My Copic'd Kids

My vacation is over! I am back in Savannah and preparing for some major summer undertakings! There's so much to do, and so much planning needed before I can start doing it. It's daunting, but also exciting. (I'll share more about the plans when everything starts to take form.)

While I had a wonderful time stomping around the country and kicking butt all through June, it is nice to be back to the grind. One perk: I HAVE ACCESS TO MY SCANNERS AGAIN! Well then, let's use 'em!

I present to you, the main four Precocious kids in Copic marker, for the first time ever.

The marker thing was a whim that has turned into a wallet-draining tornado. I loved working on grayscale, since it was nice and cost-effective, but the people wanted color and a timely coupon to Art Supply Warehouse resulted in an impulse buy of a color set. And some extra colors. And then some MORE singles to fill out my palette a bit...

Ok, so now I see the appeal. Copics are kinda swell. I have a long way to go before I become a master at them like Darc or Becca, but I really love the practice!

Without a swatch list of my own, I had to guess which colors would fit the Precocious cast best when ordering. Overall, I'm quite pleased with what I could do with my meager collection. (For the record, both Bud and Tiff's fur colors didn't scan well, so I tried to approximate them using Photoshop. They look better in person.)

If you're interested, and you don't feel like reading the info in the pic, here is what I came up with:

Bud:
Fur: Silk
Ears: Baked Clay
Hair: Light Suntan
Nose: Tea Rose
Inner ear: Pinkish White
Pants: Light Grayish Cobalt

Tiffany:
Fur: Egg Shell
Ear: Baked Clay
Hair/Smiley: Cadmium Yellow
Nose: Tea Rose
Inner ear: Pinkish White
Eyering: Yellowish Beige
Dress: Lime Green

Autumn:
Fur: Apricot
Hair: Vermilion
Inner ear: Baby Skin Pink
Dress light: Lime Green
Dress dark: Forest Green

Jacob:
Fur: Warm Grey 3
Shirt: Lipstick Red
Pants: Antwerp Blue

I can see a few colors that might be improved. I may want to play with the orange and yellow in Autumn and Tiff, and Jacob could probably work with Warm Grey 2, but I don't have that one.  Jacob's pants could probably be a lighter blue as well. I'm happy with all color choices for Bud.  Down the line, I may update the aforementioned colors, but for now I think it's all good.  (I can't afford another marker binge for a while.)

New Copper Road! 6/26/12

Haha, this was supposed to go up this morning, but I totally spaced on it. Anyway, It's here now and it comes with a bonus experience! For a different effect, try reading it and ignoring all but the first and last panels! Vote here to see it!

In other news, my lengthy vacation is nearly over. I will be heading back to Savannah later in the week and, after recovering, fun stuff will start littering the front page, the blog and my FA account again! (Heck, I may even take a peek at the DA page and upload something!) (Maybe.)

SpiderForest Comic of the Week!

This week's comic is SPINE! It's a gritty, stylistic action comic that's pretty cool. Click the link, look at the first few pages and you'll know right away if this comic's for you. It gets a bit slaughtery and languagy, so kiddos stay out!

New Copper Road! 6/19/12

I am master of buffering! Even though I've been on the road for a while, I still have Copper Roads to post! (There is gonna be so much panic when July hits and I suddenly have to start comicking again.)

Today, everyone's favorite plastic ball of evil is back, with a desperate plea. Do you dare let it down? Vote to see the new comic!

Thank you, Anthrocon!

Ask me a few years ago if I'd ever be in a pic like the one above, and I'd laugh at you. Whaddaya know.  Turns out furry cons are good times! I had a lot of fun at my first Anthrocon, and I'm already looking forward to coming back next year - and rocking it even harder!

After two conventions now, I have to say it... I really like this dealers room stuff.  Everyone yelled at me to go see panels and get wubwubwub'd to death at the raves, but my joy is in meeting fans (old, new and future), fellow artists and throwing my art around to all who want it.  I'd do that every weekend if the travel expenses and all things logical didn't make it impossible.

This con was extra special, because it was the unexpected debut of the first Precocious book! (Which is still available for pre-order by the way!)  I finally got to hold it in my hands and it was so very lovely!  The first thing I did when the dealer's room opened up was rush over to the great Bill Holbrook, who made my life by agreeing to write the foreword for the book.

Bill got the very first artist edition, and was kind enough to let us gush all over him for a bit as we took photos. It meant so much to me to have someone I've idolized so long give me support, and I hope we con together often so I can hear more and more stories from a legendary veteran!

Anthrocon was wonderfully welcoming to me.  I had lots of traffic for the first half of the con, and enough free time to go chat with some friend and favorites after that.  Sundays are always slow, so I filled the time playing with marker experiments and lots of reader meetings. (Apologies to all whose chairs were stolen for that.)

Major thanks go to Matt and Darc of Code Name: Hunter, for being my hosts and my guides through this new experience. Ash, their pet British guy, was sugary sweet and helpful. I'd have been lost without them pushing me along and introducing me to all sorts of awesome people.  (The epic dinner adventure with us, Amber Williams of DMFA and her husband gave me my first con story!) I got to have wonderful conversations with a bunch of great folks, including Jenner of Doc Rat and RedCoatCat.

So, yeah, you furries wore me down with your niceness. I want to come back! I want to play again!  And those non-furry comic cons I'm doing in the future? You have a lot of live up to now.

As I recover more, I'll be posting a lot more about Anthrocon on the sketch blog and Twitter, and you'll be able to see a lot of my AC artwork over in my FurAffinity gallery.  (When people upload my commissions, I'm favoriting them like the narcissist I am.)

SpiderForest Comic of the Week!

