Puppets Comic Book Series

Art Poster Sale 24x36

2012-05-15T22:30:00.003-07:00

This large, red illustrated poster is 2' X 3' and at my Etsy store.

Supporting my upcoming release of Puppets, later this year, I've made some 24" x 36" posters. This first edition of the over-sized poster at my Etsy store. Get free stickers a FREE hanging kit when you order them.

Squatch is another title possibly in the works for 2013.

All these new products are reasonably priced and available now at my Etsy store. Go check them out and support independent art and publishing at a grass roots level, already.


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Comic Cons

2012-05-08T18:59:00.000-07:00

Of all the days to have a downtown court date - I had to go on the Monster Apocalypse.

This year, I'm very happy to announce that my self-publishing effort, Gargantuan Media is actively showing at midwest Comic Cons. I'll be at ASH in Indianapolis in June and at Summit City in Fort Wayne May 12th. Summit City is being held on Saturday May 12th 2012 at the Grand Wayne Center at 120 West Jefferson Boulevard in Fort Wayne, Indiana 46802. Tickets are only $10, kids 12 and under are admitted for free. Tickets are on sale right now. Get your tickets and come see me in Artist's Alley at Table A13. I am in the front row. I will will be armed with freebies for you guys.

Summit City is being held at the Grand Wayne Center 120 W. Jefferson Blvd., Fort Wayne, IN. 46802.

This is my biggest con to date and I will be loaded up with Roaches, posters and new maybe even some mini-comics. I'll also autograph books, new posters and custom merchandise with purchase. Come and get art and books from an Indiana artist at an Indiana comic con why don't you, already?


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Puppets Dark Horse Cover

2012-02-16T21:02:00.006-08:00

This cover is based on Dark Horse Presents #5 originally published in February of 1987.

This new cover, available as large scale posters, canvases and high quality photographic prints, is very closely based upon Dark Horse Presents #5 featuring Paul Chadwick's Concrete with the cover art done by Paul Gulacy. That book was originally published in February of 1987 when I was still knee-high to a tarantula.

I made this cover and entered it into an on-line competition called Covered that features old school classic comic book series like Kirby's F4, Cappin America and Petersen's Mouse Guard covered by new school artists.


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War Cry: A Web Comic

2012-01-26T21:42:00.001-08:00

War Cry is a full-color web comic being built at Smack Jeeves.com.

Another web comic I have going is called War Cry. For you guys that really are into Japanese animated shows like Berserk and Fist Of The North Star you will immediately see similarities in this story. I figure: if I am going to be influenced (i.e. "steal") then I am going to be influenced by the best.

This material is 18+ Mature Horror. Rated R for boobage and blood.

War Cry is a full-color web comic being built at Smack Jeeves.com.

The War Cry web comic started as my October 2011 24 Hour Comic Challenge pencils and just sort of exploded into a full story set on another planet w/in aboout 2 hours. The original drawings are over also at WAR Cry on Smack Jeeves. I'm making and uploading newer versions with these Star Trek setting/colors.

As the print editions of Roaches and Puppets are getting printed in black-and-white books it's great to use color in a story. Both of these current books are TEEN and up but War Cry is unabashedly Adult - no sex, but a lot of gore.


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Puppets Cover

2012-01-11T00:01:00.000-08:00

This book is in development using emerging technology and a traditional print run.

Art is the biggest challenge for me on the first Puppets book due to the fact that I'm currently the only artist on the project. However main pencils for the book are cleaned up and the story-telling duties are being ably arced by my friend Derek Edwards. The art and story for the central characters of Miette and Cement are taking shape despite time and energy being in short supply!

I'm surprised with the growing interest level in the book. Thank you to all that continue to subscribe to this blog!

Today, the original script for this title (all two pages of it!) has been re-written and arced by Derek Edwards as 6 individual chapters w/a severe and much needed professional tweaking. The graphic novel is moving daily and getting closer to becoming a finalized product on book store shelves in Indianapolis books stores in March of 2012.

In future chapters I've added a Hedora character, The Blob, that gets itself splattered across the city only to reform itself and attack the concrete giant. I added this monster for a bit of the old monster-on-monster grudge match.

