Homage Collage Finished / Leaving Again

So I made a couple hard copies of Homage Collage that are basically promos, and I gave them out to a couple people that worked on the album. If you want a copy shoot me a message or email or something. I've only got a couple left.

Also it's going to be a while before I post again. I'm going on the second part of my vacation tomorrow. Going up to Canada. I'm taking my camera with me, and some stuff for drawing. Hopefully I'll have a bunch of stuff to show off when I get back. See you guys in a couple weeks.

Comic-Con Part 2

So me and my good buddy Travis Thomas treked down to San Diego this weekend to attend the comic-con. It was a ton of fun. Here are some pictures and notes from it. Also check those gas prices.
Here is all the merch I accumilated from the days events.
Me.
Travis.
Ashley Wood's giant size Bramble Bot.
The Dharma Initiative. Boosh!
Castle Fucking Grayskull!
Giant Hellboy wall hanging. I just thought this was cool.
Star Wars Clone Wars. There was tons of this shit.
Me in front of Nite Owl's ship.
Lost Creators Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse with Josh Schwartz the creator of Gossip Girl, The OC, and Chuck. The guys who do terminator and pushing daisies were also there.The super bad ass Entertainment weekly panel with Kevin Smith, Judd Apatow, Zack Snyder, and Frank Miller. I also went to a panel for Kevin Smith's new movie, and saw some clips from it.

So while looking through stuff for comic-con I noticed that a ton of my favorite artist were going to be there, so I went out and bought a sketch book hoping that a couple of them might do something for me. I got some really good ones.
Franky by Eric Powell.
I don't know what this guy's name is, but the Awesome Dan Hipp did this for me. It's one of the bad guys from Gyakushu! (or however you spell that comics name)
Finally, Bamba Lad by Ashley Wood.

Comic-Con Part 1

So I'm in san diego right now. I meant to make a whole post about this, but I didn't get a chance in my rush to leave.  I'm going to comic-con tomorrow. Hopefully I'll have tons of pictures and stuff sometime this weekend. 

Cover Reviesed

So after I sat on the Homage Collage cover for quite a while I realized it didn't really fit the music at all. First of all it made it look like I was a band. Which I'm not. The original idea was a bunch of people all spawning from the same thing, representing a one band. The final version really lost that. So I decided to redo it. Here is the redone version.

As far the music goes. It's finally done. The album has been like 95% done for like 2 months, and I finally hunkered down and finished it. It turned out pretty good. I'm gonna listen to it all the way through tomorrow and make sure that nothing is wrong, and then I'll probably post it a bunch of songs on the myspace. So look forward to that.

Stickers IV: The Final Battle

Epic title huh. But yah. These are the last of the stickers pretty much. These are the small ones. I still need to do the big ones. Hopefully tomorrow if I get a chance.

Update Time

Here is a full version of Sam out of his normal gear. Since Early Years is over now, I thought I'd give an update. Well the other day I finished the script for issue 1, and worked more on the next 3 issues stories. I think it's turning out really great so far. I'm start working on more pages some time this weekend.

Early Years: Age 17

Ah. So we've come to the end. So this is the that pivotal last page. It's kind of a little bit of Clif-hanger. There is going to be a lot of mystery surrounding the death of Sam's parents. Originally the last page was very different. I was wondering to myself why I decided to have his parents die (since I just did this in Tales of Sub-Riviera), but after I thought about all great super heroes lose their parents when they are young. Super-Man, Batman, and Spider-man had to lose his parents and uncle Ben. It's a great starting point, and I'm going to really use this device. Most of the first series will be searching for Sam trying to figure out what happened to his parents. I've probably said too much already, so I'm going to cut myself off.

Art wise this is my favorite page. There isn't anything I don't like about it. The crosses on the coffins turned out really cool I thought. I also really liked how the expression on Sam's face came out. My only problem was that he is supposed to be crying, but it's kind of hard to tell.

Well I hope you enjoyed this little mini-series. I should be back tomorrow with another post, and I'm just about done with my internship so I'll be getting back into working on my comics very soon.

