Behind The Scenes

Behind The Scenes

I’m up late tonight working on colors for my Shaman’s Stone short and thought I would share a little behind the scenes look into the coloring.

The Space-Gun crew was offered a chance to pick up a dropped ball on an anthology and as long as I can get these 10 pages colored by next weekend I’m good to go for issues one.

More details on the book once I’m closer to being completed and get the scoop for myself. Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Admitting Failure

Sometimes admitting that we’ve failed, or fallen short of a planned goal, is hard. And it’s necessary. As artists we’ve all had countless pieces get scrapped in-progress, never to see the light of day. This is how we learn and grow, and eventually get better at our craft; by learning from our mistakes.

Having said that I’m none-too-happy to announce the failure of my Old Ones Kickstarter initiative. It ended about 2 weeks ago (well short of the mark with only 10% funding) and I’ve just been putting off the inevitable process of realization and growth, because it can be a painful process.

I have to admit though, it’s 100% my fault. I think the most obvious blunder I made was trying to raise too much money, for a project that was just too big. 108 pages is a lot, and 8k is a huge chunk of change to ask people to throw down on a young, relatively unknown artist. I also didn’t offer updates as often as I should have, and should have planned those out in advance. I also should have put together a video, but my stage fright and odd social behavior kept me from doing so. This time. (for an awesome Kickstarter primer check out this article by Jason Brubaker.)

So after a little brainstorming with my studio mate Jake Ekiss The Old Ones has taken on a slightly different form. It’s now a more humble 52 pages story, focusing on the horror and sci-fi aspects that originally inspired me to write it. It also won’t be printed, at least not at first. I’ll be offering it up on the web at some point, and in the meantime will be looking into digital distribution methods as well. Once I have a solid plan I may even open up another Kickstarter fundraiser.

Surprisingly the other side of my artistic life, my freelance design and illustration work, is going extremely well. I’m lining up web and print work left and right, and while it may not be glamorous or for big-name brands, it pays the bills and lets me do what I love for a living; create.

So what have the past few months taught me? Well first off comics is a cut-throat business. Not because of the people involved, just because of the sheer number of artists trying to break in, and the already established artists fighting to keep their pages coming. I’m also lucky that I have the design and interactive expertise to fall back on; otherwise I might be in real trouble.

For better or worse marketing and advertising pays and it pays wells. You sell your soul sometimes, but you get paid up front, not on the back end.

Star Trek Fan Days

Star Trek Fan Days

I’m attending my first ever Star Trek Fan Days convention October 23rd & 24th and I’ll be offering my first ever limited-run giclée print to celebrate the occasion.

Spock: Past and Present, limited edition 13×19 giclée


Spock: Past and Present will be limited to 30 prints, available exclusively at the Fan Days convention. They will be on sale for $20 each and are printed with high definition inks on 13×19 archival quality Epson photo paper.

I’ve always been a huge sci-fi fan and Star Trek: The Next Generation really had an impact on me as a kid. TOS is pretty classic, but I identified more with the slow, cerebral aspects of the TNG series.

The newest movie was a great action piece, but still a little lacking in the sci-fi department for my tastes, though Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy stole the show.

Star Trek Fan Days is October 23rd and 24th and the Plano Center. Hours are Saturday 11am-6pm & Sunday 11am-4pm.

Deadpool Sketch giveaway

Deadpool Sketch giveaway

We’ve got another winner over on twitter with my ongoing #followme4freeart giveaways. Congrats to Donald Munsell on his win. His character of choice? Deadpool.

Donald was the first (and only) twatter to respond to the contest question:  What were Deadpool’s first words, spoken in New Mutants #98?

The Answer?  “You’re Nathan, right?

Congrats again Donald.  Be sure and follow me on twitter for a chance to win your own original art.