I knew, even before she was born, that I wanted to draw the invitations to her first birthday party. In what I’m certain had to be a gesture of love toward her man-child husband, my wonderful wife suggested we go with a superhero theme (“but with pink“), so with that in mind, I went to work. I’m always intimidated when it comes to drawing things like this – it’s a daunting task when the subject means so much to you. I drew a lot of babies that looked either too forced, too lifeless, or too much like they wanted to stab somebody, but eventually, I landed on a winner.

I also drew another, simpler pose for the cake, and my wife used her mad decorating skills to recreate it in icing, which I can say first-hand is no easy feat. I tried my hand at a little piping, and it got nerve-wracking pretty fast, so I had to step aside and let her fix my mess. If you can find yourself a baby mama who’ll frost your pastries and fix your messes, I highly recommend it.

I haven’t seen all 923 photos from the party yet, but I hope we took at least one close-up of the cakepop display pictured above, because it was delightful. My sister-in-law makes a mean ball of cake, so she whipped up a quick eight dozen or so (no big thing), and I created these little tags to attach to them. Fancy, y’all.

The day was perfect, the party was epic, and thanks to the love and efforts of many people near and dear to me (most of all, my wife), our baby girl had a wonderful first birthday. My only regret is that my dad didn’t make it see this day. I thought about him a lot, and I think he would have gotten a big kick out of this:

The character in that scribble is Captain Bucky O’Hare, and he holds a special place in my big, geek heart. In junior high, my friend Daniel Gonzalez introduced me to the comics, more or less around the same time that the animated show was coming out. I wasn’t sure what to make of it at first. His name struck me as stupid, but he was a green, humanoid rabbit with a gun, which was the exact opposite of stupid. There was also a humanoid dog with a gun, a humanoid gorilla with a gun, a humanoid duck with a gun, a humanoid alligator with a gun, and some awesome-looking humanoid toads with guns. Basically, it had everything I wanted from any cartoon property ever, plus guns.

And the designs blew my prepubescent mind. Big feet, enormous eyes, cartoony expressions – I ate that stuff up. At Christmas, I ended up buying all the toys for my younger brothers, because, at 13, I wasn’t really the right age for them. I bought myself some when I was 28 (attention: they’re amazing). I even created a rabbit team of my own, and drew several full-length comics about them. Bucky played a huge part in shaping both my tastes and my art, perhaps even more so than the TMNT (Daniel, incidentally, was the same friend who, years earlier, introduced me to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and was an incredible artist who inspired me a lot in my early drawing days. I really wish I could track that guy down. But I digress). I’ve been itching to do some Bucky O’Hare art for a while, so I decided to flesh out the sketch a bit.

Maybe it’s just foggy memories, or maybe it’s because he never attained the levels of over-exposure afforded to other characters of that era, I don’t know, but the cool factor he used to hold for me as a kid remains more or less the same today. I think I’ll visit some of the other Bucky characters in the year-long sketch thing I’m doing fairly soon.

It rained a lot while we were there, and at one point it started coming down during our walk to Ghiradelli square, so we took refuge inside a small gift shop. There, I found a sketchbook with the words “One Sketch A Day” on the front, and interior pages that were slugged by day. Our trip happened to coincided with my birthday, and my wife suggested (insisted) that we buy the sketchbook, and I spend the year filling it with drawings, ending on my next birthday.

I took her up on the challenge, and so far, it’s been a lot of fun. I try not to labor over ideas or spend too much time on any drawing, because I don’t want it to become a chore. Thus far, it hasn’t – in fact, the opposite is happening. I’m finding myself looking forward to sketch time, and I’ve also started digging out old art supplies that don’t get much play in these digital days. My first few sketches were just pencil and ink, but last night I actually rifled through the bathroom trashcan (it was…damp) to fetch a toothbrush I threw out last week, so I could do some watercolor splatter. I’m not reinventing the wheel or anything, but I’m having fun, and – most importantly – I’m getting at least one thing down on paper each day that has nothing to do with my day job.  It’s all too easy, after a full day at the studio, to make excuses and not lift a pencil in the evening. But since each page is numbered, I’ve got to put something down, or forever be left with an empty space reminding me that I didn’t. Pretty cool.

I’m not committing myself to sharing every day’s sketch, but thus far, I’ve been posting them pretty regularly on Twitter and Instagram, in case you wanna follow along. And I’m sure I’ll be rounding up my favorites once in a while and posting them here, too.

Matt and I worked together at Nickelodeon, and he was the reason this was able to happen. He mentioned me to the fine folks at BOOM!, who were kind enough to give me a shot. I’m a big Peanuts fan, and my first love in this art game has always been comics, so getting the opportunity to work on a comic book cover for a Peanuts book was a huge thrill for me. I was a little nervous going in, simply because Snoopy is such an icon, and I was pretty terrified that the folks at BOOM! and Schulz Creative Associates (who have final say on everything) would look upon my submitted work and immediately realize they made a big mistake. Luckily, they approved it with only minor changes, and so, if you’re attending ECCC, you can pick up a copy of your very own.

