Cable Animated.

I gotta Cintiq this week. And ya know? It's pretty sweet. This is the second piece of artwork I've created on it. I won't show you the first cuz it kinda sucks, lol. But anyways, this was done incredibly quickly (roughly an hour), which is definitely one of the benefits of working digitally.

PS. Just as a side note, this has absolutely nothing to do with Wolverine and the X-Men. Not even the same style. This is nothing more than a slightly polished sketch.

Wolverine & The X-Men

Well, the cat's out the bag. This project is the reason you probably haven't seen me drawing much in the way of comic books lately. I worked on it the majority of '06 and '07 as character designer. I've worked on a few other cartoons before, like Boondocks, Hellboy, TMNT, etc. But all of those projects were only to a limited degree. This is what I consider my first cartoon since I worked on it full time for over a year. So it's pretty cool to see your designs come to life.

Coming this fall.

Ellie Saves the World.

Aight, so some people have inquired as to what the piece is in the title of this blog. This piece right here was created for PopGun #1 (available now), an anthology book published by Image Comics. This piece came about in an interesting way. I was slated to do an actual story for the book, something that I would completely write, draw and possibly color as well. This is something I've wanted to do for quite a while now. Unfortunately, life got in the way. A mix of way too much work, a bit of procrastination, mismanagement of time, a smidgen of fear, and a few other reasons led to me not getting my submission done. So I talked to the editor Mark Smith, and told him what was up, but that I still wanted to contribute something, anything. He suggested that I create a cover image for another story called Ellie Saves the World. So he sends me the in progress pages along with the story, and I thought it was ****ing awesome. Totally up my alley. I was happy just to get down with something so cool, to be honest. So I whipped this piece up pretty quickly, and hit up my man John Rauch to throw down some colors, to which he did an excellent job on such a quick turnaround. And I'm pretty happy with it. Sometimes that's how these things happen. And there you have it.

90's Week - Zealot & Grifter

As far as dynamic duos go, there aren't many that can beat Zealot and Grifter from the WildC.A.T.S. Thanx to Jim Lee for creating two of the coolest characters from the 90's. And look -- my homage to the 90s goes as far as to include smoke, rocks and no feet. That's gangster.

90's Week - Ripclaw

Next up on this list is a character near and dear to my heart, Marc Silvestri's Ripclaw (from Cyberforce). I've always thought this was such a great character design. I think he's gotten written off over the years for basically being a native american version of Wolverine, but in my mind at least he's always stood on his own two feet. I remember back in the days when Cyberforce crossed over with Jim Lee's WildC.A.T.S., and him and Warblade faced off (in hindsight, these guys had such funny names, lol), and they were just ripping each other to shreds over that chick Misery. . .man, did I geek out to that. Those were the days.

90's Week - Chapel

So, anyone that knows me well knows that I was a huge Rob Liefeld fan back in the day. His art really spoke to me. It was always full of energy, and even when it broke the rules (which admittedly, it did often), he still always made it interesting to look at, and most importantly, it was fun. That, to me, is the true essence of comics, and something I feel like a lot of current comics just lack. So, here's my homage to one of the baddest black men in comics, Chapel. The guy has gotta frickin' skull on his FACE. And guns the size of Lil' Bow Wow. Recognize.

90's Week - The Maxx

Wassup y'all! Happy New Year. I had a great week off where I had a chance to reflect, relax, sleep, eat and draw. I did all of those a great deal, which in mind is the perfect vacation. I headed back home to Boston (my hometown) and got to look through my childhood comic book collection, which I haven't really done in quite a while. It's always a kick to look through some of the stuff that shaped my childhood and provided me with the inspiration to do what I do for a living. I always read comic books as a kid, but my real love and passion for the medium didn't really develop till 91' or 92', around the time of the formation of Image Comics. That whole movement really affected me. The art was so frenetic and colorful and just so . . .new to me, and for the first time in my life it made me say "wow, this is what I want do". That said, this next set of images is sort of my homage to all those great books from the 90's that I dug.

This first one is based on Sam Kieth's The Maxx.