Wednesday, December 29, 2010

2010 highlights pt.2

2010 has been quite a year for me and I've enjoyed it immensely, I hope it's been good for you as well.

I'll break these three year end posts into pre-CC, Comic-Con, and post-CC. If that makes sense. It falls right in the middle of the year and I spent so much time working up towards it that it makes a natural break. Sort of, it'll conveniently make three posts at least.

With both my professional work and my personal work I feel like I was able to make a few strides that passed previous years. Here are some highlights I wanted to revisit, in pretty much chronological order.

* * *

We wrapped up last time with my Alice book, and looking towards SDCC. This past Comic-Con was the best (again) each year it manages to top itself. The personal highlight for me was Tony DiTerlizzi stopping by our booth and getting to talk with him. He had some incredibly nice things to say about my work and that made the convention for me, hands down.




Also, getting to hang out with my buddies over at Flight is always great. This year I spent a little more time there than last year and got to talk more with Jake Parker, who's one of my favorite dudes as well as my main bros. Jason Caffoe and Richard Pose. Oh my gosh it rhymed. Well, if I begin getting into mentioning specific people I'm going to miss some so it's time to stop.

Speaking of Flight. My Flight 7 story, Onere and Piccola told an original myth, the story of the earth sinking and asked who would hold it up.

FLIGHT is the Eisner nominated, Harvey nominated, graphic novel anthology created and edited by the genius Kazu Kibuishi.

I was honored again to be included in the 7th volume in the series.

In Flight 6 my story was "Walters" a rambling, wordless 40 page story. It was a fantastical retelling of the true story about the man who flew his lawn chair with weather balloons. You can see the extensive "making of" posts here.

For Flight 7 I was challenged to develop a story beyond a wordless one. After some time I settled on "Onere and Piccola" an original myth of mine. I love mythology and I'll take any chance I can to try to write something archaic and sort of grand. Truthfully the story of Onere and Piccola is just a small facet of a larger mythology of a story that I hope to be able to show you all some day. It's just one of the stories told in the world of one of my stories. If that makes sense.

Here are some of the stages of development. You can read my full post on making the story here.


As always our fire escape was an escape from ... nothing, actually it was just cool.



And as usual to wrap things up I created a super video that chronicled our time spent at SDCC. If you like, click and watch it actually on YouTube so you don't have to see the videos battling with my sidebar like that.



I also made a video detailing a few of the things I picked up from Comic-Con.



* * *

This rolls us into August 2010 where this month saw not only the return of "bit and run" for it's second volume, but the completion of my first sketchbook.



I began it in July 2008 at Comic-Con. I've planned every major thing I've done for the last two years in this book. My Flight stories, Walters, Onere and Piccola, the Grimm show, Terrible Yellow Eyes, my upcoming Alice shows. Everything.

I took some pictures of a few "unreleased" pages. You can see them here.

* * *



"bit and run" lives! I began my second volume of Nintendo themed comics. You can see the entire second set of comics here. More about them next time as they feature more in the last third of the year for me.

* * *


The event of 2010 that I think of at least once a day is losing my cat, Kitty. August 25th, Kitty was killed by four dogs. At about 2AM we heard scuffling and barking outside our kitchen door. By the time we got there they had dragged her into the street. Just four random dogs loose in our neighborhood.

Kitty was the best. She was there every time I went outside. She never left the porch, she was always there. She followed me around whenever I worked in my garden. She would literally walk me across the street like a seeing-eye-cat over to my friend's house and she'd wait there for me and walk me back.

I miss her terribly.

* * *

Last but not least, for the second part of this year end wrap up, there was the beginning stages of Indie Craft Parade, the event co-organzied by my wife, Erin. For which I animated this elephant.

Indie Craft Parade from Indie Craft Parade on Vimeo.



More about ICP, my Alice shows, bit and run v.2, Fraggles, and more next time.

1 comment:

pupu said...

hello ^^...
do u still update your other blog: photoshop experiment?