Chumble Spuzz Was in Wizard!

So yesterday i was talking to Eric on the phone, and he said that is buddy Brett saw a little blurb about my comic in the most recent copy of Wizard magazine. I didn't truly believe it. I have a self-defense mechanism that has been reinforced by the cruelness of female-kind and my own stupidity to not react to anything until you know 100% if it's true. For you non-comic people, Wizard is the Sports Illustrated of the comics world. There is no bigger comic magazine. It would be like if Lunaractive got a small blurb in Rolling Stone.

So I eagerly drove to Fred Meyer where I usually buy Wizard magazine, if I'm in the mood. They were out of them. So then I drove to Haggen, the yuppie grocery store, and found it. I opened it and flipped through every page and found nothing. I went through it a second time.

Nothing.

Then an ad catches my eye for the next issue of Wizard which hits comic stored December 26th and news stands January 8th. So I had the wrong issue. It was about 8:30PM. I sped northbound toward southeast Portland to try to make it to Guapo comics and coffee, since the book wouldn't be available on news stands for a few more days. They used to close at 9:30PM when I lived nearby (a few months ago).

When I arrived, they were closed. They changed their hours. As it turns out, if I had just left and gone straight to Guapo I would have had it. I just missed them.

So I went to bed, and this morning I woke up and headed for the comic store in Milwaukie- Things From Another World. They had the issue and I nabbed it up, and went into my car to find it. Sure enough, there it was. In a little tiny section along the bottom of one of the pages, there's a featurette where the headline reads "INDIE WATCH '08: Check Out These Small Press Must-Reads." Mine was the first on the list. Here it is...




I know that if you have never really been into comics this isn't that big of a deal... and even then, it's not THAT big of a deal. But still- Wizard magazine hardly touches comics that aren't super mainstream. In fact, they seem to cover comic related film and television more then comics anymore. This magazine is everywhere in the country... I used to buy it at McKay's market in Lakeside. I remember getting a subscription when I was in highschool. So I'm excited that the most widely distributed and read comic news magazine there is sent a blurb about my book and tagged it as a "must read." That's cool.

inked in walnuts

note: originally posted on my MySpace blog.

2 Years ago on Christmas, when my brothers Noah and Isaiah, and I, went to visit our Dad, Step mother Deela, and 3 siblings- Deela bought us all sweaters at salvation army and had us go to Wal Mart for a family picture:



This picture has been a favorite of mine ever since. It's a great depiciton of us, and the kind of joy we experience the rare times we get to all be together. It also shows how often we practice odd facial expressions in front of mirrors.

With my computer dead I was at a stand still with work. I had a couple days before we were to head off to Moses Lake to visit the family, and I decided at the last minute to try to do some walnut ink renderings as Christmas gifts to my family.
For Dad and Deela, I did this walnut ink rendition of the above photo:


I tried for some more traditional portrait style paintings for each of my young siblings- the first here is Megan. I actually drew two small sketches, a small inked draft, 2 large detailed pencil drafts, one fully finished ink draft, and then a total redo of the final pencil and ink drafts- which is the piece I finallty settled on with Megan. She is really hard to capture, but I'm at least happy with this one.



I had a photo of my little brother Malachai which I loved, so I tried to capture it in this painting. He's playing with this toy monkey that I got him last year for Christmas. I feel I didn't capture his likeness very well, but it wasn't so bad I redid it (though I may have if I'd had the time).



This is Kaitlyn- I didn't have a good photo to go straight off of with her, so I had to use a few photos and sort of create a pose. Of the three I feel this one bares the closest resemblance to the real person, and I did the least amount of drafts on it.


I was glad to be able to give gifts like these, though as the guy who made them I already see the flaws in them- one of the main reasons I wanted to make these was because my family had some older portraits I had done when I was about 20 or so up on the wall, and they were hideous. This will at least hold me over for a little while.
-eef

Reverend Mofo

I went to the PDX drink n' draw a few weeks ago. We did these posters, where you draw your character in the center, then everyone else does their rendition of that character around it. I picked Reverend Mofo, the foul mouthed preacher monkey from Chumble Spuzz. I really love what these guys came up with. I am still pretty shy among these artists, some of them are really good- and the interesting thing is, I have been around other serious artists very little in my life. I think, especially, the fact that I never went to art school makes me really nervous around more seasoned artists.

It's pretty much how it is anytime you try to join into a group of people you don't know, you wonder at first if you really are going to fit in. Whatever comes of it, I love the fact that I can go to a bar downtown and meet up with about 15 artists, many by trade, and others published comic creators, and draw together. Growing up in Coos Bay, any time I went out to a bar to draw, people just looked at me funny.

