The Anthology Project: Volume II

Hi gang! I'm crazy exited to have a story in the upcoming volume of "The Anthology Project: Volume 2" along side over 20 amazing comic artists! And let me tell you, this book is going to be GORGEOUS, woo wee.

The fine folks who run the project (Joy Ang, Nick Thornborrow and Sam Bradley) have set up a kickstarter page to help build up funds for publication, with awesome thank-you-rewards of buttons, art prints, original illustrations, and of course the book itself. We've only 31 hours and $1000 away from reaching our goal of $14000 (so close!!)

Minimum pledges are only $1, so please, take a look at the short project video the gang put together and if you like what you see consider pledging to help us reach our goal and to help support a group of independent artists in getting our lovely book out there! Thank you! :)

KICKSTARTER PAGE: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joyang/the-anthology-project-vol-2-a-collection-of-comics

And here's a sneak peek at my comic :)

Fanart Friday: Drama-Con

Sandra Green from Svetlana Chmakova's "Dramacon"!!! Svetlana was one of the three master artists at our Graphic Novel residency at the ACA, and one of the most crazy-talented, inspiring, hard working, adorable and classy ladies I've ever met :3

Badass lady for a saturday night. Brush and ink.

Shrub Monkeys #122

Click link for comic!

Coffee shop sketches

Breaking in a brand new sketchbook! Hope I can keep making myself do morning coffee-shop sketches before starting my day, it's the perfect warm up.

Fanart Friday: Jonah Hex

This week’s #fanartfriday tribute is for the excellent Jimmy Palmiotti (comic writer/artist) who came to hang out and inspire-the-hell out of us at the ACA Graphic Novel residency. HE IS AWESOME!

Sneak Peak for #fanartfriday...

My rough first pass for #fanartfriday. This week's topic: Jonah Hex (comic)! Also, since I don't share my process very often, here are some designs from a scrapped comic project I was working on. I decided to take the story in a totally different direction, so you'll be seeing the muscleman (albeit nicer dressed) and the dog in my story for the upcoming Anthology Project volume 2!

Commonwealth COMBAT!!!

Okay, I've risen to my ACA pal Thi's challenge for "Healthy Competition, Part One: Australians vs. Canadians. WHO IS THE BADDEST BADDIE IN THE COMMONWEALTH?" The only way to duke this out? In my imaginary videogame, aw yeah!

Canadians: Sam Bradley, ME, Svetlana Chmakova

Australians: Pat Grant, Shahriar Shadab, Matt Taylor

Edit: Something stupid and silly I drew for my buddy Shad who had no idea what "poutine"(our national delicacy) is. Another win for team Canada!

Fanart Friday: Power Girl

A sassy Power Girl fanart for Amanda Connor! Amanda is insanely talented, super sweet, crazy funny, and came to hang out with us ACA kids (along with her fabulous comic-making partner in crime Jimmy Palmiotti) for a couple days this October, bringing along a whole stack of her awesome comic page/boards from "The Pro" as well as some other projects, and beautiful original art from other brilliant artists like Frazetta and Moebius and...*wheeze*. Okay I realize that was a big, rambling run on sentence, but man... that's just how excited I am, Amanda is great! #fanartfriday!

TSA Life Drawing

Decided to give life drawing at the TSA a try today, and I liked it! I've heard the best way to improve is to be "non-negotiable with your drawing days" so this is something I'm going to have to force myself to keep doing! I'll start off with the last drawing of the night (20 minute pose)

(one minute poses)

(three minute poses)

(five minute poses)

(ten minute pose)

(fifteen minute pose)

(20 minute pose)

A couple ACA Assignments

One of our assignments at the ACA working with Paul, was to do a direct brush study of an existing comic sequence drawn by an established artist, I chose this one by Attilio Micheluzzi.

... then we had to redraw the sequence in our own style. This was my first pass, there are tons of wonky things about it from weird handling of background-consistency and perspective and off model characters, but I feel like I learned a ton (especially with just handling a brush!) My studio mates encouraged me to do another version in my more"goofy"style, but I never got around to it (bah!)
Another assignment was to take film stills with various focus depth and interpret them into our own drawing.

I don't really feel like I quite got this one, should have added more plant life in there and worked with lights and shadows better, but it was fun to play around with. KEEP MOVING FORWARD!

