Practice

Head Shots

Playing with my Pentel waterbrush this evening. Used various pencils (HB, Verithin Black and Prismacolor Gris Chaud 90%) along with washes of black watercolor.

Wheeee!

Here's my latest cartoon:  You can see below the red line /inked version. And then the crude little post-it note sketches I played with before compositing the final lay out.

Dreaming Big

You'll note that I made the caveman smaller in the final cartoon. I also cropped out the ground to imply a slight worm's eye view. I wanted him to appear more incidental on the back of the brontosaurus—like an annoying fly. I redrew him a couple of times to really get that more accurate "bronco buster" feel. With the bronto's expression, I wanted it to appear mildly surprised. 

Rockwell Homage

Side note: Tomorrow (Friday, November 15th) is the last day to order a 2014 Incompatibles Wall Calendar!!! To order, surf over to http://incompatibles.bigcartel.com/product/2014-wall-calendar. Here's a sneak peek at the month of November:

This is a parody of the famous Norman Rockwell painting, Freedom From Want. Initially when I came up with the "Turduckow" concept, I thought I'd just do a beauty shot of a holiday turkey on the table. But then I thought it might be nice to have a family around the table waiting in anticipation. Then it hit me: Normal Rockwell already painted an image that fit the bill.

Below is the final redline inked over. Note the blank matted frame on the wall. Initially I was going to put one of my earlier cartoons there, but then my wife had the great idea of making it a painting of the dinner ingredients.

And here's some of the initial musings. Note how round my initial turkey was. Also I felt it was important—in the final piece—to have the bovine legs/hooves stand out, so I made the cow a Holstein:

Red Rough

Here's a hodgepodge of cartoons I've been working on lately. I like to work small on post-it notes. I can  break up the compositions into pieces, recomposite elements in P-shop, and then reprint them as a larger redline for final inking.

Doh!

This guy just realized he forgot to order an Incompatibles 2014 Wall Calendar. Don't let this be you! Act now, the order deadline is this Friday, November 15th. Packages will ship in early December, just in time for holiday gift-giving. To order, surf over to http://incompatibles.bigcartel.com/product/2014-wall-calendar

Note: The first 50 orders will receive one collectible Incompatibles button, plus a signed calendar and personalized doodle by the artist.

Discourtesy Clerk process

Here's process on my latest Incompatibles panel. You can see how I corrected my inaccurate wordsmithing in the rough. It was redundant saying: “kill a dolphin” and “clog our landfills.” Both phrases point only to plastic bags. Luckily my wife saw the error and I corrected it to reflect both plastic and paper. Also, you'll notice I spliced the head in lower right of the page onto the body of the clerk. It seemed to catch the critical vibe I needed in his expression.

Incompatibles 2014 Wall Calendar

The Incompatibles 2014 Calendar is out! Act now, the first 50 orders will receive one collectible Incompatibles button, plus a signed calendar and personalized doodle by yours truly.

Note: Order Deadline is November 15, 2013. Packages will ship in early December 2013, just in time for holiday gift-giving. To order, surf over tohttp://incompatibles.bigcartel.com/product/2014-wall-calendar

doh!

Lost a riddle wager on Facebook. The consequence was posting a giraffe image for my profile picture for 3 days. I didn't like the pictures I saw on Google, so created my own pic.

Dabbling with Tan Paper

raw bacon (er, cornelius bacon that is)

Here's what Bacon looked like before I struck the red under-drawing out. You can see I change my mind a lot. In case you don't know, this is Cornelius Bacon from my graphic novel “Peck.”

odds and ends

genghis

shopping for faces

Here's work-in-progress on an upcoming Incompatibles installment. I like drawing iterations of characters which I can easily splice into an additional redline once the comp is scanned in.

Save the Date: May 2nd Exhibit Reception

Save the Date: Thursday, May 2nd, 6pm–8pm, Reception for “Breathing for Dummies” an exhibit of 50 Incompatibles cartoons at the Sac State University Union Gallery. Come on by, grab a bite to eat, and take in the process of my humorous scrawls. I will be raffling off a few framed prints at the reception, as well as selling and signing "Bride of Lichtenstein" prints. For more info and a parking pass, surf over to:

http://www.csus.edu/indiv/e/estiokom/breathing_flyer.pdf

Hope to see you there!

Blow Comics

Just found Incompatibles listed on a site called Blowcomics.com. As of today, April 1st 2013, it ranks 207 on the Funny Webcomics list of 925. Woot!