Also, I want to tell you guys about the real bad guy character from this book, Ratso, who is a morlock styled mutant. Ratso spends his time chasing Miette around on a wave of rabid rodents that he rides through the gutters of the city. Some art and drawings of Ratso and his hairy minions are located over here.


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Glob(s) Attack City!

2011-04-26T00:00:00.000-07:00

The Blob, merrily eating it's way through Midtown in Central City.

This is a Kaiju book. Kaiju is Japanese for "strange beast" or often "monster" like Godzilla and King Kong. In the page above, Cement is surprised by another monster, the massive Blob - an American kaiju. This "Glob" busily dissolves people and buildings when coming into contact w/ARC equipped military elements.

The Blob gets smashed up into smaller parts by an enraged Cement. This scene features Cement, Miette and ARC troopers and the Glob. That makes two principles (Miette, Cement) plus 1 hostile Kaiju (Glob) plus misc. ARC soldiers (7-12 of them firing ARC's) and tanks (3-4) to animate here. That's a total of like 14-19 plates spinning around at once, minus the flames and smoke!


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Puppets Poster

2011-02-26T00:01:00.000-08:00

Poster for Puppets with Miette guiding Cement through the city.

The kaiju book has finally taken everything else over. And it's gotten really hostile about it. And this project is definitely the demanding type. However, the art itself is coming along much better than originally expected.

This poster is at a stand-still until the 120+ panels are inked...


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Puppets: Raw Inks

2011-01-28T00:12:00.000-08:00

Cement crosses the Mittman Street Bridge into Central City.

Inks for this project are more fun than I had anticipated. I'm trying to get more of the central pieces of art finalized. A few of these drawings are cracking me up with the "extreme" facial expressions in some of the individual panels.

So currently I'm inking digitally over 120+ pencils. I'm finding a few tight little compositions like these, including the silhouetted hero shot for the BOOK. Yep, I did say 120+ panels. That's about 17 pages.

Ratso is kinda psyched about stuff. Rat stuff.

ART HINT #12:
These pages start as seriously eff'ed up drawings - real messy graphite. Then, the original drawings get scanned in and dumbed down to 150 dpi reference art. This "art" layer PSD lives w/in an AI document.

Adobe Illustrator easily accepts the Photoshop PSD "art" layer when the PSD is imported with the "individual objects" setting checked in AI. After the line work is completed in AI the image is exported as another PSD for color detail and lighting. In this way, a page can be sent from PS (as pencils/colors) into AI (as inks) and back into PS (for final colors) keeping a very sharp vector line.

Usually my AI vectors/inks AND the PSD are saved in two docs: INKS.ai (illustrator) and LAYOUT.psd (photoshop). The next step is using InDesign to assemble the pages. For you hardcore book designers please note the "Import Options" check box when placing your art. You find some very robust tools in this option!


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Character Sheet: Cement

2010-09-28T00:01:00.000-07:00

Cement is a giant concrete monster. He enjoys long walk over cities and yuppoids.

Cement the Monster was once a small marionette and has always belonged to Miette. He has gone through a lot of incarnations visually. This early sheet for the gray goliath has the most appeal - like something Kirby and Lee's dreaded Mole Man would conjure up.

Cement is a 60-foot-tall puppet that wrecks Central City searching for two bad guys.


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Puppets Character Sheet Miette

2010-02-01T02:01:00.000-08:00

This sheet for Miette features her in a snowy city park.

Character Sheet for Miette. Miette is the co-hero of the Puppets book and is a very strange, little 9-year-old girl. Together with Cement, her 60-foot-tall puppet, she goes after some baddies.

For character sheets a lot of poses is good.

This is the first page of the Puppets book published in Roaches in 2011.

This is the first page of the Puppets book published in Roaches in 2011. There are two more versions of this page as a full-art color page and as a March 2012 black-and-white version in sharper detail.


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Puppets Inks Detail

2010-01-31T00:01:00.000-08:00

Some early production art w/a square eyed Cement and Miette.

Above is a sample panel from the forthcoming Puppets book about giant monsters, strange young Miette and the cold, cruel city of Centropolis. This image was made in 2010 to get an idea of the style and the art technique involved. I think it sets the tone. The strangeness of the giant monster/little child and the rain both set that tone.


