Merry Christmas

7 left, one returns.

DVDs I've watched this past month-
Most of these are favorites that I've seen many times, but a few were new to me.

The Russ Meyer Collection Volume 2

The Benny Hill Collection

Bullshit Season 2

Simpsons Season7

If you've seen some of these you may like the others-
If you have any suggestion let me know.

8 Diagram Pole Fighter
5 Deadly Venoms
Born Invincible
Iron Monkey
Zu Warriors
Legend Of Zu
Chinese Ghost Story
Buddhist Fist
Tom Yum Goong
Battle Royale
Master Of The Flying Guillotine
Magnificent Butcher
Old Boy
Tai Chi Master

3 To Get Ready

From the Phantomime show.

Process

I've hade some requests for more process posts. I don't usually save this stuff but made an exception in this case on Bob Self's suggestion. If I can find the original sketch I'll post that as well.
The composition for this came fairly easily, but I had problems with the details and colors.
I think the turmoil paid off in this case as this has become a favorite. It doesn't always work out that way I'm affraid. Often times I'll suffer justt as much anxiety and never achieve any gratification. But, in the end you just have to put it to bed and move on.

OH! FIVE WRAP UP.

NEWS-

I'll be conducting a one day class/lecture on character design at the Entertainment Art Academy on February 19th.
I'll have lots of prelim stuff and finished work done for various studio projects that I can't show here. I'll be deconstructing them and illustrating what works, what doesn't and why. I'm going to try to cram as much info into the day as I can without it becoming too incomprehensible.
Glen Murakami, Stephen Silver and Mike Mignola have done them in the past and I've heard great things about the classes. I'm really looking forward to it. You can get more details via the link over there on the right.

GALLERY SHOWS-
Maybe 2 next year, one in the spring and one in the fall. We have soft dates now, but we'll wait to firm them up before posting them here. One of the dates will likely be on the east coast.

GOT YOUR NOSE-
Final animation is wrapping now. Scoring, editing and revisions should go rather quickly. I think there's an air date in the early spring.

Book release schedule-

CHROMAPHILE 2-
Available summer 06. Same size and page count as CHROMAPHILE but with all new content. Some of which can be seen here on the blog.

KINGS OF THE ROAD-
This one is a wild card. It's basically complete but with nowhere to go. It's an odd book that doesn't easily fit into any category or genre. My guess is that it'll see print as a small run of 1,000. Hardcover- 96 pages- 5x7.

(WELCOME TO THE) BIG CITY-
Scheduled to debut at Comic Con in San Diego. Hardcover- 128 pages- 11x9.5

JACK AND RUSTLE, IT GREW THERE-
Maybe late 06, it depends on how the first half of the year goes.

OTHER STUFF-
New shirts, stickers, skate decks, toys and other merchandise starting in late spring.

I know why the cowboys cry.

I created these fonts for Kings Of The Road but they never quite worked as intended. I like them and think I'll finish the lower case and puctuation and use them for something eventually. Here I placed them in a context that complements them a little better.

Izzy outtakes

Izzy originally started out as a bookened to Got Your Nose but soon took a bit of a turn. These illustrate the visual changes of one of the spreads.

The year that wasn't

The month of July from the canceled 2006 Bad Apples calendar.

From red to green.

A few BC sketches of props and what not. Green this time.

The Seattle Kid

Where ya headin' wayward fella? Hop in I'll give ya a lift.

Go! PEE WEE, GO!

An unfinished shot of the squad runnin' and gunnin'.

Chopped and dropped

I was working on this really wide interior shot when something else came up. I chopped the piece up and moved some things around and came up with this composition. I may or may not finish the piece as originally intended.

Swarm

A few BC studies. I didn't bother to design this layout, I just sort of threw some pieces on the same page and called it a day. I like the rover/buggy thing.

Road Work

I've been trying to drop the weight I put on over Thanksgiving by taking an evening jog with my trainer. It's tough staying slender with alll this gravy and egg nog around.

Smoke, smoke, smoke

A custom “Funny Club” figure from the touring show last year.

My childhood blanket

Various patterns to serve as end papers and chapter breaks in Kings Of The Road.

The Fuzz

A shot of Pee Wee and her ride.

Orange and green

A study for “Jack and Rustle”.

To the letter.

Font designs for Big City. All of these are display faces, so no punctuation. There were plenty of servicable faces out there that I could have used, but none had the outside corner radius' that I wanted. I wanted a sort of neon cyrlic feel. The goofier "bubble" face is a miss. I got carried away and lost the thread I was following. I'm sure I'll use it for something some time.

In better light.

As of this writing this should be here for San Diego this year.

As it should be

These pieces ran in this summer's Project Superior. They were designed to work as spreads or as individual images. Here they are together.

One more thing...

I thought I was done moving everything over here, then I remembered this. I ran into Tracy Lee from Electric Tiki this weekend and it turns out that this piece will in fact be produced. It has been on the threshold for nearly 2 years. It won't happen tomorrow, but it will eventually.

More books.

I shot these pictures of Got Your Nose and Chromaphile at the same time as the skateboard shot. I had planned on using them on the website, but... errrr..

Deck The Halls

Can I turn a phrase or what?
I'm in the process of doing some new decks with ABC. I'll post some designs as I finish them.
Here's a picture of one of the decks from last year.

Night Of Ghosts

But on the 13th day...

An invitation for a holiday party.

Huh? Wha? Uh... Yeah.

I can't believe it's been four months since the Comic Con.
I've canceled plans to be at Wondercon and Ape this year.
I think the dazed and confused look on my face here illustrates why.

...after page.

And an image that probably won't make the cut.

Page after page.

More book editing. Here are pages from the Big City source book also due in 2005, but probably won't show up until 2007.
I actually combined a couple of spreads here to save space.

The Scalpel VS The Machette

HACK! HACK! slice. slice.
Now that Got Your Nose is on track and going well I can get back to finishing up the books due for 2006. Here are a few spreads from Kings Of The Road. About a third of the book has this layout. It looks like it'll be a 112 page 5"x7" hardcover.

Aim for the head.

As I get into the home stretch of editing images for Chromaphile 2 some images I really like surrender to the knife. This one was for my friend Paul's dodgeball team. There's a good chance it may get last minute clemency. I like it. Mostly.

A little to the left...

A picture from last year's show at Wax Poetic