A look back at 2011...

If I had a mantra for 2011 it may have gone a little something like- "GO! GO! GO! DON'T LOOK BACK!! AAUGH!!!" While some days it seems to have all whipped by at the speed of a fast-thing, when I actually stop to pause, breath, drink some tea, nap, and look back, I'm really happy with what was accomplished in this one short year. 2011 was definitely a very productive and adventurous years in my life, and if you'll indulge me for a few minutes here are a few of the highlights... (INDULGE ME!!!)

I drew comics and illustrations for beautiful anthologies...

The Anthology Project 2,  Flight 8,  Girls Drawing Girls 4,  Womanthology

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Kept a roof over my head and food in my belly storyboarding on fun animation projects... 

Wild Kratts,  Johnny Test,  Mia and Me

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Travelling, LOTS of travelling!

Quebec, New York City, Portland, San Diego, Los Angeles, Disney Land, and San Francisco! While on the road I reunited with fabulous friends, met wonderful new ones, got engaged to my best friend Gerry, got into plenty of sibling shenanagins,  explored new cities, ate tons of tasty food and experienced a whole shebang of fun adventures! While I like travel for travel's sake, most of these trips were of the nature of "business trips." And by "business" I mean COMIC CONVENTIONS!

location: All over th' place

Comic conventions in 2011: 

Wizard World (Toronto), Mocca (New York), Stumptown (Oregon), Anime North (Toronto), TCAF (Toronto), San Diego Comic Con, Con Bravo (Ontario), APE (San Francisco)

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Built up confidence and fell in love with inking by brush 

Prior to October 2010 I'd never even picked up a brush expect for sloppy painting attempts

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Self published"Silly Kingdom."

Started and published a brand new comic called "Silly Kingdom" with my brother Shaggy.  Printing was financed through pre-sales of the book by our amazing friends from around the world (who helped us reach more than double our original IndieGogo fundraising campaign request and made us feel very loved indeed!) 

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Drawing art for some excellent philanthropic projects-

One of the greatest compliments anyone can give me is to tell me that something I drew made them smile and made their day a little bit brighter. This year I was invited to help out with a couple great charity projects- drawing fun and goofy illustrations for the power of good.

Several of my inked originals were auctioned off to charities focused on cancer research. Comic Creator's Alliance fights to end child trafficking through Prevention and Aftercare programs, and Womanthology is a charity comic book anthology with all profits being donated to Global grassroot organizations.

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"And  many more..."

Setting intentions for 2012!

As I'm still in the thick of finishing project deadlines I probably won't relax and start planning my goals for 2012 until we're well into January, but the BIGGEST focus for 2012 is to find a healthy balance between love, career, and friendships.

Aaaaaaand I also want to go on more adventures, fill my head with knowledge, and draw comics and pictures that make people smile. I want to learn to read French (so I can finally read my French comics!) and go to the Angoulême International Comics Festival (with a big collection of Silly Kingdom stories!) Try my hand at  violin, parkour, fencing, aerial arts, paint a mural, volunteer in the community, and... uh... draw more Shrub Monkey comics!

Thanks so much for reading! My very fondest wishes to you all in the new year. May 2012 be filled with laughter, love and lots-of-inspiration,

My current studio set up

(I'll tidy things up after my storyboard deadline!)

A note to our amazing IndieGogo sponsors!

Happy Holidays everyone! We hope you've all been enjoying a lovely Winter Solstice, Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa, winter/summer/what-have-you-DECEMBER-MONTH-DAY!

We've posted an update for our Silly Kingdom pre-sale donors on our IndieGogo page, but for those who missed it WE HAVE SHIPPED ALL YOUR BOOKS! Yay!

If you haven't received your packages yet (we've sent out art print and button rewards) it should be arriving any day now. The last remaining funder rewards are the commission-level ones that I (Katie) am working on piece by piece. So if you haven't written me to let me know what you'd like me to draw for you yet, please drop me a line at: sillykingdomcomic@gmail.com

Thank you all so much for your enthusiasm in helping my brother Shaggy and I get Silly Kingdom made this year! We learned a lot getting this first book out, and we couldn't have done it without the support and amazing encouragement from each and every one of you.

A very happy and inspirational New Year to you all! See you in 2012 :)

The making of... Silly Kingdom!

Now that almost everyone of our IndieGogo book orders and Christmas rush comics have been shipped out, here's a little behind the scenes look at the making of my brother Shaggy's and my latest comic project "Silly Kingdom"

Silly Kingdom BACK IN STOCK

At long last my brother Shaggy's and my comic "Silly Kingdom" is BACK IN STOCK! (December bonus: Free shipping WORLD WIDE)

We realize this is pretty last minute for Christmas gifts, but if you order by Friday Dec 16 noon EST we'll be shipping everything out by airmail that day and your books should take no more than 5 business days to arrive. With the high holiday traffic we can't 100% guarantee it'll arrive by Friday the 23rd, but bonus after-holiday gifts are fun too, right? ABSOLUTELY!

