Amelia color cover

Here's my first attempt at coloring the cover for the next issue.
I'm not sure I'm happy with it yet, I think I made the wrong choice for the eye color, and I don't know if I like the green. So I'm still working on it.

Also, this saturday the current crop of seniors at CCS graduates, which I suppose means it's been a year since I graduated. Congrats to the seniors, it'll be exciting to see yall walk. I'll try and take some pictures and stuff and post them on here on sunday or monday.

Amelia Update!

I made this little piece of art initially just for the heck of it, then I thought it would be a good promotional piece. It was inked with pitt pens and the scanner I used was dirty or calibrated incorrectly or something. The color and the faux old paper background were added in photoshop.

Then there's this!

click it to go to my flickr page and look at the larger version for a closer look at all the squiggly wormy veiny things

This is the finished inks for the cover of the new comic. I'm coloring it in photoshop right now. You might recall from earlier my concept sketch, here.

Atomic Age Send Off!!

The atomic age logo, and underneath the atomic age wall

So since I left Bloomington, the home of Atomic Age Cinema I haven't done the best job of keeping in contact with the featured creatures.
But I still hear occasionally what's going on, mostly thanks to Captain Kosmos. The Cinemat, which is the weekly venue space for AAC has been closing down for awhile now. the captain informed me that the matinee show yesterday was their second to last.
For those of you who might not know, before coming to Vermont to study cartooning I was involved in AAC, a weekly live horror hosted movie show. There was a midnight show, playing mostly horror movies, with free prizes and strange events, then there was the kid show,



Now I'm going to violate one of the big rules of hosting shows like this, I'm going to break the illusion, and just admit outright that I was The Kick, the original Kick that is,
yep, that's me, you could never tell under the mask

Now the kids show was never the success that the midnight show, as you can guess their wasn't a lot of audience overlap (Kids at 3, live surgery and boobies at midnight!). But, we had a small and very loyal audience. If it wasn't for those few kids the show wouldn't have kept going, but there are three kids in particular who made every saturday worthwhile.
At the kids show we mostly played old movie serials like Flash Gordon and Captain Marvel, and old cartoons like Betty Boop and Flip the Frog.

When I left Bloomington the kids show was taken over, first by a new Kick, my protege so to speak, ignore the small audience
Then by Captain Kosmos, both of whom I want to thank, especially CK for keeping me involved.

At the midnight show I'd host often as The Kick, and occasionally play different creatures. One thing I want people to really understand is how much work went into this every week, this is just one free gift from one week, a new gift was made every single week,


Now I don't know what the future of the midnight show or the kids show will be, but I know it's hard to keep AAC down. In a way they've already moved on to bigger and better things, like The Dark Carnival Film Fest

But I hope they find a new live venue soon, even after I left it was good to know it was there, doing it's part to keep Indiana weird.
So in conclusion, I want to say good luck to David Pruett, Arthur Cullipher, Kirk Hasting, David Underwood, and every one else who has come and gone from Atomic Age,

This is the Kick saying, be seeing you!

Chapter 7 scanned

I finished the front and back covers last night then went and scanned all of chapter 7!
Here's a randomly chosen panel from chapter 7,

I haven't done any clean up yet. Do to my tiny lines and still some pencil marks I think this will be a difficult chapter to get ready for print. But I'm more than on task to have it printed for MoCCA.
Also, today the freshmen had a BBQ, and I attended! And I had fun, and played Bocce ball!

In the next couple weeks I'll be showing a lot more panels. I'm going to have to come up with a good way of showing exciting images without being to spoilery. I'm really proud of this chapter, as it's the first one I've done using the brush, but I also don't want to give much away.

People's Academy

Bryan Stone, Steve Bissette and I taught at the Peoples Academy for two days last week.
A couple weeks ago Bryan and I went up there but it was a bit of a false start, but that's a story for another time. This is the story of success.
When we got into Morrisville and found the school we found ourselves on their events board outside the school,

Flyers promoting our teaching and the student's art show were strung all over the school,

Here's our original flyer from the first time,

We taught Ms. Lynch's 6th 7th and 8th grade class. She was great and her students were enthusiastic and a little crazy.
We also taught high schoolers on a voluntary basis. Not many showed up, but those that did put a lot of work in.
Here's some pics from the student's art show,


We had some time off between classes and did some site seeing. We went to Emily's Bridge, a haunted vermont bridge,


I think a lot of the kids came away from our two days having gotten something, and I know I had a good time.

Chapter 7 previews (2)

These are from the first few pages from Chapter 7.

Amelia alarmed

The Mustache Man being shady

So I ended up watching Phenomena instead of Creepers. I liked it a lot, but it got mixed reviews from the room. John was right that it's weird even for Argento. And as Steve said, watch out for CHIMP!

This week I'll be at The People's Academy teaching comics to sixth grade through high school students. Wish me luck!

I'm inking the cover of the new issue now, so far so good.

Chapter 7 previews

These are photographs of some panels from chapter 7. Out of context I don't think there's anything spoilery in them.
I switched my art supplies, having gained confidence with the brush I am using that instead of the nib for my characters.

Sammy with a face full of shame.

Sammy being treated like the little brother he is.

I'll post more tomorrow.
Also, went to a giant book sale yesterday and got some good looking stuff. Including a VHS copy of Creepers

which is the american release of Phenomena, directed by Dario Argento, starring Jennifer Connelly, I haven't seen it yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

King Kong Vs. Godzilla

Went to Keene this weekend with Steve and Bryan to see this,

It was awesome. It was live horror hosted by Saturday Fright Special
It was real cool to meet more people into horror hosting, it's been a long time. They did a great job, it was at an old nice theatre, and it was packed with screaming fans.

Bissette image

A drawing I did of Steve Bissette is up on Mike Dobb's blog.

Mike Dobbs is a writer and film historian, and as he point out in his blog, not a cartoonist.

Creature Double Feature

Black and White

Color

Sorry, no 3-D


I inked this with a brush and nibs as an inking demonstration for a class this year, mostly focusing on the different kinds of lines you can get with the different tools. The coloring was done in photoshop last week.

Also, one more page of Chapter 7 to go.