Sex, Drugs and Candy Canes: The Santa Claus Story

My Graphic Novel is available digitally on Amazon!

I actually finished this at the start of the year, so I'd just missed Christmas 2013 and waited to put it out during this season.  Here's the official synopsis.

The true untold story of Santa Claus with all the sex, drugs, and violence Bing Crosby didn't want you to know about. 

In 1964 Kris Kringle is killed by the mob for welching on a gambling debt and it's up to his estranged nephew, Santa Claus, to take over the mantle as Christmas gift giver. Content to live out his life on a government pension and a cash settlement from a bus accident, Santa has no interest in such things. But when his wife, Sasha, accidentally kills a neighbour with some questionable baked goods, forcing them on the lam, the North Pole seems as good a place as any to hide out. Those living arrangements come with a price though and now Santa and Sasha have to race the clock as they search for the magic sack, conjure the elves and track down the reindeer, while staying alive and free against mobsters, yetis, the feds and a slew of other dangers. But was it really Sasha's baking that killed their neighbour? And if not, who or what did? 

  Here're the first 5 pages of it!

  The idea for the book snowballed(no pun intended) as many of my ideas do, out of a doodle.  I drew Santa with a sexy Mrs. Claus and some twisted evil looking elves trudging through the snow like 5 years ago or maybe even longer and for a couple of Christmases in a row revisited them with different drawings and eventually started writing down ideas for where the elves came from, why a sexy Mrs. Claus(her name's Sasha in the book) would interested in such a fat slob and started coming up with ideas for the reindeer and other elements of the mythology until eventually I had a pretty detailed outline for the plot.  The book is 116 pages long and is a fast, fun read.  You can get it at Amazon, HERE.  And hopefully through some other sites soon as well.  You can also get the cover art on tshirts and mugs and stuff at Society 6 and Red Bubble.

More Combat Fairies!

Holy Shit Balls Batman!  Another blog entry in one day!  How could this be!  It be!  It be!  Just finished doing something and have a window of time before doing something else so I figured what the hell, lets keep "Project Get Blog Up To Date" going.  So now lets talk Combat Fairies!  If you look back a couple posts you'll see the first Combat Fairy.  At the time she didn't have a name, but now she does, it's Aela.  She needed a name because characters need names and they especially need names when they're gonna be sharing space with other characters.  So now I introduce...insert drum roll here...Enora!

But wait!  Aela and Enora aren't in this alone!  You also have to meet, Kiani!

But these three aren't in it alone either!  Well they are for now.  My plan ultimately is to have a team of 5 and maybe a sagely commander type character that wouldn't be in on all the action and fun.  The first one was just a doodle that went wild but as you may have have guessed, I'm planning more for these characters in the future.  After that first one I came up with what I think are some really cool ideas for a back story and some fun adventures to send them on that will be in comic book form.  It'll be a while yet before I get to actually making that comic though.  I'm preoccupied with a new film project at the moment (there'll be a post on that soon, it's one of the motivators to get the blog back up to date) but once that's done a Combat Fairy one shot will likely be the next order of business.  In the mean time though I'll continue to put up images like these of the other characters as the ideas come to me and as I have the time to do them without slowing my other stuff down too much.  And I'll be writing notes and honing the ideas I have for the characters.  Projects seem to work better when those ideas have time to incubate and grow.  That's all for now but if you like these characters they're all available as prints and tshirts and phone covers at both Society 6 and Red Bubble, check em out!  Might even be time to make a Christmas gift out of it!

Combat Fairy

Here's another sketchbook doodle that turned into a fully coloured version.

I actually did both the sketch and the finished version right after Jungle Space Girl but I'm just now remembering to post it.  When I had the initial idea for it, it was going to be Tinkerbell.  She would've looked more or less the same though but with the name "Tinkerbell" written somewhere on it in cool lettering but as I drew it I thought why bother doing a bad ass version of Tinkerbell when I could make a bad ass version of a completely original fairy.  So here it is.

I never gave her a name but when I was drawing the the inked version I started getting ideas for other Combat Fairies so I'll be doing more.  I'll just draw them as I think of them among other things that will be keeping me busy.  I've actually already sketched out the next one I just haven't had a chance yet to do a clean version and colour it...but hopefully soon.  I've even got some ideas for a storyline as well so maybe when I've got a whole team of Combat Fairies I'll do a comic with the characters.  Nearly naked fairies fighting monsters and stuff...can't go wrong right?  I'll have to start naming them as I go too.

50 Years of Bond

I'm a 007 fan, as many people are.  This year marks not only the release of the 23rd Bond film but the 50th birthday of the James Bond film franchise and as a result the character and the movies have been discussed a lot lately.  I'm even set to help my photographer friend, Brad of BWD Photography with a Bond tribute photo shoot.  All this stuff coalesced and I drew this poster you see here.

