Apr 13 2012

An AlphaBeasts Farewell

Yep, that’s right–my Monster Manuals, Fiend Folio, etc. have all been put back on the shelf… because, as of yesterday, I’ve now completed all 26 letters of the AlphaBeasts project. The project was a real blast start to finish and I’m surely going to miss my regular Friday late-night ritual of rifling through my old TSR books to select a beast to work on throughout the weekend. More than that, though, I’m going to miss seeing the amazing array of creatures that start streaming out via Twitter and Google+ in the wee hours of Monday morning.

I’m hard-pressed to narrow down a few samples of the most impressive complete alphabets from participants, but here are just a few off the top of my head: I loved this elegantly drawn and whimsical alphabet from Amalgamated Biscuit.  Project captain and tumblr-er extraordinaire Andrew Neal wound up with a really great-looking gray-toned/screen-toned alphabet. Caitlin Lehman‘s stuff is just mind-blowing. Christian Sager‘s alphabet really stood out to me as far as breadth and depth of concept goes. EC Steiner‘s work is absolutely gorgeous. Henry Eudy‘s alphabet displays both his amazing sense color and of humor. In addition to some pretty great drawings, Isaac Cates‘s blog posts for each entry were a highlight of the project. Joey Weiser turned in one of the best themed sets of the project. Jonathan Rosenbaum‘s drawings were both beautifully-drawn and often hilarious. Kelly Williams‘s combination of beautiful line-work, ink wash, and spot color was something I looked forward to every Monday. Leah Palmer Preiss produced a beautiful themed set of beasts incorporating found snippets of vintage books, magazines, and newspapers. Lupi McGinty’s watercolors were beautiful–and with her kid, AZ, thrown into the mix, they’d often turn in three or four beasts per letter. Sam Wolk’s beasts were always impressive, often showing off some amazing hatching technique.

I could go on picking out alphabets that I like for a while–and there are some pretty impressive nearly-complete ones that’ll likely get wrapped up soon, like Rich Barret’s–but it’d be easier for you to just go to the AlphaBeasts tumblr and check it out for yourself:

http://alphabeasts.tumblr.com

My Beasts:

I decided to take all of my beasts from a single source: Dungeons & Dragons. In retrospect, I think this was probably not a great idea, since for each beast I basically just wound up doing my own “rewrite” of the single published D&D image for each creature. As a whole, though, they’re not a bad-looking bunch of creatures. Here’s a full picassa gallery of them A-Z:

(Click through the image for the full gallery)

Note that there are still some good originals for sale at my web store. $12.00 cheap!

And, of course, stay tuned for AlphaBooks…. coming soon!

Apr 09 2012

Z is for Zorbo

Clearly this creature didn’t make the saving throw vs. “butt-cut.” I actually didn’t have much choice for my final AlphaBeast: there’s only one non-sentient, non-zombie (I’d also exclude zombies for being humanoid/sentient) Dungeons & Dragons “Z” creature in either Monster Manual or the Fiend Folio that has an illustration… so zorbo it was.

I’m a bit happier here with my spot black experimentation–although the true test of getting used to spotting blacks will be doing so without any sort of a mid-tone/gray in the mix. Once you get a lot of spot black going on, it conflicts visually with gray-tones since both are indicating shadows. Anyhoo… my very last AlphaBeast:

Z is for Zorbo

The original art for this is for sale here.

 

You can follow the other “Z” entries as people post them to Twitter this morning by following the #AlphaBeasts hashtag. View all previous AlphaBeasts entries at the AlphaBeasts Tumblr: http://alphabeasts.tumblr.com/. You can also find some submission guidelines there, as well as links to bestiaries and lists of creatures.

Apr 02 2012

Y is for Yuan Ti

Here’s the penultimate #AlphaBeast, the Yuan Ti. This one’s not one of my faves so far. Partially that’s because I don’t really dig the character design a whole lot, but it’s also because of my ham-handed spot blacks. Spotting blacks is something I’m really not good at (and never really do), but I’ve been working on it a bit in my sketchbook and I thought I’d try to throw some spot blacks in here. They didn’t work out really well, but hey, that’s how you learn. From the Monster Manual II…

Y is forYuan Ti

The original art for this is for sale here.

