Bucks other than Rogers

About a year ago, I was hired by a Cleveland company to do some work for National City Bank. They needed a mascot designed that could appear at bank openings and events. They had some concepts, even some rough costumes, and needed them converted into a cartoon. Kind of like taking the Mickey Mouse you see at DisneyWorld and from that making him a cartoon. My initial designs can be seen here.

From there, we went through many revisions. Quickly the deer, or "Uncle Buck" became the favorite. He went from being an older uncle to being an older coach to being a younger coach. Briefly, they flirted with the idea of giving Coach Buck a younger buddy, Junior Buck.

The final design implemented a number of changes and revisions. Many cartoon characters like Donald Duck and Porky Pig wear shirts but not pants (except for when they come out of the shower for some reason) so that was the convention I used. The decision was later made to give him pants. And his antlers were turned from regular antlers into dollar signs. He also went from an older, pudgy design to a much younger, fit design.

Coach Buck has appeared mostly in the Chicago area. He's made some personal appearances and been available as a coloring page, too.

Four or More!

After a week-long hiccup to do some business in Burbank, I'm back pumping out the Love and Capes pages. Here's page four, which means I've only got twenty left to go! It's going to need to be a page every three days to hit my deadline. I think I can do it, but once again it will be a little tighter than I'd like.

Sigh. At least I'm consistent.

This page was tough to break from a writing standpoint. I had a joke which I really liked, but as written, it would break the flow of the story. I wound up swapping Mark for Charlotte, and the whole scene works better now. Not only does the funny still work, but it creates a better transition for the story and, of course, the next page.

Two of a Kind

Next week is the excellent Baltimore Comicon in, of all places, Baltimore. I'll be there at booth #1409, wherever that is. I know the con has expanded in size this year, so I don't actually know where anything is.

Last year I worked on the Mary Jane Watson Toon Tumbler exclusive. This year I got to work on the companion glass, the Gwen Stacy glass. I like that we were able to keep some of the same design elements as the last glass which helps make them look like a set. I also got to write Gwen's dialogue. She didn't have a famous quote like MJ, so I had to come up with something so they both had dialogue.

Click on the picture and be taken to a larger pic. And be sure to come to the show!

Creature Feature

It's come to happen so much that it's become a truism: The best way to generate work is to leave town.

So I headed off to Los Angeles and got a call from Scene Magazine back in Cleveland. My art director there needed an illustration for the weekly "Night and Day" calendar section. Fortunately, I brought my drawing gear with me and was able to get it done. I drew and inked the piece on my friend's desk, scanned it, and colored/tweaked it with Photoshop and my graphics tablet.

It's an illustration of Ghoulardi, the Cleveland horror host played by Ernie Anderson, before he became the voice of ABC. "Next, on the Love Boat…" That was him.

He was a little before my time. I was more a Superhost guy. Supe used to show kids' drawings off on his Saturday double-feature show, and frequently showed off mine. That kind of early validation probably got me into an art career as much as anything else.

Well, Maybe Just One More

Quiet day today. I have one last Buzzboy page to post, though. I'd done this one earlier in the week and missed it when I was putting them up on the blog. It doesn't seem right not to post the full set, so here it is.

Lifter of Heavy Things

The phone still hasn't rung yet, but it's not the weekend, so that doesn't surprise me in the least.

Actually, that's not completely true. My phone has rung for business reasons, but not the ones I'd expected. That's yet another thing I can't talk about though… sorry. As soon as I can, I will.

I did some physical labor today, which was kind of fun. I moved a table for a friend, and it was good to get out and lift something more than pixels. And I got to have lunch with my friends Charlotte and Dwayne. It was a good conversation all around, and not only did I get to spend some quality, non-convention time with my friends, but I also left feeling retroactively better about my Tuesday meeting.

This evening, to get out of Eugene's house and hair (which, let me make clear has so not been a problem, I just wanted to make sure it stayed not a problem) I borrowed his car and went to Amoeba Music. Since I'd just been there a couple of weeks ago, I managed to keep well under my normal $100 hit.

In case you're wondering, I bought two Celtic Woman CDs, Chicago's first Greatest Hits, Roxette's first album, the Veronica Mars soundtrack, SheDaisy's Fortune Teller's Melody, Robert Downey Jr.'s The Futurist, Heuy Lewis and the News' Greatest Hits, Steve Winwood's Back in the High Life Again (yes, I'm buying my teen years back… thank God they didn't have that Tiffany album), and Angels and Airwave's We Don't Need to Whisper since my friend Sean recommended them on his blog.

I also managed to get a Slurpee. For some reason, the greater Cleveland area has run off all the 7-11's, so road trips like this are when I can get my sugary frozen concoction fix. Yay!