Artists who contributed: Ron Chan, Ryan Hill, Erika Moen, Jon Siruno, Amy Mebberson, Rich Ellis, Randall Kirby, James Ratcliffe, Steve Sylvain, Cat Ellis, and Matt something... and the rest who's names I don't know. I copied these names from Ron Chan's email, admittedly.

A few new drawings

These are few of the digital ink drawings I did for a client recently for eskimo mythology. I drew these and inked them fully on my computer with a Wacom tablet.

The first one is a shapeshifting demon that takes on the image of a child. The second is a tickling demon. The third is called Amarok, and is a HUGE wolf, which I based off of a bear's body.

I used three different techniques on each drawing, that's why I think they each have their own look to them. The Shapeshifter, I wanted to look more human than I was capable of drawing freehand, so I used a 3D modeling program and posed a figure, and added lighting. I used that as reference for the drawing.

On the tickling demon, I did just freehand, and went a little bit more cartoony then any of the other characters. I figured he's a tickler, so cartoony works for him.

On Amarok, I had a photo of a bear which I sketched lightly over the top of to get the shapes of the bear's body, then I referenced some wolf photos to make my bear/wolf hybrid. The client had me add some ravens to show the scale of how big this creature is. I have to say, I think this is one of the most frightening beats I have have ever drawn.

Unlettered Pages

So here's the last 4 pages, no lettering. I'll just kind of give the run down here since you get no insanely tiny dialog to try to read.

Suddenly, two thugged out homeboy crack dealers see their car is being stolen. They are the rightful owners of this junky car, and it is very valuable to them, because the seats are stuffed full of crack. (which is what has exploded all over Kyle). Kyle, of course, tries to threaten them with his fake squirt gun, and as usual they aren't convinced and they start shooting.


Moon is sort of the guy who is all gung ho about the crime fighting. He is a goof ball for the camera, until it's time to pull out his gun ("sweet cheeks") and serve up justice on the streets. As you can see, he tries to bail Kyle out, but he gets shot at too. It's at this point he realizes he is out of bullets again. A common theme for Moon in the comic would have been him rooting around his wallet and pockets and change jars for spare bullets. In this scene he hides behind the garbage cans (bullet proof of course), and rummages through his wallet trying to find a bullet.

So, the one thug is firing at An thony, while the loud mouth one with dreadlocks jumps on Kyle, pimp slapping the hell out of him, as he has crack in his eyes and is rolling down a hill in a crappy car. He begins wailing on the thug with the severed E-brake he recently snapped loose. What you don't see is that after this, Kyle takes out the thug with his trusty brick, which becomes his best friend through out the comic.

Meanwhile, I'm chasing the crack-head, who punched me, down a dirty alley way. I'm not doing so well with the whole running thing (I added that for character, in real life I run marathons while lifting weights and eating vegetables). Suddenly, the crack head opens a junky storage shed and a bunch of mangy street dogs start chasing me back down the alley way to the street.

How would it have ended? This scene? Well... the dogs run out and start to attack the thug with the gun. Kyle abandons the rolling vehicle and begins freaking out because he's all cracked out. He curls up on the floor of the Juggernaut holding the brick close to him. We kick at the dogs as we speed away... and the rolling car hits something explosive or messy. In the script it was the Red Cross bloodmobile, which rams into a gas station and blows up- then it rains blood. Maybe too much. We'll never know. That's that!
-eef

The Rest...

Here's the last 6 pages from Code of the Juggernaut. I think I actually have some more, but they are not lettered. I'll try to post those next time.

I love how some of the art on this turned out. After Chumble Spuzz I became more free with my style and at the same time, tighter. I was more conscious of page composition, black areas, and expression. I had feared going back to an all-human book, because humans are the hardest thing there is to draw- but I feel like what I came up with for this project far exceeded any previous human characterizations I'd come up with.

I really wanted it to almost feel like a dark comedy film- in my mind it was sort of like Kevin Smith's slacker buddy dialog, comedically in the style of something like SuperBad, but with the sort of chaotic vigilanteism from Boondock Saints.

I wanted to base each character as much on his real character as much as I could. I wanted us to joke like we really do behind closed doors. I wanted all of our shortcomings to be laid out to laugh at, and our good qualities to be what wins the fight in the end. Ultimately the story was going to be more of a road-trip buddy movie. No success story, no big battle with evil. I still hope to tell it someday, but when I do I'll restart from the ground up.
-eef

More pages from COJ

Here's the next 5 pages from Lunaractive: Code of the Juggernaut.