From Death Til Now Comes Back!

From Death Til Now, my online graphic novel, is back in full swing with weekly updates. It was really nice to spend some time finishing up the line art of the first book. Hopefully soon I will pick up the weekly updates to more than one page a week. It's been nice to get back in the saddle though and start seeing some finished pages again.

In other news, Amulet 2 debut at the number 2 slot on the New York Times Bestsellers list for paperback graphic novels. Congrats to Kazu and the rest of the crew on a great book and first week!

See everyone next week with the next FDTN page.

Amulet 2 Hits Shelves Today

Above is a piece of fan art I did for the Amulet series by Kazu Kibuishi. When I sat down to do this, I really wanted to do something that felt like an official style poster since I've been working on my design skills. I'm happy with the result :-)

I was fortunate enough to be a part of the crew of people working on the sequel to this awesome graphic novel series: Amulet: The Stonekeepers Curse. I owe a lot to Kazu and his contributions to comics. He's been very kind to all of us who've helped him. The people I've gotten to know as a result to working on this has been a real added bonus. You guys are awesome and I hope I get to know all of you better.

If you haven't read the series or are already a fan, let me tell you, book 2 is awesome. It's everything you'd hope for in a sequel to the first book. So, pick it up everybody!

Project Round Up!

Things are kind of in a lull at the moment, so I thought it would be a good time to recap the status of my projects.

The biggest news is Kazu Kibuishi's "Amulet: The Stonekeepers Curse" is coming out in just a couple of weeks! I was able to be a part of the production on this outstanding book by being a part of the color flatting process. I'm pretty stinkin excited that my first published credit for comics work is going to be on this great series. So be sure to pick up a copy on September 1st! Kazu has also agreed to do an interview sometime soon, so I look forward to sharing that here whenever we can get that done.
I decided pretty recently to take my "Kevin and the Golden Temple" story out of the workings for the anthology project it was originally slated for. No offense to the anthology really, I'm still going to try and put something together for them. I just didn't feel I was doing the story much justice in the way I had to kind pace it and all. I'm still developing this world and I really think the story is something that will be fun and exciting for kids!
From Death Til Now is still continuing on at a steady pace. I've started focusing more on the computer and toning end of things which has been nice. My brain was a bit in overload on the drawing/thumbnailing side of things. I plan to resume regular updates on this book online in the month of September. Hopefully speeding up to a completion of book 1 in the early part of 2010. Looking at Josh Ulrich's color sample makes think volume 2 may almost certainly be in color!

Other than that, I'm busy working on a new portrait commission which looks to be really special. Also, because I can barely contain myself any longer, I started writing the treatment for "The Unknowns" book 2.I still need the series to sell , but I had to get my ideas for how the story would continue down on paper before they slipped away into oblivion!

The next couple of weeks look to be a bit slow, which is alright because my birthday is around the corner and then From Death Til Now will be back to spreading the mystery. For now, its time to do some doodling.

"The Unknowns" Is On The Clock

About a week and a half ago my agent let me know that The Unknowns had been sent out to publishers for consideration for publication. I thought once the book finally got out there and was being looked at by publishers that I would feel a bit more sane about the process. You know, just knowing that the final clock was ticking. Instead, I've found the whole experience to be much more exhilarating and nerve racking than I thought. The thought that this idea I came up with three and a half years ago while sitting in a laundry-mat is out there being seriously considered by some of the biggest publishers in the world, has me altogether humbled.

Comics have been a childhood dream I've clung to far longer than good sense would usually keep people going. I've pressed on despite the ridicule of some of my art teachers, friends and even family. It is a passion to which I know of no real sedative. If anything I know I've gotten farther than many ever have. Merely because I kept going.

I don't know how I will feel once all of the tallies have come in from across the publishing world. I suspect now is a time for dreaming and hoping rather than preparing. But I think most of all I think I will keep going. Just like I always have. Regardless. Why? Because I don't know any better. And because I feel at home when I make my silly picture books. So, cheers to the jitters. You remind me I still care.

