Zinefest!

It's a busy couple days starting tomorrow. Close on the heels of my interview at Gaper's Block, I'll be on air for Tony Breed's morning radio show on CHIRP between 8 and 9 am central. This is all in advance of this weekend's Chicago Zinefest. Tomorrow night I'll be reading at 826CHI as part of the exhibitor readings sometime between 630 and 830. And then in addition to having copies of Process and Oscarfor sale at my table on Saturday, I'll be doing a special workshop: The One Hour Minicomic Challenge, where I'll attempt to complete an 8 page mini from idea to printed/folded/stapled in one hour, while I answer questions and talk to the attendees.

Change-Bots 2 at C2E2

This weekend I'll be at McCormick Place for C2E2, where Top Shelf (booth #810) will debut Incredible Change-Bots Two. I recently finished "Bew! Bew! Bew!", the 15"x21"(apx.) Change-Bots battle drawing I've been working on for the Change-Bots Two art show at Scott Eder Gallery in May, so stop by Scott's booth (#728) to check it out (as well as a spectacular collection of other artists' work). I'll also have a few copies of the letterpress Oscar minicomic, some of which was on display at the MCA Chicago's "New Chicago Comics" exhibition earlier this year, as well as Change-Bots Fan Club Memberships, the Process minicomic, and hand-drawn trading cards.
If you're in San Francisco instead of Chicago, head over to Giant Robot for their Game Over 4 art show to see my Balls Patrol.

Change-Bots Fan Club 2.0

Incredible Change-Bots Two will be out sometime in the next month, along with the first volume coming back into print. There's a new Change-Bots Fan Club offer - the new offer doesn't include the fancy drawing the original offer did, but it's also cheaper. You get a hand letter pressed membership card (your choice of faction), and the current month's four page newsletter which includes fun facts, a comic strip interview with a Change-Bot, a one page comic, a bonus fun page, and a small drawing of your favorite Change-Bot. There'll be a different newsletter for each month while the offer is available (until the end of 2011). The first newsletter's bonus page is a cutout pattern to make your own paper Rusty. I colored and assembled one to show how it looks - he even does a low tech incredible-change.
Details on how to join below; I'll also have limited quantities on hand at conventions and signings. Paypal is also now accepted - paypal to the same email listed on the form.
Please note to clarify - the membership includes the current newsletter only; I may try to have some email version of the whole set available to send out at the end of the offer, but costs are prohibitive for sending out physical copies every month.

Shoplifting From American Apparel

I drew the film poster (colored by Bill Crabtree) for the adaptation of Tao Lin's novel Shoplifting From American Apparel, and Sangha Films has a Kickstarter page up now to fund the film. Incentives include a chapbook that will have art from myself and others. Watch the trailer to see the talking trees I also drew.

Teamwork

Just Barely

When the first Change-Bots book was released, Wizard Magazine ran a one page exclusive comic I drew for them. So with Change-Bots Two coming out this March, I thought it'd be great to do that again. Unfortunately, Wizard Magazine announced that it was ending it's run after issue #235. Fortunately, the new exclusive Change-Bots strip made it in! So go to your comic shop and pick up the last issue of Wizard. Maybe two copies, so you can leave one in its sealed bag and open the other one to read about Change-Bots Two. Meanwhile, I drew a few strips for online previews as well - check out Comics Alliance and Comic Book Resources for more appetite wetting action. Er, whetting. CBR also has an interview with me about the new book. Next up, Cat Fancy...

Luke Process

My blog was featured over at Be@Home, and I mentioned that I try to post behind the scenes process kind of work. Coincidentally, also this week was the release of the book Creating Comics, which features a lot of comics creators talking about their working process. So, to continue the trend, today's post is about my process on a recent illustration project - drawing a seven page story for Sorted! as part of their comics series. My story is Luke Gets Lost, about a ten year old boy who's a bit lazy.
Here's the notes from writer Lissanne Oliver for the cover design:

LUKE GETS LOST
: PAGE 1 – title (COVER) page. Plenty of white space
• CHALLENGE: LAZINESS

• Luke sitting in a beanbag or over stuffed lounge chair. He’s grinning. He’s a big sloth.
• small stack of books/comics with an “Overdue” tag hanging out
• Plate or cereal bowl on top
• few cereal crumbs on the floor
• ipod on floor with a trail of headphone cable
• Fart escaping

Step one was to pencil out the rough idea for the composition. After sending that to Lissanne, we talked about making the beanbag chair more beanbag like, so I re-worked that before inking and adding the gray tones. Then I needed to fit my drawing into the cover template, along with adding some green. This required a bit of photoshopping, which I'm still not very good at. After all this, there were a few problems - Luke was a little big and dominating, with not as much white space, and seemed to be crowded into the cover. Lissanne suggested shrinking the size, reversing the image, and tilting the chair back a bit. Some of the details needed adjusting, such as the stack of books which became lost visually next to the beanbag, or that I spelled 'you're' as 'your' on the invitation. She also mentioned wanting the story to be drawn more loosely and sketchy - along the lines of how I drew AEIOU or Every Girl Is The End Of The World For Me.


I wanted the cover to match the interior, so rather than manipulate the image in photoshop - which would take me a while - I figured it'd be just as well for me to spend that time simply re-drawing the cover. So I reversed and shrunk the image in photoshop and printed it out, and then used it as an underlay, since the paper I was drawing on was thin enough to see through. I hand tilted the drawing and used that as the pencils, fixing some of the details and letting the drawing become rougher and less finished. Of course, I find I'm unable to draw quite the same way I did when I was drawing AEIOU. I put more pressure on myself to make things just right nowadays, so maybe I end up reworking - and overworking - things. After a few false starts (mostly just drawing Luke's head and having it feel just a little off), I ended up with the inked cover complete with grays. Then I fit the new drawing back into the cover template, along with making some minor adjustments like getting rid of the ipod.


After the cover there were six more pages to draw, and rather than inking the pencils I'd finished for them all, I printed those out and used them as underlays. When those were finished there were more corrections to be made. Sometimes I'd made mistakes in the text, and in some places Lissanne wrote new text. There were some panels with minor adjustments and a few I redrew entirely. This was the first story I've drawn written by someone else, save for a short two page zine piece, and although it felt stressful to work on at times, when it was finished it didn't seem like it had been so bad. I think sometimes the idea of how hard something will be can be just as bad as if it were hard in reality. I feel like all in all it was a good experience and turned out well.