Daily Doodle Topic: Flying Horse

Just something dumb n' fun to get your week started on the right foot... or rather... HOOF! Meeheeheeeee...

Let the battling begin!

"Thank you" fanart for my inspiring ACA Master Artist Paul Pope, of his character Battling Boy :) Inked with a size 000 brush. (click for full sized image)

...and again here's the goofy version... because I just can't help myself.

Down at the good ol' ACA...

So It's been a full week since I was last at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (in sunny New Smyrna Beach, Florida) part of a group of 27 artists participating in a Graphic Novel residency retreat. When friends and family ask me "So, what was the whole Florida-thing about?" my answer is usually, "Oh man... awesome. It was so awesome. I can't even tell you... whoa, yeah, I'll do a post about it later."

And here we are! And I still don't quite know how to sum the whole thing up. How do you put one of the most inspiring, rewarding and fun-filled months of your life into just a few paragraphs? BUT lucky for you (and me) one of my ACA mates Matt Taylor (gentleman and Australian) did just that on his blog which you can read here (neatly packaged and SUPER insightful): Part one and part two.

But basically, here's what went down: I went to study under master cartoonist Paul Pope, learned a lot, met amazing people, ate delicious food, swam in the Atlantic under a full moon, sang karaoke, dug deep inside my psyche, and found a clear vision for what I want to do with my life. All in all, a jolly good show!

The big glorious group of us. All talented. All inspiring. All hard working. All... incredibly good looking- whoa, way to go comics! You can see the work of these ACA comic all-stars in my links section.

Here's my core group, looking off into the distance (except for Harry who's looking RIGHT INTO YOUR SOUL!) ready to rise to the challenge and take on the future of comics. From left to right we have Harry, Shahriar, Sam, Sean, Master Artist Paul Pope, Chris, Francis, Gabe and moi!

Aaaaaaaand okay, if you wanted a little bit more than that, my brother Shaggy Shan recorded a podcast with me about my time at the ACA, where I go off on weird tangents and babble a bit and we giggle non stop, but hopefully there are some nuggets of knowledge you guys'll get from it!!!! :) TTTM episode #19: A Seester has returned.

And that's about it for now, peace out my lovelies!

~Kt

AFTERWORD:

More awesome blog posts and comic links from my ACA buddies :)

http://www.patgrantart.com/boltonblue/blog/?p=99

http://refugeereflex.blogspot.com/2010/11/look-over-there.html

Daily Doodle: Polka-dots

Feel like I must've been channeling Vera's lovely pinups with this one.

Is it ever gonna be enough...

Been listening to a lot of Metric ever since I got back from Florida, favourite songs being "Satellite Mind" and "Gold Guns Girls". This isn't necessarily an Emily Haines fanart (though if you interpret it that way that's cool!) It's sort of an inner interpretation of the kind of strong independent kick ass woman I'd like to channel more often... but I digress, I love Emily's voice!

Fanart Friday: Death-Day

A couple of us from the ACA have started a fan art friday tumblr account (in response to twitter's "follow fridays"). This week's #FF is for Sam Hiti's epic sci-fi war webcomic "Death-Day." Sam was one of Paul's awesome guests at the ACA and he came to hang out and gave us awesome painting tips. Tip to keep your brush in shape after cleaning: lick it, sounds weird but it works!

Battling Boy

A thank you doodle for Paul Pope, an amazingly talented and inspiring cartoonist (and a super nice guy) who I was lucky enough to study under and hang around with for the past month at the ACA. This is the title character from his gorgeous kick-ass graphic novel "Battling Boy" coming out some day soon from First Second publishing! Exciting!

Home again!

I'm back from sunny Florida and the glorious wonders that was the ACA Graphic Novel residency (or "comic camp" as we lovingly call it)! I had such a brilliant, inspiring time and met such wonderful, talented, amazing people... there's waaay too much to blog about, I did a small podcast for my brother Shaggy Shan about my experience, so I'll link to that when he puts it up and maybe embellish a bit more. But for now have a friendly jellyfish girl drawing!

Her name is Amy, she's based on the jellyfish that rammed head on into my stomach while swimming in the Atlantic on a full moon. Lucky for me it was all cap or I would have been screeeeewed...