SHREIK-FEST WINNER plus Not a Winner

"Desolate Road" directed by Marwan Abderrazzaq took the Best Horror Short Film prize  

Storyboards by me. 

I'm an award winning storyboard artist. 

I guess that's not how it works.

I worked on an award winning film as a storyboard artist.

I wish it would  hit the internet.

Trying to do a collaboration with Marty and completely bolloxed the whole thing. 

Wanting it just to flow out with hardly any extra effort. 

Came out dull dull dull.

Pulled the plug and selling the scrap on Ebay.

One of the sketches I did over the Holiday

Feeling ancient Egyptian like on that day

Page From Current Work In Progress

 

Last night I was looking at Maurice Sendak books as well as the work of many other excellent illustrators.  Simultaneously inspiring and humbling.  Sigh.

This project is taking longer than I expected.  Must get better faster or I won't get time to draw half of what I'd like before the big clock runs out.

A movie that looks like a video game that might be worth watching

Journey To The West

Merry Christmas!

Another illustration I did to promote Polar Bowler.  The "full" game should be coming out in the first quarter of 2014.  I was pretty happy with this one.  Done in MS5.

For Marty to Decipher

Below, cutting the pieces in photoshop, changing adding. Going to print this in pieces and use my light table to trace the shapes onto nice comic book ruled Bristol, finish it up. shoot it off to Marty for some Brush Pen inking.

Photoshop goofing with a single sketch-Kindle shop excitement

Got my sketchbook to preview correctly in my Kindle shop.

That required getting a version of CALIBER that worked with my ancient Mac OS.

Where I could use Caliber to convert the existing PDF into  MOBI format.

Upload previews correctly now and looks dandy.

Pretty dang excited by Kindle. Much more so than POD like Lulu.

This is a way to mainline money if you come up with solid promotion notions and have a product to sell.

I don't know it for a fact, need to check, but I bet Maurie Manning is a Kindle entrepreneur.

TAGsters are the first to get the digital version.

Because I love you guys.

Test Animation

This is the result of a test I did at work of a new animation tool called Spine.  It's 2D animation with a skeletal rig.  It's the perfect tool for someone who has done a bunch of 3D animation to do come to 2D cut outs style animation.  It's pretty simple and intuitive and our programmers seem confident that they won't have much trouble getting it into a game (it's what the tool was made to do, after all).
http://esotericsoftware.com/
Sorry, I don't see any way to make it loop automatically through blogger.  I suppose you can load it onto your hard drive and loop it with your player.

The Albino is now on Kindle

No re-write to speak of. I got antsy to see exactly how easy it was. Now I need to do some decent writing. So easy. If you have a PR skill, a guy could probably make some money with this.

Xmas Specials and Sympathy

Remember the anticipation you'd feel in the days and weeks leading up to the one-time event that was the screening of our favorite animated Xmas classics?

We're in Virginia with the nieces/nephew. Had to share some crayon love. They like Rudolf, but when I asked them to name their favorite movie of the moment, they answered "High Society" (1954).

?!?!?

Yes, the one starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Louis Armstrong and that other guy, the skinny singer dude from Hoboken...what's his name?

They awoke to find this drawing on the counter. I said The Elf on the Shelf did it. Their Elf is named Helper, which I find really funny.

Arm surgery went well, (repaired a torn tendon), but can't use it much right now. Hoping for a full recovery soon. Trying to milk all the sympathy I can in the meantime by wearing my sling everywhere.

Remind you of anything?

More

Ebay discipline

Hope to get enough pencils out that I get just like Inktober. That something is missing if I haven't spent 3 hours doing a drawing. No goals, just a system of 3 hours a day.

I've used levels on this picture . The link shows the straight scan, no touch up.

 I'll do pencils on Batman vs The Hulk tomorrow

The Perfect Look for "Li'l Okie Ellis" or "The Teen Ellis"

See Marty! This style would work just fine.  Ellis, wouldn't you like to see your life immortalized forever in artwork like this (minus a lot of the fleshier parts)?

