Illostrated

We start our second week of practice Saturday morning for my sons tackle team. The team is shaping up, the kids all seem to actually GET hitting which is good, and I think we’ll be ready to go for our first game mid-Sept.

Tonight is the first varsity game of the year at the HS, and pre-game is our first tailgate party of the year, starting at 4pm. I’m off to mow a field into the lawn out back, then to get some propane for the grill and landscape paint or chalk to put down lines on the field out back for some flag football action later. Then after the game, it’s back here for a POST game party, which will involve plenty of drinking, picture taking and I’m sure a cowboy hat or two showing up in unexpected places. Setting the DVR for the Lions last exhibition game tonight as well, Michigan State game is on Saturday night as well, and next week is college football week on ESPN.

I do have work I need to get on though too, I can’t just sit around watching football and going to football practices every night, my wife would disown me.

well it looks like the mini-series I was set to start this month, isn’t going to happen after all. Thus I am looking for work again here. I tend to color between 2 and 3 books a month here on average, and all I have going now is my monthly title Dragon Cross (which is scheduled to end after issue 9 is up in September) So…….anyone that knows of a publisher in need right now, I’d love to hear from them (or from you so I can get in touch) My rates are really pretty reasonable, somewhere between $70-90 a page right now depending on the lineart I’m coloring. I’m also open to coloring commissioned work if you’re an artist looking to get stuff colored. Again rates vary with that depending on lineart, backgrounds or no backgrounds, just characters or whatever. If you’re interested please feel free to get in touch. Also feel free to pass my name along to anyone you know that might be looking for some coloring or digital painting. Time to start hustling so I can line some stuff up for the next couple of months. Thanks in advance everyone!!

doesn’t happen very often to me, since I color so many pages a month, but I’m in a position of waiting on pages here and it sucks. I HAVE work to do, but the release of that particular book is months away. The pages I’m waiting on are for a book that is due at the printer on August 13th. Needless to say, I’ve lost 2 or so days now and it sucks. Hopefully I can get that corrected today. I’d LIKE to have a few days off soon and not have to worry about killing myself before deadline as I enjoy them.

In other news, read a screenplay last night for a project I might be picking up. pay would be 100% upfront, I’d likely fly out to LA to meet with the creator and possibly the artist to go over the scope of the project, talk about visuals etc…. It’s a great story, a REALLY solid story actually. I’m also down with the payment terms, setting aside a 4 or 5 month block of time to work on it, and only worrying about that ONE project during the time, and a mini-series I’m starting mid-August. Would be a REAL nice wrap to a REALLY successful year for me here workwise. I’ve had plenty of bumps along the way this year, but really…I’m doing VERY well for myself and the future is looking extremely promising.

Still working on my creator owned project on the side here, going to be hard the next month or so what with coaching my son’s football team and stuff, but I’m really trying to roll this out now THIS YEAR, even it isn’t in August as planned. Where does the time go…..if I could answer that question I’d at least feel better about not having time to do everything I want or need to wouldn’t we all?

this battle is going to be EPIC! Nuff said. Issue 7 of Dragon Cross is out end of July, first week of August. Issue 8 which THIS scene is from, will be out end of August first week of Sept. As of issue 7 I am also now a story editor on this series through issue 9 (and HOPEFULLY will remain in such capacity when the next mini-series relaunches) I think Frank Digaudo is bringing some interesting twists to the storyline as he takes over the main writing chores on the series. The overall quality of the book is going up each issue, which is exciting to see. enjoy, more work to do before some friends come over for a barbecue this afternoon.

Too excited to NOT share what I’ve been up to this week. Working on Take a Chance issue 3, won’t be out until December I think, but wow is this book looking GORGEOUS so far. Easily my best work to date. I absolutely am in LOVE with the pencil work that Ardian Syaf is doing. The best thing about this entire book is, I can already envision the story in graphic novel format, and I’m really pulling out the stops to make this book my “portfolio” book. The great thing is, compared to my other books I’m doing right now, the coloring on this book is going MUCH faster than anything else. Which is even MORE exciting. So here’s a 3 page preview. I won’t show any more pages, I’m pretty sure it’s okay to share these, at least no one has ever said that I can’t show a few pages off here and there. Issue 1 is out in October, there MIGHT be a preview at SDCC here soon from Dabel Bros. and Del Rey, not sure though. enjoy, back to work for me.

been a while since I worked on this book, but Bluewater Productions is releasing this series starting a week ago now. Issue 1 is available now, issue 2 is out soon with the remaining issues to soon follow. One of my favorite books I’ve worked on in the last couple of years here (and I’m thinking of how good it would look if I were working on it today being so much better now than I was 2 years ago) Some pretty stellar artwork in this book, and the story by JS Earls is outstanding! Here’s the youtube video trailer from Bluewater for you viewing pleasure.

