Tr!ckster 2012

I had a great time at Tr!ckster this year! Thanks to everyone who pulled themselves away from the con to come and visit.

I'm happy to say I even managed to squeeze in a few commissions while I was there.
Thanks for the scans guys!

Banana Girls at Tr!ckster

Banana Girl Statues have arrived just in time for Tr!ckster 2012. Tr!ckster is the creator owned pop-up event near the San Diego convention center during comic con. These Banana Girl statues will be available for purchase there.

But first, my favorite part. The unboxing.

Also available at Tr!ckster will be my usual books and cards as well as these new signed art prints featuring the original Banana Girl piece.

I'll be attending Tr!ckster much of Friday and Saturday, but the statues will be available from day one. See you there!

Tr!ckster

Instead of attending the San Diego Comic con this year, I'll be going to Tr!ckster. You'll find it conveniently across the street from the San Diego convention center.



If you haven't heard about it, it's a retail space: specializing in creator owned wares including small run and limited edition books, fine art prints, toys, clothing, and more. As well as an art gallery space and a series of symposia focused on creator driven demonstrations and discussions.
Should be pretty neat-o.
I'll be there Friday and Saturday but it goes all the way from Tuesday JULY 19 to Sunday JULY 24, 2011.

Hosted at the San Diego Wine and Culinary Center
200 Harbor Drive, Suite 120
San Diego, CA 92101

If you're going to Comic con go across the street and say hi.

Here are a few detail shots from my contribution to the Trickster god themed gallery show and art book. The original will be for sale at the show.
For my subject I chose the Naree Pol (aka Makalee Pon) from Thai mythology. These girl shaped fruit are a bit more like Sirens than Tricksters per se, but what the heck.

The Cards Are Here!!

54 Intercontinental Cuties have arrived!


Which means we'll have them for sale tomorrow at Action Figure Freddy in San Francisco.

And then at San Diego Comic-con Booth 4800!

San Diego Comic-Con BOOTH 4800

Myself, Josh Cooley and all 54 Intercontinental Cuties will be at booth 4800 at the San Diego Comic-Con next week. Booth 4800 is my usual location on the show floor along with Scott Morse and Jeff Pidgeon. This time around we'll also be joined by Jim Capobianco!

In the Program guide we should be listed as Red Window.

Hope to see you there!

Intercontinental Colors

Here are the first batch of finished full color cards for "54 Intercontinental Cuties", a pin-up playing card deck by Josh Cooley and myself. They will be available for purchase at Comic-con this year then shortly thereafter here on this blog.








If you haven't seen Josh's process for making his cards yet, check it out. It's very educational.

Intercontinental Process

This time I thought I'd show some process all the way through to the final product. If you're just tuning in, these are for an internationally themed pin-up card deck I'm producing with Josh Cooley.

These are some of my first thumbnails, not all of the pieces started out this way but it definitely got the ball rolling.



You can see a few of the early ideas for the Egypt card above but I later settled on Cleopatra. As you can see by the roughs below I did some exploration before I found a pose I liked. I knew I wanted to have Cleopatra swooning over a photo of Marc Antony, but how exactly took a little trial and error.



Ultimately I decided with this version since it seemed the most queenly.



The composition wasn't quite working right with the way the corner suits were falling so I flopped the image when I inked it.



And the final card with color.



Here's the same process again with the Vietnam card.





When I inked this one I separated the foreground elements from the background. Just for ease of inking mostly, but it came in handy when I was coloring too.



And the final colored composited card.



The deck will be available to buy at the San Diego Comic-con in July, then shortly thereafter will be available for purchase here on the blog.

Intercontinental Box Art

When coming up with the aesthetic for the box design of "54 Intercontinental Cuties" Josh and I were very inspired by some really cool two color pin up playing card boxes from the fifties. Josh came up with the brilliant idea to use an airline stewardess theme for the box and the card backs.

Below is an early rough design pass that I printed and folded together into a box to get a sense of what the real final box would look like. As you can see all the text is hand written and is overall pretty rough, but this gave Josh and I the ability to make our final design decisions.



So here is some of the art I created for the box art. I inked it with a brush on paper.





Below are a couple pictures of the "dummy" which the manufacturer created as a template for the real thing. It's a sturdy flip-top cigarette style box and inside are blank dummy cards which are the same size and material that the final product will be. The dummy is made partly for our approval so we can get a sense of what the final product will be like but also the take our final measurements to create accurate box art.



And lastly here's a sneak peek at the final art for the front and back of the box. Special thanks to Erin Cooley for putting the final package art together in "In Design" and for helping with the fonts. And To Josh for writing the hilarious text for the back.

Intercontinental Inks

Back to the girlies!
Here's the first batch of inks for my and Josh Cooley's "54 Intercontinental Cuties" playing card deck. Josh and I decided to do line art with digital color to keep them consistent with each other. Since our styles vary already, painting them traditionally would make consistency that much harder.