Ladies & Getlemen!

I don't even use this blog anymore, and (even more so than before) nobody reads it besides me, but I thought I'd throw this out there. Why not. Support myself and Richard Worth on our quest to publish our own comic book. It's gonna be cool. Go to IndiGoGo through the link below and give us some dough. That was a quality rhyme.

Gourmet Burger Kitchen Comission

My friend Lora works for GBK and gave me lots of delicious burger vouchers for doing this for their staff party. It's adapted from the second issue cover of Marvel's "Strange Tales," which I adore... I'm a sucker for a spindly Spidey. Bit o' fun, bit o' food.

The Magnificent Marauders Season II

Well, turns out this year I had the pleasure of continuing my involvement with the McMaster student paper comic strip for the first story arch, all the way from England. I'm looking forward to see what things will look like when the pen and paper gets handed over to the other two artists. It was nice to reprise my role as artist, and it's good to finally have the project finished and under my belt now. Here they all are...

Blaze Bear

Here are some quick storyboard concepts I did this summer with West Park Media for a Yorkshire fire department ad. Blaze Bear is the English fire safety mascot, much like Smokey Bear, and I thoroughly enjoy the idea of him bursting into private situations to "save the day" by soaking things. I'll put up the link to the video once production is finished and whether or not they put it online.

"March of Death!" 4/4 Finale

Well, 14 strips later and here we are... a full year's worth of little comic strips. I utilized last week's "March of Death" banner because I thought it worked really well, and embellished the title card to reflect the pulp adventure serials I was loosely trying to emulate. Everything is wrapped up in this one, and I think it's a great way to end of the series, since I myself will be graduating in a month. I brought in the array of heroes from one of my very first mock ups of the team I did for Tony back in 2008 -- ending as we began, in a way.

Next steps will include publishing the collected strips (either doing it semi-professionally, or just printing them off myself and stapling them, zine style) along with some sketches and additional material. It'd also be great to have students next year take up the mantle of The Marauders to keep them going for future generations of McMaster students to explore further. But, even if it ends here, it was incredibly rewarding for me to work on my first published comic this year. The perfect diversion from school work (too often, at times), I think it will ironically represent more about my future as a body of portfolio work than my history degree, demonstrating my ability to (somewhat hastily) get things in on a weekly basis. At least that's more than I could say about research papers.

I hope anybody who actually read it enjoyed it, I know I did. Now it's on to other projects! I've got a few ideas in the works, so stay tuned...

"March of Death!" 3/4 Special Edition

Full page o' glory! The newspaper printed a special music edition magazine in the paper last week which absorbed most of the content. As a result, we got a space three times as big as we usually do for the Marauders strip. It came at the perfect time in the story as well, right when the action is the most... action-packed. This was so much fun to do, and also so much work. I had to seriously rush a few of the panels as a result of basically doing three weeks worth of drawing in one week, and it was challenging to figure out the new layout. I think the serious hand crampage payed off though... it's certainly a nice highlight piece to the whole series, and a great opportunity to work on a larger scale.

I loved the way Divinus' teleportation scene worked out, as well as the final panel. They are some of my favorites from the whole series. I also enjoyed how reflective this was as a metaphor for my coinciding school life. March truly is a time of death, and I felt just like our heroes, unable to keep up with the horde of assignments pressing in on me from all sides. Will I get them all done? We'll just have to wait and see if our heroes survive...

"March of Death!" 2/4

We finally get to figure out what's going on in this issue, with some hinted back-story. Which is great. Not to mention the important fact that I got to draw zombies. A zombie, I suppose (though he does break the "no talking" rule of zombies... though I suppose the fact that he's possessed accounts for that) . The Cap is also back from his hiatus -- off catching up with homework after his encounter with MechEng way back when -- along with Dr.Pine and Sulla. This strip only has 4 panels as well, alot less than the usual 6 or 7. It gives it more space for detail, giving me the chance to really lay on the ink. I think it turned out nicely. Like last week's re-use of Togo Salmon, the keen eye will detect that I used Captain Marauder's pose here for my poster design as well.

Fun Fact: Dr. Togo Salmon made his living researching the Italian Samnite people. Perhaps he read the wrong ancient scroll at some point... with dire consequences! But hey, I just draw this stuff.