I don’t feel like resizing just to post a picture this morning BUT evidently this swanky new wordpress engine will resize things for me so all you have to do is click on the image for a larger view. I worked on this double page spread yesterday afternoon into the evening (might make a few more value adjustments to a couple areas IF I have time to). Came out pretty good I think, even though I could easily have spent another 6 or so hours making things REALLY shine if I had the time or if my pay was getting doubled to do it. back to painting more dragons now, 7 pages to go before Monday.

sometimes a single word can sum up everything nicely.

ugh.

word to the wise (notice I didn’t say a word FROM the wise) when shooting a pneumatic nail gun, always pull the trigger with your DOMINANT hand. It also helps if it’s not raining outside, the boards you’re trying to hold aren’t as wet as the handle of the gun, the roof you’re standing on isn’t wet etc….etc….

that being said, my finger is feeling better enough to work today luckily. Not only did we get the shed/playhouse for the kids in the backyard almost half done this weekend, we also go the carpet in the basement laid as well and rearranged furniture and stuff so that there are much more open spaces and plenty of room for playing pool now. I also got one of my paintings hung up in my wife’s office as well.

I’ve got a lot of work to do here, just trying to keep my head down and get through as much as I can each day so that I can enjoy some of the summer here as well instead of slaving away with no down time. k, feels like it MIGHT be a good day of work today if I can get a bit more coffee, a small bite to eat, some motrin, and get my finger taped up here. YO!

been so crazy the last month I feel like I fell down a rabbit hole. Think I colored an entire book worth of pages (22) from last Wednesday to LATE Monday night/EARLY Tuesday morning. While taking almost all of Sunday off for Fathers day. Had a small scare when my mom called on Friday to say that my dad was in the hospital for chest pains and testing and stuff. So I went up there on Friday to see how they were both doing, everything ended up being okay, so that was a huge relief. Then went back on Saturday to bring the other car home. Sunday we went and saw Prince Caspian at the theater, grilled steaks, and generally just took a much needed day off after working till 2 or 3 am all freaking week. Lots of drama and uncertainty still surrounding pretty much every aspect of work, at pretty much every company I’m working for in one capacity or another. Some of it is just stupid, some of it is stressful, some of it is probably much needed in order to get things back on track where they should be. All I know is that I’ve held up my end of things with everyone I’ve ever done work for, and I’m realizing that’s a hard thing for publishers and editors to find on a regular basis.

Tonight will be our 3rd baseball game in the last week too. oy. The bonus is, our team is hitting really well now (4 homeruns last game even though my son missed out on his 3rd of the year by a couple of feet probably and settled for a triple) and starting to field the ball well too, we turned our 2nd double play in as many games last game. My daughters softball game is home and at the same school as our baseball game tonight so I might get to see her play some after our game is over. She had a triple last game as well, but her team is really struggling this year to get everyone on the same page, and to show up each game (literally, hard to play when you don’t even have enough players to cover each infield position on a regular basis)

My brother and I started digging holes for the posts to the playhouse/shed we’re building in the backyard. Although anything that has a peak of 14ft is probably a ridiculous thing to add the word playhouse to. So we spent a few hours doing that, using a power auger with the name “EARTHQUAKE” written on it (and rightfully so as it shakes your entire body) and good old fashioned post hole diggers. Got those filled with a base of cement, and then called it a day as I had to run him up to work last night before 5. Somehow we’ll get this thing built in the next couple weeks, with much help from my father-in-law, and my wife is going to have to help too, because I’ve got yet again, LOTS of work to keep cranking out here to meet deadlines this summer.

Debating on whether I want my son playing summer baseball in July or not now too. Would be good experience, BUT…he’s playing football in the fall this year too, and practices start in mid-August. So I don’t know how well he’d do with only taking off 2 weeks between seasons really. I have a sneaking suspicion that before I know it, it’s going to be September here, my daughter will be in 7th grade, I’ll be turning 32, and the summer will be over. I need to find more time to drink pina coladas with the wife and chillax on our patio out back I think, somehow. Although with September comes football season. We’re planning on some tailgating get togethers, of which we’ll be keeping people posted.

alright, taken 2 hours to get this written in between coffee breaks, formatting pages for work today, and other stuff. Time to get moving, I’ve only got till 4 today because I still have a lineup to put together for tonights game yet too.