Samurai Sam!

Last year, writer Michael Leal and I teamed-up on a fun 1-page project called Samurai Sam!  This was slated for a comics anthology of 1 pagers that has unfortunately, since been shelved by the publishers.

Michael and I worked on this old school "Marvel-style" where we discussed the idea and came up with a general concept: a satire on the old "Hostess" cupcake ads which appeared in comics back in the 70s.  So I went about drawing it, and thought I would do it in a somewhat "manga" style for fun; Michael then did the captions and dialogue based on the artwork.  I enjoy working in this fashion since to me, it makes the effort truly collaborative!

And here, for your viewing pleasure is Samurai Sam in "A Demon for Cake!"

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!