Oh What Up New Year?

City of Cards C2.19: Here!

Oof, okay, got hit with a nasty cold over Christmas so I didn't have too much time to get much drawing done. to make up for the fact that I haven't posted a whole lot of sketches on here lately, here are some pencils for an upcoming panel of Chapter 3:

Still pretty busy at work, getting used to the job and all that, but it's good. I feel like I'm learning a lot and I hope that I'll be able to put that to good use.

All my thoughts and love go out to all my CCS bros. You guys are always on mind as we step into the new year. 2011's motto was don't look down, 2012's motto? I'm thinking something along the lines of "Don't Hide in the Shadows".

What does this mean? It means keeping doing your work, let people know about it, meet new people, and keep trying. Don't let the grey and fatigue eat away at yourself. 2012 is a year of change, embrace it.

Last Post Before the Holidays!

City of Cards C2.18: Here!

Another short blog post as this is my last week of training at my new job before the holidays and I haven't had a lot of time/mental energy to get much more done.

To sum things up, though, I love my job. Absolutely. Being able to work in comics is a dream come true and I hope that this experience will allow me to help others make and promote quality, interesting work and to be able to reach wider audiences.

Okay, sap time over. I plan to rock out a bunch of City of Cards stuff during my few days off this holiday so that I can keep up a good schedule. Ideally, I'll knock out the rest of the inks for Chapter Two and be able to focus in on getting the pencils for Chapter Three done. I sent the script for the fourth chapter out to get looked over so all of that is a go.

Happy Holidays people!

Boom!

City of Cards C2.17: Here!

First, a new voting incentive here where Ace and Plato answer the all important question about the future of talking dogs: here!

And just a reminder, I'm posting up more progress work and other stuff up on the City of Cards G+ Page.

So this week was my first official week at my new job. It was totally unexpected, but I'm really happy with my new position and I hope I'll be able to fit myself in quickly and easily. Or, at least without causing too much damage.

It may mean less time for sketching, but I don't plan to slow down on my comic work so don't worry about that being effected.

LA Got Me Busy

City of Cards C2.16: Here!

There are a few pages/panels in my comic that make me really happy and the second panel on this page is by far one of my favorites. Plato's expression just kills me.

Not going to say a whole lot this week. I've been extremely busy all of a sudden with an internship doing some work for the guys at Boom! and while that has been amazingly awesome, it's also knocked me out. It'll definitely take me some time to get into a good rhythm with these hours.

It's also been awhile since I've posted any brush pen art since, well, it's been awhile since I've had a chance to do any. All three are based on the same image and this shows how each time I get closer to the eventual image I'm going for. The final rough is what I'll use when I go in and do my perspective fixes for the final image. It's my favorite way to work out roughs for backgrounds and this is for another project I'll be getting into more heavily in the upcoming weeks.

So Long Brovember

City of Cards C2.14-15: Here!

That look on Plato's face? That's the look of a man who once knew what motivated him in life and longs to get that feeling back. Been there bro, been there. And thus concludes the cage fighting pages.

And with Brovember over, I also made a new future Q/A stick comic up at TWC so vote to see that.

So I'm back in LA, which will be my new permanent location, at least for the immediate future. More details on that hopefully later, but suffice it to say at least I'm enjoying the weather.


Finally, not something I usually do so I'm going to make this short. So apparently the Akira movie is a go*. All I can say is that in my mind Akira was born out of a post WWII Japan and it's that context that makes the books so powerful. By removing the context and changing the characters so drastically you might as well call the movie something else and you're less likely to piss everyone off.

I wish I could say I don't understand Hollywood's fear of original content, but I do. Brands create a sense of financial security. It's unfortunate that when the decision to utilize a brand is made and companies decide to minimize financial risk as much as possible, then everything that made that once coveted brand the icon it once was can be reduced and distorted. The work has already been done.

There are other issues with this movie that I know other people are touching on and I do recommend listening to what they have to say as well. It's not a new complaint, and one that will probably be made by many others much more eloquently about many other adaptations to come. Akira is personally a visual and thematic inspiration to me so what I've said does come out of a place of bias.

*Also, just to note, for me it's less about the eventual casting choices and more about the mindset behind the development of this film. I would also like to have more concrete information from different sources in the future.