New things, new commissions

Hi all!

Well, things have been hopping! I'm officially art directing a new online game from Dark Skull Studios, I'm doing some work for Marvel, starting a new iPad project AND still working on World War Kaiju. Busy enough? Not really - I've got some commissions too!

Here's what I've done lately on the commission front. I'm having LOTS of fun drawing these days...

Neil Gaiman's Death:

Scott James Taylor as Starkweather (& Solomon the lizard!):

Mary Watson, née Marston (from Sherlock Holmes' "The Sign of Four"):

Need I add that I want you -- yes YOU -- to drop by my online store and order a commission of your own? :) click here!

OK, T.T.F.N - talk to you later.

-Patrick

Several items of interest

Today will be a link-heavy blog post, because there's a LOT to report. Thanks for stopping by; hopefully you'll find something to improve your lot in life, or at least give you a reason to continue slogging through this horrible world of pain for yet another day.

First, and most importantly... Starkweather: Immortal, my first hardcover graphic novel, is available - FINALLY - on Amazon.com! My largest piece of work by far, I'm really glad it's a real thing at last. I'm very proud of it, both as a professional accomplishment and as a piece of entertainment. Please check it out, and possibly even buy a copy. ;)




SDCC wrapup!

San Diego Comic-Con was great on so many levels. I got to see all the latest happenings in the world of pop culture, I met with friends both old and new, and I met a couple of my wonderful Art Directors in person for the first time (Hi Jon Schindehette and Jeremy Cranford!) along with several other interesting new potential clients. And I hyped my wife Danelle's comic book flatting business (she's been doing that for a couple of years now and has worked on a lot of really cool books - if you need a flatter/color assistant, drop her an e-mail!)  So -- Good stuff all around.

But primarily I was there to promote Starkweather, and that went just fine! Hello and a big thanks to everyone who stopped by the Archaia booth to say hi and/or buy a copy of the book. We had 100 copies air-shipped from the publisher in South Korea and sold out all of them over the weekend!

I was invited to an interesting event at the con, put on by  VentureBrosBlog.com We recorded a podcast where @spookychan, @TheSciFiBlock and I and several other cool Venture Brothers fans talked all about the show from the super-fan perspective we all have. :)  I think it ended up being very interesting - find out for yourself here:  http://bit.ly/9i1sUv

Also, I was on the Archaia "all access" panel, where the artists and writers from Archaia's creator-owned books got together to talk about our comics. If you were there you probably know it was a ton of great fun!


In other news...

Back in April of this year I was interviewed by the Electric Playground show on G4 Canada, and it's now been released to the internet!  I talk all about Starkweather and everything!



And also on the Starkweather trail, the folks at Popculturehound.com interviewed both me and D-Rod about Starkweather, and you can now read the awesome results here (mine) and here (Dave's).  They came out great, though they do call me "Jason" in one place for no apparent reason.. :D

 And finally, for those who are Ninja Mountain podcast fans! I made one of my all-to-infrequent appearances on the show this week, and with Jeremy away at GenCon I also played host to Socar Myles and Kieran Yanner:  http://goo.gl/b/Z4uP

Well, that's about it for the moment. What, that's NOT ENOUGH?  You want MORE?? Well, a) you're a sick puppy, and b) I'll have some really big news about upcoming projects soon.

As always, be sure to leave a message. I love to hear from you!

My art process!

As you may know, Starkweather: Immortal, a hardcover graphic novel from Archaia which I did the art for, is out now!! (You can order it so many places on the web, but you may want to do it on Amazon.com - CLICK HERE TO ORDER!).

As part of the bonus features, we were going to include a 4-page "how-to" feature, but unfortunately it was cut due to space. So now I'm presenting it here, because I thought it came out pretty well and some of you might enjoy seeing the process I go through to create my comics. And if you like it, or have any questions at all, leave a comment.



page 1

Page 2

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Page 4

Starkweather discount and other stuff!

For a very limited time you can pre-order the Starkweather: Immortal hardcover for OVER $11 OFF at DCBS: http://www.dcbservice.com/search.aspx?search=starkweather

Plus, we'll throw in a free exclusive print. Order quickly - I don't know how long this sale will last but it's very short.

Here's a fun preview for you - the layout of the dust jacket!


Also, I did a four-page tutorial about my Starkweather art process! If you're interested in my art techniques, you might like this:
http://patrickmcevoy.deviantart.com/gallery/#Tutorial-art-process

Starkweather character sketches

It's time for a little bit more about my process on Starkweather: Immortal, the graphic novel!

Originally, we were going to print an issue 3 and 4, but as I mentioned in my previous Starkweather post, those plans were changed so we'd just fold that all into the hardback GN collection. And for issue 3, we were starting with a scene that introduces several new characters at a mysterious meeting place.

New characters means "new character designs" of course. My partner-in-infamy Dave Rodriguez is very good about writing vague descriptions of characters and letting me design them visually pretty much as I like, so this is always a fun part of the process. I don't spend a lot of time making the pictures look 'great', per se (or even 'good'!), since they are just for me and Dave. However they do have to serve as a model for future drawings. Here are some of the new characters that are introduced in the first few pages of the former "issue 3"...


Barak


Decarte


Mr. Nyps


Persephone (She's sort of based visually on a movie star from the 1920's & '30's, Brigitte Helm).

