Oonaka Meat Baron

A character from a Prophet story I'm working on - a vice-ambassador of the Flesher's Union (or just one of the 'Meat Barons' in common parlance)
More soon(ish)!

Comix and Stories!

Later this month, I'll be heading over to Vancouver for the ever-excellent Comix and Stories, the one convention I've been (fairly) regularly attending for the past four or five years. Swing on by if you're in the area!


Also, if you're on the West Coast of Canada, you might see an illustration I recently did for Wildplay Element Parks, a cool company that runs a bunch of big crazy adventure parks full of zip-lines and tree-borne obstacle courses. Wild stuff indeed! Check out their site here: http://www.wildplay.com/letsplay

Prophet #32

It's months away, but the cover you see here is for a Prophet issue I'm taking on myself - full writing, drawing and coloring duties. Pictured here - an Earth-Empire scout watches the Fifth Army of the Crystal King decamp somewhere on the Deccan Plateau.

The Prophet Trade Soon Arriveth

 

And when it does, it's cover shall be THUS. In stores this August!

Designing Prophet

Over the past week or so, I went over to Vancouver to have a Prophet story-powwow with Brandon Graham (to figure out the issues I'll be tackling for print next year) and figure out the cover for the first trade paperback. In doing so, it made me think back to the first issues of Prophet, drawn last summer...

The first three issues of prophet were a real blast to work on. It took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to make those first three issues last summer, spitballing the story with Brandon and seeing what we could build off of that initial premise (only with a lot more conan thrown in).
The actual making of the comics themselves, with the amazing help of Richard Ballermann, the colorist (and an AMAZING designer and illustrator outside of comics), was tough but good going.

Below I've included a handful of the initial sketches that survived from that summer of development.

When Brandon first approached me about working on the title, this was the first idea I sent back his way - John Prophet as a badass adventurer more in the vein of Carson of Venus or John Carpenter, a former marine or something of the sort.

 

These sketches were developed off of the sketches brandon sent in response - less vietnam vet and more space-ie. My main idea was to give him the kind of jumpsuit you'd see in the cockpit of a seventies sci-fi craft (like an x-wing, perhaps?) Also, by this time, the story for the first issue (or, the pile of ideas that became issue 21) was starting to crystalize a bit - thus the mold-people in the corner there.  


 

Here: The first "canon" drawing of John Prophet. It was a sort of 'proof-of-concept' piece which ended up being as a cover for the first issue when it was re-printed.
 
Here: Drawing the various termite-like castes of the mold people. 
   


This fella is a weird alien design that I've chopped up and re-used a few times - the cuttlehead. There's a few lurking in the background of the alternate #21 cover I just showed.    
 

These are a couple of those critters, re-jigged derivations of the five-leg bauplan. One of which tries to eat Prophet in the first issue...


Here: In response to a sketch from brandon outlining the caravan, this is the design that would end up going to print. If you've read the issue, you'd know - it's a caravan powered on poop.  


 

Here: John Prophet's dolmantle acting as a breather system, as well as the Qid-pids (known as poop-shovelors all while the issue was being made) and the pilgrims of the caravan. 



As an added bonus, Studygroup recently put up a story of mine from a couple years back, where a handful of the aliens that show up in Prophet made their first appearance (there are furry mold-men and cuttleheads, along with a Kzin or two hidden in there).

Take a look!

BAR FIGHT!!!!!!

A comic of mine from ancient times (I mean, from about two years ago) is awake and moving again over at STUDY GROUP! Take a read if you haven't already!

Blood Group

Nine pages from a russo-cyberpunk story I was working on from two years ago. These pages came about as a school project, but the style and process of making them informed a lot of my stuff since. I'm currently working on a project (that I can't talk about) with a similar visual aesthetic, and since I can't show off any of it, I figured it was about time to let out the pages I'd been sitting on for the past two years.

Enjoy!
(And, native Russian-speakers - forgive the errors!)

Jan's Severed Head

A bust of the main character from my comic "Jan's Atomic Heart". The drawing itself is from 2009, in a pencil rendering of the type I don't have the patience for anymore.

I've been a bit quiet here since my graduation last month, but soon I'll be putting more stuff up!

After the Oil-Sands

Well, after four long years in Calgary, it's time for me to bid the province adieu, at lease for a while.

But in the memory of all the great times me and Alberta had together, I put together this project - a series of illustrations exploring what the province might look like after the tar sands are all wrung out and the local government and economy collapse. I was greatly inspired by the early years of the post-soviet countries, where pre-existing criminal groups (some already in positions of power, some not) moved in to fill the void left by the collapsed governments, presiding over the new post-currency barter economies. With the overall long-running trend of rural flight continuing throughout the Great Plains (both in the US and Canada) and the ever-beckoning concept of turning the uninhabited expanses of the region into a "Buffalo Commons" (turning non-productive former farmland into native grassland complete with buffalo and wildlife) seeming more and more appealing, I'd like to think that the world I'm about to show you isn't that outlandish. 

In this scenario, we enter the scene right as a new "authority" - a nomadic criminal group, fresh from smuggling some goods and guns north through the newly-porous borderlands of the Buffalo Commons - arrive in Southern Alberta, ready to build an empire.  After all, there's a whole country of free-range ranchers and corrupt corporate farming operations that'll need "protection", and neither biker gangs nor the RCMP will cut it anymore.

Pictured: Two of the Brothers Shaw eliminate Hank Wright, a notorious One Percenter of the "Serpents" Motorcycle Club.  

 Pictured: The long arm of the law finds the Shaws at their camp.
 

Pictured: But the Shaws are quick to slap it away.

Pictured: The new Status Quo. 


Of course, this isn't the first material I've produced on the subject of a lawless future west.
Enjoy some short comics HERE and some illustrations HERE and HERE.

The Crashlanders of Delta

Last year, I did a project set in a far-off human colony called "Delta". You can see all the illustrations HERE, but the basic premise is this:

Delta is a human research settlement on a low-gravity world, inhabited not only by human colonists, but two other non-human sentient species. The native species are the radially symmetrical giants - called the "Amphorans" or "squids" by the humans. A race of hunter-gatherers and foragers, the amphorans are largely indifferent to the new inhabitants of their world.

The last species living alongside the humans and the amphorans are the Crashlanders. Known among themselves as the "Kal-Tuhn", the crashlanders are refugees - survivors from the losing side of a massive civil war. Stranded in a sprawling settlement near Delta, the only way the crashlanders can survive is through the humans. Unlike the Amphorans, who can both metabolise the proteins of native wildlife and fully exploit them based on generations of knowledge, the crashlanders are tied to the simpler and more digestible foodstuffs of earth, giving them one option: to work for the humans for their 'bread and butter', so to speak. Acting as everything from pack animals to construction workers, the crashlanders find themselves subservient to representatives of this young, arrogant race. And it chafes them a bit.

The following are a set of characters - the proto-typical seeds of an all-ages sci-fi story set in this world.



The Crashlander Matriarch and the General Administrator The Pilot The Ancient Chief
The Kid

Prophet #28 Cover

Some of the process sketches for the cover of an upcoming issue of prophet - made in the image of the very first prophet issue circa 1993.

A Murder of Crows

Here's a piece I recently did for the talented Alex Hernandez's latest story, "A Murder of Crows". It's a solid short sci-fi piece that I would highly recommend.

You can read the story right here.