Mark and I are working on an interview with each other to be posted soon to go with this.
This was a great short story to work on, I'm very happy with how the collaboration with Mark tuned out, very excited about this one.
Comic Book Tattoo is going to be an amazing showcase book, i haven't read the other stories yet, but i've seen lots of the pages here and there - the book looks amazing!
This is the first of three anthologies I'm going to be in between now and December, what a way to kick things off.
a film about the roerich garden project in montreal
Found this on you tube about a project by a local artist i know. Emily Rose Michaud & company built it in the winter. Miss Janet made this excellent 6 min doc about the day Emily and a team of volunteers set it up together over the course of one very cold day. The Garden lived on, you can keep up with their progress here. It's pretty damn cool.
So if you read here often you'll maybe remember in the spring i postponed work on Dream Life a bit to do something exciting that had come up. Over Due to follow that up. I did a short story with Mark Sable [GROUNDED, FEARLESS, HAZED] that rifted of of Tori Amos's song Upside Down, for her latest project - a huge 12" x 12" 480-page comic anthology titled COMIC BOOK TATTOO.
Here's a picture of the Hardcover Edition taken by our Editor extraordinaire, Rantz Hoseley. Some shots of the inside on the other side of this link. The cover art is by Jason Levesque of stuntkid.com.
Soon I'll be able to show you some of my own work, and Mark and i are sloted to do some interviews soon too. Stay tuned!
Trailer for Therefore Repent! a post-rapture graphic novel
So i heard this song recently - Dogs by Michelle Breslin! - i've been planing to do a trailer for Therefore Repent! for a while and this song just fit so perfectly.
Ok, so another more polished how to video on the craft of comics.
This one came from a question i got on Panel and Pixel from Kevin Mellon & Jason Copland. I'm thinking this is fun stuff, so I'm probably going to start making vodcasts part of the regular CH 0 feed.
Been a slow month; with all the spring cleaning, recovering from con flu, and finding a roommate i've not got a lot done on dream life - grumble - nice chunk of the layouts but wanted to have more of the art done by now too. Any who, starting to get going, here's some stuff from the last few nights whittling.
Taking a few days to ink, then back to Top Secret project.
Blocky thing takes forever to ink, I'm telling you, Boyo.
Having some interesting conversations with a few writers right now, considering illustration a sort of philosophical picture book, been approached about a couple of comic book ideas that if not too big I might end up doing, and maybe even seeing if I cant think of an interesting animation idea - had a studio contact me about the possibility of talking about developing an idea with them, pretty exciting the more I think about it. Pondering what concepts i've been kicking around might make the leap well, or if I have any new notions that might be worth pitching....hmmm.
Also making small steps towards writing a new Sea of Red project, that i've pretty much decided I'd like to do sooner than I can draw it, so looking into other artists for that maybe.
Been making plans
to tour for Therefore Repent!
It's looking very good for me going to the NYCC, and Paradise, and by hock or crook my first visit to the San Diego Comic Con. Also Windsor/Detroit as well in the next 6 months! Maybe more yet, haven't got a confirmation but might be giving a presentation here in Montreal at the end of the month as well in NDG, hosted by geekmontreal.com
Jim's going to hit the road as well a little bit, stay tuned and i'll have dates and places for all that.
Well, i had wanted to be further along with the book than this by now, but a cool 7 page story came across my desk that i could not pass up - it will be in a very very big, high profile book this summer, just had to do it. But just the same, progress on Dream Life, while slowed a bit the last two weeks, has been very gratifying.
This character and the giant woman who appeared in Charlie's dream just before were inspired by some reading about Pablo Picasso i did a while back, and some of the interpretations of his use of the Minotaur and the Maiden motif in his work.
When John and i first worked on this story together years ago [at the time called 'Nuts'] he came up with the idea of a 'blocky thing' that would torment Charlie at different points though the story, play tricks on him and challenge his assumptions. At the time it was a great but unspecific creature, with no described form. I loved the idea of it, but it was always a shady non specific idea at the time for me.
Later when i dusted off those old bits of story we had worked on together and started re-working it into Dream Life, the blocky thing - while a very cool abstract literary idea, was really hard to give form to as a character for the comic.
I tried a lot of different approaches but none of them ever resonated for me that strongly.
It wasn't till reading about Picasso's minotaurs that I worked it out. I forget who it was who wrote the notes that cinched it for me, but their descriptions of what it stood for was exactly dead on for my interpretation of the Blocky Thing.
Was out for lots of walking today, brunch at a diner then off to exchange the scanner.
After that spent a few hours working on a short story gig that's popped up. It's top secret but very cool! Made a lot of progress visualizing the story and imagining the characters. Going to be a pretty one i think, like what i came up with.
Scanned a few inked pages later when i got the replacement scanner hooked up, posted those are on Flickr.
The hits have slowed a bit, but I'm happy to welcome a bunch of new regular readers to my new Solo project, Dream Life. about 700 of you have visited this site in the last few days, 3800 of you at flickr, and i have a lot of new friends on live journal and flickr.
Thanks to you all! The feed backs has been really positive, very encouraging.
I've had a fallow blog on Live Journal for a few years, but i never found a good use for it, other than cross posting from my home page here.
