Commuter Mementos

Some sketchbook pages done within the last week. The new job and a nasty cold took me out of the game the past couple weeks, but I'm jumping right back in. I did these pages on the BART commute to/from San Francisco, on my way to a severely awesome Cake concert, and hanging out in the city after work with some coffee and my sketchbook and comic notes. The commute is great in that it provides me with mandatory sketchbook time every day so expect to see plenty of sketchbookishness for the next couple months until I move.

Checking In

Oh, my poor neglected sketchbook. I haven’t worked in it since the day I went to that John Vanderslice concert… which makes it about 3 weeks now! I’ll try to make amends before the end of February. I’ve mostly been focusing on the new job and the little time I’ve had for myself has been channeled into working on the story for “Rogues & Robbers”. I’m swimming in notes right now. Oh yeah, and I got sick again... now there’s a dumb story.

In the interest of keeping the blog rolling despite this minor dry spell, here are a couple pieces from my sketchbook that I did last month. The first is an atmospheric study I did over an espresso-nated beverage. I like it a lot. The second page I actually hated for some reason but almost kindasorta like now. Did it while killing time before the aforementioned concert and on the train ride home. Don't look at the guy in the chair in the upper right corner. It pains me.

Pre-spring cleaning... some random, idiot doodles I found when trying to clear off my desk. Some of them are thumbnails for actual finished pieces but most were just goofy time wasters. Hope someone finds them entertaining.

I think I may instigate a “one personal drawing a day” policy pretty soon whether it’s a quick character sketch or a longer sketchbook study to keep myself in the game and stocked up on blog fodder.

Hella News

So January is up and I’ve already nailed two New Year’s resolutions: new job + haircut. I’ve got a full-time gig as a concept/3D artist with a game company. There’s little room for happiness yet because I’m just so filled with relief! With the job search out of the way and steady pay in the near future, I can finally concentrate on the things that matter most to me: working on my graphic novel, attending more concerts and galleries, being social, and moving to San Francisco. Not to mention how awesome it’ll be to be doing something for a living that I believe in and enjoy. This is my first career-job ever and I'm so excited. Thanks 2009!

Originally, I hadn’t planned on sharing this project in its entirety online. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free, right? But, what the hell. Enjoy:

Being the well-organized neat-freak that I am, I wasted no time in waiting a mere 3 months, following APE, to finally clean out my car and address the box of leftover comics for which I no longer have space. My car (Esteban) is at critical capacity… god help me if I ever have to have a passenger. So I’m putting the leftover copies of "Hella Days" up for sale for a mere $8 a pop (shipping included). I also promise an original, sweet-ass drawing in each book, to sweeten the deal. To buy a copy, just send $8 via Paypal to halloween_moon [ at ] yahoo.com (lame-ass, old email address… don’t laugh) along with your name and the address you would like the book mailed to. I’ve never tried to sell anything online before, so I guess this’ll be a learning experience. I am currently only selling domestically… international readers, I love you but I’m just not equipped to do business with you yet. Much appreciation! Esteban thanks you too.

While I’m on the topic of comics… I will soon be moving forward with a print version of my former graphic novel, “Of Rogues and Robbers”, of which Jack was also our heroine. A recap for those new to ORAR or new to the blog: I started writing/illustrating a comic back in 2003 that ran for a few years (it’s still on my website) but due to the increasing demands of school and work and trying to find employment post-graduation, I was forced to put ORAR on hold.

The comic itself was not originally conceived for print and when I began having thoughts of publishing it, it became apparent that I was going to have to redraw and rewrite it. My style wasn’t consistent, I grew a lot over the course of the comic, and I didn’t know nearly as much about story construction at the time I started it as I do now. I’ve had years to “what if” the hell out of the story, get to know my characters and I’m ready to rework it and also develop a set look for the series. I’ll post plenty of production work here once I get the ball rolling on the visual development and actual illustration. Right now, ORAR is an ocean of story notes that need to be fleshed out, sewn together, and fine-tuned.

