Oafcon - They're here! You're NEXT!

Gotta get ready

Daily Oklahoman write up on yours truly by Matthew Price.

International Super Hero Day- Pauls Valley Ok

How I spent my day. Doing free sketches at this place. Action Figure and Toy Museum of Pauls Valley, Ok. Owned by Kevin Stark.  

This big video walk through of the place still leaves out a couple of areas.

Then the sketches (some of them) that I did. We (Scott Sackett and me) did quite a few. They were free. But we started to get tips. Got 25 bucks before we were done.

The funniest one is the 2 scouts I have close together, one holding the others arm. Because That's what I thought i saw in the ref photo. That's just the tall one's arm crossed hand. That probably chapped the shorter kid.

The first 2 Iron men were for brothers. Which do you think was the preferred  drawing? The one they both wanted over the other?

A Recent Musing

With all the BS I've been dealing with lately.
It's amazing I found the time to do this

Ellis is hanging from everybody's neck

Ellis's art is the three day badge. I also saw it as today's one-day badge. As far as I know it is the only badge save the staff badges (mine, yay me!). I came late today to the Fest and when the registration czar was printing up my wife's badge I told him whose art it was. He said when he shrunk it down and saw how good it looked badge size he decided to use it as the main art. Prizes for doing a badge can only be redeemed in person at the 2015 Comic Fest.

Can't believe one guy did all this!

Amazing!



The "Making Of" is Cool Too!

Follow this Tumblr page!

Thought it would be good to post some positive stuff in light of all the sad news, lately:

Bay Raitt's Tumblr Postings

All kinds of wonderful things on there...like this:

And this:

And this:

I wish I was at ComicFest

Hope all is going well Beata. It would be great to be there.

W.I.P. . . ("The Boxing Brunette") UPDATE: FINISHED!

I like how the overhead spotlight came out!

This one's big--14" x 17". A commission from A.P.E. Now I have to color it. Oy, vey!

Obviously I'm trying to channel those great Playboy-type artists. I say "Playboy-type" 'cuz when the fella who wants this described his idea of a gorgeous brunette astride her vanquished adversaries in a boxing ring, my first thought was of "Wicked Wanda" from the 70's era Penthouse mag...which then prompted me to do a search of same.

Dang! That's one amazingly gorgeous "strip" (*ahem*)!

Said the artist's name is Ron Embleton--a name I'd never heard before. I remember these from my dad's stash o' flesh mags, hadn't seen her since maybe '83?? What an indelible mark she made on my young mind!

Anyone shopping for me for Xmas, you are welcome to locate a collected volume of these and send it my way.

p.s. Is this too dirty for this site? Guy begged for topless--and who am I to censor the human form???

UPDATE: started coloring last night...felt tip marker, as per usual: (ADDED ANOTHER--it's funny--they just keep coming out looking like old Playboy illustrations--I'm not trying to copy them, I swear!)

Ronnie tweeted that John Roy died a couple of days ago

I knew that I worked with John back in Blue Sky days. But it took seeing his face to really remember him.

Cartoon for work.

There is a huge sculpture of "Iron Feathers" at the Will Rogers Airport. I see it a few dozen times a day driving the rentals on the round de round route I use.

Avis office people started putting together a newsletter and this will be my first contribution.

I nixed my other one. I was afraid caricature could hurt feelings.

I made another animated GIF with these images on youtube. But I gave the slide show maker on youtube a try as well. I like adding music to the effect.

 

I need to draw tonight. Marty has me all inspired. And awe inspired.

Ballpoint pen today at work.

I may make it drool, blink and breath later

 The original. Paper Towel stock.

And scantly animated. I wish i had timed the wide open, no drool pose about twice the other states. Too late now. Update: I went back and retimed it.
Better

 Todays inktober and animation at the same time

Not my art. Got it from Tumblr. One assumes it's a a Mexican BW horror comic.
Want to keep the animation more and more ambitious. About to do my first "whiteboard" animation..

Scams are all over. Joe Benitez tells me this is fake

Inktober 11- with animated Gif power-Obscure film hunt continues

Admit it. You hate my animated crap.

Inktober 11 where I didn't stop until I made it epilepsy friendly.

Not Japanese Kaiju. I've decided the film I'm looking for is Peking Opera, more than likely something Shaw Bros produced.

These stills are from Madam White Snake on youtube.

Characters and environments are more consistent with my memory of the sirceror who turns a boogers into a fly.

But it also has a Kaiju moment where a samurai looking statue comes to life and wreaks havoc. And it's not Daimajin. I bought a couple of those. It's not the look, it's not frothy enough.
Found a great link here on Shaw history

Sandwich Artist!

 

I have a job alert program with the key word "artist" entered. It automatically e-mails me whenever it finds something it thinks I might be interested in. It just sent me a listing for Subway "Sandwich Artist", which is what I guess they call the guys behind the counter assembling your Italian footlong.  I wonder how much artistic license they would allow me in creating culinary masterpieces. The world must be trying to tell me something.

A.P.E. Con Post-Action Report

Since people here were nice enough to notice I was gone to A.P.E., and requested a summary of same, let me put down a few quick thoughts....