Balloons in place-

Tumblr Post of all 7 pages in a readable form.

It will take some nudges here and there.

I'm also thinking I'll do the line art in maga studio, 

then switch to photoshop for any tone.

I just like painting in photoshop better.

Then on to some other things.

 Scott Sackett from the Ok Comic Creator FB group framed one of my Inktober sketches.
Amazing what a little frame does for something
It goes from refrigerator art to heirloom.

A Pirate's Life....

Finally completed this. A Disneyland "Pirates of the Caribbean" spoof starring Beata's brother, Peter. Came up with this way back, when Beata purchased a copy of the Brushpen Breakfast Book for Peter (I did that drawing of Peter as a Disneyland audio-animatronic bust that Walt thinks is too scary for the Haunted Mansion...remember?). Peter's a big Disney fan, so I knew he'd appreciate something like this...so, I begged her to "commission" me to do this--and being a sport, she acquiesced. It's good to have a patron!

The people working to get Peter into the auctioneer pirate's costume are all caricatures (or there 'bouts) of famous Imagineers. That was THE GAG. The tag line is in Walt's voice: "Peter, we'll just need you for a day or two...a week, tops!"

Ha, ha.

No computer aid on this one--just felt-tip marker (with a touch or two of white paint) over blue pencil (which was a mistake! it sends all the yellows green. Should have stuck with my orange),  approx. 15" X 20."

I've done 6 hand lettered fonts

And you can have them

Zip file of all six fonts

Go here for the Tumblr preview of them

And then used the font. Kinda cool getting back to this.
Balloons , panels first.
Then finish the line art.

Page 13

Here's page 13 of the book. I think I'm pretty happy with this page.  Hopefully I'm hitting my stride.

Another sketch in Manga Studio

Still working on using the pen

FATE on Steam!

The classic WildTangent game FATE is now on Steam.  Steam has all sorts of little achievements, trading cards, emoticons, etc. that I whipped up for the launch, such is this illustration (I didn't design the achievements or the logo, but I did the rest).

Update!

Here's another one!  Except for the FATE logo this is all me.  Well, the designs are my versions of characters from FATE.

Bleeding Cool Survey-Marginal Business

People who make money at Cons.

How Much.

Ok I'm a hypocrite here, I can admit when I'm wrong

After all the BS I made over Manga Studio, I reviewed it and watched the vids etc. I decided to try it out, and to my unwavering surprise.....I liked it. Attached is my first dabbling with it using one of my girls from my sketchbook. I can see where this can come in handy with what I want to do.

Ellis, Do You Really Have 980 Pages Of Tumblr Posts On Your WeirdEllis Blog!?

The story behind the image...

Jeff gets a hit

Nucleus book signing

I need to see the movie.

Should be almost 50 degrees Friday.

Probably then.

May be number one again that weekend.

Supposedly the best Disney Princess movie yet.

Deadpool Sample done and on EBAY

Feels good to be done with something I let linger around entirely too long. It will be doubly good if I clear it right on out of the house.

If I get work from Marvel with this, Marty has said he would ink me.

At least the first job.

Monsters and Dames

My piece for the Monsters and Dames ECCC fundraiser book has been accepted!  Yay!

Car exhaust downs 3 super heroes

I love these showcase anthologies of the comics I grew up with. 

I just don't remember how stupid they were.

This is the one that featured the JLA pinned to a spinning roulette wheel set up.

 Kissin' Kirby!

Particle FX on YouTube

Link to Tom's YouTube Particle FX Videos
Could you guys do me a favor?  Click on the link above and see if you can view my YouTube Particle FX page.  A potential employer is asking to see some examples of my particle work.  Since I don't have a website yet, the best I could do was upload some videos to YouTube.  Do the videos run?  Are you able to set the resolution to HD and see them okay?  Thanks!

Page 9

This is Page 9 from my book.  I'm currently working on Page 11 (big splash page... loads of work on that one).  After discussing Manga Studio I thought I would show what I'm doing with it.

Perspective tool in Manga Studio

Pretty easy to use.

This drawing done before I knew several things I now know.