Random Monday

The last few weeks have here in the studio have been very busy, yet sort of have a random, slow end of the summer gate to them. The days have the steady gate of a work horse in the studio, between working on Brave and the Bold, doing upwards of 30 character designs a week, there is now the mix of comic jobs like the Secret Saturdays and now Vampirella. It appears that I might end up inking my Secret Sat job because Jay Stephens can, due to some recent health issues.

It also seems that summer goes faster after the 4th of July that it does before, or at least to me. This is also the first summer where I taught CE classes during the break, so in a lot of ways I had no summer break this year. In a month from today I'll be back teaching and back in school at PAFA, already the Halloween candy is invading the isles of the local supermarkets and has been for over a week it seems.

I'll have a few weeks after my classes all end where I will finally have a little vacation and might spend a few days in Michigan with my parents and maybe in NYC to see some museums. I saw Dark Knight and Hellboy, I enjoyed both, but I was not blown over by either of them. I thought both were too long and would have been better if they had 20+ minutes cut and had way better staging during the fights/action sequences, the hallmark of superhero films.

It seems the Brave and the Bold preview has gone over well and was well received at the SDCC where it premiered. I wish I could show a lot of what I am working on, but I can't--so you'll all have to wait till next year when it comes out. Any week now the Secret Saturdays will be premiering on Cartoon Network and so far I've caught one episode on the new season of the Venture Brothers. I missed most of last season and noticed they have changed Brock's model a bit and the have a bigger budget as the show looks even better.

I haven't been buying hardly any comics at all, but I did enjoy the art on the Marvel Sky Doll reprint and the Punisher book by Gorlon Parlov, Scalped and the Johna hex comic with the awesome art by Jordi Bernet. But the best comic so far I've read this year, or even longer for that matter is Three Shadows by Cyril Pedrosa and published by First Second. Great art, good story--great storytelling and such a handsome looking book! It's French of course, they still seem to do the best comics to me, or the ones I find that overall use the medium the best. Pedrosa is a former animator, for Disney, and that is very obvious from the great staging, posing and acting all of his characters do. He also employs an awesome dry-brush technique. I can't recommend it enough.

You can also see what I am listening to on my last FM feed to the right. Most mornings I listen to WNYC up until Fresh Air with Terry GRoss in the afternoons, then it's usually Itunes the rest of the day, switching between stations like Fistful of Soundtracks, Radio Deliro, etc.

Well, I suppose that's enough randomness for one post, I'll leave you all with a page from the Vampirella comics I'm inking over my great buddy John Heebink, which will be out for Halloween.