I also sat back down recently (as in finished it today) and reread my fifth draft of The Unknowns book 1. During my time away from it I had started to come up with all of these little scenes I thought should be added. As I read it again, I started to think otherwise. This book is the tightly spun story I think it should be. It's no Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in length, but it doesn't need to be either. It sets up the world and the conflict very quickly and establishes the boundaries of our characters. A lot of the character building stuff I had in mind I felt could perfectly wait until a later volume and quite honestly it would be better served there. This book needs to be a hook and as such it needs to causes us all to wonder what's going on in the house of our next door neighbor. And to that end I think it is successful.

I have a ton of corrections and ommitences to take from the text still, but I think that will wait. I want to give myself some time to read some more of the book "100 Cupboards" by N D Wilson before I get ready to pass out. This book is awesome guys. I may have found a new favorite author!

At any rate. I won't be saying much else on the progress of The Unknowns until I know exactly what is happening with it. But in the meantime, I will be busy praying, biting my nails and trying to stay busy with the other ideas coming from my brain. And finishing From Death Til Now.

Kevin And The Golden Temple

I finally finished my first pass at my serialized short story called "Kevin and the Golden Temple." It's pretty exciting to see it locked and the realization of a simple story idea I had years ago come into something pretty fun and exciting. I'm still workingin one possible page to help flesh out a few ideas.

Other than that From Death Til Now is continuing its clip to the end. There's only maybe ten pages left to draw and then begins the process of doing all of the computer shading. Again, if any of you artists out there have time and want to help, please let me know. I am looking for some volunteers.

The Unknowns is still on the burner for now, but I've been rereading my script and thinking a lot work can still be done (surprise right?). I mainly think the ideas could be fleshed out a bit more when it comes to the characters themselves. It feels like it could have a few more quiet moments in it. As it stands it feels a bit like a roller coaster, which is good I suppose. I suspect many changes will still come to mind. Eventually though you got to lock things down and believe you've written the best thing you could. Well, more work ahead I guess. :-)

Progress of Late

Things have been moving along a bit slower the last couple of weeks. My wife mandated a no comics week last week for me as I had nearly burned myself out writing and drawing eight pages of From Death Til Now a week. It was just sort of time to put my mind on other things. So I spent one morning out a park with my bible, a book and a journal. It was time well spent. I really calmed my spirit down on things. By Saturday I was champing at the bit to get back to work. I was able to get some work done on Kevin and the Golden Temple and do some mapping out of the final two scenes in From Death Til Now book 1.

Lesson I learned from the last few weeks/year. We can all have goals and ambitions. But when those goals get in the way of us enjoying those around us, our health and/or our enjoyment of the very field we're creating in... well we've probably gone too far. The real trick is using time wisely. Taking the moments most spending idling away the day to really get productive. You have to stay driven and motivated, but it needs a balance.

So far this week I've finished the painting on the Kevin story. I've also completed one of the major reveal spreads in From Death Til Now and knocked out one standard page as well. It feels good to be back in the saddle again. Work is getting done, but more importantly I'm approaching the work from a simpler heart and that's really making a difference in my day. Here's an art moment for you today. It's a panel from page 137 of FDTN. Who's behind that mask? I dunno! guesses?

Enjoy!

Ending Earlier Than Expected

Well, after quite a bit of thinking and tinkering with the final chapter of FDTN. I ultimately decided the firt book would be better served if I ended it in about fifteen pages. Thematically the original ending of the book just felt off when you saw it withink the context of the rest of it. This feels much more mysterious and appropriate for a book 1 ender.

This is exciting for me though, because I will be finishing my first graphic novel, line art wise, in about a month! Then it will be the rigorous process of grayshading all of the new pages (about 50) and cleaning up older pages. It's exciting though and has me REALLY excited for book 2, since so much content is being shifted!

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FDTN The Special Edition

As a part of finishing up book 1 of FDTN I felt pretty adamant that the original four pages needed to be updated to match the quality of the current pages. Much of the early stuff still holds up, but that scene feels so off compared to the later work. Like the characters don't even look like their current incarnations. So I've spent the last week redoing those pages, while working on the structure for what may be the last chapter of book 1. It also fits well to redo these pages as chapter 4 starts where the beginning of the book ended. It makes me both proud and embarassed to look at the comparison. See for yourself!

