Skook WiP #98

It’s 11/11/22. It’s the 11th day of the 11th month. The war to end all wars ended today back in 1918.

Yeah. No comment.

I’m off social media and putting my best efforts into updating Daughter of Spiders as my project for NaNoWriMo. Any internet use has to be for historical research for the story. No current news. No gossip. No reviews of old b-movies.

Mugshots

This month’s process GIF features a girl and her dragon. Or perhaps a dragon and her girl. Or maybe the tragic death of a lollypop. It’s all a matter of perspective.

It’s available as:
A mug in my Zazzle store
A lot of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Mighty Nizz

The latest page of the first Mighty Nizz story is up. The scan of the original art is below. The final colored version can be seen at MightyNizz.com.

Versus

Back in October I was commissioned to do a portrait of someone, a friend of a friend. The initial suggestion was to portray the fellow taking out a giant bug.
The commissioner also thought it might be fun to portray his friend as Katsuki Bakugo (a character from the anime My Hero Academia) fighting Meruem (a character from the anime Hunter x Hunter).
My client gave me the choice of depicting either scenario. I sent him sketches for both and asked him to choose his favorite. He went with the anime version.
I worked up pencils for the portrait. I’m not familiar with either of the animes from which these characters originate so I had to do some research to get their details right. I think I did fairly well.

Once I got approval on the pencils I moved on to inks and then spot blacks and shading.
Below is the final version. I had to be a little more careful with this project than with illustrations that are intended for print. I can fix errors on those pieces digitally. The physical art for this one went to the client so it had to be as clean and mistake free as possible.
That’s it for this week.

Take care. Take charge. Take flight.

See you next Friday!

Tuesday Night Party Club #15

Artstuff: Panel Jumper
Behold the Panel Jumpers – Cole Hornaday and Ben Laurance. They produce a series of videos and podcasts focusing on comics and comics history. Cole is generally the face in front of the camera and voice behind the microphone. Their videos are minimovies that both educate and entertain. Besides the youtube channel they also do a live show called, not surprisingly, Panel Jumper Live. For each of the PJLs they commission a local artist to do their portraits. I was honored to be asked to create their portraits for their upcoming June 22nd show.

Above is a scan of my original black and white drawing. Cole and Ben are both fans of the Mad Max series so I put them in post-apocalyptic gear. After the apocalypse the survivors with have fabulous outfits and fascinating hair styles. It’s true.

The image below is my first finished color portrait.

I did a second version after Cole asked me to make the Panel Jumper logo red. A perfectly reasonable request. That’s the color it normally is. I had gone with blue because I thought it worked better with the background.

With a red logo I adjusted some ot the other colors and the image below is the final result.
At this writing no one is sure if the scheduled PJL will happen. Plagues mess up all kinds of plans. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Story Seed #39: Alternate H & Ws

African American Holmes and Watson
Korean Holmes and Watson
Congolese Holmes and Watson
Cyberpunk Holmes and Watson
Wild West Holmes and Watson
Medieval China Holmes and Watson
1950s Noir Female Holmes and Watson
Anytime/Anywhere Holmes and Watson

Arthur Conan Doyle created a solid story formula in his Sherlock Holmes adventures. A genius detective and loyal friend solve mysterious crimes. The detective is kind of misanthropic and weird, the friend is more normal and relateable to the general reader. Add in the Baker Street Irregulars, Detective LeStrade, Mrs. Hudson the long suffering housekeeper, Mycroft the spymaster, the Woman and arch nemesis Professor Moriarty and you have a template for a series of mystery suspense stories.

The formula has been used many, many, many times by many, many authors over the years. Some folks have just changed a few details and given the characters new names. Others have gotten permission from the Doyle estate and written new adventures. Some versions have modernized the setting. Some have tweaked the characters ages or relationships. Generally the new versions don’t stray too far from the original. Sherlock Holmes stays male and stays British.

But the formula doesn’t require the genius detective and the loyal friend to be British or male or to take place in Victorian England. The brilliance and resiliance of the formula is that an author could pick any setting and with a few adjustments make the formula fit. It’s been done a few times. Watson & Holmes. Miss Sherlock. Baker Street. There’s room for a lot more takes.

Pick a setting. Start playing.

Other Newsletters

Nothing Here is a newsletter spearheaded by author, Corey J. White. He has regular and guest contributors and a wide focus discussing and linking to various articles, podcasts, videos, newsletters and other interesting things. I like this newsletter for the variety and for originating out of Australia. I think better when I get perspectives from outside the US.

Lifestuff: Coronapocalypse Days

Unlike cinematic apocalypses, fashion during the Coronapocalypse is pretty staid. Mask and gloves on top of whatever you’d normally wear.

Functional. Hopefully.

I spent Sunday doing some spring cleaning and organizing. I’ve been letting things pile up for years. I can ignore stacks of books or art or paperwork for long periods of time. Last week I had taken time to clean off the top of one of our flat file cabinets. I’d expected that job to take longer than it did and was relieved at how quickly it had gone. I’d uncovered some art that I’d forgotten that I’d done. That’s always entertaining.

I’ve got plans for reorganizing our library/studio space but it’s a big job that will involve moving hefty pieces of furniture. I’m not ready for that yet. I tackled smaller jobs. Took out the recycling. Packed up the old Mac Mini. Set aside the two backup hard drives. Cleaned off the table that the Mac had been occupying. Covered the table again with art and art supplies that had been on the floor in the spare room. Recycled some process art – blueline and reference images. Stirred up a lot of dust.

Emptied the shelves in the pantry. Checked the “best by” dates on various cans and boxes. Looked online for evidence whether the food in some of those containers would still be edible. Kept the stuff that was only two years past the date. Five year and older got opened and dumped in compost. Returned to shelves the remaining items. Hey! I can walk around in the pantry now!

Monday, yesterday, Sabe went to the vet for blood tests. Hopefully we’ll get good news. He’s been suffering his own fashion crises lately. We got him a sweater because he’s lost weight and also taken to sleeping behind Sarah’s nephews gaming machine. Where it’s warm. He’s adapted to the new garment with grace. In the midst of the above (and other more mundane activity) I’ve continured to work on illustrations. I’ll post the commissioned work when appropriate and the practice work in between the archived stuff I’ve been finding.

I hope things are going well for all y’all out there. I make it through the hours by remembering that change is the constant of life. Sometimes I can direct the change. Sometimes I just need to ride things out. Feel free to write. I’ll do my best to answer. Take care!

Valorous Cats and the Great War

It’s been a busy last couple months. I’ve been doing illustrations for two successful Kickstarters.

The first – Horrors of War – is a collection of Call of Cthulhu scenarios written by Adam Scott Glancy set during World War One. That one funded back in 2014. I originally contributed an illustration to the original Kickstarter video and illustrations to one of the scenarios. After that my life got too complicated for me to commit to meeting deadlines. Mr. Glancy’s life got complicated as well and work on the project stalled.

Things have simplified for me, enough that when he contacted me earlier this year I was able to happily commit to illustrating two more scenarios and a series of general illustrations for the book. The plan is to have the project done by 11/11/2018. I expect to have my parts done well before that.

At about the same time Oscar Rios of Golden Goblin Press let me know that things were a go for Cathulhu Kickstarter. That campaign ran from June 29th to July 29th and successfully overfunded. One of the successfully met stretch goals was to have a PDF of the illustrated edition of Tails of Terror available for October. That meant I needed to complete sixteen illustrations in August.

I turned in the last one this morning.

I’ve got lots of work yet to complete on both projects but I thought I’d take a moment to breathe and update this website. Cheers y’all!