Dean Rankine is groovy

Check this out! One of my favorite comics artists right now is Dean Rankine. He is the Australian creator of the insanely quirky and enjoyable Holy Cow! Christian Comics (read 'em... you're guaranteed to smile). Well, we recently did a pin-up swap, where we drew each other's characters. Above is his great rendition of Ralph, Gregori, Esmerelda, and Dimitri. Man, it's dang fun seeing someone else's take on your characters! Thanks for doing this, Dean.

Below is my version of his Grossgirl and Boogerboy. This was a lot of fun to make... trying to adapt Dean's kooky characters into my style.

Digital doodling

A couple of weeks ago, I joined the ranks of lucky artists who own a Wacom tablet (a device that lets you use a pen instead of a mouse to draw on your computer). I've been having a blast experimenting with it and trying to get a feel for how it works. Here are a few of my sketches I've done with it so far. These are all-digital, no paper or ink involved. (As always, click on an image for a bigger view).

And, of course, it's Tuesday... and that means another page of ROOK CITY!

Last Evil Ain't Easy... for now.

Here is the seventh Evil Ain't Easy strip. This will be the last one for now, as my assignment from the KC Star is over. However, I plan on making more of these. I'm probably going to submit some to other weekly newspapers and see if there is any interest in carrying them. If nothing else, we'll continue to post them on our site as another webcomic.

If you want to let us know what you think of little Dr. Nimbus and his troubles, then head to our FORUM to do so! As always, thanks for checking out our stuff!

And remember... Rook City returns from hiatus this Tuesday!

Back from the mountains

Well, Laura and I are back from our adventure in Montana. Much fun and rest was had on this trip. I learned a valuable life lesson... when riding in a convertible all day, one should wear sun screen. (My parents rented a convertible to drive through Glacier National Park one day while we were there.)
One of the best parts of the trip was finally checking out a great comics shop in Missoula, Montana... Muse Comics & Games. Man, I wish this place had been in business when I lived up there! Not only are they just a dang cool store with a great selection, but they even help local comics creators print up their mini-comics and sell them. I haven't heard of another store that does that! They also bought a few copies of Random Ink #1 from me. I was also able to find some great books there, like the very scarce Project:Superior hardcover and Matt Madden's 99 Ways to Tell a Story.
I didn't get as much artwork done as I had hoped, but oh well... that's what vacations are for. Relaxing. I did finish the next page of our jam comic we are working on and these couple of sketches you see here. That first mountain one was done on the way to Glacier Park one day. And this last one here was drawn on the flight back home. Bet you can't guess what movie we had just seen...

Holiday and stuff

Hope everyone had a good 4th of July. I went to a bbq and watched a few fireworks, but my favorite part of every 4th is at the end of the day when I sit down and read the declaration of independence by myself. It always make me want to pull out my copy of common sense then visit the local bookstore and read up on the founding fathers.

Anyway, now that I’ve bored all the non-Americans I’ll get to my point. While looking through some of my old papers I found the stash of comics we worked on when we were in junior high and High School and I have to say that they are very entertaining, though not always for the same reason they were when we made them.

Since I don't have a scanner handy I can't put up any scans so I figured that one of the top ten lists from the back of one of them would be fun.

So here it is

10. Speedy
9. Brian O’Connor king of the little people
8. Future Boy
7. Cateyes
6. Army Ants
5. The Monster Squad (including members: Oger, Hyde, Guru, Momzie, Schyler and Jo)
4. Grog
3. Blobish
2. Junkman
1 The Artillery(comprised of Crosshairs, Cannon, Buckshot, Colonel Voldank and Brewsky)

And yes those are mostly names of real characters we had created.