Angel Lite commission
Okay, at this point, I’m beginning to suspect that the guys over at Angel Lite know about my aversion to pointy masks and hair – it’s a wierd thing that turned me off to Marvel comics and X-Men in specific when I was growing up. As cool as I think this character looks, they KEEP MAKING ME DRAW THESE POINTY MASKS!
Jack
Jack is a fairly blatant Gambit rip off, with a little twist on the powers. I’m a fan of this style though. Grifter is another Gambit rip-off and I love the character. Knightsabre is a far less successful stab at that type, but it’s a model that’s proven, and this makes a nice companion piece to that Dice character I did last month.
Dice
I’m not sure I’m feeling Dice here. I don’t really engage with the concept, but he’s just half of a pair, so maybe I’ll get it more when I do the next one…
Avengers of OZ
This started out as a costume design- an extension of Iron Man, but I don’t think I’ll ever get to it. Still, the idea intrigues me and if I could get a few more together on it I think I’d like to explore it further.
Tub of Terror pitch
So, my friend Angelique was throwing around an idea for a terrible movie, and the more I heard of it, the more I though this really should be done up as a Tub of Terror comic. Even though Violent Blue is over, I still had the templates and threw this together as a kind of back-handed pitch.
Edge
The tough thing about Edge is that the Ninja has been done to death and it’s hard to make him a composite of the Mortal Kombat template and/or Shredder without tipping too far in either direction. The blades are still important though. I almost wonder if I didn’t put enough on- then I think of the way Shredder looked in the TMNT movie and realize less is more.
Knight ad
Back in the early days of doing A Knight No One Forgets for Angel Lite comics, I was pushing the deadline hard but still needed to get some art out to generate buzz. I ended up grabbing some of my favorite images and compositing this quick ad. It’s one of the few KnightWolf images I’ve ever done any color on.
Eagle Eye
I really dig this design, which has a lot of influence on it from the Sorceress in He-Man. Not sure which Angel Lite series she’ll be appearing in, but here she is. Eagle Eye a.k.a. Melissa Wright LaDonna’s cousin she can fly and has of an eagle
Christmas graphics
As we head into Christmas I wanted to show off a little bit of work done for the company website . I always changed the blog button during Christmas time to the santa hat image, just a little bit of fun on the web page.
Back when I was with Holland Computers, I notced that the graphic designer always created holiday wallpapers for the used computers and I loved the idea, so I’ve done the same for subsequent companies I’ve worked for. The business card is a scan which was translated into a 2d object, but the entire graphic is rendered in Bryce 5
Favorite ads
I always like to see as running on the demo machine in the front and usually will create some basic stuff that also ends up on the company blog site. Here are a few of my favorites….
Offline
This is one of my favorite graphics. A soft portrait that gets the message across immediately, simply. This photo was actually shot on my workbench with my test equipment, arranged just so…. I added the text on the computer screen and played with the shading to give it that quiet moment look.
(and yeah…I had to blur the Lilo and Stitch graphic on my coffee cup….)
Shiva
I know, the name is woefully overused, but it’s not a bok I’m working on. Here’s the character designe for the Victorian Roses enemy! Lady Shiva formerly known as Red Rival. One she work with Casino The Swami and helped send The Meddler back to kill baby Jesus but we all know how that worked out. She despise The Victorian Roses
Broken
Since so much of my job has always involved fixing devices, when you’re running a company blog or website you end up needing a lot of graphics of this breaking! Here’s a few I did for my last job.
Vs
I actually wish this one had come out just a little better. I was writing an article on the decline of the console as smartphone apps and games gain market share and whipped up this little graphic. It’s rushed and it shows, especially since I’m not as familiar with drawing Mario as perhaps I should be….
Derringer and Rugar
More character designs from Angel Lite’s The Ballad! These guys were based heavily off characters in Django Unchained, and I admit it shows. Still, tried to throw a sort of spacey look to it in the buttons on the jacket and things like that.
Tech Zombies
I was working on the company blog doing an article about “zombie accounts” – user and email accounts on a company’s server that aren’t purged after an employee leaves. I wanted to have a little fun with it though, so I altered up these two old photos from Zombie walks back in 2010 or 2009. I’ve always loved how these came out and it’s even more fun because I was doing these on company time for company purposes!
Victorian Roses
Here’s some characters sketches from another Angel Lite series I’m not involved in, these are the Victorian Roses. The characters seem kind of mystical, but also with a big Posion Ivy influence. Here are our Heroines.
Glow comics part four
I mentioned a few month ago, instead of handing out flyers for our GLOW event, I created a small comics with all of our information on the back! We’ve got to wrap this up though, preferably by rescuing the hostages!
Glow comics
This is not quite a commission, this was originally done up as a get well card for a sick friend, but the image was just to cute not to share.
This weekend’s cons
This weekend happening in Cleveland is the Cleveland CONcoction!
If you’re a gamer, this is seriously the place to be. They’ll be celebrating sci-fi and steampunk this year, with the chance to win a lot of the same games you’ll be playing!
There’s panels, author guests, the Wonderland Ball, the masquerade, costume contest, gameplay, live performances (you really need to check 
out Too The Egress) and tons more going on. This is the only con of it’s type in Cleveland and it’s exactly the kind of con I like, packed with tons of events and programming.
Hours:
Friday, March 13: 12pm – 11pm
Saturday, March 14: 9am – 11pm
Sunday, March 15: 9am – 3pm
That said, I’m already booked this weekend a little further west, and will be heading to Indiana Comicon.
I’m going mostly to meet Denny O’Neil – seriously, DENNY O’NEIL! The guiding hand of the Batman titles in the 90’s! The writer of the 70’s Shadow series! The author of countless editorial “From The Den” colums!
