Man vs. Nature

Over a year ago, my friend Ethan Nicolle asked me to create some imitation pixel game art for his latest graphic novel Bearmageddon.  However, during the time I was working on this, a little web comic Ethan created with his kid brother became an internet sensation.  Needless to say, Ethan had to commit himself full time to Axe Cop and Bearmageddon was put on the back burner   But in August, Bearmageddon finally premiered and in color!  Today the "game art" I created made its debut CHECK IT OUT.

Bearmageddon is like Ratfist, a complete graphic novel that is posted online, one page at a time.

Coloring Someone Else's Drawings - Not Just For Kids Anymore

My first professional comic book work is finally printed and in my possession.  Doug TenNapel's Bad Island, published by Scholastic Books.  Before I drew Scrooge and Santa, I was a Lead Colorist with Katherine Garner on what was TenNapel's latest comic.  This was the first time I had done anything professional for the comic industry.  Not to mention, the first time I had every worked as a Colorist.  I was just starting to get to know Doug when he asked me to do this, and working through it helped to develop a friendship with him.  Mr. TenNapel is a good man, a hard worker and a great guy to work under.   I also got to know Katherine and learn what an equally hard worker she is, not to mention her skills in the craft of coloring.  My position was to develop a color pallet that other colorists could work from, and together we created the base colors for Katherine to the render (shadows/highlights) and adjust.  It was a good experience and I'm very pleased with the result.
This project lead to other work with Doug, including coloring his web comic Ratfist (Lead Colorist - Katherine Garner).  This on-line graphic novel is in the works to be published by Image Comics, but you can read the entire thing for free right now!
As an extra treat, I was recently given a copy of Bad Island and a Ratfist shirt.

 Thank you Doug and Katherine for all your hard work and support.

I'd Like To Give A Shout-Out

Obviously, I haven't posted anything in a while, so I thought I should at least show something before this month is over.
This is a simple drawing I made as a shirt design for a cute rock band called CryOut.  The members are four kids, three girls and one boy.

For a little while now, I have been helping to color Doug TenNapel's webcomic, Ratfist.  That's been keeping me pretty busy lately but the end is in sight.

Comic Heroes

I thought it might be fun to create a few posts talking about individuals that I admire in their craft, in the hopes of supporting and promoting them.
The webcomic world has grown to be very vast over the years, and I don't pretend to be an expert on them.  There have been a couple that I like but none that I follow consistently.  That might be changing due to an exposer to this world from personal attachments.  This is mostly due my friend Ethan Nicolle and now Doug TenNapel.  Over the past couple of years I've gotten to know Ethan as a friend and as a respectable artists.  After getting to know him and really enjoying his company (mostly due to the fact that we are both Misties), I found out that he did drawings.  I didn't realize until he handed me a couple graphic novels he made called Chumble Spuzz and told me that he was nominated an Eisner for them, just how much of a "Drawer" he was!  About a year ago, he came back from his Christmas break with funny stories about playing with his kid brother Malachi, and how they created a character called Axe Cop.  I and other friends witnessed how this fun little idea exploded in a cultural phenomenon!
My friendship with Doug TenNapel came about in the opposite way.  I was a long time fan of his work, ever since the video game of Earthworm Jim.  Over time I got to talk with Mr. TenNapel at various points, but it wasn't until a mutual friend (Ryan Agadoni) gave me an opportunity to know Doug more personally.  (Doug and Ethan are also close friends, which was one of the reasons I met Ethan.)  Doug's latest project (his body of work is EPIC) is a brand-spanking-new webcomic series called Ratfist.  This is Doug's first webcomic and I hope it will gain the same success as Ethan's first webseries.
I admire both of these men for their body of work, the ethic for their craft, and the ideals they live by.  They are also great guys to work with, as I've experienced helping each of them on a couple of projects.
In celebration of and first year anniversary of Axe Cop and the launch of Ratfist, I decided to do a little sketch of these great guys.  Even though I haven't met him yet, Malachai is in there to give credit where credit is due.