Let us know in the check-out descriptions box (or email us at sillykingdomcomic@gmail.com) if you'd like us to personalize the comic to someone special! :)

Silly Kingdom winter art print

Here's a peek at the art print that will be going out to my IndieGogo donors :) 

And BAM! Jason Caffoe has knocked it out of the park once again with his colours. 

Womanthology preview in Diamond Bookshelf

Hey nice! The comic I drew for Womanthology got a giant one page preview in "Diamond: Bookshelf." Story by Joamette Gil and the rest of the pages coloured by Mary Bellamy. Fun stuff! (nice to see an awesome Kali Fontecchio illustration too!)

Womanthology will be available in January and you can preorder it (and support your local comic shop) by giving them this order code:

Cheers gang!

Shanahanigans at the Small Press of Toronto Winter Fair.

"Shanahanigans are a foot, you say!"

This past weekend my brother Shaggy, myself and my lovely table-buddy Adriana Blake attended the Small Press of Toronto winter book fair in the University of Toronto's Hart House campus. It was a humble event of about 50 vendors and a nice sized gathering of the curious, but I think what delighted us especially was how freakin' awesome the Hart House campus is!

Table buddy Adriana marvels at the Gothic Revival architecture pre-set up.

Now, the serious and stuffy kinds of scholarly folk might cringe at the notion of Hart House being compared to a certain Wizarding school, but I was delighted to hear "Feels like I'm at Hogwarts!"at least ten times while I was there (my own utterance being one of them). Took long enough, y'dumb OWL.

Adriana peeking out from behind our merch.

My bro and I had a handful of fresh-off-the-printer copies of our new-run of "Silly Kingdom" books and were all out of them by the end. Thanks to everyone who bought a copy and kind thanks to all our generous IndieGogo patrons who swung by to pick theirs up, you guys are the best! 

Aside from selling books, checking out books, buying snacks, eating cupcakes, and running amuck on campus filming the rest of our IndieGogo "shout outs" (more on that later) my brother and I were lucky enough to have one of our pals (and notorious cupcake supplier) Chris Cater indulge us a photoshoot to celebrate our new comic. 

Fun times! I'll update with more info on adding Silly Kingdom to the online shop as soon as we pick up the remaining boxes of books this Wednesday!

Cheers gang, thanks for reading!

SPoT

Holy last minute promotion Baman! What are you guys up to tomorrow afternoon? If you're in Toronto and the answer is "nuthin" then why not swing by the Small Press of Toronto (SPoT) book fair and say "hellooooooo" to my table buddy Adriana Blake and myself. We'll have art prints, originals, sketch commissions and I'll have a small batch of SILLY KINGDOM books available!

Yes the second print run of Silly Kingdom is here at last! And while most of the books are being packaged up for IndieGogo donors or held overnight to let the binding glue dry properly, I'll have a handful of books at the table tomorrow. If you'd like to grab a copy then swing on by early! (Tables are first come first serve so I don't know where I'm sitting yet). Otherwise we'll be restocking the online shop again after the weekend so if you're looking for a last minute Xmas gift consider picking up a copy for your loved ones and frenemies.

Cheers gang!

Live model studies

(20 min ^)

 (2 min  warm ups ^)

  (2 min ^)

(15-20 min ^)

Shanahanigans at ComicCon

HA! Found the photobooth folk who were at the ComicCon party for Jeff Smith's 'BONE' posted pics of my siblings, Johane Matte and I as sample photos for the event. It was such a fantastic party in a ComicCon weekend FILLED with awesome events. This video on their page shows more photos of party attendees with the craziest ones being with Flight people (of course).

Five months later and I don't think I ever really did much of a recap from our California adventures (been so busy with Silly Kingdom, storyboards, Womanthology...) but we came back with some great stories that I'll do something with someday :)

...like this photo Tony took that looks REALLY BAD out of context... 

(Taken during the Flight booth shut down at the end of ComicCon. FLIGHT I love you!!!)

Jackie Rose

Guest art for Josh Ulrich's upcoming Jackie Rose book (which you can also read online here). I've always had a love for world-travelling-adventurer stories, bizarre ancient treasures, and scrappy clever heroines (with freckles!) That Jackie has to work crappy part time jobs to finance her own adventures was that extra slice-o-life humour that made me really dig Josh's story.

And here's the rough cintiq sketch!