When I envisioned this thing I got pretty excited but it was a little bittersweet.  I had to move a project I've been struggling to get rolling on to the back burner to do this.  Sometimes you have to take advantage of an idea while it's fresh or you won't do it all.  Can you spot and name all the stuff?  I won't do all the work for you but here's a list of everything included in this poster.  See if you can find it all.  Don't be afraid to imdb if you have to, but try to do it without.

Astin Martin - from Goldfinger(1964) and beyond
Tatiana Romanova - from From Russia With Love(1963)
Domino - from Thunderball(1965)
A snake - from Live And Let Die(1973)
Torture chair and knotted rope - from Casino Royale(2006)
Crocodile - from Live And Let Die(1973)
Nick Nack - from The Man With The Golden Gun(1974)
Submarine - from Thunderball(1965)
The Golden Girl - from Goldfinger(1964)
Martini Shaker - from any of them
Missiles - from most of them
Tiffany Case - from Diamonds Are Forever(1971)
May Day - from A View To A Kill(1985)
Tracy Bond - from On Her Majesty's Secret Service(1969)
Blofeld - from You Only Live Twice(1967)
Skis - from The Spy Who Loved Me(1977)
Scottish Flag - not from any of them really, but he was born in Scotland
Jaws - from The Spy Who Loved Me(1977) and Moonraker(1979)
Largo - from Thunderball(1965)
Vodka - from any of them
Plenty O'Toole - from Diamonds Are Forever(1971)
Space Shuttle - from Moonraker(1979)
A shark - from License To Kill(1989)
Playing cards and Poker chips - from many of them
Oddjob - from Goldfinger(1964)
Doctor No - from Dr No(1962)
Grant - from From Russia With Love(1963)
Auric Goldfinger - from Goldfinger(1964)
Francisco Scaramanga - from The Man With The Golden Gun(1974)
Pussy Galore - from Goldfinger(1964)
Octopus - from Octopussy(1983)
Octopussy - from Octopussy(1983)
Solitaire - from Live And Let Die(1973)
Q - from From Russia With Love(1963) all the way to The World Is Not Enough(1999)
Laser watch - from Goldeneye(1995)
Honey Ryder - from Dr. No(1962)
Vesper Lynd - Casino Royale(2006)
Moneypenny(Lois Maxwell) - from Dr. No(1962) to A View To A Kill(1985)
M(Judi Dench) - from Goldeneye(1995) to present
M(Bernard Lee) - from Dr No(1962) to Moonraker(1979)
Jetpack - from Goldfinger(1964)
Felix Leiter(Jeffrey Wright) - from Casino Royale(2006)
James Bond, modeled mainly on Sean Connery - from Dr No(1962) to Diamonds Are Forever(1971)
Satellite - from Diamonds Are Forever(1971)
Helicopter - from From Russia With Love(1963)
Martini glass - from all of them.  The man liked to drink.
Gun barrel - from every single one of them.

Commission With a Side of Awesome Sauce

You may recall a couple months ago I posted a commissioned drawing of a guy, a girl and a couple of cats going up against an army of zombies.  If you don't, check it out here, and try to keep up.  Well anyway, that drawing was commissioned by the guy in the drawing as a gift for the girl in the drawing.  Make sense?  Hopefully, cuz here we go again.  The girl in the drawing then recently commissioned me to draw a new drawing as a gift for the guy in the drawing.  I feel like I could've explained that more concisely but I'm happy with how it turned out none the less.  Anyway, here's that new drawing now, I'm quite happy with the way it turned out and thankfully so were they.  Kim described it as 100% awesome sauce.

Now I know what you're thinking, "jeeze Dylan, isn't it kinda crass to plaster your company name and logo all over that poster?"  Well it would be, but those are just watermarks and I assure you they were not included in the version I handed over to them. 

I was given pretty clear instructions for the first poster.  Caillin really knew what he wanted, right down to the basic composition.  For this new one though I was given pretty much free reign to come up with something.  Kim gave me a run down of things she'd like to try and convey with the poster...I took that and we decided to keep with the same theme as the first poster so the two of them could work as companion pieces.  I came up with this, somewhat based on the poster from the original Conan The Barbarian poster.  I googled that though and it turned out I really wasn't remembering that poster correctly at all, so this may or may not look much at all like Conan, save for the raised arm.

Here're the stages of the drawing.  I draw it out in blue so once I ink it I can scan it without picking up my construction lines.  I used to have to erase all that stuff when I was done drawing...it burns the hell out of your arm and covers the desk and floor with eraser turds and who wants that, right?  It was another fun gig.  I'd like to do more of this kinda stuff.