He Works in Mysterious Ways...

A couple days ago, I was watching Sam Bradford accept the Heisman Award, and it reminded me that I should post a comic I did a while back.  I remember watching Indianapolis Colts Head Coach Tony Dungy accept the 2007 Super Bowl trophy and being really annoyed by how much thanking of God was going on.  I sketched out this one pager (below) that night.

  

I realize that most of the time when people thank God in award speeches, they probably don't think God decided to let them win over the other heathens.  (At least I hope that's not the case.)  Instead, I guess that they want to publicly state that they are Christians as a show of humility. But to me, it always comes across as unnecessary acknowledgments of inclusion to an evangelical religious group.  

I sort of view it like donations.  If someone makes a big donation, they might get a lot of recognition and praise for their charity (and perhaps a tax write off).  However, if someone makes the donation anonymously, they only really care about the cause they are supporting.  My views on being evangelical are similar -- walking the walk is way better than talking.  Which is why it irks me even more when I come across one of the bazillion music awards shows and see a mysoginist hip hop artist or a hypocrite country star go on and on about Jesus.

Anyway, I didn't actually ink this comic until a year later.  Even though a lot of the specific names in the comic were out of date, the underlying theme still exists so I went ahead and finished it.  (Besides, who could pass up drawing God with a mullet?)  I had plans of changing the dialogue from year to year, while keeping the last two panels the same.  Perhaps I still might!

Austin American-Statesman Illustration

Here's an illustration I colored last week.  It was drawn by Nick Bertozzi and appeared in the Austin American-Statesman this past Saturday.  (If you follow the link, beware that the image posted on their website has some color issues depending on which browser you are using.)  Nick already had in mind the hues he wanted to use, but left it up to me as to whether to add highlights and lowlights or not.  The one above is the one he ended up going with.  Below are a couple variations, one with alternate hues and the other a flat image without highlights and lowlights.

Anatomy Study 1

Graphite on Paper, 18"x24"

Kenyan Boy

Ink on Paper, 9"x12"
Loosely based on a photo I took in Kenya while on Semester at Sea.

Figure Drawing 4

Pastel on Paper, 18"x24"

Digital Portrait

 

Last week, John Kuramoto asked me to draw a bio pic for him which will appear in the upcoming Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology.  John wrote a story to be drawn by Christine Norrie for the book that will be out in 2009.  My task was to create a realistically drawn head shot in the style of the ones already featured on the website.

Last Spring, I indulged and purchased a Wacom Cintiq tablet.  This wonderful toy turned out to be an invaluable tool on the various coloring projects I have since been a part of.  While I have mostly only used the tablet to select and color certain parts of a scanned-in drawing, this project gave me the opportunity to draw directly onto the computer.  I am quite pleased with the result!

Hat Portraiture in Reverse 3

 

Ink Drawing on Vellum, 9"x12"

Figure Drawing 3

Pastel on Paper, 24"x18"

Stuffed!

 

I spent the better part of May and June coloring the 120 page graphic novel STUFFED!  It was written by Glenn Eichler, writer for The Colbert Report and creator of MTV's Daria, and drawn by Nick Bertozzi, author of last year's critically aclaimed The Salon and Houdini: The Handcuff King.  I'll have an official co-colorist credit (along side Mr. Bertozzi) for the book which is being published by First Second Books.  The story is a social satire on racism in modern America and our coloring inspiration came from Hergé's TinTin.  The book won't be out until 2009 but here are a couple of pages to wet your whistle.

Astor Place Starbucks

Vine Charcoal on Paper, 24"x18"

Figure Drawing 2

Sanguine on Paper, 24"x18"

Grand Central Station

Vine Charcoal on Paper, 18"x24"

Girl Scouts Comic

I did some coloring work for Christine Norrie last spring which is finally available!  Christine is a fantastic artist with great inking skills, and so when she asked me to help out coloring an 18 page comic for the Girl Scouts, I was happy to get involved.
 

The comic was for the Agent of Change Handbook and was about a group of girls that found a box of abandoned puppies and chose to "do the right thing." Christine wanted to color the comic in gray tones with dots reminiscent of the old comics using Zip-A-Tone.  We settled on four shades of gray and the best combination of dot sizes.  I colored in flat grays and then converted the layers to dots.  Here are a couple of the pages as they looked before the dialogue balloons were added.  Click to enlarge them to see the dots in full effect.

Figure Drawing 1

Graphite on Paper, 24"x18"

The Chelsea Market

 

Vine Charcoal on Paper, 18"x24"

Snake 'n' Bacon

I have once again had the pleasure of doing some animation work with John Kuramoto. This time I provided "additional animation" work on a pilot for Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming. The show was written and drawn by Michael Kupperman and based on the characters and stories in his comics.

The pilot was a 14 minute mixture of live action and animation starring Kristen Schaal (Flight of the Conchords), Dan Bakkedahl (The Daily Show), David Rakoff (This American Life), Bill Hader (SNL), and of course Snake and Bacon.  Animated in a low budget 70s cartoon style, the pilot has several vignettes that flow into each other.  Unfortunately, this Mr. Show type charm has been lost when Adult Swim cut it up and posted it in pieces on its website. Here are the rest of the clips in the correct order:  It seems that Adult Swim has removed the clips from their website, so here are a couple of screen shots instead:

This American Life Cartoon

I recently had the opportunity to provide some animation assistance to John Kuramoto for an upcoming Chris Ware cartoon on the TV show, This American Life. I have been a huge fan of the radio show for years, listening to the entire backlog while coding at my job at IBM. So you can imagine how excited I was to learn that John had already worked on a short cartoon for Season One and was asked to work on one for Season Two. He was nice enough to let me do a little of the work! Chris Ware once again did the art and story boarding. John then digitally cut up the art into moving pieces and did the animation. I did the lip sync animation.

The epsiode, Every Marriage Is a Courthouse, will air Sunday, June 1st on Showtime, but the cartoon short has been released as a sneak peak.

There's also a web bonus download in the iPod friendly .m4v format. Also check out John Kuramoto and Chris Ware's cartoon for Season One. Finally, here's a trailer for Season Two.

Wordless Comic - Finished

Heeb Magazine Comic

I colored this one page comic drawn by Neil Kleid that appears in the current issue of Heeb Magazine (Issue #16). You can check out the official version here -- while you're at it, check out the whole issue -- it's got some good stuff!

Here are a couple of other color versions of the comic.  My initial direction was to do a full colored version which ended up looking a little busy:

The editor and I decided to try a two-toned coloring which is what we ended up using in the magazine.  Here are a couple of other two-toned coloring schemes:

In the end, everyone agreed that the blue and orange one was the right one to go with!

Wordless Comic

Here's a one page comic that I am working on for my Comic Storytelling class. The assignment was to create a one page wordless comic. I've got a couple things to touch up, but I thought I'd post it anyway.

Hat Portraiture in Reverse 2

Ink Drawing on Vellum, 9"x12"