Silly Kingdom digital copies released to backers

Today my brother Shaggy and I sent digital copies of "Silly Kingdom" to the 274 amazing people who supported us in getting this comic made through IndieGogo.

We gave it our all and now it's time to push it out of the nest and see what it'll do!

Buttons!

Yesterday evening my bro Shaggy and I put together button packages for our IndieGogo button-level-perk-reward backers. The comic logo and 2 random characters each. Which two will you get? We'll have a handful of extras left for APE this weekend (one free button with a comic purchase) so get em while they last! (table #542) 

PonyUP!

So a couple weekends back my brother Shaggy threw a 'Ponies Marathon' where a bunch of us got together to eat cupcakes and analyze why "My Little Ponies: Friendship is Magic" is so insanely popular. Here's the resulting podcast (spoiler: we become shamelessly addicted to the show)  http://talkingtothemicromaphone.blogspot.com/2011/09/tttm-030-pony-cast.html

Silly Kingdom release date: OCTOBER 8TH!

Hey gang! The official release date for "Silly Kingdom" is Oct 8th! Running at 36 pages with b&w interior, this comic will be available to order in book form or as a digital PDF at http://sillykingdom-comic.blogspot.com/

For our IndieGogo supporters, the digital PDF of the comic is going out to you tomorrow and we'll start shipping books Oct 3rd. Check out the IndieGogo site for info regarding your perks! (click the blue 'updates' tab). http://www.indiegogo.com/Silly-Kingdom-at-San-Diego-Comic-Con

Thanks so much for helping us see this project all the way through!! :)

APE: Alternative Press Expo 2011

Hey folks! If you're heading to APE in San Francisco next weekend (Oct 1-2) my brother and I will be hanging out at table #542 with cartoonist table buddy Chloe Dalquist, come on out and say hullo! 

(Click to view bigger!)

#fanartfriday: Amulet

Had to take a quick break from storyboarding, commission work and comic organizing to wind down with some fanart. Here's a tribute piece to Kazu Kibuishi’s “Amulet.” A fantastic adventure comic!

Alice in a Tea Cup-coloured

The coloured version of this commission for my pal Nico!

Precipice of Darkness

Drawn for Allison as a gift for her friend, both fans of Penny Arcade and their RPG computer game "Precipice of Darkness". Here are the rough thumbnail sketches.

The proof is in!

I just checked out the proofs for my bro Shaggy's and my comic "Silly Kingdom". At long last we're GOIN' TO PRINT!

Spring for Zack

A digitally pencilled commission of Zack's character "Spring!"

And several rough thumbnails from earlier.

Pentel, you are swell!

The folks at Pentel are so amazingly sweet. After inviting me onto their site as a featured artist they went and sent me a goody bag of drawing tools including (a personal favourite) one of their pocket brush pens (I carry mine everywhere I go).

I'm having fun playing around with the different brushes and pens. I'm planning to do an inking demo this week as part of a feature for Womanthology, but for now here are some doodles drawn on the back of one of my Wild Kratts storyboard scripts using the brush pen and the hybrid technica.

Such a lovely gift, thanks Pentel!

Jesse and Sonali

Commissioned as a wedding gift for my friends Jesse and Sonali who tied the knot last weekend. Here the happy pair are surrounded by their wedding party of friends and favourite fictional characters!  

Margarite and Leopold finished page

While I'm wrapping up on "Silly Kingdom" here's a finished page (minus text) from a comic I drew in collaboration with writer Joamette Gil and Mary Bellamy (who coloured the rest of the comic) for the 100% all-lady comic anthology "Womanthology" which will be published this winter through IDW Publishing. Fun times!

Silly Kingdom cover FINAL

Can I get a round of applause for my friend Jason Caffoe colourist extraordinaire please? CLAP CLAP CLAP! 

And here's some closer detail (including a fly doing the backstroke hyuk hyuk!)

And with text thrown in...

With the cover done, "Silly Kingdom" is ready to go to print this week, OH MAN SO EXCITED! :D

Portfolio and site updates

Hey folks!

I've just made a couple quick changes to the site, the biggest being that I've added a page up top linking to an easy to browse portfolio collection of my work. MUCH nicer to look through than scrolling endlessly through this blog.