U-NITE 2013 at the Crocker

SAVE THE DATE: U-NITE at the Crocker Art Museum is coming up on Thursday, April 11th! This is the official kick off for Sac State's 2013 Festival of the Arts. If you're interested in seeing a showcase of artistic talent, come on out and take it all in between 5:00–9:00p. Various faculty and student groups from the College of Arts and Letters will be performing throughout the afternoon and evening. If you'd like to learn how I conceive and craft my weekly "Incompatibles," you can catch my visual presentation at 7pm in the Works On Paper Study Center. For more info, surf over to http://www.crockerartmuseum.org/programs-events/events/event/2311-U-Nite

The event is free to students, alumni, staff and faculty with a valid Sacramento State ID, otherwise regular admission into the museum will cover the festivities. Hope to see you there!

Franken-Reference

I recently paid homage to Roy Lichtenstein by doing a parody of his famous painting Kiss V. “Bride of Lichtenstein” involved swapping in the faces of Frankenstein and his ill-fated bride to be. Really it became more of a hybrid of the original images and the new likenesses; I wanted to hold on to the woman's blond hair yet incorporate the white streak, bandaged hand and possessed wide eyes. I also set the cartoon in larger Ben-Day dots than the original piece as I wanted to make the effect more obvious. Below is the result.

Tra La La

Above are some of the exploratory sketches I did on my latest cartoon installment. I videoed my wife skipping and observed a lot of reference on the subject to get the physics right in the final version. I really wanted Sigmund to give off the feel of child-like joyous abandon.

[Creak]

Well, it's way overdue: I'm starting to take the Peck out of mothballs. If you're not familiar with my whimsical comic creation, surf over to http://peckcomics.blogspot.com/ and click on the “Read the Novel” link on the right to view Issue #1. Essentially he is a quirky one-armed superhero who's trying to clean up Dodge. Anyway, it's been a while since I've done any sketches on him. I need to shake out the cobwebs and redevelop the muscle memory. I want to tackle Issue #2 by this summer and I need to be in full Peck-mode so I can hit the ground running come June.

The Natives Are Restless

Here are some of the preliminary studies for this week's cartoon. I do these on post-its or in my small moleskin notebook and then composite them in P-shop. This is particularly useful in layering elements that overlap in space.

To Belly Or Not To Belly?

Here's my latest Incompatibles (La Brea Armpits) from rough sketch to finished piece. Note above that I was indecisive on the face and belly of this guy. I was giving him a goatee and thought to myself: “Why?” Also, his navel and t-shirt length kept moving up and down as I toyed around with how much pooch to show. Having a higher t-shirt led to more belly hair and just ick. In fact, the attention was just being drawn to that hairy black hole the more I exposed it. In the end, simplicity won out. I focused the detail in the proper place—the mammoth and sabertooth.

Dragon Border

This is an adaptation of a chinese dragon I'm doing for my Dad. It's going to be a border on the promotion certificates for his martial arts organization. Definitely more intricate than I'm accustomed to drawing. I have complete empathy for tattoo artists who do work this kind of detail!

Thumbering

Here is a story I'm developing for Yarns 2. I'm not totally sure I'm going forward with it. I wanted to chew on it in visual form to see if it might speak to me a bit. Sometimes I will just start brainstorming a story visually in short sequences, just to see if it leads to something. Wandering thumbnails I guess: Thumbering.

Gleaning

Here's something I did to warm up tonight for some thumbnailing. I used a Pigma brush pen for the line work and a Pentel waterbrush for the shading. I really love laying down work with a brush. It so free and real. I suspect I will be doing work on a Cintiq sometime in the next year or so, but the humaness of analog is something I never want to lose in the work. Below is the colorized version done in P-shop.

Christmas Greetings

Here's the inked version of this month's Christmas Incompatibles. In the past I've actually penciled all my lines and then beefed them up in P-shop. This time I used a Pigma brush pen on the lines and a 4H mechanical pencil for the shading. Doing the two parts of the drawing in different mediums presents a tone consistency issue. I could use a technical or crow quill pen for the shading, but it tends to be slow going. I like the strokes for the shading to be very quick so I need to experiment with a few other tools to find the best solution. Below is the final version.

Calendar Fini

The calendar is in the can. Phew! Coming up with 12 new gags was a good drill. I also solidified my process for formatting the panels for print. Up until this point I had only posted them online, I could get away with some digital liberties in soft display. Now I have a good boilerplate process to make them print and web optimized. My only missing piece in the process is a good Cintiq screen for flatting. I'm also looking into the viability of a good tablet (iPad or Galaxy) coupled with a Dagi stylus and Photoshop Touch. All I really need them for is to speed up my flatting/coloring process. Everything else is done by hand.