That's not so great so really i just didn't use it. But as i considered how to distribute my new book online, i thought about how groups i've been admiring such as Act-i-vate and Transmission X have been doing things and hit on making use of the old LJ blog.
Also, if all went as planed, then the IDW edition of Therefore Repent! hit the stands today! Officially yesterday, but most places get new books Wednesdays. But in any case, go check it out! and if they don't have the coolest book of the new year in yet, ask them why the hell not!
Some art without the wash work, I'm feeling like a really good stride if being hit right now with this. Nothing against the last project at all, but it's so nice to be doing something i wrote myself right now. Primarily because of things like this: this was NOT in the script for these two pages, was just going to have a big panorama of the landscape. But the idea hit and i ran with it. No one to check with, i could strike while the irons were hot and it came out lovely, and will add a nice bit of layering to the story with this figure showing up in Charlie's dream here.
He's presenting our post-Rapture graphic novel THEREFORE REPENT! along side new issues of Fred Grisholm's HATESONG, Brian Fukushima's JOBGOBLIN. And Jason Turner & Manien Bothma's True Loves 2!
Then it's back to old Hog town for Word on the streetSunday Sept 30th to present Therefore Repent! He'll be signing books at his table in Fringe Beat as well as giving a presentation called Be Your Own Boss In The World Of Publishing.
And you can also catch him participating in a panel with Willow Dawson and Ray Fawkes called "I Have A Great Idea For A Story, But I Need An Artist!"
And not only is it free to read, it's also free to use: we're licencing the jpg versions of these as remixable under this Creative Commons licence.
So, if you've ever wondered what'd it'd be like to be the writer of a comic book and work with as talented an artist as Salgood Sam, now you can.
Download them from this site, and open the pages up in Photoshop or Gimp to replace my words with more interesting ones.
Colour the pictures.
Use the images as graphics for your non-commercial projects. Send the results to us and we'll put 'em up on the site: even better, we'll send the three most inspiring remixes a free book.
So are you Game? I'd love to see what you can come up with...
I have two more Zines to share with you, this time in CBR format so you'll need to grab the popular CDisplay reader here for those.
First is the second issue of Nisrigion. A lit zine I illustrated, designed and published. It Features both the alternate covers for the issue, and the conclusion to J.F.Sugerman's futurists gonzo dystopian play Drowning. You can catch the first part in Nisrigion one, posted here in PDF form a year ago.
And the other is a sketchbook journal titled CscdcC, I'll leave the slightly embarrassing long form for you to read yourself. I've excised some unworthy early attempts to write from this, but most of it's there still.
Wanted an excuse to work with a few new tools, some stuff I'll probably apply to my own site soon, to help tidy it up some.
+Told Bernie a while ago I'd help fix up his old site, and move it to a better host.
Sooo....
The new url is bem.spiltink.org, and while it's still got some stuff to tighten I'm officially launching it today. Drop buy and bug the guy to post some new stuff! :)
Been taking it easy but for me that still means making art most of the time. Made first dent in the rock that is the next project, feeling pretty good about that. So, This is PG 1 of my next book.
This is full bleed art, the book will be 8.5"x10", i think B&W. It was done with Pebeo encre de chine ink, Pelikan White Gouache, and a cheep #2 brush. Kind of sick of pens for a bit right now - what i used mostly to draw the last 154 pages of art. This is slow, but it's were im at right now so...
I was inspired for the this sequence in the book by two sets of photos, one recent pictures taken of the sun, the other of deep sea life around volcanic vents. The set will run for 4 pages contrasting the two settings then move into a dream sequence.
Had fun with a small gig this past week working as a portrait artist at the Jazz fest - free drawings of people attending the shows [the festival paid me for the work] mostly I forgot to take my camera with me, but this one day I was besieged by a gang of kids who monopolized me for the whole 3 hours I was there :)
Enjoyed this, think i'll have to find some way to make it a semi regular summer gig type thing. The 3 or so hours of drawing strangers really helped open me up for work when I go home so I was actually more productive the days I worked the festival than the others.
I have some original pieces of art going up for exhibit and sale this weekend in Oakland @ mamabuzz cafe for the Everything Kitchen Sink show there -- it's a formal send off for the defunct art and culture magazine I contributed to over the last 4 years. Here's the info and links about the show and jpgs of the art.
Everything Kitchen Sink: Opening Reception Friday, July 6th, 6 to 9pm Join us as we say our goodbyes to Kitchen Sink magazine, while honouring the work of the illustrators that have made it beautiful for the last five years.
We will "bring the magazine to life", one last time by painting imagery from the magazines on the walls, providing customers with four fives years worth of reading material, and giving you a glimpse into the mayhem, thought, and inspiration that created Kitchen Sink.
Featuring work by Nancy Bach, Craig Baxter, Tim Brown, Molly Crabapple, Chris Lane, Laurenn McCubbin, Nicole Neditch, Marie Rich, Salgood Sam, Emma Spertus and David Wilson. In conjunction with Art Murmur.
So as i was saying, here we go.
This was a great short story to work on, I'm very happy with how the collaboration with Mark tuned out, very excited about this one.
Stumble It!