1. My favorite con for the simple reason that it most closely fits the sort of work I'm doing. No superheroes, no mainstream genre work (sci-fi, horror, erotica, manga, etc.--and yet elements of all these genres were present in much of the work, but without any of it really qualifying as mainstream). No big publishers like DC/Marvel. No Hollywood. Everyone worked from the same 6' x 3' tables, too, so it's all very egalitarian. No custom big boy booths.

2. Very local-centric. Most of the artists and almost all of the Con-go'ers were Bay Area folk. Which was nice. Many students, too.

3. Most everyone bought something  (which, after Rose City, was very refreshing!). Biggest complaint I heard from attendees was failure of organizers to hand them a complimentary shopping bag with their badge and program. People wanted somewhere to dump their purchases.

And the new venue ( at Fort Mason, inside an old military warehouse on a wharf jutting into the S.F. Bay, with stunning views of the Golden Gate and Alcatraz just outside) was great. But up in the air where it will be next year.

Personally I did pretty well, meaning I was pretty dang busy the whole two days, selling steadily (which was a huge relief). Tho' in the end I didn't make much...I covered the costs of my table, but not all of my printing, and nothing of my hotel and meals (but then Blair and I had planned to make a little vacation of the weekend, so I didn't have any realistic expectations of covering those costs...that was in the fantasy, I-sell-everything-plus-a-buncha-drawing-commissions scenario....).

The ad in the program worked great (and Tom, you were right, I shoulda' added some tone); but more than that, people seem to remember The Teen Ellis. I had multiple people stop at my table when they saw my banner and say, "Oh, I recognize him--you had the ad in the program." (experiencing the power of advertising at work = thrilling!) Also, banner was a big success not only for bringing sales, but more importantly, for giving people a good idea of what the comic was all about.

People were very positive on the book. Going into the weekend I honestly didn't know if it would get any play, but people definitely appreciated the art and thought it looked funny. And quite a few bought. Phew!

Met lots of super-cool people, got a lot more names on the email list, and did quite a few fun drawings. Printed 56 FUME comic books, sold about 24 (? haven't counted 'em yet) plus another 7 or so sketchbooks, which sounds pathetic but in my experience is pretty dang good and really did keep me busy the whole time. I took photos of about half the caricature sketches. Had some fun offering to do historical or fictional or musical personages. Wish I had pix of a really funny sketch I did of Homer (the Greek poet, not the Simpson) for a guy writing a novel involving classical figures, and another of two topless girls boxing (!); the guy who requested that one liked it so much he commissioned me to do a large-scale color version with more girls (yipee!).

Best one I think was the Elton John request. I don't really know Elton but this one came to me in a blaze of inspiration and it had the guy who requested it busting up.

Also, wouldn't you know it, last drawing of the Con and I was finally getting my groove going...

The interwebs have been ablaze with advice/complaint/invective re: how one should or should not go about making money at any given Comic Con. I don't know if there is more to say on this subject, but if there is, I'm too gassed to say it tonight (we drove straight-thru last night after a Sac-Town dinner with our famous T.A.G. brother Jimmy Gorham, arriving home at 3:30 this a.m.). But I will say there is this gnawing unease I feel about the tone of what I've been reading from those who are (or claim) to be "winning" the Con wars (you know, the, "get out there and sell, sell, SELL!" crowd): I don't go to these things to be sold. I go to see stuff that knocks me out, and possibly buy it. Barring the knock-out response (which is rare, I admit), I will often make purchases of marginal items based on either a sympathy for the seller, or a sympathy for the material ("they're trying to do a fun Kirby Monster mash-up--OK, I'll spend the $10 bucks..."). It's cool and I guess inevitable that people want to be really savvy about how they market and merchandise themselves, (and on the flip side, it really does suck to sit with yr very personal work on public display and receive not even a passing "Huh," in response...), but I will say the best artist/creators that I know of all SUCK at this marketing/schmoozing game that is being preached so loudly across the web. I don't care that Dan Clowes or Adrian Tomine aren't giving me the razzle-dazzle when I pass by. It's enough that they've wrung their nuts out trying to do good work.  

I will leave you with a shot of a man we all know and love, Mr. Jason Weezner (so great to see him!!):

Yin and Yang- Bad with the Good

Went to my first life drawing class in some time. I'll probably go back for the once a month happening from now on. Had a very rough time the first hour. Warmed up and got this sketch.

A Happier Time - PS I didn't get that Job

Got an email from Serco. Couple of them. Stating it was close (courtesy? politeness?)

But they went with someone else. No doubt at least 35 years younger.

Wood's demonic joy now mocks me.


JMG added: Jack Cole

 and Tom adds...

 

Inktober 4

Link to the tumblr post where I show reference and process.

And explain I'm cutting back on Kirby copying. It's hard.

 Too much sweat doing it to let it go to waste as a half assed effort. So I'll digitally repair this image and hopefully improve. Probably move right into color and make it a piece.

Another Photoshop experiment

Used some of my handmade textures and various layer options on one of my earlier pencil sketches.

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