Banner Part 1

Folks, we may have a winner for "Dullest Blog Series Ever." (Okay, the cowboy joke was pretty good.) At this rate, next week's posts will be an exciting play-by-play of me cleaning up the icons on my desktop, the grand finale will be me emptying my computer's trash.

Snooze. Anyway. Here is the banner--part 1! That's right, I'm spreading the banner into a two-day post. What will pop up in that window? My guess is the word "STATION."

Side note, does anyone remember how Bill and Ted (from the Excellent Adventure) used to say, "Station!" as a slang term? In place of, say, "Radical!" or, "Righteous!" It never stuck--I think it only existed in that movie (or maybe it was the sequel.) Station! Say it, it's fun.

The most popular gnome seems to be young Scintellshine. She has a Hermione/Rapunzel thing going for her--so studious! Scintellshine will return in some form or other. Keep an eye out for her.

Science Break!

I'm not the only one re-doing my website this week. My illustrator's rep, Shannon Associates, is revamping their site too. Over the weekend I had to assemble a portfolio for the new format.

Building a portfolio is tricky business. You want to show your best stuff, but you don't want to show your hardest-to-create stuff. Because the pieces you show will, ideally, be the type of work you will get. For example, graphic novel work is HARD and doesn't pay super well. So I don't include many graphic novel/comic style pages in my portfolio. I've got the covers for Rapunzel and Jack in there, but no interior pages. Cover work pays nicely, three or four good covers can pay the same as a whole graphic novel. A cover can be done in a week or two, a graphic novel can take a year.

I love doing graphic novels, don't get me wrong, but I like to create those jobs myself.

In any case, one kind of job I NEVER get enough of is the natural science illustration. A few years back, I got to do some prehistoric amphibian scenes for National Geographic (for their children's publishing dept.) THAT was cool. I love those kind of jobs--I feel like a scientist when I do them. (I ought to get a lab coat.) I always keep this image in my portfolio:



This was a company job. Before I went full-time freelance, I worked for a company that did graphics and murals for natural history museums. This painting shows the fossilization process.

New banner tomorrow, I swear.

Final Background

Okay, I think I've got my background finally figured out. I made it brickier and the carvings less recognizable. I'll keep it for now. Tomorrow, the banner!

Best Background EVER!

On second thought, the white totems are kind of boring. This is WAAAAY better.

Have a great weekend!

Some Devils You Know

I thought I'd take a break from the thrills and chills of re-skinning my blog to post this cartoon I stumbled across. I thought I'd seen all of the Disney shorts, but I've somehow missed this one. It's funny and creepy at the same time--I love these ancient black and white shorts. Carl Stalling did the orchestration--he did practically ALL of the music in the Looney Toons shorts, I didn't know he worked for Disney at one point.

Note to the people working on The Devil You Know movie: You should do the opening credits like this.

Space Station Overhaul 2

Hmm, I like the white block background, but I think the larger patterns were distracting. Here is a variation with smaller bricks and a few new shapes. I warmed it up with a tiny it of yellow too.

I don't want the background to compete with the day's actual post. I want the background to be the background. This may still be distracting. It's fun to play with tiled artwork, though.

By the way, for those of you following the deadline drama, I had to ask for more time. I'm now 4 for 4 on graphic novels missing their original deadline. I had to ask for two more weeks, putting me back up to 30+ days.

One day I'll finish a graphic novel on time. One day.

Space Station Overhaul

Hey everybody. I'm starting a new thing today, but not a story--I'm renovating the site! If you follow this blog in a reader, you won't see what I'm talking about. So make the long trek over to the actual site.

The "Octopus Train" banner is now gone. I liked the sentiment of the Octopus Train, but let's be honest, it wasn't one of the better looking banners we've had here. The replacement banner is being worked on now, as well as a new background that looks like a tiled version of this:

...also not quite finished. Usually, when someone redoes their site, they just do it all at once-WHAM!-new site. But I think it would be fun to build the site in an analog manner, where you see the drawings of the banner and background, etc. progress as I work on them. Feel free to throw out suggestions for this theme.

And don't forget to vote yer Gnome.

Gname That Gnome #24--The Last Gnome

And here she is, the final gnome, "Misgnomer!" Brought to you by commenter Nathan.

All of your gnomes have been summoned!

S0, who was your favorite gnome of the 24? Vote in the comments. I don't know what I'll do with the winner, I can't promise a full-on Percy-esque story, but you never know. Gname your favorite gnome!

We'll fire up something new tomorrow.