My FIRST Kickstarter Project is now GOING!!!!

Backing Johnny B. Gerardy's artistic efforts for the cookbook are picking up speed a bit.

I filmed and edited a new video that you can play from the project page. Anyone backing the project will now also get updates on a daily basis. Check out the video to get a look at Johnny himself, if you haven't met him, and such creations as:

SHISH-KABUB,
TransFATMAN and BUSBOY,
DELI DOLL, and
THE TENDERIZER.

If you'd like, blog about this on your own sites if appropriate. I'll be tweeting, facebooking, Plaxo-ing and myspacing about it. Whew!!

"Weapons & Death" New Red Dead Instructional Video

This is the lastest instructional video for the Red Dead Redemption game. As the name suggests, there are lots of weapons and death within. Tread lightly ... I think this is clipping some of the frame, to see it correctly, use the title as your link.

GHOST PROVOKERS Episode 1 is online!

Spooooky greetings TAGgers! Please check out the Ghost Provokers webpage for the first full episode in 4 parts! Click HERE for the link to the page and let me know what you think! Lots of deleted scenes coming soon as well.

Sketchbook faces

I haven't posted in awhile but heres some sketches

from my Faces Sketchbook

Game Jam Background

Here's a sample of some background work I did for out recent Game Jam effort. It was meant to be a parallaxing background for a side-scrolling chase sort of game, but we didn't have time to put in the parallax. Still, it looked pretty good when it was scrolling along.

It's not too bad considering it was created at 2:00 am.

Vote For John Marston's Costume ...

Hey, check out the little contest that a nationwide game retailer is running. Clues you in on what kind of fellah Marston can be. I like the polecat hat in the hunter outfit. The title is your link to the site.

Painting In Progress

It's gonna change some more. This is just a first pass at colorizing the grayscale

Six New Questions on "Gun Nose Presents" Quiz

While it's no Ghost Provokers (and really shouldn't ever be; there can only be one G.P.) ... there are now eight questions in the "Gun Nose Presents" trivia quiz, six of which are new since the last posting. A few are strangely provocative ... It's fun learning just enough Flash coding to be dangerous.

GHOST PROVOKERS trailer 3 is online!

For those who haven't seen it yet, the new promo for GP is live. Go to: http://www.ghostprovokers.com/ to check it out. Thanks!

Can't wait. Another Star Wars review coming

Cork 39

Between work, Ghost Provoking, and general life it's been hard to put out new Corks. But here's a new one anyways.

Learning To Fly

Hey there! We've started up the Mokosos Scribbling Wall again here at High Moon Studios recently. If you remember it's just a bunch of us here making sketches based on a bi-weekly theme. This week's, Learning To Fly. Go to http://themokosos.blogspot.com if you want to see more.

Rapsody of Steel 1959

A long lost treasure from 1959. I remember seeing this in grade school on those old reel projectors. Click on the title to view the MOV.

Doug Lectures Storytelling

Click Title for link. Marty will notice that Todd Ammons, Heavy-Iron animator, also lectures on animation.

Staton's Pages for "Gun Nose Presents" ...

Here are the three pages from Joe Staton for my comic project, "Gun Nose Presents." These will go to Joe Rubinstein to ink, then back to me for colors and letters. Fun. ;-)

Illustration Magazine NEW Art Gallery

Illustration Magazine has started a gallery for classic art for sale at their site. This piece by REYNOLD BROWN (1917 - 1991) of Curucu, Beast of the Amazon is listed for 18k. Lots of great works are posted.

http://illustrationgallery.weebly.com/

New Ghost Provokers trailer up.

The new promo is up at the Ghost Provokers website! Check it out and let me know what you think.

http://www.ghostprovokers.com/

Man's got to know his limitations

See those two middle color rectangles under "your search colors." One is blue green and one is pink purple. I can't tell those apart. I would guess pink purple for both. This is the heart of why I gave up oil painting. I have to make all my painting efforts digital where I can do color picking. But it's best that I avoid color all together. To avoid embarrassing moments where people comment on the greens in my skin tones.

Clck the title for 1970 comicon tape recordings. A lot of Shel. Scott Shaw. And KIRBY!

Comic Art Community website for art surfing

Title takes you to the subhead of Adam Hughes Sketches. I've been right click saving his pin ups.

Test Version of New Game ... "The 'Gun Nose Presents' Q&A"

Just so you can see it in its nascent state, here is the "Gun Nose Presents Q&A" ... To get there, click on the title of the post (I put it up on www.drunkduck.com). Right now it is just two questions and there isn't an adequate sell statement on the finishing slide that asks you to play again. I'm working on it with Kyle Hansen at my office and he's teaching me the Flash you need to know. When it is done, it'll be 20 questions at a time and I'll have progressively "deep" versions for fans of the comic to play.

GHOST PROVOKERS website is live!

Hey everyone! Hopefully alot of you have received word via e-mail or Facebook about this, but if not...

THE GHOST PROVOKERS WEBSITE IS UP!

Click on http://www.ghostprovokers.com/ and it'll take you to the site where you'll get to see the first promo of our upcoming episode on January 27, 2010 as well as some video bios and picture galleries. Each Wednesday (Jan. 13 and 20) we'll have a new promo leading up to the premiere as well.

For those who don't know, Me and a few co-workers have made a parody of those ghost shows you often see on TV like Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, and Most Haunted. Our investigative technique usually involves something more antagonistic and we end up turning relatively harmless spirits into angry, vengeful ghosts, usually at my characters expense.

Take a look, let me know what you think. All told, the whole episode on the 27th will run around 25 minutes. We're going to be putting it up on YouTube, eBaum's World, College Humor, and other sites as well as our webpage. I hope you enjoy it! If it turns out well we're going to make more. And PLEASE feel free to send the link out to friends! We want to get as many people watching this as we can.