Original Page:

Updated Linework:

Comics - Marvel Team Up Style

Inspired by my experience working on Amulet 2 and the great fun I had getting to know the other artists, and the same experience my friend Josh Ulrich has had working with Dave Riddick on Legend of Bill: We've decided to join forces for one super comics creating monster.

Because of my work schedule and availability, doing the computer side of comics production is just not as easy or accessible for me. I spend my down time during my day inking comics the old school way. Josh on the other hand is much more comfortable and available to create comics on the computer. We decided we'd give something a go. I will be inking his comic "Newman" for him and he'll be lending a hand to the flatting and toning of "From Death Til Now." We've experimented a bit on a few pages and the results have been nice!


Jumping into the inking process on Newman was pretty seemless I think. I already had a pretty solid feel for what Josh likes in his inks and it great fun playing around in his universe. A much nicer place to be than the trembling drama of my own book, lol.

Josh wanted to give coloring FDTN a try and I wholeheartedly encouraged it. I was really really excited about the prospect of seeing the book in color an he gave some great reasons for me to want to go that way. See the above example. But ultimately I decided to keep trucking in grayscale for volume one. There's just too much to go back and do. Though looking at the above image gets me pumped!

But the best thing has been just working with a close friend and sharing our talents on each others books. We're gonna give it a go, and with any luck we'll be done with FDTN vol 1 and Newman book 1 by the end of the year. Its exciting to try and build a type of studio collaborative environment and share the load. It lets me chillax a bit more! And keep chugging on the penciling and inking! Now back to work.

An Early Preview of What's To Come In FDTN

I feel a little guilty showing this off so early, like I'm spoiling such a great moment, but I figured I gotta show it to wet your appetites. This is a double page spread that is coming up. I'm so stinking proud of the original art on this! I look at it and think of how far the quality of my line work and my work ethic has come since I began. FDTN will celebrate two years of being on the web really soon and its sad we're not doing updates currently, but I am very pleased to say that I am on track to complete all of the finished line work in about three months. For those at home that's 80-90 pages in three months! This new process I've worked up has been a huge boost to the production and I'm so excited to share it all with you. So click on the page above and get a bigger view!

New FDTN sketch and rebranding

Well at last I am posting some of the sketching I've been doing. I'm trying to get back into the feel of some of the characters we haven't seen in awhile. Mainly Thomas. He features pretty heavy in the end of this book. So, I figured I'd better get a grip on how to draw him again. Click the image above to enlarge.


Also, I have decided that once FDTN comes back I am going to completely re brand the book. A lot of the design work I created for this thing occurred when I barely knew anything at all about Photoshop or web design. So I want to help build an identity on this book. With my sketch is my first attempt at a new font for the logo. Let me know what you think. I expect that it's gonna take some time, but it should be fun. My plan this week is to draw the next eight pages and start plowing through the inks on the pages. I hope I can keep up the work ethic. And once I'm ready for the computer shading portion, I may be looking for some help with the flatting work. Anyone volunteers interested? Email me, and show some samples of your work.

"Monster" - the Power of Suspense In Comics

Naoki Urasawa is one of Japan's all time great manga artists. The first real splash his works have had on the states is a series call "Monster." In its American incarnation, the series was dulled out of 18 volumes. I'm currently reading 14. As a writer who LOVES thrillers, Monster is the prime example of what good comics can do in this field.

This thing is epic. If you haven't read it or heard of it, I highly recommend that you do. Also, I found a pretty rockin documentary on the creator with English subtitles. Enjoy!

From Death Til Now Review

A special thanks to Neil Holden of the Cool Web Comic List Blog for his awesome review of "From Death Til Now." He made some pretty flattering comments about the George/Virgil dynamic. It was a special treat to read. I've been working on this book for awhile and I haven't had many reviews or interviews for the book, so it made my day. You can read the review here: http://www.coolwebcomiclist.blogspot.com/

In other news, I started plotting out more on the final two chapters of FDTN. I expect to have a fully written treatment of the last two chapters within a month and then it will just be a matter of thumbnailing and scripting those new pages. I've been tossing around the idea of switching the line work of FDTN to pencil drawings. I may test this. But my biggest concern is the look being too different from the previous pages. So I dunno. Pencil drawings are A LOT faster though. Maybe I'll post some exaples and we'll decide together.