Secondly I've updated the site shop with some new prints and an easier to order paypal set up. I'm always open to suggestions so please let me know if things look alright or if you might have any ideas that can help my shop and the overall site be as convenient and simple to navigate as possible!

Thank you as always for visiting my site and for your lovely comments. I've been fairly quiet art wise but there are fun things on their way! Cheers!

Pentel Arts

I'm super stoked that Pentel Arts invited me to be one of their site's featured artists. I've been using their lovely refillable pocket brush for a while and really dig it. They're sending me some sample products to try out for fun and I CANNOT WAIT to get my hands on them! :D

Comic Con Travel Show 2011

Hey folks! My brother Shaggy has uploaded all 6 parts of the San Diego Comic Con segment of our travel show! Join us on the colourful, fun, weird and random journey that is SDCC. As I spent a majority of the con hanging out at the Flight booth, most of the screen time is shared between Shaggy and our little sister Heather as they wander around and she experiences SDCC for the first time.

There’s still more to come with the travel show as we did a bit of adventuring around on our own after the Convention ended. The show will conclude with our massive shout out to each and every one of our IndieGogo comic project funders! So stay tuned! 

Part one

Part two

Part three

Part four

Part five

Part six

Little Island Comics

While many eager intellectuals and young aspiring minds went back to school yesterday, my brother Shaggy and I decided to celebrate and flaunt our no-more-classes-no-more-books-freedom by popping into the comic shop for kids "Little Island Comics!" YAY!

Little Island Comics sits nestled between toy shops just south of Bloor and Bathurst on the "Honest Eds" side of the street. Like the title suggests it's a little shop, but it is PACKED wall to wall with an amazing assortment of beautiful children's books and an awesome comic collection which includes manga, graphic novels-both new and classic-of all genres, and a little section up front of large hard cover French comics (I can't read a lick of 'em but love staring at the pages.) Self described as the first kids-comic book store in North America -maybe even the world!- Little Island Comics is a sister store to The Beguiling comic shop which is just around the block.

 (Shaggy spies Flight 8, an anthology we have a story in! 

Not sure why he's making that expression...)

There's a big curtain sectioning off the back wall that Shaggy and I were hoping lead to a tunnel back into the Beguiling... maybe ending in a swirly rainbow slide into a ball pit. Talking to the friendly staff, we were told it'll be a space for comic work-shops and for guest talks and signings when book creators are in town. Toronto has a super supportive comic community, one of the reasons I love living here, and something like this excites me to no end about the future and growth of that comic culture. As a kid, sticking close to my dad while we wandered around dingy comic dungeons had it's own sense of fun and adventure, but if I had a place like THIS available back in the day? Twenty-eight year old me was excited being there, eight year old me would have melted into a hyper-glee-spasm.

(This trip's haul: It was hard only picking a few... and come on, 

it's an INDIANA JONES comic. I've had a crush on Indy since I was 10)

I wish Little Island Comics much success and good fortune. If you're in Toronto swing on by and check it out. And don't be surprised if glancing in and seeing the small space you expect to only be there a minute or two but find yourself sticking around for a good long while.

Happy reading!

Silly Kingdom Cover Progress

A work-in-progress on the “Silly Kingdom” comic front cover. Gorgeous colors by my friend Jason Caffoe (of Flight and Amulet comic fame). Still a couple tweaks left (yes dad I'm putting that fly in there!) but I'm super stoked at how amazing this is looking!

And the interior cover design. I had quite a lot of fun designing the Medieval border and messing around with look of the title. For those of my backers getting original sketches with their books they’ll be going on this page!

Orange doodle

Orange colerase pentel and pencil pocket brush pen. 

Another year older...

I was completely blown away by all the lovely b-day messages sent my way yesterday, and realizing it was impossible to reply to each and every one of them individually, drew an all encompassing thank-you-Tapir instead! Thanks for checking out my comics and drawings, here's to another trip around the sun with plenty of doodles to share! 

... and what's the significance behind the b-day Tapir? I dunno, I just like Tapirs. Some gals want a pony for their birthday, me... Tapir.