So, I’ve been a little quiet this past month and a bit.

A lot has been going on, though most of it I haven’t been able to talk about. Some of it I still can’t talk about, but I’ll try to give a quick overview of the month.

To start with, on the Monday following wrapping up The Mighty Motor-Sapiens, I was contacted by an editor at Marvel about doing some sample sketches to try out for a potential job. It took me a few days to research the job and do the sketches and get them in.

Then I came down with the flu.

That kind of knocked me on my ass for two weeks, and I was a little distracted in anticipation of finding out about the Marvel job among a few other things I still can’t talk about. I still hadn’t got back up to full speed before my Significant Other announced she wanted to go on a last minute beach vacation to get away from the deluge of snow we’ve had this year. I spent a couple days while recovering from the flu, up on the roof shovelling off the 5 feet of accumulated snow, so I wasn’t too hard to convince into going down south for a week.

So, We’ve been back for two days now, and I’m recovering from a little stomach bug I picked up in Mexico. I found out the day before we left that I didn’t get the Marvel gig as they decided to go with one of the other artists they were considering for the job (more on that in a later post). But, It looks like I should be able to announce the show I’ll be doing storyboards on soon, as I’m scheduled to start on April 28th.

In the mean time, I’ll be finally finishing up my story for the Tori Amos anthology for Image this week and hopefully getting caught up on Wahoo Morris the following two weeks.

March was supposed to be the month I crammed on Wahoo Morris, getting caught up and several weeks ahead. Sigh… the besy laid plans and all that. Hopefully I can at least get caught up before the deluge of work starts again.

More later!

This is a piece I drew as a potential cover for Wahoo Morris, back before I decided to stop publishing singles and go with a direct to trade paperback publishing model.

I was a little frustrated with a Work For Hire project I was working on, and got some bad news about another job I was waiting on, so i decided to to sit down and ink this to clear my head. It took about 2 hours in one sitting.

I might end up using it as spot art in the next Wahoo Morris book.

That set of fill-in comics I did for Microsoft way back in January? Well, they finally ran last week so I guess it’s okay to post them now, with a link back to the main site.

It’s interesting scrolling through the archives. The art style changes every week, and sometimes multiple times during the week. I’ve been reading a lot of the comments and most of the complaints are about the characters look changing.

When I did the three day’s worth of strips, there was almost no reference material for any of the characters and I imagine that was the same for most of the art teams as I believe they tried to get several weeks worth of buffer by using a number of artists and studios simultaneously. I was given the first 7 days of pencils, beautifully drawn by Rich Burchett, and that was it. After I had drawn my three days I was then given a character sketch each for the other two characters. I tried to stick as close as I could to the look he initiated. How successful I was is up for debate.

All things considered I think the strips turned out nice.

I finished up the final page of the final week of The Mighty Motor-Sapiens about half an hour ago.

I must say I’m a little sad to say good bye to the characters. I’ve been working on them now for well over 6 months, and the past 9 weeks pencilling them as well has been one of the most fun gigs of my career! It’s going to be weird going to work next week and not having Gigs and the crew to draw.

My thanks go out to Mark Wheatley for the opportunity, as well as the whole team including co-creators Bob Tinell and Daniel Krall (along with Mark), scripter MJ Butler, colourist Jerry Carr, and interim penciller Matt Plogg. Hopefully I haven’t forgotten anyone!

I am working on the pencils to the Mighty Motor-Sapiens week 28 right now – the final week! The weekend and next week will be dedicated to my story for the Tori Amos anthology from Image Comics. After that, unless something else comes up, I have a few weeks free until I start storyboarding in mid April for probably the rest of the year. I’m going to do my best to get caught up on Wahoo Morris in that time!

Anyhoo, here’s the roughs for week 27 of Mighty Motor-Sapiens for your viewing pleasure!