Victor Monstor redesign!

I've been drawing a lot of The Horde in the last few pages of the Nightmare Pro Wrestling web comic and thought I would go ahead and post up the more recent model sheets I've done of the characters along with the original ones I did two years ago.

First up is Victor Monstor. I've been studying a lot of old Disney and Warner brothers cartoons, for my Dr. Pyewacket and Vladdy comic, and I've noticed that some of that style is creeping into my NPW pages, which I really like.  

The newer style is just so much more fun and expressive. Even the colors feel more cohesive than the old ones. However, I think the old Victor Monstor pose is hilarious and just might use it when I design the new roster images. Still no new design for Lil Fraken. I gotta get to that.

Cheers!

Adventures at STAPLE!

So my wife (Nicole), my brother, my two sisters, and myself went to Staple, the independent media expo, this past weekend.  It was exciting to see what other artists are doing and chat with them about their work.

The first artist who really caught my eye was a fellow named David DeGrand. He had a lot of great looking prints and a cool comic called "Heeby Jeeby Comix." The comic was an anthology of comics done by David and fellow artists Chris Houghton, Bob Flynn, and Dan Moynihan. The stories included great character designs, monsters, and fun situations. I picked up the comic and thinking about it now, I'm wishing I had picked up one of his prints. David was a cool guy and he even did a quick sketch for me on the end page of the comic. You can check out more of his work over at his site: http://degrandland.com

 We also ran into a friend of Nicole's named Ximena who had a table with a couple of friends. They had some great stuff and my eyes quickly moved to a mini comic they had called "Cobra Commander Comics" and I was sold on the cover alone. Even just flipping through it I knew it was Awesomely hilarious! It was about Bill a beaver, Eric a superhero(?)looking guy, and their new roommate Cobra Commander. GREAT STUFF! Best $1 ever spent and we also had to get a cute pin that Ximena had designed. You can check out their website at: http://mascotwedding.com

Moving down the aisle, we came across Chet Phillips's table and wow! Nicole and I were in awe. He had a bunch of fun stuff. We picked up a trading card set called "World War Monkey" a Portrait of Military Monkeys.  Which was just that, Portraits of Monkeys in military uniforms. We also came across a handbound book, bound by his wife, called "Wrestle Pets." Of course I HAD to get that one. Inside the book had fun drawings of cats and dogs in Lucha Libre outfits along with fun wrestling stats. Chet was really cool and you can check out more of his Amazing work at his site: http://chetart.com

We all left feeling inspired and extremely happy with our experience at Staple. Hopefully me and Nicole will be putting in an appearance of our own at a table there next year.

Later.

Vampires! No Glitter!

Dr. Pyewacket and Vladdy will eventually run into some vampires and here are their designs.

When they're not being evil, they'll look very bored. The boredom of living for centuries will play a role into how the Doctor and Vladdy run into them, should be fun. These guys won't show up till a little later though. I'm still working on the werewolf story. 

Next week I'll be posting my designs for the Frankenstein Monster!

Cheers!

The Werewolf!

Here's my first post for the monster designs of the Dr. Pyewacket and Vladdy comic. I posted on Twitter a while back that I was drawing a fat werewolf, well here he is.

The Werewolf is going to be the first monster Dr. Pyewacket and Vladdy have to deal with in a classic cartoon sorta way. Think of the early Chuck Jones Daffy Duck and Porky Pig cartoons.

His human form, down in the bottom left corner, was based on Lon Chaney jr. Unfortunately, the more of Chaney's features I tried to incorporate the more the character didn't look like he belonged in the same world as the other characters. So I tried to keep the design as simple as possible. I'm still not one-hundred percent sure about it. Nicole suggested I just design my own guy...I might end up going in that direction.

Well hope you enjoy the Werewolf, I'll be posting up some more designs up soon.

Cheers!

The Adventures of Dr. Pyewacket and Vladdy!

TA-DAA!!! Finally I'm showing some images of the "SECRET" project I've been doing on the side, while working on NPW. Introducing the adventures of DR. PYEWACKET AND VLADDY! The story will be about Dr. Pyewacket (the cat) and his little vampire protege, Vladdy who are Supernatural adventures/hunters that will be thrown into fun situations with familiar looking monsters. The design and atmosphere of the comic is inspired by the old Disney and Looney tunes cartoons, especially the spooky ones.

I also went with a very limited color palette. Recycling the same five colors where needed. Why? Well, one reason is that it'll save time, which is preferable due to this being a side project, but also to have fun and explore what I can do with a limited color palette.

Each story will be around twelve pages long and be posted, two pages at a time, weekly, on the Strange Kids Club website. At least that's the plan for now anyway. The first pages will be going up around mid-march, so stay tuned for updates.

I'll be posting up some of the Monster designs next week!

Cheers!

Strange Kids Club Anthology Mini Comic

Here's a sneak peek of the 6 page mini comic I did for my buddy Ron Scott for the Strange Kids Club Anthology. Yes, it involves Wrestling...and monsters. It was really fun exploring a new style and way of building the pages. The style is influenced by old Disney and Looney Tunes cartoons, which I began exploring for my "SECRET" project, which I will debut later this week! Keep an eye out for that...maybe both eyes. 

Any-who, The Strange Kids Club anthology should be out around mid-March and will be chock-full of great art by great artists. Check out some more AWESOME sneak peeks over at the Strange Kids Club, and tell them Jon sent ya. 

Cheers!    

New Character Designs

Things have been really busy lately, not just with work but with preparing Nightmare Pro Wrestling for the year 2011. We have a lot of things planned, a new NPW website, doing some merchandise and getting ready to jump into doing comic book conventions and similar shows.

Outside of the realm of NPW, Nicole is still working on her book, refining it and coming up with new and fun ideas for stories. You can take a look at her stuff over at her blog The Minted Mouse.

I've been working on a couple of comic book side projects that are going to be mini comics, I'll be posting things up once I have more to share.

After going through some of the older work for NPW, I want to share a comparison of the old character designs with the new ones. In a lot of ways the 1st and 2nd Issues of NPW were experiments with figuring out how to do inks, lighting, backgrounds, paneling, etc. So with the start of Issue 3, I wanted to update all the character designs to reflect more of a sense of each characters personality. I also tried to make them look more fun and interesting with design and color.

Yeesh...it's almost a little painful to look at the old designs but at least I can say I've learned a lot since starting. I'm excited to see how much more the characters will change as I continue to working on NPW and growing as an artist.