Thanks and have a spoooooooooky day!

Color Fun

Click the header and go nuts.

Marty Deadbeat

Happy New Year, friends and TAG Brethren. I've regrettably fallen out of the TAG habit. I blame my last freelance job. I was doing storyboards for the new MassAnimation project, creating an animatic for the DC Universe Online Game Trailer.

As always, I get on this sort of project and want to post drawings for you guys, but am of course forbidden by my NDA and paranoid overlords. So I couldn't share anything until now. But like most promiscuous types, once I put the pencil down, it's over. I'm done. Then when the wraps come off and I can finally post some links, drawings, etc., I've forgotten I even worked on the thing.

So file this under the "better-late-than-never" category. This project, the DC Universe Online Trailer, might be right up some of our TAG'ster's alley (Jimmy, Ellis, are you listening?). You can animate Batman! It's basically a contest to animate shots of Batman, Joker, Superman, etc., for the trailer. There is an animatic that you will follow, but all you have to do is download the (free) Maya software and the (already complete) models (with rigs) and start animating. There are prizes and cash. I will not vouch for this business model as a replacement for actual gainful employment, however it gives the enthusiast a channel for getting to animate a famous character like, say, BATMAN, and possibly be chosen to animate for the final trailer (if your shot is selected they will pay you some money as a prize, and then pay you to finalize the animation under their employ--hey, it's something). They are even giving away a Sony VAIO computer every week for the best shot of the week.

(Personal note: For me, the biggest obstacle between me and doing more 3D animation has always been the model-making and rig-making. So I see this as a boon to people just looking to animate. But I get the critique, too. As you see, I'm not entered in the contest!)

Anyhow, I drew the first half of the trailer, which is Batman vs. Joker and Wonder Woman vs. Circe. Another Marty, Marty Klein, did the Superman vs. Lex and "gameplay" second half of trailer. I focused a lot on posing the characters for the animators, but in retrospect I think Marty's super-basic poses may help the animators in the contest loosen up a little and come up with some original posing of their own. You can click on the link in the title to see Jim Lee talk about the contest. I personally didn't sit down with Mr. Lee, but he regularly reviewed our boards (I was told he dug my W.W.).

Trailer is HERE, I think....

New From Johnny B. "Shish Kabub" ... Character for the Comic Book Creators Cookbook

Just thought I'd share. Johnny is pencilling and inking his l'il fingers to the bone!!

TAG pics

Click on the headline to see pics from last night's TAG North meeting! You might see a familiar face or 2. Be sure to look at the other things on the blog and comment!

Heard of Kickstarter? Might Be Good ... ;-)

I am pursuing a unique (and fun) way to raise funds for projects. Have any of you heard of www.kickstarter.com? I did because someone sent me a blurb about a project they were trying to fund and I thought the fundraising venue itself was more cool than his project ... Check it out - here is the comics portion: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/by/recommended?tag=comics As you can quickly see there are not as many projects going on with comics, but that's no reason not to start one (and there is even a comics cookbook that didn’t get its funding; I’m not daunted – it was more limited than mine!!).

The idea is that you have a project you need to fund, so you outline the project and put together a series of increasingly cool prizes people can get for their increasingly large donation. And that can be as imaginative as your project itself. Give a .pdf of the comic book you’re making for a modest donation, and then step it up the more someone is willing to fork over. Of course, you should make a promotional video explaining what your comic is about, fronting some of the artwork you may already have finished, etc., and, of course, asking for the $$$ right up front.

It’s kind of a crap shoot, but a lot of projects, good ones that have some universal appeal, do meet or exceed their funding goals.

Best thing is, the creator gets the money and keeps all the control of his/her comic or graphic novel.

Here is my favorite one from my project explorations: “Robin Writes A book (And You Get A Copy)” … http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/robinsloan/robin-writes-a-book-and-you-get-a-copy Check out the video and the pledge levels. Really imaginative and quite cool.

If the project runs out of time and the goal isn’t met, everything is deleted and no one is out anything. The accounting and e-transfers are handled by Amazon.com, I believe … so it is reputable, secure, and dependable.

So anyone out there who wants to step up, take out an account at www.kickstarter.com, get your idea formulated, and find an existing member who will extend you an invitation to participate (you have to be invited on board because if it wasn’t by invitation, the site would be flooded with half-baked, crackpot projects with no hope at all of getting funded).

For some of you who want to be paid to draw and publish your comic and who want to keep control of it, this might be a good way to get started.

Hal Foster's Tarzan

Terry Beatty has a blog post with a lot of great Hal Foster art. It makes me curious looking at this whether Foster had a formula for the size of original art to published size. I imagine the published size here was quite small and the detail he might ordinarily give a piece would give diminishing returns compared to working bold and with less hatching. Love all the lost and found, the compositions, the great silhouette, the contrast.

Click Title for a link to Terry's Blog. There when you click the pictures you get bigger versions

RDR Spotted "Out There" ...

This just in from somewhere out in Videogame Retail Land ...

Look out, world. It's a-comin' ...

You'll never be done surfing

Click the header. It's a blog called golden age comic book stories. Incredible amount of great scans of golden age art.

Warning, If you don't have a fast internet connection, this link may stall your computer. The blog has entirely too many JPGs on a single page. The links on the left, based on artists and groups take you to other densely loaded posts.

The picture I've added is from The Web Of Horror. Where artists like Bernie Wrightson and Bruce Jones and Jeff Jones did a lot of early comic work. I did my own fill in the blank monster but never sent it in. Greatest art contest idea ever.

Watch Mort Drucker draw

Inspiring

Avatar Sequel

KZ Posted: I like this better.


or this