MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR

Have a safe Holiday Season and may your Holidays be filled with peace and love for you and your family!

RETRO SCI-FI...

 

Moon Base

 

Saucer Attack

A couple of fun illustrations that were inspired by the artistry found in old pulp magazines!

Monster of Frankenstein Family Portrait

A portrait of the Monster of Frankenstein.  A practice sketch for the upcoming graphic novel I'm illustrating from Sequential Pulp and Dark Horse Comics, written by Martin Powell.

Frankenstein's Night Out!

The Monster of Frankenstein just can't have a pleasant night on the town; it's like he just attracts trouble no matter where he goes or who he's with! 

Coming in 2012 from Sequential Pulp/Dark Horse Comics.

"The Monster of Frankenstein" is set to return!

In celebration of Mary Shelley's birthday, we've waited until today to officially announce Sequential Pulp/Dark Horse Comics newest graphic novel. The Monster of Frankenstein returns! Written by Martin Powell with Artwork by Nik Poliwko.

 

Tara the Jungle Girl!

A few years back I had the pleasure of writing and drawing an adventure of the classic jungle heroine from the 1940s: Tara, for AC Comics' Good Girl Art Quarterly #18.  The Tara story will be reprinted in the trade paperback FemForce Rarities #1, available in September. 

"Star Gem" was actually a re-write of an unpublished story I had done years before called "Eye of the Beholder" featuring a male protagonist named Grimace, and it was fairly easy to adapt the original story to suit Tara.  Here are a few of the Tara story pages followed by the original version.

 

STARLEX

Earlier this year I provided the lettering and colors for an exciting new book from Tree Frog Comics: Starlex!   The brainchild of creator/writer Dan Barnes, Starlex tells the tale of Alexis Starling, a Photography and Art student at Los Angeles University, and the fateful evening when she was up near the Hollywood sign taking pictures for her portfolio of a meteorite shower!  She snapped away as one of the shooting stars came ever closer, and "...the star fell faster and faster, she gazed up at it frozen, she could not move. Faster and faster the star fell, closer and closer until... silence. For that split second there was nothing. Time stood still. As the star fused with her body they became one. She fell to the ground, her body sparkling like the night sky above...”  She absorbed the power of the star and became Starlex!

The fantastic art was provided by up-and-coming artist Dody Eka!  Dody's pencils were so clean that I did the color work directly on his penciled pages!  Issue 0 also features a great cover by Melike Acar!

Here we share a couple of pages from Starlex as well as a special pin-up by yours truly!  Starlex is available now from IndyPlanet!

Zombies Are a'Comin'

Here's a little preview of a couple panels from an upcoming strip that will be published later this year in Bela Lugosi's Tales From the Grave from Monsterverse Publishing.  The story is by Michael Leal and the art is my first done entirely with the Cintiq tablet!

Click to enlarge...

CURSE of the VESSEL

I'm guessing the best place to start would be with the project that brought me back to working in comics, and that would be the Curse of the Vessel.  Back at the beginning of 2010 I joined Facebook and was delighted to find a great community of comic book artists and writers!

One artist whose work I really enjoyed was Danny Kelly.  I loved his simple yet powerful style, and he was very prolific... posting tons of great material daily.  What caught my attention was Danny's pencils of one of my favorite characters, The Phantom!  He indicated that if anyone wanted to ink the piece, to go ahead -- so I did!

As luck would have it, inking that piece led writer Michael Leal to contact me.  Michael was working with Danny at that time on Curse of the Vessel, to enter into the then annual Small Press Idol Contest from Dimestore Productions.  The big prize of the contest was that the winner would see their book published.  And Michael and Danny had just lost their original inker on the project, so Michael asked if I would be willing to take over the task.  Always one to take calculated risks, I agreed.

Danny would send me hi-res scans of his artwork, which I would then print out and ink on a lightbox (I didn't have my Cintiq tablet yet) using a Gillot steel pen nib, #3 series 7 Windsor-Newton brush and various Pentel markers (mostly for background elements and borders).  I would then scan in the pages and make minor corrections as well as add blacks and then send them along to the 4th member of our team, colorist supreme Michael McElveen.

The good news is we went on to win the contest and see the book published.  And here are a couple examples of Danny's original pencils along with my inked pages.

New and Improved!

Lots has changed since I started this blog a few years ago -- in fact, I had pretty much forgotten about it!

The major change has been my re-entry into drawing and writing comic books, something I had thought was in my past when I embarked on a new career direction of writing and directing films. I'm still working in film, but mainly producing work for major corporations.

My major endeavor these days involve drawing, inking and coloring comic stories as well as working on private commissions. Recently I've inked issue 0 of Curse of the Vessel, written by Michael Leal and penciled by Danny Kelly; it was the winner of the 2010 Small Press Idol contest. I've colored Dody Eka's work in writer Dan Barnes Starlex issue 0, available now from Tree Frog Comics and have been working on a number of comics both written by myself and others.

I'll be sharing the new work with you here soon!

Cool fonts, cooler prices - but HURRY!

Time out for a Public Service Announcement!

If you need fonts for any application, whether for comics, movie titles, or product labels (guilty as charged), check out the offerings by Comicraft. They've been involved with digital lettering since 1992, and their fonts have appeared in thousands of comic books. Yes, that includes later issues of SINNAMON.

The reason why I mention them now is that they've got a half price sale going on until August 4, 2008. I'm not an affiliate, and I don't get a commission, I simply like their fonts. Their after-sale service and support has also been top notch. Once you pay for the font(s), you can download them right away.

Here's the font I purchased last night:



Did I mention the font names themselves harken back to the glory days of comic books?
You can check out the sale here:

http://www.comicbookfonts.com/home.html?sid=0001O0V4jTZLBiEqeI039U2

COMIC BOOKS : The Bruiser!

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An exclusive to the Neuralnet Blog, we present this rare tidbit: An unpublished cover for The Bruiser.

The Bruiser was originally created by Angelo Furlan and published by Catfish Comics in the mid-1990s. This cover features Bruiser in battle with King Solomon (Bruiser's at the bottom of the page, BTW); with artwork by yours truly! (click on the image for larger version) - Nik Poliwko