Feeling the burn...

Comics, comics, comics!!! That is the name of the game these couple of days off. I finished up a portrait this morning and now I'm working like the devil to finish up my work on "Kevin and The Golden Temple." I think more people on this super secret project are working at a much slower pace than me, lol, but I (as always) have to come up with a story that takes a bit more than a couple of pages. So I'm pretty much sprinting hoping I finish up on time since it looks like I will be drawing and painting close to twenty pages. It's good practice though as I am planning to start official work on The Unknowns graphic novel once this is done. And don't fret FDTN fans who may be reading this, I'm working on that too.



Since all of my wife and I's favorite TV shows are off for the summer, we decided that we would work on comics together instead or veg out. She's been helping flat pages and its been great fun to work together and spend that time being productive and just visiting. I'm so blessed to have a spouse who supports and desires the same things I do with life, work and family. With her by my side I feel like anything is possible. We're gonna make some awesome work together. :-)

I also decided this week, after much thought and prayer, that I need to really hone in a specific set of things that I care about and set as goals. My two favorite art subjects are comics and portraits. And for reasons more complicated than I will pretend to understand, I've spent the last two years kind of floundering between various things. Working on comics mostly, but leaving my painting in the dust. A lot of that had to do with the fact that galleries I was repped by closed and things slowed down. But I've missed my passionate pursuit of the portrait and I want to redicate myself to it. I have some plans forming. I'll share new examples as they come.

Finally A Readable Draft

This past week I finally nailed down the first truly "readable"draft of "The Unknowns." It took four passes at it, but I think its finally in a state where I can bring others opinions in and receive feedback. I gotta tell you, it's quite gratifying to look at what I've finished and see it in printed form, sitting on a table.

My thoughts on this draft are that it is essentially the story I set to tell in the very beginning. It's both funny and scary, while feeling pretty endearing at the same time. It feels like quite a jump forward from my first pass at a finished script a few short years ago (thank you Stephen King). So, now I just have to get it into the hands of a few well trusted friends and my agent and we'll see where things go from there. I'm so tempted to get started on the actual comic, but my better judgment tells me to wait awhile.

For now, I have a story about a boy and a monster to tell, and portraits to finish.

"Lost" Finale and "Kevin and Golden Temple"

Another year of "Lost" has come and gone. Only one more season remains. "Lost" is without a doubt my favorite show of all time. I first encountered it right before I got married about four years ago. At the time I didn't watch much TV at all (not a bad thing btw). Mostly because I was a senior in college and had little time to begin with. But I saw a trailer in the theater for it as it was coming out on DVD and I became intrigued. I bought the first season and watched all of it in about two weeks. The rest is history.

I constantly find myself being inspired by it at the end of every episode to work on my own stories and push my work further. The writing and production is so above the bar on every aspect that anyone who really gives it time can see this thing has changed storytelling in the TV format forever.

Last night's finale did what I was hoping for all year long, it brought in the element of mystery the rest of the season had been lacking for the whole year. Everything sort of shifted to a answer mode for the season and while that is what I think we were all hoping for, I enjoy the "wait what?" aspect of this show immensely. I don't know how this thing is gonna work next year. Well done gentlemen. Well done. Next year will be sad seeing it go off the air. Maybe afterward I'll get more done. At least "Fringe" is just starting.


The above is a quick sample of the short story I'm working on for an upcoming anthology called "Kevin and The Golden Temple." Can't reveal too much yet, but suffice it to say, it's going to be quite different than anything I've created yet and should really be fun. More on that as it approaches.

"The Unknowns" Draft 2 Is Completed

Yesterday I finished up my second draft of my new graphic novel, "The Unknowns." It was really gratifying to finally print out a readable version of my script. I bound the whole thing up and set it on the coffee table, then sat back in gratification. :-) I'm tempted to dig into it and start editing it, but I'm taking a break from it to enjoy the moment and let the next piece of feedback come from my wife. She's my editor and sounding board, so I'm excited to hear her thoughts. I just wanted to take a moment to say... I'm excited!