Happy first day of Autumn, Autumn!We are entering my favorite time of year, Fall (any wonder the first Mouse Guard book takes place in that season?). It was three years ago that Julia and I adopted our dog, and since it was the first day of Autumn, we named her as such. 
We got her at a pet-adopt-a-thon at the Detroit Zoo (where my sister-in-law works). Autumn was a rescue from the west side of Michigan near Muskegon. After some research we found that she is an Anatolian Shepard. And the only breeder in MI is near there, so we wondered how she ended up at a rescue. Turns out, her bite (the way her teeth align) does not conform to the characteristics where she could be used to breed. But, their loss is our gain. She really is the best dog I have ever owned.
We got her at a pet-adopt-a-thon at the Detroit Zoo (where my sister-in-law works). Autumn was a rescue from the west side of Michigan near Muskegon. After some research we found that she is an Anatolian Shepard. And the only breeder in MI is near there, so we wondered how she ended up at a rescue. Turns out, her bite (the way her teeth align) does not conform to the characteristics where she could be used to breed. But, their loss is our gain. She really is the best dog I have ever owned.
This weekend (Sept 27th & 28th) I'll be at the Baltimore comic convention! I really enjoy this show, it's a nice size, not too big, not too small. As normal, I'll be signing, and doing doodles and I'll have free temporary tattoos. I'm also excited to have my new Convention banners dropped off to me from IMPhotographics. So if you are attending the show, stop by and see me and my new banners!
MichiganI was chatting with fellow-ASP creator A. Dave Lewis the other day about Michigan and our current state of affairs. He was asking me for a point of view from someone living and working in MI. We talked about the departure of the auto industry and how Michigan needs to move on and find other industries or revenue to welcome into the void left by the auto-evacuation (that is not to say I don't value the still producing auto jobs here, but it is unrealistic to think that the auto industry will ever boom here again like it did in the first half of the 20th century). One of the points that I always come to is that MI should be a vacation/tourism location. A. Dave was surprised by my statement and asked, "why?" 
I could easily fill up an entire blog post explaining why, but I'll instead say that I never intend to leave MI as a home because everything I'll ever want is right here. It's why I based Mouse Guard's landscape and city names on the state I consider my playground. Michigan.org has been playing some awesome ads here to encourage MI travel, but I don't know if they are playing to a wider audience, but these ads give me goose bumps and say the types of things I think we should have been saying about our state for a decade (and all narrated by Michigan native Tim Allen). Here are the links to my personal favorites so far. The last link is the Michigan.org site with even more radio and TV ads.
House of Mystery:After a convention where I met Bill Willingham face-to-face, I was offered one of the tale-within-a-tale stories in Vertigo's House of Mystery series. My story (written by Bill, artwork by me) will be in issue 7, due out on Nov. 5th. Here is a sample panel from pencils to final colors. I doubt I can say anything about the story..and by posting this I probably have already said too much.
Taun Taun:I may get a chance to do a step-by-step drawing tutorial that appears on the StarWars.com kids site. Here is the final drawing that I colored of a smelly on the outside, even smellier on the inside winter mount. I'm a pretty big Star Wars fan (there have been a few SW references in Mouse Guard so far) and I was pretty geeked to get this opportunity. I'll post when/if the tutorial gets accepted and is posted.
Fan Art:I have been hanging on to this fan art by Ryan 'invincifan' from the Comic Geek Speak forums. I found it again after reading this article on Newsarama where "Sheik Muhammad Munajid claimed the mouse is "one of Satan's soldiers" " and "warned that depictions of the creature in cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, and Disney's Mickey Mouse, had taught children that it was in fact loveable...that under Sharia (Islamic law), both household mice and their cartoon counterparts must be killed."
Saxon is a marked mouse......
Good thing my mice have weapons.
4 comments:
Congratulations on the gig for DC! That's wonderful, I can't wait to see it.
Wow, nice Taun Taun, i wander if the step by step will be for the Taun Taun itself, or some other StarWars character. I hope you get the chance anyway, i'll keep my eyes open for it.
Wow, I love your ink work on the House of Mystery...and how you manipulated the tone to make the background recede. Do you do any masking to get that effect, or just carefully avoid the foreground elements with the dodge tool? If it's a trade secret, I'll understand!
That's so awesome that you got an issue of House of Mystery! You never know what you're gonna get next with that book.
Post a Comment