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.
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!
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.
Another 12 months. Another 52 weeks. Another 365 days. Another year. Happy 2014 everybody. I've been really, really, really, really, really...sorry had to take a breath...really, really, really, really bad about updating my blog these last few months, if not the whole year. I have been drawing though! I promise that much.
I've been keeping pretty busy. Did a few animated commissions for a webseries called Beverly Hoodz, check them out here if you want. I'm tapped to animate a few more from that series too, so keep your eyes open for that.
I'm also teaching more at Vancouver Film School. I'd already been teaching two levels of Flash for about a year and a half but in July I took on some more classes. Now I also teach Classical Animation, Storyboarding and Comic Book Production. That's been a lot of fun and you'd be amazed how much I love putting together power point presentations for lectures and gathering film clips for examples. I'm a movie/cartoon/comic nerd after all. In addition to all that my free time has been largely eaten up by my graphic novel. Did I mention I'm doing a graphic novel? Oh ya, I'm doing a graphic novel. Check out some in progress shots of it on my Facebook page, here. While you're at it, like my Facebook page too if you haven't already. And hey, if you're on Twitter follow me there too, I post in progress pictures there quite often. The graphic novel is almost done now but it took a lot longer than anticipated. Started it in June and thought I'd be finished, colour and all, by the fall. That turned out to be a pipe dream. I was using how fast I draw Cowman comics as my guideline to estimate my timing but the truth is this novel gets a lot more elaborate in a lot of ways and I can't pump the pages out as fast as Cowman. I'm not sure yet if I'll be getting a real publisher or if I'll be putting it out in some form myself but the story is semi-seasonal so it'll be a while before it's made available no matter how I go about it. I will put out some official finished images to wet your whistle when it's all done though.
Hmm...what's next? Here're some random drawings from the last few months.
Drew this after watching Mel Brooks get a Life Time Achievement Award.
Drew this on the bus, just cuz...
Another bus drawing.
Didn't draw this on the bus cuz I didn't have enough time left that day. But I did see this woman while I was on the bus, picture her bobbing up and down to the music on her boom box.
Doing more random drawings is my only real New Years resolution. It might not be an easy one cuz I am planning on diving into another ambitious project this year but I'll definitely be making an effort. Speaking of ambitious projects. Remember Pork Cops? I posted about it a while back. I finished it earlier in 2013 but set it aside so I could come back with fresh eyes and recut it to make it move a little faster. Also might've made some changes to the sound mix cuz there are one or two questionable sound effects. Long story short my computer died and I lost all my original working files so I couldn't edit it like I wanted. So instead I just posted it as is on youtube. In hindsight I'm actually still pretty happy with it but I definitely would've made some adjustments given the opportunity. Check it out here! Right here. Now at this very spot!
One last thing. Cowman is still going with new comics every Tuesday and Thursday. In fact I just finished an epic story arc called "The Foolery Saga." Here's the promo.
Cowman is now also on Tumblr too. I'm playing catch up over there now so I'm posting daily until it catches up to it's current run and then it'll update Tuesdays and Thursdays just like Blogger. I took a hiatus though for the holidays so I'll start posting daily again on January 6th with Cowman #187. You astute individuals may notice that that is the first Cowman listed on the above promo for the Foolery Saga. In other words if you want to check that out then heading on over to Cowman's Tumblr page and subscribing might be a damn good idea. Or if not go to his Blogger page and get caught up there.
So that's it for me for now, and didn't even really cover everything. I'll try to update more often again so I don't have to write a novel for my next update just to cover it all. Later guys.
I bought 'Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles' on DVD last month because I'm awesome that way. Like any healthy male product of the 80's I was obsessed with that show growing up and that first movie is still pretty cool if you ask me. After I watched it I drew this...
This isn't a bad drawing but I thought I could do better. It's more or less the classic turtle design drawn in my style. I wanted to mix it up a bit so I did some more sketching and played with the proportions to make them stubbier and a little less anthropomorphized...a bit closer to the original Eastman and Laird drawings.
I ended up doing a whole character line and added Splinter, April and Casey. In the original comics(which I've never read) April was actually a lab assistant or something, not a reporter like in the cartoon and movies...so I split the difference and drew her in street clothes, note the yellow jacket though.
Apparently in the new Michael Bay produced movie that they're working on they've decided to make the Turtles aliens instead of mutants. There's an expression for that, I can't remember exactly how it goes but I think it rhymes with 'DUCKING MUPID.' I have an unrelated movie suggestion myself though...I think Bebop and Rocksteady would be great in that new 'Gone With The Wind' remake I'm sure somebody wants to make. Don't you think so?
Here's Wolverine after what I imagine was a bloody good time. Hoho, haha, get it? Cuz he's--ahem, moving on. No real reason for drawing this other than I felt like drawing Wolverine so I drew Wolverine. I like it, kinda cartoony but kinda bad ass too.
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.