 

You can follow the other “Y” entries as people post them to Twitter this morning by following the #AlphaBeasts hashtag. View all previous AlphaBeasts entries at the AlphaBeasts Tumblr: http://alphabeasts.tumblr.com/. You can also find some submission guidelines there, as well as links to bestiaries and lists of creatures.

Mar 26 2012

X is for Xorn

From the original Monster Manual, it’s the xorn. I was expecting the “X” entries to be slim pickings–and indeed there weren’t many Dungeons and Dragons beasts to choose from–but, I was excited to see the xorn since I really like the xorn’s creature design. I was pretty happy as well with my interpretation of the xorn at the pencil stage; unfortunately, though, I started into this one way too late on Saturday night (if you catch my drift) and the inking job is the sloppiest of my AlphaBeasts entries so far. I made a valiant effort to try to save the drawing at the ink wash stage this evening. The end result ain’t too shabby, but certainly not as satisfying as the (original now-sold!) wyvern from last week.

X is for Xorn

The original art for this is for sale here.

 

You can follow the other “X” entries as people post them to Twitter this morning by following the #AlphaBeasts hashtag. View all previous AlphaBeasts entries at the AlphaBeasts Tumblr: http://alphabeasts.tumblr.com/. You can also find some submission guidelines there, as well as links to bestiaries and lists of creatures.

Mar 19 2012

Twitter Picks Page Two Of The Harveys Ballot

The Harvey Awards is easily the most difficult comics award to vote on. Mainly this is a function of its two-tiered voting process. In addition to the usual final vote where folks select their favorites among a small pool of stand-out nominees, the Harveys have an initial round of voting during which the nominees themselves are chosen–among a pool of every single thing published during the calendar year.

Even if you’re reasonably up the previous year’s reading, it can be a daunting task just to remember what came out when and what the standouts were in each category. If you’re a bit behind reading-wise, it’s a near-impossible task to come up with a list of the best books of the previous year.

So just for fun I thought I’d put out the call on Twitter–one category a day–and see what the consensus opinion was for the categories listed on page two of the Harvey ballot.

First, though, a few things:

1) I only did the second page because the categories on that page are generally the ones that deal with books from 2011 rather than series. Since I tend to read the former, those are the categories I was most interested in. If there’s a good reaction to this post, I’ll consider doing page one as well.

2) This is obviously a 100% non-random survey. The people who received my call for opinions are people who have chosen to follow me on Twitter and (presumably) have some commonality in their tastes.

3) Some categories are more robust than others depending on all kinds of “Twitter factors.” For example, there’s a ton of Manga in the “US Edition of Foreign Material” category because my inquiry about it got a retweet from an influential Manga blogger/reviewer. Even random stuff like what time of day I put out the call affected feedback.

4) I felt weird about including Oyster War in the online comic category, but several people listed it in their replies. They were probably just being nice, but they listed it so I added it.

5) Most important: Let me know your picks in the comments, via Twitter, or via G+ and I”ll add to these!

So, here it is:

Best Single Issue or Story

  • L&R New Stories 4 – (Whole issue or just the Love Bunglers story) –Los Bros. Hernandez / Fantagraphics

  • Ganges 4 – Kevin Huizenga / Fantagraphics

  • Blast Furnace Funnies – Frank Santoro / PictureBox

  • King Cat 72 – John Porcellino / self-published

  • Locke & Key: Guide to the Known Keys – Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez / IDW

  • Spotting Deer – Michael DeForge / Koyama Press

Best Anthology

  • The Unexpected / Vertigo

  • Dark Horse Presents / Dark Horse

  • Astral Talk / Domino Books

  • Study Group Magazine 1 / Study Group

  • Thickness #2 / self-published

  • Thickness #1 / self-published

  • Not My Small Diary #16 / self-published

  • Fluke 2011 / self-published

  • So Buttons #4 / self-published

Best Graphic Album (Original)