I usually fill up a few pages with ideas before I get to this point, and then do a page like this with some front and side views and a bit of distinctive emotion or action the character might display. With that done, I am able to work going forward with a good idea of how these characters look and feel. I did a couple more pages of sketches of each before starting the final drawings, just so I was comfortable with them.

And here is where we first meet Mr. Nyps and his boss, Persephone. This is the first page of chapter 3!




As before, I'd appreciate any feedback you might have, questions, comments, etc. Thanks for stopping by.

Starkweather: Immortal!

It's finally done. It's in the can. It's completely finished.

"Will Ferrell's career" you ask? No, we wish. Rather, I speak of the Graphic Novel that I've been working on with writer Dave Rodriguez for (off and on) 2-1/2 years!

STARKWEATHER: IMMORTAL

This hardback edition from Archaia will contain 138 pages of story, four covers, a complete original prose story by Piers Anthony, and lots of contemporary fantasy fun! It compiles Starkweather: Immortal issues 0 - 2, and the unpublished issues 3 and 4 (with the fourth part coming in at 35 pages alone!)


Here's a first look at the wraparound cover for the book:



The logo, "trade dress" etc. goes on the right side, and the left side is the back cover, where Dave will no doubt write some gloriously wonderful prose to sell the book to prospective buyers. Such as you!!

We hope that the book will be published and ready for the San Diego Comic-Con in July. We were hoping to have it out in time for Wonder*Con in San Francisco (in April) but unfortunately our fine publisher Archaia didn't have a place for us on the schedule for then. So July it is. I think it will be worth the wait.

And we've already waited a long time as it is! After a good start with the zero issue (based on a story written for us by Fantasy great Piers Anthony) and then two main issues, we sort of hit some snags. Archaia Studios Press had some ownership shakeups, and took a year off from publishing, to re-emerge last year as simply "Archaia". In the meantime I personally had some ongoing money problems which greatly curtailed the time I could spend on what is basically an unpaid labor of love.

However, during that extra time Dave was continually thinking about, and improving the script. After a few plot sessions we actually ended up with a very different animal than we'd started with, and Dave re-scripted much of chapter 4 and added some pages to chapter 3... Which gave me a lot of extra work, but I think you'll find it was well worth it.

Also - of interest to those of you who have already read issue Zero (the story of Cartaphilus, immortal Roman bastard), Dave went back and extensively tweaked the script, so the version in this volume will read (I think you'll agree) MUCH better than the original. We're still using Piers Anthony's story, but now I think the dialog works better for the comics page, thanks to Dave's expert massaging.

[Quick aside - you will probably love Dave's web comic Shadowgirls, with art by Dave Reynolds. I know I do! www.shadowgirlscomic.com]

MY BIG PLAN
So right here, on this very blog, I plan to do a series of behind-the-scenes process posts. Showing sketches, drawings, render process, 3D models (I used a few for recurring sets!) and hopefully some interesting thoughts about the series in general.

As a start, here's a previously-unpublished page from the fourth chapter. No big spoilers on this page, I think (and I won't be including any word balloons anyway on these previews) but I think it's a fun one. Definitely one of my favorite pages from the chapter.





OK, more to come soon, including some steps through my work process for panels. Hope to see you here. Please leave a message if you like reading about this.

-Patrick

See you in Chicago, and other news

San Diego Comic-con was incredible! Thanks to everyone who stopped by the booth, and big special thanks to those who bought a copy of Starkweather: Immortal #1!

Writer Dave Rodriguez and I will both be at Wizard World Chicago this week, doing it all over again. This time, there's no ASP booth, but our pulse-pounding publisher has generously donated tables in Artist's Alley to the Archaia folks who are going, so we should be in a little Archaia section there. Just find the Artist's alley and look for the Starkweather banner and there you will find us with copies of Starkweather and, again, FREE ART with every copy you buy. Such a deal!

Dave will also be publicizing his new "Shadowgirls" web-comic. If you haven't been reading it you should be!!

There are a few small reviews on the web for Starkweather: Immortal #0, but this one is the longest so far, and it's favorable (as most have been) so here's a link! It's the second review down the page:
comicnews review

I'll write again when I get back from the con. Hope to see you there!

Starkweather: Immortal - new series in June

My new comic book series is called Starkweather: Immortal. Here is what you need to know about it!

The basics are these... Starkweather: Immortal is a 5-issue series published by Archaia Studios Press. "Issue #0" will come out in June, a special prequel featuring secondary characters from the series, and that based on a story by Piers Anthony, in his first made-for-comics work! This special issue will feature both a big 26-page comics story, and the full prose-version of the story, plus lots of sketches and things. It's a big book filled with cool stuff!

For those of you new to the Starkweather world, it was originally a limited series from Arcana, written and created by Dave Rodriguez, with art by Jon Bosco. A digest-sized collection of issues 1 - 5 plus a short introductory story is available from Arcana. The story centers around a young witch named Alexander Starkweather, a young man plagued with self-doubt and tormented by prophetic dreams.

Our new series will expand greatly on Starkweather's origins, and flesh out the world he lives in. You should have absolutely no problem diving into this new series without having read the old one, as we will re-introduce all the characters and concepts, and retell some of the story.

More info!
The good folks at Archaia (also known as ASP) have set up a forum for us on their boards. Stop by and chat with us about Starkweather (or anything else that comes to mind...) here - Starkweather Forum.

In Addition, Dave and I each have pages at ComicSpace, where we'll be talking about Starkweather and our other comics projects:

My ComicSpace Page

Dave's ComicSpace Page