Entry 155: Blast From The Past- Part 12

My fellow dudes and dudetts,

I bring you another Blast From The Past.

Last time I did one of these entries I talked about my first comic book series, "Assassins Guild," which I did back in 2001-02. I also talk about how during that time I got an internship at Wildstorm studios. That internship started in early 2003, but before I get into talking about my time at Wildstorm, I've got a bunch of random drawings I want to show you, all done bettween 2000 to 2002.

This is from the year 2000. There was time there when I was catching Pokemon on tv everyday. I got to a point where I was liking the show so much that I wanted to draw it. I did this page purely for fun. 

I did include this page in my portfolio at that following year's SanDiego Comic Con. It got some interesting reactions. Editors upon seeing this page would act like I was some kind of weirdo and that they were to cool to be into Pokemon... I'd immediately loose respect for them. They don't know. 

Also from 2000-- this was one of 2 pieces I did for Dark Horse. A few Blast From The Past entries ago I mentioned meeting Chris Warner at the Comic Con and continuing to send him my work. Well, my persistence soon payed off when he gave me my FIRST professional work. It was a big deal, even though both of the pieces were never intended for publication. They were for something he called "The Dark Horse Bible"  which, as I understand it, is just a catalogue of properties they own. So he needed a few images to go with a couple properties. 

In revisiting this piece for posting it here, I filled in the blacks and added the pixel tones and splatter.

I believe this was done in 2001. This was a pin-up I did for the comic, Decoy, from Penny Farthing Press. I actually did a bunch of pin-ups for them, one right after the other. I did 2 Decoy pieces, 2 Zendra pieces, and one Victorian piece. They were published in the comics. I took a break from doing Assassins guild to do these.

At the 2001 San Diego Comic Con I did a portfolio review with Crossgen and it went really well. Bart Sears told me I had "chops" and was really nice and encouraging. He gave me this "test" packet that included all this info about the company, a sample script, and even paper to draw the pages on. It was the most promising portfolio review I've ever had. So I drew the sample pages and sent them off to Crossgen. I really thought this was going to go somewhere. I never heard back from them. They went bankrupt soon after that and disappeared. So I didn't feel so bad about it.

There came a point in 2002 when I realized that I was a dummy. I felt like I had learned nothing in school and that it was now up to me to educate myself. I started reading a lot. I also realized that if I was going to be serious about being a comic book artist I should probably learn something about inking. So I bought a brush, a nib, a set or Rapidagraph pins, ink, and some sketchbooks. 

The piece above was an adaptation of a play by E.E. Commings from his book "I--Six Nonlectures". I wanted to draw the whole story but I got no further than this page. 

I started inking this page with a nib, but I wasn't really liking it and switched to using my rapidagraphs. 

The piece at the top of this post was my first attempt at using ink wash.

Another ink wash piece. This is referenced from the Woody Allen film Stardust Memories. 

Also from this time period are the two rapidagraph drawings I posted back in this post:  Entry 129: Mini-Blast

Here's another movie referenced piece-- from the movie Buffalo 66.

Years before Travis Charest did his Space Girl I did this... I say that as if calling a character "Space Girl" is so creative and original.

Here are some more pieces from this time period.

That last one is a re-visit to a character I've talked about before in these "Blast" entries, back in entry 5.

I'll leave you with this weird face, I found when I was looking through all this old stuff.

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