Santa Don't Miss Or Else.

Santa Don't Miss Or Else, or SDMOE, as I like to call it, is a brand new game made just for you by Portland Studios! Just in time for Christmas!

Mark made up the idea, I made all the art for it, Mark made it into a game, and the venerable Ben Kammer wrote and performed the music.

Take the Rudolph 2 for a spin! Drop some presents into the chimneys before the time runs out. Compete for the high score!

And for goodness sakes, don't miss -- or else.

Merry Christmas from your friends at Portland Studios.

Illustration Friday : "Voices"

Wow, what a potentially creepy topic. I mean, voices, just voices? Like the disembodied sort?

Who knows.

I'm currently working hard on what is probably the largest personal project I've done so far. It's around 50 pages, told in a graphic novel format.

Back towards the end of summer I was invited to contribute to the new volume of Flight. I've been at it at nights since late September.

My story is about Larry Walters and it's a mostly fictional adaptation of his life, his childhood, travel with a weather balloon, and what happens in the sky. In a way, you could say that the way some people hear voices, Larry (in my version at least) sees things in the sky. But only when his glasses fall off.

I've begun piecing all the art together so most of them the edges aren't clean, and a few I've had to place into panels, but over all it's going very well and I'm pleased with the way it's turning out.

Below you'll find one finished page, a finished spread that comes a page or two after the first one, and the raw watercolor underpainting of the first page. Enjoy.

________________________________________

* * *

Also! I'm doing a drawing to win a drawing!
Check out the details to enter and potentially win a drawing by me here.
Details towards the bottom of that post, in bold.

vote for my wife!!!

Hey everyone! I'm very proud to tell you that my little wife is currently a finalist in a Holiday Entertaining contest. She needs votes to win.

Fortunately voting is incredibly simple. No registering, no signing up, not anything like that. All you do is leave a comment on their voting page with this :

B. Retro Christmas Favor / Place Card

* * *

That's it! It's fast, easy, and should only take a second of your time.

Click here to comment and vote please!

* * *

Here's a little deal I'll make with you -- if you vote, leave a comment here as well and I'll enter your name into a drawing to win a drawing. It'll be awesome!

Voting ends TODAY Friday, December 19, 2008 at 11:55pm PST

Thanks in advance. I know Erin would appreciate it.

On a side note, I promise to post progress from my mysterious and huge personal project I've been references in the last few posts. I'll get something up over the weekend. Hang in there!

my famous girl [UPDATE]

Erin got a hot mention on Design*Sponge which, I'm told, is the most powerful design blog on the internet. Awesome!

diy project: erin’s winter scene placecard favor


* * *

Wow, as if that's not enough, Erin's also gotten herself entered into a contest here :


They're going to be picking 10 finalists to be voted upon [I'll keep you posted on that as well!]

They at least picked her entry put up as the photo on the "we've got a lot of entries to go through" post.

The above link also contains a link to quite a few more photos of our recent Christmas party.

Check 'em out! I'm so dang proud!

hey look it's a post!

Hey folks, thanks for sticking through in the lean times. There's tons going on behind the scenes here, at work and at home so hang on a little longer if you please.

I wanted to give you a little glimpse of some of what I've been doing at work the last few days. We're working on some shorts (animations) and I've been making the model of Inar, the dragon (from one of my stories) --anyway, here's a look at the rig -- all 50 some layers of it. Each piece of underbelly armor is it's own layer and the neck is made up of about a dozen layers of rows of scales. The idea being that in AfterEffects there's ways to manipulate these layers into a form of animation. So! That's about it for now. Thanks again,

Cory

still fighting

That's right, fighting the good fight. I'm about 10 painted and finished spreads into my project, that marks about a little better than a third of the story completely done. Maybe close to half but not quite. I'm handling all this in the hours after work, so it's all late nights.

Speaking of work, I'm doing something fun between projects right now, we're making little animated shorts for Portland. Below you'll find the storyboards (sans music -- I didn't want to post the temp track I used. Just know it has rushing strings and sounds like the most beautiful music in the world) for my first piece.

You'll also find some of the sketches. Essentially, this is just a little beat of Jack and Inar, one of my stories. It has Jack (the boy) riding on Inar's (the dragon) back in the night sky. Jack stands, walks against the wind to Inar's head. We hope to have this completed soon. I just wanted to post the progress. Enjoy!

* * *

where the heck --

have I been?


I think these last few weeks have been the longest in a while where I have left my blog untouched; my thanks to you who have stopped by while the lights have been off. I am sorry. At least I did not sit on your house. And I'm not a giant.

Erin and I came down with the stomach flu over Thanksgiving and that knocked us out for a couple days. When we got back I had two deadlines to finish that week and my harddive at work died on me, practically in my hands (fortunately I had most everything important backed up) to boot, I'm in the middle of the largest personal project I've ever done.

In a few weeks I'll be able to post some about it, but until then, and to thank you for your patience, I'd like to leave you with one page. One page out of about 50.

This is just the watercolor and pencil; I haven't applied the digital process yet, color, more values, etc. Just the raw watercolor.


Thanks for waiting.