normal razor. The story went on a little too long over way too many issues, though.

But the costume design is still pretty cool, so it was fun to get to draw this!

Sketchbook Art: Up From the Depths, Thirty Stories High

The great thing about doing commissions at conventions is all the stuff you get to draw you'd never think of doing yourself. I was a huge fan of the Godzilla movies as a kid, and drew him all the time. I probably mostly drew the Hanna Barbera cartoon version, but they'd already converted the King of Monsters into lines for me. How could I not?

The 90's remake was pretty abysmal, but if you have the time, do yourself a favor and check out the original script. Much, much better. Godzilla's the good guy!

At ComicPalooza I got the opportunity to draw Godzilla doing his thing. Pretty cool!

Sketchbook Art: Chernabog

Chernabog is one of my favorite Disney villians. He's got such a cool design, and he's in one of my favorite Disney films. I just wish he were on more merchandise (and likewise, that the Villian Shop at Hollywood Studios hadn't become essentially a candy shop) because I would eat it up.

More Chernabog and more Hades, that's what I'd like to see.

This is a commission from DragonCon, and it was a ton of fun to do.

Thor Tattoo!

I was commissioned to draw a Thor piece a while back. (Look! It's a Thor: The Dark World tie-in!) The interesting thing is that I was told that this would be turned into a tattoo as well.

That just blows my mind. I've famously said that I would never get a tattoo* since I'd feel obligated to get some of my own artwork, and I can't stand anything I've drawn that's over six months old. That's part of the nature of being an artist if you're doing it right, though.You should keep improving.

So when someone says they want to affix some of my art to their person forever, that's amazing. The art I did was flipped to make it work better on the designated location, but i's definitely my art. Incredible!

(* The only exception being if Paul Storrie and I ever become hunters and need an anti-possession tattoo.)