Early Years: Age 16

Sam In Love. One of these panel's already got posted a couple days ago. I really liked how this page turned out. This page unlike the other has a pretty clear purpose. It's obviously the first Time Sam and June met. This was probably one of the first pages I came up with for this story. I really wanted it to seem kinda awkward. I'm not sure if it came out the way I hoped.

Art wise the only real problem I had with this page was that second panel. I tried reworking like 3 or 4 times, but finally conceded that I couldn't make it any better. I'm still in love with (hehe) with that first panel. I thought the 3rd panel durned out good too, I just like how the halftone and colors fade into the background.

Early Years: Age 12

We're getting up there now. Age 12. Sam is starting to look older now. I kind of had 3 different age looks for Sam, this is the middle one. This page was made to really reinforce the fact that Sam's Dad has been drilling this stuff into him. This had to be done, or this first arc of Sam wouldn't really be believable.

As far as the art goes I really like this page, the only panel that really gets me is that last one. And actually I think it's all fine except for Sam's Dad. He's standing at the wrong angle. I think I might actually redraw that part for the final issue, because it really bothers me. But I really like the first two panels. I actually really like the pose Sam is in in the second panel. I also tried to really put this page in a setting, which is the family dojo. I hope you enjoyed this page.

Early Years: Age 09

And we have another page. This page is just to show that their is a long history of the samuri in their family and that Sam's sword has been passed around for a quite a while. And no his sword is not the Ivory Rose. You'll get to see that later.

I really loved that last panel, but the hands on the panel before it are really funky. Not a whole lot else to say on this page.

Early Years: Age 07

Page 3. Moving to Japan. This page again seems rather simple, but I just wanted to illustrate how big a deal it was for Sam to move to Japan. This is probably one of the few panels you'll actually see Sam's Mom in. I have a couple flashback ideas for Sam's Dad, but his mom isn't really apart of them, but maybe I'll work her in.

As far as the art goes. I like it for the most part, though I kind of have a little something wrong with every panel. The perspective of the arches is a little off, the shadow on the plane is a little funky, and Sam's face look a little off, but It's ok.

Early Years: Age 05

OK page 2. There isn't that much to this page. It is basically to show that Sam's dad has been training him since a very young age, and that he was trying to teach him more than just fighting. One of the first things I decided to do when I came up with the idea for this short story was to have little to no dialogue on these first 7 pages, but I felt this page would have been too odd without any dialogue.
For the most part I really liked how this page turned. I really love those first two panels, but the third is a little funky, and the fourth is fine, but I thought I cut Sam's Dad head at a weird place. But yah, there you go.

Early Years: Age 00

Yeah! It's finally here, Sam early years. Unfortunately this page is mostly old news since I posted most of these panels a couple month back, but now you get to see it in the new coloring style.
I don't really know why I just chose to go all the way back to when he was first born to start the comic. I kind of felt like it would be epic to start the comic off the day he was born, it also establishes that he was born in the US, because soon you'll find out that he doesn't stay there long.
My one problem with this page was that I felt like it doesn't entirely match the style of the rest of the comic, especially that last panel. It looks a little to real, but oh well. You win some you loose some. Tomorrow Age 5.

Sam Sans Band

So this image is going to take quite a bit of explaining. Basically Sam has had the same look all his life. The all white t-shirt and pants and the red head band and belt, but after the end of early years, and through the beginning of Chapter 1 he was a radically different look (for reasons I can't explain right now, but after the last page of early years you'll know, at least if you understand what happened). This is that look.

Notice the lack of head band, and the regular t-shirt. Every time I've drawn Sam it's been with that head band, so creating a version of Sam without it was rough. I did tons of different sketches of this version of Sam and I think this is version I'm going to use. A lot of the versions I did were decent, but just didn't look enough like Sam. I think you can definitely tell this is Sam, just sans head band.

NWU OZC STIKER

Here is the last sticker in the series. I really liked it at first, but the more I look at it the more I don't like it. Oh well. I already printed the stickers. Plus big versions this time. Should be fun. Should have them all done in a couple days.