  • Petrograd – Philip Gelatt Jr. / Oni Press

  • Homeland Directive – Robert Venditti / Top Shelf

  • Unspent Love – Shannon Gerard / Conundrum Press

  • Finder: Voice – Carla Speed McNeil / Dark Horse

  • One Soul – Ray Fawkes / Oni Press

  • Infinite Kung Fu – Kagan McLeod / Top Shelf

  • Gingerbread Girl – Colleen Coover & Paul Tobin / Top Shelf

  • Congress of the Animals – Jim Woodring / Fantagraphics

  • Habibi – Craig Thompson / Pantheon

  • Troop 142 – Mike Dawson / Secret Acres

Best Graphic Album (Previously Published)

  • The Death Ray – Dan Clowes / Drawn and Quarterly

  • Hark! A Vagrant – Kate Beaton / Drawn and Quarterly

  • The Smurfs Vol 4 : The Smurfette – Peyo / Papercutz

  • Donald Duck in the Andes – Carl Barks / Fantagraphics

  • Mr. Wonderful – Dan Clowes / Pantheon

  • Big Questions – Anders Nilsen / Drawn & Quarterly

  • Casanova (vol 1 & 2) – Matt Fraction, Fabio Moon, Gabriel Ba / Marvel

  • Daytripper – Fabio Moon, Gabriel Ba / Vertigo

American Edition of Foreign Material

  • Color Engineering – Yuichi Yokoyama / PictureBox

  • The Man Who Grew His Beard – Olivier Schauwen / Fantagraphics

  • The Arctic Marauder – Jacques Tardi / Fantagraphics

  • Pinocchio – Winshluss / Last Gasp

  • A Bride’s Story – Kaoru Mori / Yen Press

  • Wandering Son (Book One) – Shimura Takako / Fantagraphics

  • No Longer Human – Usamaru Furuya (Vols 1 & 2) / Vertical

  • I’ll Give It My All… Tomorrow – Shunju Aono (Vols 3 & 4) / Viz

  • Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths – Shigeru Mizuki / Drawn & Quarterly

  • Velveteen & Mandara – Jiro Matsumoto / Vertical

  • The Drops of God – Tadashi Agi & Shu Okimoto / Vertical

Best Domestic Reprint Project

  • Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Vol. 1: Race to Death Valley – Floyd Gottfredson / Fantagraphics

  • Pogo – Vol. 1 of the Complete Syndicated Comic Strips: Through the Wild Blue Wonder – Walt Kelly / Fantagraphics

  • Prince Valiant, vol 3/vol 4 – Harold Foster / Fantagraphics

  • Tarzan: The Jesse Marsh Years Vol s 9-11 – Jesse Marsh / Dark Horse

  • Walt & Skeezix 5; Forgotten Fantasy: Sunday Comics 1900-1915 – Frank King / Drawn & Quarterly

  • Bob Powell’s Terror: The Chilling Archives of Horror Comics Volume 2 – Craig Yoe/Bob Powell / IDW

  • Captain Easy: Solider of Fortune (Vol 2) – Roy Crane/Fantagraphics

Best Biographical, Historical, or Journalistic Presentation

  • Genius, Isolated: The Life and Art of Alex Toth / IDW
  • The Comics Journal #301 / Fantagraphics
  • Caniff / IDW
  • The Ink Panthers Show /Mike Dawson

Special Award for Humor in Comics

  • Ian Boothby – Simpsons Comics, Futurama Comics

  • Michael Kupperman – The Autobiography of Mark Twain 1910-2010

  • Sergio Aragones – Sergio Aragones Funnies

  • Roger Langridge – Snarked!

Best Online Comics Work

Special Award for Excellence in Presentation/Art Direction/Production

  • Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Vol. 1: Race to Death Valley – Floyd Gottfredson / Fantagraphics

  • The Incal Classic Collection / Humanoids

  • NoBrow 6 / Nobrow Press

  • Everything We Miss / Nobrow Press

  • Nipper 1965-1966 / Drawn and Quarterly

Best Syndicated Strip or Panel

  • Cul de Sac – Richard Thompson

  • Mutts – Patrick McDonnell