I’m hesitant to give away much of the story even though the entire (WARNING: HELLA OLD!!!) exposition is online. I’ll try to summarize the story briefly without giving too much of it away:

It’s about a ring of pickpockets who stumble into a much larger criminal agenda, get in way over their heads, and have one hell of a time trying to find their way out. Jack (short for Jacqueline) is a master pickpocket. When a talented rookie named Warren joins the ring, they accidentally become involved in a high profile murder and… well, you’ll see. There’s mystery, murder, poignancy, revenge, conspicuous pasts, friendships, difficult choices, coming of age… all that juice. It can best be described as “The Godfather” meets “Oliver Twist”. Subversively epic.

“Hella Days” was a departure from the sort of stories I normally create. ORAR is characteristic of my usual style… definitely darker, more introspective, and adult. If I had to place it in genres, it would be Mystery/Human Comedy/Thriller, in that order although comic stores will label it "Alternative". And if the story doesn’t break your heart a bit, I will have no choice but to consider it a failure. The heart of the story is in the relationships between the characters. Although there is a large story arc, it will be broken into several books for easy consumption and more manageable creation.

I haven’t been able to justify working on ORAR (until now) amidst applying for jobs, doing paid work, and updating my portfolio. However, the occasional ORAR drawing or note does find its way to paper. I think this is what I’m going to do with Jack’s hair for the novel:

And finally, I updated my website for the first time since July '08! It's pretty much all stuff I've posted here but if you're a new visitor to my blog, a look at the website is like a quick recap of the goings-ons here.

The Book Bin #2

This installment isn’t from a book I personally own. About a year and a half ago, I checked out “Pen Drawings of Florence” by Herbert Railton from the library and was so taken with the inkwork that I scanned the entire thing at high resolution. It was published in 1890 and would’ve cost a small fortune to buy. I used to do a lot of high-detail ink renderings myself (though they weren’t nearly as well-executed as these) before I started working with washes and doing more economical drawings to record an impression.

Detail of above:

Detail of above:

Since this book was originally published almost 120 years ago and I haven’t found any recent publications of it, I’m going to assume I’m not stepping on any legal toes by sharing it. If I am, let me know and I'll remove it. For a limited time only, you can download the hi-res scans from my server so you can study the detail of the inkwork or print it out for reference or whatever. I doubt this'll burst my bandwidth limit. The file size is 144MB. If anyone knows of a place where I can put the large zip file permanently, I’d appreciate a point in the right direction. Thanks and enjoy!

"Pen Drawings of Florence" by Herbert Railton

Sketchcrawl 21

These are a couple of pages from my first Sketchcrawl last Saturday in San Francisco. I feel really good about that motorcycle. I don't think I've ever been in the company of so many artists at once. It was overwhelming in the most awesome way. I'm totally looking forward to attending future crawls!

Sketchbook Shenanigans

Above: I love this page with the exception of the lower right drawing. Keeps the page humble, I guess. Below: I was going to edit out that abandoned bit of drawing at the top but for some reason, I like what it does for the overall composition of the page. Also wanted to stay honest. It's a taco truck, by the way.
Below: This was the only drawing I liked on a page I did last month. Done late at night on BART on the way back from San Francisco.

Teashop Finale

Here's the tail-end of the teashop piece. There are still things that I want to do to it, including adding one of the characters. I'm temporarily calling this a finished piece however because I want to go on to other facets of the project and this is pretty done anyway. I haven't designed any of the characters yet so I'll revisit this piece when I've got something more to add. That way I can also get a look at it with fresh eyes and fix everything I just can't see anymore.

Unlike most of my environment pieces, this did not start off from a drawing. I did a load of thumbnails to get a feel for what I wanted but then I realized that since I already pretty much knew what I wanted the layout of the room to be, it would be easier and faster just to model it and choose a camera angle I really liked. So I did a simple model in Maya, captured the wireframe, and just painted over that:

More sketchbookery:

I actually like this page a lot despite the fact that a few of the figures have waaay tiny heads. Most of these drawings were done at Borders.