Stop looking at me like that. I’m excited.
Mike Zeck and Mike Grell are going to be there as well!
I could actually care less about the media guests at this one (although I and going to get princess autographs for my girls- I admit it). The guest list here is really looking impressive – John Beatty, Art Thibert, Bob McLeod, Whilce Porticelo, Jae Lee, I have a stack of stuff a mile high I’m bringing, just as soon as I break out my Shadow costume….
So wherever you’re headed, be safe, if you see me in Indiana tap me on the shoulder and say hi. If you’re heading to Cleveland, say hello to the POP! members or the Z.E.R.O.S. (Zombie Eradication & Rescue Operations Squad) and give them my best! And we’ll be back with new Violent Blue on Monday!
Casino and Switchblade
Some more for Angel Lite comics. The evil Casino the Swami and his associate Switchblade. I believe these are the bad guys for their series “The Ballad”. I’m really pleased with how dynamic Casino came out with my overuse of cross hatching….
Angel Lite commission
William Zo Walker a.k.a. Amp. former pimp and hit man to El Cartel. After he found that El Cartel had his wife killed and pinned on him he went to work for Cartel. After Cartel threaten his daughter April and grandson Duston. He quit and co founded The Red Lobos and The Red Raiders https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angel-Lite-Comics/123392724366941
And don’t forget, new Violent Blue tomorrow!
Better call Saul
It’s odd, I seem to be watching more television than I ever have before. At least more than I’ve watched a very long time, and this is in great part due to the fact that my wife is watching a lot of this with me. Ladies you know that saying that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach? Totally wrong. A way to a man’s heart is by watching his television shows with him. Seriously sit down and watch an episode of Doctor Who with them or catch the football game with him on Sunday and then talk with him about it – I’m telling you it’s almost better than sex. It’s one of the things that my wife does with me that I love the absolute most.
So I watched the premiere of Better Call Saul this weekend, and it has some bad will 
immediately because of the way AMC tried to shoehorn it in between Walking Dead and Talking Dead (especially considering how emotional WD was this week!) I understand trying to follow a strong popular series with a new series that you’re trying to promote, but to move the Talking Dead (which is basically the documentary on how each episode is made)further back, it’s too late in the night that for that nonsense and you lose momentum. Better Call Saul needed a very strong series premiere to build over come the bad will there.
This was not that strong Episode.
One of the things that made the Saul character work in Breaking Bad is that he was the comic relief.What I was really hoping for in Better Call Saul was a single camra comedy with dashes of drama kind of taking itself seriously but still being funny. This is not what we got, and the character lacks the gravitas to really pull the levels of dram they are shooting for. Saul was always designed as a one-dimensional character in this attempt to go back and retcon him into some sort of layered deep character just doesn’t work. I will not be back for the rest of the series and quite frankly I think the entire conception was a Misstep. I realize we’re following Breaking Bad, but Better Call Saul wasn’t the way to do it. Better Call Saul would be better served as something lighthearted and funny.
Among other things you’re watching this weekis Gotham. There was a real misdirect here, I was looking foreward to the Scarecrow episode and to discove it was his father was a little disappoing. I think the scarecrow could be someone older than Bruce Wayne, in fact I’d love to have seen him actually be one of Wayn’s teachers, however, being homeschooled now kinda puts the kibosh onthat. The biggest misdirect however was the way that Edward Nigma was suspended. I thought for sure this is the beginnings of the Riddler and it would make perfect sense for him to be disgruntled after being fired from the police force, but no, by the end of the episode the status quo was restored and he was back on the force. I’m not sure if that was a missed opportunity or not .
We were also delighted to return with Wizard Wars. This series really engaged me, and I think it’s got to do with the way it’s a competition and also with the stage and parlor aspects of it. I tried watch the show following it on SYFY a sort street magic kind of series 
which is interesting in itself, but I’m not that into street magic I’ve always been drawn far more to parlor and stage magic, indeed that’s the kind of magic that I do.
Sci-fi did manage to raise my ire however. The series premiered the week previous and I missed it and there’s no way of me watching it on sci-fi without loggin in with some arcane credentials from my cable provider. I used to catch up with Hollywood treasure by watching online and it kind of pisses me off that site is making it so much more difficult to keep up onthier shows. Just another reason to hate the network I suppose.
I enjoyed the flash this week as well. The Flash has really been quite a discovery for me, I don’t think I wanted to like this as much as I do (I suppose a misguided loyalty to the 1990 series) but I caught up on the entire series over he Christmas break and found it to be really well done at whole lot of fun. The return of the series has been no exception. We’re back to monster of the week and in fact this a villian we’ve never seen in the comics, but 
there is also another bit with the Pied Piper. The scene with his implants was horrifying and we can see he can be quite a violent character, and I think actually more interesting than anything we’ve seen in the comics.
Really I think this is where the Flash’s strength lies.
They embraced that this is a comic book, something that superhero shows in the past of really shied away from. Arrow even took a long time to get there.
You can see where they are trying to shoehorn Firestorm in to the series. We’re in full back-door pilot mode, though I can’t really see Firestorm carrying his own series. A miniseries or perhaps even setting up appearances in Justice league? This would be the smartest thing at DC could possibly do. Far smarter then steadfastly trying to separate their television and cinematic universe, but that’s a whole other tangent, we don’t really wanna get into that right now.
That’s it for this week, Gotham is on tonight and I will be seeing in front of the television with my wife seeing where we go with the scarecrow ! Can’t wait. (but since we have to, go check out todays Violent Blue!)
Glow comics part three
I mentioned a few month ago, instead of handing out flyers for our GLOW event, I created a small comics with all of our information on the back! Heres the second days comic to recap the further mischief from our villians!
Argo City Comics 