This was an awesome experience, and I have to say thanks so much to Matt, to Adam Staffaroni and everyone at BOOM!, and to everyone at Schulz Creative Associates for letting me fly with the Red Baron for a bit!

Due to previous commitments and some life-changing stuff, Brock and I agreed that my contribution would have to be a short one. He sent me a script for a two-page story, and after reading the description for a character named Suckface, I pulled out my sketchbook and started drawing. I probably should have read beyond the first paragraph to realize he wasn’t significant to the story, but the dude has a vacuum attachment on a mouth that is really a black hole, so yeah, I stopped reading and started sketching. I sent Brock a few concepts, he dug ‘em, and I set out to draw the story.

A few years back, when I was drawing stories for the hit man anthology series I was a part of, I drew everything separately on individual pieces of paper, and then assembled the pages digitally. It was a decent way to work, but in the end, I had nothing to show for all my efforts and hours at the drawing table (well, except the books themselves). There were no pretty original pages to display (or sell) – all I had was a stack of random drawings on loose sheets of copy paper. Back before the digital era, I used to draw everything on one page, and I wanted to use this project as a means to start doing that again. Ironically, with that goal in mind, I took to my Cintiq to start roughing out my pages.

At this point, I’m just figuring out my panel layout and what goes where, so the drawings aren’t that important. In fact, you can see that in some of the panels, I didn’t even bother drawing anything at all – I just scratched in some words. Luckily, Brock was able to make out what was happening in each panel, and after he gave me a couple of notes (I was drawing the “devil horns” gesture incorrectly, with the thumbs extended, for one), I moved on to pencilling.

As with my roughs, I do most of my pencilling digitally nowadays. I’ll be drawing my final pages traditionally, but at this stage, digital is more practical than paper for me. Knowing that my lines don’t have to be permanent kind of gives me a mental freedom from worrying about mistakes, and with that worry gone, I tend to loosen up, feel out my drawings more, and put down bolder strokes. The downside is that I often end up overworking things that ultimately print out at the size of a fingernail. If there’s a right combination of brush size, resolution, and zoom (or whatever) that’ll allow a handsome guy to clearly see what he’s drawing without zooming in too far, I have yet to find it. At any rate, this is what my final pencils look like. The first page was a bit of a chore, since backgrounds aren’t my strongest suit. If I were to draw it again, I’d probably do some things differently, but overall, I’m pretty happy with it. The second page was a lot of fun, though. It gave me plenty of opportunities to play with the characters and their expressions, which I love to do.

At this point, I print out test pages at letter size to make sure everything reads well when shrunk down for the eventual printed book (I’m shamelessly hoping there will be one), and then I print out each page at tabloid size in very light red (any color will do), on acid-free bristol board. I’ll be drawing my final art right on top of this print out.

I’ve always been a very tight penciller, and there were some areas – particularly those I zoomed in too closely on – that I’d pencilled so tightly that there really wasn’t much point to re-draw them in ink. I decided to just print those areas out in black and save myself some inking (and possibly avoid a few messy screw-ups, since I probably wouldn’t have been able to ink them as neatly). It worked well enough, and this is a “whatever works” game, but I still felt like I was cheating a little. Anyway, with the pencils printed onto the bristol board, I pull out my trusted brush pens and get to inking. This is my favorite part. I savor the anticipation, envision greatness as my pen approaches the page, and then start sweating when my lines don’t do what I want them to.

Once the inking is done, I scan everything in, remove any traces of red using Photoshop’s Hue/Saturation slider, and then punch up the levels to darken the black. From here on out, it’s just a few anxiety-filled hours of obsession over color choices, and some inevitable changes to the line art (like adding some cheesy puffs on the table in the last panel of page 1, and replacing the iPod speakers with the boom-box Gene was already carrying). Eventually, I come to a place where I can finally call it done, and I send the final files off to Brock.

Then I make a few more color tweaks and send him the real final ones.

The finished, colored pages are up on the SuperFogeys site, so head over there and read the story of When Dictator Tot Met Gene. I hope you dig it as much as I enjoyed drawing it, and a huge thank you to Brock for letting me play in his universe for a bit!

Anyway, here’s some Hulk action for ya. I drew the three green Hulks directly in Photoshop, and the grey Hulk at the bottom was done in my sketchbook, and then dropped into Photoshop for colors.

Incidentally, I think I’ve drawn the Hulk holding a flower more times than I can remember over the years. I just love the idea of this massive, destructive force stopping to gently appreciate the beauty in something so small and delicate.