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Puppets Inks

2009-08-09T04:50:00.000-07:00

An early page from Puppets demonstrates scale and style for the book.

This is a raw page, early in the digital inking phase, from Puppets - a self-published comic anthology under development. The book contains three stories. This page is from the anchor story, Puppets, focusing on a strange young girl named Miette and the revenge she seeks through a concrete giant.

Puppets is heavily kaiju influenced. When the story begins, we are introduced to small 9-year-old Miette and her large and odd collection of marionettes. We are helpless to intervene as Miette is savagely attacked by burglars - leaving one of her arms badly broken.

After Miette runs away from a hospital where she's being treated her revenge comes in the form of a collosal concrete monster. Miette orders the monster to find and destroy her attackers before they attack anyone else - even if it destroys the entire city in the process.


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Roaches: The Graphic Novel

2009-02-01T02:35:00.000-08:00

Ya ever wonder what the official rules to being a cockroach actually are? Follow this nifty guide, complete with handy suggestions, to scrounge for crumbs and scurry in the darkness. Achieve a state of perfect verminhood! Written by and for cockroaches by his Lowness the venerable Grand Roach hiself.

This highly anticipated offical field guide is scheduled for a late 2010 release for anxious roaches everywhere.

Roaches exist in over 4,000 forms across duh planet, although only a few species, such as Blattella Germanicus, ever have direct human contact. Simply click on the image of this remarkable species for a wallpaper-sized image.


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Lemming Island

2009-01-31T00:36:00.000-08:00

Lemming Island is a short animation and part of a bigger graphic novel. The project is currently being penciled for the graphic novel section of the project. The Island itself is the opening storyboard panel for the animation:

Lemming Island is the story of suicidal rodents and the evil Rat King. While the mouse-like creatures fling themselves off a cliff, based on the "warning" of the evil Rat King of an oncoming Tsunami, a lone lemming is left to chronicle his people's fate.

One scratch music track close to finished. I'm recording the soundtrack of maybe five or six songs for two short animations.

Horse Glue - Lemming Like.mp3

I'm ironing out the areas where the guitar overlaps at weird points and the organ comes in late. It sounds unusual and has a flow. It's the overall direction I'm going with the sound for the Lemming Island animation.


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Lemming Island

2009-01-29T04:42:00.000-08:00

A short piece of 2d animation has been in pre-production for 1 year:

Shooting for like a 2010 or 2011 film fest circuit run. I'd be happy with summer ones in Indiana and Ohio. There's a mountain of production work to finish. Also, I have %5 of the audio and V.O. work done as of now.


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Roaches: The Graphic Novel

2009-01-21T00:01:00.000-08:00

Just for you, Internet! The Office of the Grand Roach has released extra rare photos from the Grand Roach's many, many speaking junkets. Simply click on the image of His venerable Lowness for a wallpaper-sized image.


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Roaches Rough Inks

2009-01-20T00:01:00.001-08:00

Be sure to buy booku copies of Roaches: A Graphic Novel. My crumby little self-published book will be released late 2011 in the Greater Indianapolis Area and Amazon!


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Whiteboard Sketches

2009-01-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

Here's some crumby sketches of a cross-section of the people from the old neighborhood.

I used to read outside this run down laundry-mat in the old neighborhood. It was pretty close to where I lived. There were always bums and packs of kids running in and out of there.

My friend Justin is a real fixture in the neighborhood and something of an urban legend in his own right. He is known to wield a mean punchline.

Girl #2 that I was sick deep infatuated with. She reminded me of an Elliot Smith song from New Moon. "You're so pretty and smart, So why do you feel that you have to hold your toungue?"

Girl #1 that I was also very sick deep infatuated with. I never got more than her name out of her but she was always pretty close to where I was seeing a show at - for like 5 years. I couldn't decide if she was a New Face in Hell or just stalking me. All I really knew was that she was beautiful.

Like I said, Girl #1 would show up in the neighborhood a lot. She reminded me of a natural daughter or Dylan or Morrison. Some things are never really meant to be but end up meaning something to me somehow.

This guy is the craziest bum in OTR. He has my lighter in his hand in this drawing. We were outside Kaldi's, when that was open, arguing about the odds of me getting my lighter back.