My Drawing Board

Between cons and my website, I've been taking commissions. It's one of my favorite parts of doing conventions these days. I just completed a bunch of them, so I'll be posting them the next few days.

Here's the first, a Power Girl commission. The request here was to "show her defiant but not ticked-off". The commissioner was pretty happy with this one.

Building My Own Mousetrap

I do a lot of conventions to promote Love and Capes. I love doing the shows, but hauling my gear to shows is always an effort. For shows I can drive to, everything fits (albeit snugly) in my convertible. The worst for transport is, of course, Comic-Con in San Diego, where I have to ship things across the country. The biggest hassle, to my mind, is shipping my wire display rack. It's too large to fit into a suitcase so I have to ship it in a big box. The box isn't so much heavy as it is unweildly, but just its size makes it expensive to ship. I've been trying to find a better mousetrap, as it were. I haven't been able to find one, so I decided to make one. Here's what I wanted my design to do:

1. Fit into a suitcase, flat.
2. Be light.
3. Display a decent number of books.
4. Be sturdy.
5. Be disposable, so I can leave it behind if I want to.

Here's what I came up with. I'll need two of them to display the Love and Capes ouevre, but that's fine. It folds down to about 17" x 27", which does fit in my suitcase. And it's even got an area for signage at the top, where I'll put a price list. I think it came out really well, and I'm a little proud of myself. My Dad is awesome at building things, and it's nice to know that I've got a little bit of that in me when I need it. I'm also going to share it, under the Creative Commons act. I've had people say that I could sell these, but honestly, I'd rather make comics than stands. Besides, not everything's got to be about profit, sometimes you should just release some good into the universe, you know? If this design helps someone else, I'm happy to help. Here's a link to a PDF of my blueprints. I figure each one takes about $10-15 in supplies. You need a 40" x 60" piece of foam core board, an X-acto knife, a long ruler, and a piece of tape or Velcro. It probably takes 30-60 minutes to build. I laid out and marked up the foam core. Here's what the flat piece looks like. (Click any picture to see it larger.) Then I scored it so that the front panel becomes like a set of stairs. I scored the side panels so that it will fold up flat. You have to be careful while making your scores, though. The design has a lot of weak points while you're trying to fold it, although once it's complete it's pretty solid. I stress tested it for a day and there were no problems. It also has a slight lean to it, by design. This puts the shelves at an angle so that gravity can help keep the books in place. The stair shelf doesn't hold itself down at first. You need the books to force it into place, but after a couple of hours, it starts to hold its shape. And I put some Velcro on the back panel to make the final connection. You could use tape, too. You just need to have a knife to cut it when you're done if you want to reuse it. Here it is folded flat. And here it is with books on it. Pretty cool, eh? Oh, what the heck, how about a little shilling? Hey! Love and Capes: Going to the Chapel, the second Love and Capes collection is available in comic stores this Wednesday! Foam Core Display Stand by Thomas Zahler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.thomz.com.

Domestic Bliss, Superhero Style

The Big Busy continues as I'm packing for my trip to Kids Read Comics and taking care of some last minute clienty stuff. But I wanted to share a new image of Love and Capes. I can't say what it's for, at least not yet. But I think it's a pretty good an indicative image of the new arc of the series.

It's Mocha Time!

Whew! What a week. And there's still a weekend left!

I did HeroesCon in Charlotte last week. Stories will follow, seriously, but I also needed to finish up the first issue of Love and Capes: Ever After. Yeah, it's not due out for a while, but it'll come out monthly, so I need to get way ahead.

So, today I finished the first issue. It was an odd process this time, as I took some tracing paper and the grid sheet… the same one I've used since issue #1… down to Charlotte so I could pencil pages at my table. Over the three day show, I did the three pages, so that I could bring them back and ink them on Tuesday, and start coloring thereafter. And now it's done. Yay!

I'll be starting on the next issue next week. After I appear at the Kids Read Comics event in Dearborn, Michigan this weekend. If you're around, come on by. It's my first year, but Top Men who have been at the event have raved about it. I'm looking forward to it.

I'm running a little late, but I'll still be in Charlotte tonight for tomorrow's start of the awesome Heroes Con. I'll be at booth AA-642, so come by and buy, or don't be shy, just say "hi", hopefully it'll stay dry, we could get some food that you have to fry...

