If you’re anywhere near NE Ohio this Saturday, November 4, I hope you’ll come out to the Buckeye Book Fair! I’ll be there with copies of Rockets, The Warren Commission Report, and Boulder and Fleet. And at 1pm I’ll be leading another drawing game show with fellow kidlit author/illustrator Merrill Rainey.
I’ll also be hiding some art drops around the conference. It’ll be a lot of fun!
Buckeye Book Fair This Weekend! Read More »
Twelve years ago I sat down to do a live stream (I think on Justin.tv?) and drew a bunch of 3×3″ sketches on bristol. No expectations, no purpose, just drawing whatever came to mind. This was one of the drawings.
Not long after that I challenged myself to create a minicomic from scratch in about a week. Just an hour or two a day. And this bear drawing helped inspire the character of Boulder, one half of the titular team of that minicomic:
I was making a lot of different kinds of adventure comics up until that point. Silver and the Periodic Forces, Switch Runners, The Replacements. They were all fun and imaginative stories, and a lot of fun to make. But I think this is the drawing where my interests shifted back to something I loved as a kid, which was drawing what C.S. Lewis called “clothed animals” stories. And my style started pointing to what my friend Dan Mishkin described as “action whimsy.”
Since then I’ve made a number of minicomics starring these clothed animal characters. And a number of graphic novel pitches. So it feels like the culmination of something to say that in autumn 2024 my middle-grade graphic novel The Inscrutable Doctor Baer and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue will finally be released.
I need to sit down to do more drawing without expectation. I’ll bet there are more meaningful twists and turns my subconscious has to offer.
The first drawing of Boulder Read More »
If you’ve been tuning into my live streams (Saturdays at 3pm ET!) you’ll have seen that I’m in the process of redrawing A Friendly Game, a Boulder and Fleet story I created during October 2016. The original version was made within the constraints of Inktober (or Creative Challenge Season as my buddy Rob Stenzinger calls it). In order to meet my goal of finishing a 24-page comic within 31 days, I threw out the penciling stage and inked over my thumbnails. It was an early experiment in finding what I think of as my “deadline style.” It became a four-year journey to finding a sweet spot between efficiency and quality.
The comic came together fairly well considering the constraints. The story explored some of my strong feelings about bullying and navigating conflict, and I got to invent a fun little game kids could play with whatever they find outside:
And the art was serviceable, at least for a minicomic. But I wanted the art to show the same love I had for the story, so I decided to re-draw the book. And I’d revise the layouts so it could match the aspect ratio of Boulder and Fleet: Mining for Trouble.
And in digging through the old materials for this story, I came across several cover sketches I did after wrapping up the minicomic:
For the minicomic I went with no. 4:
But maybe I can go with one of the other designs for the remastered edition!
A Friendly Game Cover Sketches Read More »
Ship’s Cook Maggie doesn’t just tell a story. She TELLS it.
From my upcoming remaster of Boulder and Fleet: A Friendly Game.
Colors are underway on A Friendly Game! I finished this page in less than an hour (and just as Team Venezuela took the lead in the World Baseball Classic Quarterfinals), so I’m hopeful about the progress on this little project!
Coloring A Friendly Game Read More »
Inking some comics tonight. My compost farming stag beetle meets a bully chicken.
That cute stag beetle ? Read More »
…I wonder if I should finish redrawing A Friendly Game, my Boulder and Fleet short story from 2016 or so.
Now that I’m done drawing BvB… Read More »
I really enjoyed the dynamic between Rube and Sapph-Fire in Boulder and Fleet: Mining for Trouble. They had a bit of a Shego/Drakken thing going on.
#boulderandfleet
I post lots of nice things on Instagram
I’m back with an essay on dealing with fears and the whys and hows of a Patreon campaign. Why? Because I’ve launched a Patreon campaign for Boulder and Fleet!
Links mentioned:
Music for this show is by Eliott Drozd.
Audio hosting provided by Ka-Blam Digital Printing and IndyPlanet Digital
Voiceover by Tara Platt
Jerzy on Google+
Subscribe through iTunes
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TPD 181 – Asking for Help Read More »
This time I share the surprise I’ve felt in how relaxed I’ve been about the Boulder and Fleet webcomic. Surprise invites the question “why,” so I explore what is different between this webcomic and others I’ve run, which leads me to some thinking about goals, vision, and an author’s expectations in terms of audience.
Links mentioned:
Music for this show is by Eliott Drozd.
Audio hosting provided by Ka-Blam Digital Printing and IndyPlanet Digital
Voiceover by Tara Platt
Jerzy on Google+
Subscribe through iTunes
Listen on Stitcher
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
TPD 152 – Vision vs Audience Read More »