Now I'm winding down my day, watching the news. It rained a little bit today, and that seems to big Big Important News here. The Midwest is getting pounded by mammoth rainstorms, but it sprinkled in Burbank, and that gets the attention.

Oh, and I finished up my portion of Buzzboy. You'll see them littered in this post, too. Click and embiggen!

Killing Time

It's another day of the LA wait.

Waiting for a phone call or an e-mail is a funny thing. After long enough, you become superstitious. You start doing everything you remember doing that "caused" the phone to ring. For me, it was usually shaving. I start to shave and BAM… phone call. So, I've been doing all that stuff, and none of it has been working.

Supersititions like this are a funny thing. I don't mind them myself. I don't actually think taking a bath makes the phone ring (but maybe I'll try that later today) but doing so to try to make something happen at least makes me feel like I'm doing something. It's like watching sports. Sure, wearing my lucky jersey may not make the Indians win, but unless Eric Wedge needs my wicked 50MPH fastball, wearing that jersey is the only thing I can do to affect anything.

Actually, I have had a little bit of news today... more of progress I suppose than anything definite. Can't complain. And in the meantime, I've inked some more Buzzboy. So click and enjoy that!

Ever Forward

I'm still in LA on my super-secret business trip. Yesterday went well, and there may have been an extra sprinkle of goodness to come out of it, too. Time will tell, and right now I'm spending that time at my friend Eugene's house. (Eugene's a very talented animation writer. You've seen his work and loved it, I'm sure.) Eugene and his family have been gracious hosts, putting up with a midwestern interloper setting up shop in their home, eating their food, and sneaking on to their wireless network. I'm lingering around their lovely home while waiting to see if I need to have another meeting with an undisclosed company.

Lest I do nothing, though, which is certainly not this workaholic's way, I've managed to color a couple pages of Buzzboy. Working on a laptop instead of my double Cinema Displays takes a little getting used to, but it's nice to have something to do other than just waiting. The waiting, as Tom Petty once opined, is the hardest part.

So, presented for your visual edification are the two (techincally three since one page is a double-page spread) paes I colored today. Enjoy.

And as soon as I can, I'll let you know why I'm out here. Promise.

Youthful Indiscretions

Way back in my youth, I wrote comic book letter columns, and the one I frequented most was Nuclear Reactions, the lettercol for The Fury of Firestorm the Nuclear Man. Writing letters to editors was a great thing back, and sadly, something that's faded because of space issues and the interweb. Back then, it was the only way to interact with the editor. It also was a way to find other like fans, as they'd print your address. I met a number of cool people that way.

Anyway, back in the eighties, Firestorm moved to Pittsburgh and the book changed. Different artists, the stories weren't as sharp… I just didn't like the book as much. But Firestorm was still my favorite character, so I kept reading and writing. My comments had both positive and negatives, and one of my frequent negatives was about the coloring.

At the time, a lady named Nansi Hoolihan was coloring FOF. She had a tendency to color the Pittsburgh skies red, even after the Crisis on Infinite Earths and its red skies of death. I remember taking her to task a few times for it, and I swear that there was an entire issue of Firestorm that featured blue skies because of my constant whining.

So, flash forward to now and Love and Capes. And here I am coloring the skies red. Over the last couple of years, I've been schooled in color theory pretty intensely. I'm not saying that I understand it completely, but better than I did back at the Kubert School, and definitely better than when I was in high school. I don't know if I just wasn't getting it, or if it was that I was used to the brightly colored Firestorm stories and the color pallette shifted intentionally when he moved to Steelers City, but I think I was unfair with her. So, if you happen upon this blog, Nansi, please forgive the ramblings of a sixteen year old Firestorm fan.

Now to the page itself: Page three is a Crusader/Darkblade scene. Love and Capes was designed as a sitcom, and the superhero chat scenes are designed to take place on a rooftop in Chronopolis. But, since I'm doing a comic book, two characters talking on a rooftop can be less interesting than two actors moving and talking. So I've tried to find "business" for Mark and Paul to be doing as spout reams of my dialogue.

This one is one I've had in mind for a while. They're leaping rooftops. It probably wouldn't work in live action, but in a comic I think it turned out pretty well. So well that I'm posting two panels, so you can see how they move. And make up for reading three paragraphs about my letter writing days.

I Could Tell You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

I still can't tell you what this Raider "wallpaper" is for, but I can still share it with you. The client wanted to have that old school newspaper feel to the comic, so I used a Photoshop effect to get the color separation dot pattern. I'm very happy with how it turned out.

As usual, click and see the entire wallpaper in its bigitude.

Wow, secret meetings, secret projects... I'm turning into an international man of mystery. But, I promise, as soon as I can say something, I will.