...okay, I'm stopping now.

Wayback Wednesday: Tylinter

I've been bad about Wayback Wednesday, I know. Hopefully I'll bank another couple of months to carry me through summer convention season. Things have been busy, and that's good, but it also gets in the way.

That said, here's today's installment. After Geauga Lake wrapped for the season, I tried freelancing for a couple of months. It didn't take. I didn't have the experience or the track record to make it work. A few years later, though, things obviously changed. But, until then, I found a job at The News-Herald, where I started off as a production artist. One of my co-workers there needed a caricature done of the owner of the Tylinter company in Mentor. (I think he was the owner. It's been a while. He may have just been a higher-up.) They were having a party, and it was to be his gift.

This is one of my first freelance assignments. I remember after the party, my friend said "His wife loved it. She said that she guessed it had cost a thousand dollars."

It hadn't. I'd charged $35. I was just starting out, didn't know what to charge, and priced what I thought was fair. I considered it a fancy amusement park caricature. Now, his wife was wrong about what I could have charged. I don't think this was a four-figure piece, but I probably could have charged more. It was a lesson in pricing. And trust me, if you want one now, it will cost you more.

But, I wasn't upset. I charged what I thought I should and got it. I was happy with that. And it was my first step on a journey that led me here to this studio. No looking back, only looking forward.

Summertime, Summertime

Summer. Lost and 24 are over for good. Most of my other shows are on summer hiatus.

But, on the upside, maximum convertible days, so I've got that going for me.

Another FCBD Review

Tony Isabella, comics pundit and my friend, is reviewing all of this year's Free Comic Book Day books in a five part series. He's gotten to my Love and Capes #13 and has some nice things to say. Yeah, he's a friend of mine, but as I've said before, my friends usually have no problem letting me know when I drop out of line. Among other things he wrote about it:

Anyone who wouldn't want to buy this comic book after reading this free issue is to be pitied and maybe feared.

Read the full review here.

My First Dr. Sketchy's

I finally went to my first Dr. Sketchy's event here in Cleveland. It was located nice and close at the Beachland Ballroom.

For those of you who aren't hip to the good Doctor, Dr. Sketchy is kind of an anti-art school live model drawing event. usually sprinkled with some music and adult beverages. I've wanted to go for a while, but this was the first one that didn't conflict with some other excitement.

It was a lot of fun. It's not all rigid and intense like some life drawing classes are. The people there are there to have fun as well as to draw. They had a contest where, on a ten minute pose, you got to work on the drawing for five minutes and then hand it to a buddy to finish. Then the assembled artists got to choose their favorite and the winner won some prizes. I'm proud to say that my finishes over my new friend Mark's drawings got us some wonderful grease pencils and much needed kneaded erasers. (Sadly, it's the one drawing I don't have from the night, as it was in Marks sketchbook, so he got to take it.)

The model was a Pittsburgh performer and jazz singer, Phat Man Dee. She's the subject of my sketches here. Obviously she's not necessarily the first thing that comes to mind when you think of an art school model, but you have to draw people of all shapes and sizes, and everything's got its own set of drawing problems to be solved and lessons to be learned. She was no exception. She even sang for us, which was a treat.

It's interesting, too, the things you work on in life drawing. I was taken with the way her hand splayed on her hip in one pose, so I did a couple different studies of that. It's moments of focus like that which make these events so good for one's development as an artist. You can always get better, and this is how it happens.

I had a good time there, made a couple new acquaintenances, and who knows, maybe even lined up a new gig. They haven't announced the next Dr. Sketchy's event, but if I can, I'm going to be there.

And, as always, click to embiggen any of these sketches.

And He Sings in "1776"

A couple of weeks ago, the News-Herald asked me if I'd participate in their Ben Franklin Project, a user-created version of the paper. They wanted me to do an editorial cartoon for that edition, preferably something about Ben Franklin. I figured, "Hey, I like National Treasure, I could do that!"

Ben Franklin was our first Postmaster General, and I've obviously had a tight relationship with the P.O. being the son and grandson of a postal worker. I thought it would be cool to show the arc of Ben Franklin and traditional letters transitioning to our e-mail age.

I heard from a lot of people who saw it, so it seems to have made an impact.