Off to San Diego Comic Con!

Well, with less than 12 hours until my flight I suppose it'd be a good idea to do a refresher post that my brother Shagster and I'll be at San Diego Comic Con this year! We'll be tabling with the classy and fabulous folks at the "Flight" booth (#2235) where Flight volume 7 will be premiering and I'm telling you I cannot WAIT to get my sweaty little hands on this thing, it's going to be GORgeous. (Actually I don't have sweaty hands, it's okay folks, you can shake them if you want... fist bumps are cool too. Maybe some stella-ella-ola?)




This'll be our first year (hopefully of many!) attending the Comic Con, though sadly it may be the last year "Flight" has a giant booth there so I am honored to be invited to sit amongst all these graphic storytelling giants. Also, did I mention "7" is my favourite number? Just one of those things...

If you buy a copy I will of course be happy to sign/doodle in it for you (unless you don't want me to... in which case you're going to have to run away fast because I can be pretty quick on the draw, wink, wink).

My brother and I don't really have our own swag to sell, but we'll have a bunch of free mini-prints that you can grab and enjoy! We'll also have a VERY LIMITED collection of buttons on us, but they're secret and hiding so you can only get one if you ask for "the super secret buttons!" Did I just make that weird? I hope not! Here are some of the mini art prints:

... I think I used more exclamation points than letters in this post. I can't help it, I'm so excited! And nervous... AND EXCITED! Hope to see you there :)

Shrub Monkeys #120

Shrub Monkeys #120 can be read here on Shanahanigans.com

Curious and curiouser...

15% prawdy, 100% fikcji!

Oh I am such a scatterbrain sometimes! While I mentioned it in one of the Shrub Monkey comics, I never really posted about this in full detail yet. A while ago I was very kindly invited to have Shrub Monkeys featured in "Karton" a comic magazine from Poland full of some very cool material! The editor Tom was awesome enough to send me some copies, and I was (and still am!) absolutely tickled to see Shrub Monkeys translated into another language! I can't understand the write up as English is my first and only language (and even that get's called into questions sometimes, m i rite? lolz rofl) but my Polish readers assure me it's all good things! :)



EDIT: "M" has been super kind and offered to translate the article for me, so I've posted the results underneath (the writer was so very, very sweet!)

Katie Shanahan (know as KtShy) is an author of an internet comics called 'Shrub Monkeys'. She is 26 years of age and works as a animator on different tv series. She lives in Toronto with her boyfriend and room-mate, she has two siblings: brother Shagster and younger sister Hes. She documents her life in the form of short and funny comics strips, with Hes and Shagster as co-authors. On how real is this documentation – this the reader will never know, though in many cases he can have a guess because on the web-page description it says ' 15% real, 100% fiction! '. The topics of the comic is real life with huge dose of humour and imagination. The comic-makers themselves read comics, watch cartoons and anime and attend conventions, therefore there is a strong influence of a pop-culture in the strips. In the comics you can find many famous people and fictional characters. From time to time Gerard Butler helps the sisters out and on top of Toronto's sky-scrapers mutated toasts have a fight. The main characters in the comics are obviously the siblings and people from their closest neighbourhood. The leading role is 'played' by our animator, which you can't not like – she is smart, nice and very down to earth. Its not quite sure how big a resemblance there is between the fictional character and the person holding the pen, but in the comments and notes the artist is not far off her alter ego. The characters drawn by Katie are both Disney and anime type of sketching. The artist herself says that her work is somewhere in between these two poles. The main and the biggest advantage of the comics is the very rich acting of the characters. The emotion are so accurate that you dont really need any dialogue because the story tells its self on the faces of our heroes. Most of the mimics are too strong but it only adds to the humour of the situation described. Recently KtShy started a new animated series (which title she can not tell) and she's started to do her so long neglected drivings licence. Her life goes on and along with it the comics. Everything You can find in the internet under ' THE LINKS'

What's the story?

Something I keep forgetting when I'm sketching for fun is to "draw with a PURPOSE!" and to keep in the back of my mind the question "what is the STORY?!" It happened here where I just started drawing a little bit of cheesecake-pinup on a blank background and thought "man... am I just drawing another cute girl staring at the camera? NO! What is she doing? Where is she? What is she thinking?" And from there the scene evolved into this here sketch. These are basic animation (and general) drawing tips, and while sometimes we can get lazy while we're doodling, it's best to keep hammering them in!

Last couple commissions

a little mermaid

Starbuckalicious

A clear sign that I need to cut back. And by cut back I mean NEVER get anything from there again :P

A super fun commission for protowilson. These two characters are from her very cool animated short film "Frankenchicken" which you can check out on youtube right here!

The week between storyboards is when I get to take some time and finish up freelance commission work, here are a few new ones! (gahr, blogger lightens and desaturates everything like crazy)

Plus the rough sketch, becauseI don't seem to share enough progress work here... (bad blogger, bad!)