I'll do the write-up about my awesome Anthrocon experiences later tonight. Great to see all who made it there! For now, on to the main event!

This week's featured comic is Riven Sol! I'll let the author describe it, since her pitch is pretty darn compelling:

"Science fiction romance meets Lovecraftian horror! Something is wrong on Danforth Research Station. Orphaned children disappear from the slum-like “lowers,” while fearsome masked guards prowl the corridors. Death lurks around every corner, waiting to swallow the unwary. When a mysterious girl named Carter comes to Danforth, it’s up to a boy known only as “Silence” to teach her to survive. But Carter has secrets of her own, and the horror within may be far greater than the horror without."

Riven Sol has a nice-sized archive, with lots of content, but not so much it's daunting. It reads fast, has a cool story and the style is very unique! You can do this, people!

Anthrocon info! (I will have books!)

Today I head off to furryland to do the Anthrocon thing. I shall play with many awesome people and hopefully make enough money to keep the comic dream alive a little bit longer.

I'll be in the dealers room pretty much the whole time it's open, so you have no excuse for missing me. Look, I'm so easy to find!

I will be at tables J16/J17 with the lovely folks of RCSI Publishing. Look for the RCSI logo out front and the giant Precocious and Code Name: Hunter banners behind us!

For those lazy folks who somehow never checked out my sketch blog, here I am. Memorize my face. That is the face you should be throwing your money towards.

While I'll try to look somewhat presentable on most days, I simply cannot let the con pass without breaking out the Tiff hat for one day! (By the way, if you guys covet the caps, let me know. There's a chance of more being made if the price is right.)

So what am I offering?

-THE PRECOCIOUS BOOK! The artist edition bundle will be available for $30.
-Commissions! Sketchbook or 8.5x11" pieces, starting at $20.
-Badges! 3x4" badges, starting at $10.
-Buttons! $1.50 for one. $6 for five. $10 for all 10 designs.
-Magnets! $1.50 each. $5 for all four.
-Whatever else I feel like offering. (Custom buttons looks like a go, for example.)

(More details here.)

I hope to see a bunch of you there! Make me feel welcome!

New Copper Road! 6/12/12

First off, Anthrocon is this weekend. Come! I'll have a more detailed post on it tomorrow.

And now for what's really important: CANDY! Sometimes, It's worth (other people) dying for. Vote here to see the fun!

SpiderForest Comic of the Week

This week's featured comic is Willow's Grove! This is a silly, fun sci-fi tale about two friends who went and got themselves abducted and their journey to get themselves back home. (A journey which involves the typical stuff like ship-stealing, shape-shifting hamsters and destroying the political structure of outer space.) It's a big archive, but you might be able to jump aboard starting here. Still, starting from the beginning is never a bad move.

New Copper Road! 6/6/12

Last week, I made an Avengers-themed comic, even though I haven't seen the film. This week, let's do it again with the Hunger Games! Vote here to see it! Bonus: Fan fiction.

The book will be at Anthrocon!

In case you're in the Pittsburgh area and were on the fence about coming to see me, let me entice you! Remember that proof I showed you? Turns out it's not the only one. We only have a handful, but since they checked out the decision was made to offer them at Anthrocon.  The artist edition bundle deal will be available at the table, for those who want a sketch and/or that bundle-only button.

If you preordered, I'm sorry to say we won't allow you to pick up your book early. There just aren't enough of them available for that. We didn't plan on having actual copies of the book at Anthrocon, so consider this a special con promotion.

For those not coming to Anthrocon or the book's *actual* launch at FA: United, pre-orders are still going on.  Reserve your copy now and help us fund a full print run! The books start shipping the first week of August.

Why the quiet time?

In case you hadn't been tracking all the links I've been posting on Twitter, I sold out to the furries over the last month so I could have a usable portfolio for Anthrocon.  Since the animal stuff doesn't appeal to everyone, I kept the finals over on my FurAffinity account.  Shoulda shared shared the Precocious pieces over here, but I was lazy and I still have some hangup about reposting my art instead of creating original art for each site.

Art on this blog could be scarce for June as well.  I'll be doing commissions at Anthrocon, and probably posting some photos of them here, but that's it.  June is my vacation month.  The second half of June will have me traveling all about, so I won't be stopping to make much art. (Precocious and Copper Road will continue to update regularly, of course, as I've built a sizable buffer for both.)

Still, the news posts will be coming. Yes, the big ones will go on the main page too, but other notes will be on the blog only.

I'm excited for this summer. July should be filled with various crazy projects, August will have another con and, wow, the book's official release!  There's some wild happenings predicted for September too!  I'll be posting news of those projects here when I can confirm them - and there should be a couple of those announcements in the next two weeks.

SpiderForest Comic of the Week

This week's featured comic is Sunset Grill! Kat, the creator, provided a summary of the comic, and who am I to do it better? In her words, "It's 2426. Earth is a patchwork quilt of squabbling Domains, loosely joined under the mantle of the Empire, which fights to present a united front to technologically advanced, land-hungry alien races. None of which matters particularly to the Sunset Grill, a bar on the shady side of town in the corrupt city of Kieselburg. The comic follows the bar's staff and patrons as they meet the challenges of their imperfect world with humor, determination, and the occasional moment of grace."

You can start by checking out the current story arc, or poke around the archive page for a tale to enjoy.

Also, much love to the Sunset Grillers who came over here during my feature week. You guys liked me the most, so you rule!

New Copper Road! 6/1/12

Some might say I should probably *watch* a movie before writing jokes about it, but those people are silly. At this point, Avengers is so ubiquitous that I've absorbed it via osmosis. Vote here to see it!