Sorry no posts lately...

I've had a busy week and picked up a new project which I hope won't take more than a month to complete. Hush hush until then.

I drew this in bed last night, just before drifting off. It's a wonder I get any rest at all:

Rose City Rollers Comic

The comic book I worked on as a colorist and designer can now be purchased online! In addition to its intrinsic educational and entertainment value, buying the comic helps support the fantastic sport of Roller Derby, Portland's Rose City Rollers league in particular, and improves my chances of getting to come back to work on a second issue — possibly as an artist this time.

Now, the RCR merchandise website is brand new, and looks like it needs a tweak or two. To stop it from blocking you based on your HTTP referrer, you may need to manually copy the following address and paste it into your browser's address bar:





For those who want to know exactly what I contributed to the book: it's broken into four parts, and I was the colorist for the 5-page story entitled "High Rollers: High Stakes on Fly Skates". I designed the credits page and the one-page article at the end, and prepped the entire book for the printer in terms of getting each page in the same resolution and format, placing the ads, adjusting the bleeds, and correcting (and making) a few last-minute errors. I also came up with a pretty clever idea to let us print the book with an alternate cover without need for a second print run -- we had them print all of the signatures the same, then flip half of them over right before binding. If you order online, you'll get one of two front covers chosen at random, with the other cover included as the inside of the back cover. It'll make sense when you see it.

Flash CS3 + Tablet PC

Flash is the best thing in the world for creating content really really fast and with a lot of flexibility. It's designed to work with a keyboard, and there were some initial bugs with screen rotation — but once I got my workspace customized and learned to lay the computer flat with the screen on my left knee and the keyboard on my right, shit worked very nicely. Doing this reminded me that the one thing I always wished for in working with Flash was more vertical real-estate. We'll see if I find the time, but I may just bring this blog back to its roots a bit.

Click for more:

Tablet Doodles

Coloring on this thing is a bit awkward... it seems to change unpredictably with the ambient light. I drew some girls from the roller derby league last week over beers, then colored them later on:




Then last night in Tacoma I did some sketches of Charlie Bullock as he tore around the house:



There was a crude drawing on the bathroom mirror of a pineapple shaking its fist at the heavens and saying this. I'm sure it was an inside joke with a long story behind it, and it inspired me to do a re-imagining:

24-hour comics

This weekend I participated in an event with a bunch of other artists who came together at Cosmic Monkey Comics and each took up Scott McCloud's challenge to create a finished 24-page comic within a single 24-hour period. I stayed for the full 24 hours, from 10 AM Saturday until 10 AM Sunday, and I did finish a comic although it came out 10 pages too short to be an official 24-hour comic. It was a fascinating experience; working with such a short immediate deadline makes it impossible to procrastinate, and gives you a palpable reason not to get mired in perfectionism. I didn't have any good story ideas, but I didn't let that stop me.

The entire event was covered in real-time blog format by Leigh Walton" of Top Shelf Productions. To read his coverage, start at the bottom of this page and work your way back to the present using the "Next Entries" link near the top.

Alright, enough background -- here's the comic. I hope to color it sometime soon.
















Higher-res CBR File for viewing in CDisplay