Movie Review: Breaking Dawn 2

Okay, I admit it. I've seen all of the Twilight movies—opening night in most cases (now where did I put that man card …). Here's another confession: I read all the books before the movies came out. You see, my wife and I made a deal a some years back: I'd read the first Twilight book, she'd read Ender's Game, one of my favorite books of all time. She kept her end of the bargain, but it didn't entice her enough to go on with the series (btw, I would recommend reading Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow—not the usual path through Speaker of the Dead … but I digress). I, however, read Twilight, then moved through all the other books as they came out. Reading the books was sort of akin to a big bag of Lay's potato chips; you know you shouldn't eat them, but man, once you get started, it's hard to stop. I remember when the first installment came to the theater, I was one of two men in a sea of women in the audience (moms and daughters mostly). The demographic evolved over time and I must say the testosterone was fairly well represented in this last one.

In reading the series, I found myself groaning inwardly while going through the last book. Breaking Dawn seemed like a real shoddy sum up of a lot of loose ends. In fact, I felt Meyer should've ended the series with the Eclipse, perhaps inserting the wedding scene as the ending. That was not meant to be as Bella and Edward go on to becoming parents (Renesmée? Really? Sounds like some Utah-parent fusion name) and taking on the entire Vulturi clan like some kind of global underworld adaptation of Seven Samurai. So I really ended up loathing Breaking Dawn the book.  

Be that as it may, I went into the cinematic conclusion of Twilight with an open mind. Ironically, the final movie seemed more satisfying than the final book. Just like the book, there were some adjustments that took getting used to: the addition of Bella's abilities as a vampire, and her hybrid daughter with accelerated growth issues. Yes, there was some hokey moments as the Cullens went about gathering allies for their stand against the Vulturi (viz., the Amazonians and Argentinians—they looked like injuns from a 50s western). And there was the flimsiness of an alliance formed at vampire speed. But the culminating portion of the conflict really actually … worked. And what's more, it dealt a surprise to everyone in the audience—even those who'd read the books! Now I'm not going to recommend BD2 as the best thing in the history of movie-making, but I can endorse it as a decent ending to a big bag of Lay's chips. Just be sure to follow it up with something more dense, like a Netflix marathon of Lord of the Rings. That should quiet the cinematic digestive tract. “B+”

Movie Review: Skyfall

With the 50th anniversary of the Bond franchise, the newest installment, Skyfall, hit theaters this weekend. I took in the latest offering at a packed Friday night viewing and was not disappointed. I will say that it doesn't feel like your typical Bond movie. It starts out with a roller coaster of an opening scene and sets up for what you expect in a usual 007 story. Halfway through, however, it takes a very personal turn and it almost feels as though one movie has ended and another begun. Not that it is a particularly bad thing, just different. I will say the villain is very unique in this installment. Silva (Javier Bardem), a wonderfully twisted psychopath, has meticulously planned revenge upon M (Judy Dench) and the M16. This movie leaves you with a warm fuzzy of nostalgia in its imagery (note Aston Martin above) and music. Adele's title song for the soundtrack conjures up 007 movies of yesterday and meaningful use of classic Bond guitar music anchors the mood well. A few personnel changes and introductions are made in this film that set up the series nicely for the next few installments. I hope Daniel Craig can find the fountain of youth through the next decade as he has proven to be one of my favorite Bonds.
“A-/B+”                                                   

Movie Reviews: Wreck It Ralph and Frankenweenie

Okay, I've been horribly remiss in keeping up on my movie reviews, so here are a few flash reviews for some of the latest flicks I've seen:

Wreck It Ralph
Animation good. Plot a little slow at first, even felt a bit contrived in parts (it's hard to shoehorn a bunch of video games into one film), but the story ends well and almost eked a tear out of me.  “B”

Frankenweenie
Argh. Usual great animation from Mr. Burton. Felt like the script was written over the weekend. Some cute oldster, inside movie references throughout, but nothing that could stitch up the monstrous neglect to the story. Too bad.  “C+”

2013 Incompatibles Calendar

Announcing the 2013 Incompatibles Wall Calendar! Order before Nov 1st. Get your signed, limited edition copy here.

Stabs at Sketching

Here is some preliminary sketching for last week's Incompatibles installment. It’s funny how the drawing can lead to finer nuances in the narrative. Originally “Vegan Rituals” was slated to display a knife-toting priestess poised to sacrifice her giant carrot. As I was toying with different blades, the thought hit me: “Why a knife? It should be a peeler.” I think that one edit really added finish to the gag.