Woo Hoo! Finally! I’ve been coloring digitally for a few years now, but I’ve always just taken my drawings and scanned them in to do so. I hate doing it that way, though, because it takes so much time to scan them in. Over the past few months, since I got my larger Wacom, I’ve started to do things here and there like touching up some of my lines, directly on the tablet. Plus, I’ve been doing a bit of sketching on the Wacom whenever I could (free, sketchtime is basically nonexistent with my schedule as it is these days, though).

Anyone who reads my blog will see that my first love is comic books and cartoon illustration, but many of you may not know that my “day job” is drawing caricatures. I own and operate caricature concessions where I have trained the artists, but I myself also go out and draw at parties/conventions about five nights each week, and I also get a lot of “studio commissions” from different companies and individuals to do caricatures for gifts, etc. Sometimes I get to do some fun ones that are a bit artistic, but mostly people just want a safe, cartoony drawing. I’m happy to oblige.

Anyway, last week, a big project came in that needed thirty separate caricatures, and they wanted them colored digitally and emailed to them. Well, I figured now was the time to force myself to “take the plunge”. What you see here is my first ever, COMPLETELY DIGITAL, from start to finish, drawing for a client. No paper at all. Still working on getting my lines as smooth as my “paper work”, but it’s coming along, I think….

No artist should live in a vacuum. I scour the internet everyday for artistic inspiration. Every now and then, I’m going to reccommend other artists on this blog. This guy, Jose Ageda, is one of my favorites. His stuff rocks. If you haven’t checked out his site yet, you have to! His colors, his cartooning, everything is just so perfect.

http://homepage.mac.com/agreda/iblog/

Hey, one of the many cool things about Japan was the multitude of brush pens available. I came back with probably fifteen different kinds, for a total of probably 100 pens. I can’t wait to try them all! This pic is of one of them. I found the pic on Google.

Well, we’re back! This past week was an absolute whirlwind. I don’t even know where to begin. I am severely jet lagged right now, though, so I’ll make tonight’s post quick. Here’s a pic of me and the fam in front of one of the cool temples. This one in Akasaka (sp?).

Yep, my wife finally talked me into it. We’re going to Japan this Friday for a week. Plan to check out some caricature stands that some Japanese friends of mine run, and hopefully even buy some cool art supplies we don’t get here.

The only thing that’s getting’ me down? The 14.5 hour flight, straight from Atlanta to Tokyo. Oh man…..

Just got this book in from Amazon today. Wow, I love it! It’s the best book out there on character design. Tom Bancroft, the author, started out at Disney Animation, and has worked for tons of clients over the years. I did a pinup for his comic book, Opposite Forces, a few years back, and had the pleasure of meeting him for lunch one day when he still lived here in Orlando. I’m happy to say that not only is he incredibly talented, but he’s also a really, really nice guy. Turns out we knew a lot of the same people, including my good friend, Steve Silver (another character designer, of Kim Possible fame). Tom actually mentioned this book to me back then. He’d just begun working on it.

His book is now a great addition to my ever-growing library, and I HIGHLY reccommend it to any cartoonist, whether you be a caricaturist, animator, comic strip artist, comic book artist, etc, etc. Not only is it the best character design book out there, but it, along with the Ben Caldwell Action!Cartooning books, are the best cartoon how-to books out there, period , in my opinion (don’t even get me started about how much I dislike most of the Christopher Hart books). You really owe it to yourself to purchase one. Thanks for writing it, Tom!

The next step for these abstracts caricatures was that since I sent them as vector images to the client, he could blow them up as big as he wanted. He did this, had them mounted on foamcore, and now everyone’s caricature hangs over their desk. Here’s a photo of them (the guy looking out of one of the cubicles is the client). I think they turned out cool, and they all loved them. He contacted me just last week about doing some more.

So, this job was from a client a few months back. I believe it was for a Michigan insurance agency or something like that. The client wanted to do something for he and his office mates that would make their department stand out. So, he commissioned me to do abstract caricatures of each of them.

Had a client recently who wanted some generic superheroes. This one is a variation of one I had on my site for a previous client. They liked it, so I changed the costume a bit. Superheroes are such fun to make up. I’ll try to post the others as I finish them. I even gave ’em “working names” as I’ve been drawing them. This one is “Racer 1”

Busy today. Haven’t had time to scan anything new in. Have been working on a couple of autobio comic book stories that I’m pleased with. Like I said before, I do a strip called “Funny Faces” for the NCN’s magazine, and I’m hoping to get enough of them done so I can compile them in a comic book in time for this year’s annual convention. Good thing it’s not until Fall! Still leaves me a little while.