Happy New Year

I did the cover for the Montreal Mirror this week, for their New Year's Eve party guide issue:



The illo was partly inspired by this photo I found while searching for reference, which gave me the idea to do the year 2010 in the spout of champagne:

Batman and Robin Inking Videos

Here's a couple of videos demonstrating my direct-to-finals approach to inking - I do my rough layout drawings digitally in Manga Studio 4, print them out in faint blue on the bristol board, and then take the plunge and go right to final drawings. It doesn't always turn out perfect (as you'll see in the first video, I make the occasional error) but it's a fun and efficient way to work, and really builds confidence.

Batman and Robin #7 First Look (Again)

Hi everyone, DC Comics has finally officially released a few pages from my upcoming Batman & Robin arc. This is the page I posted and had to pull a couple of months back, plus a couple more! Enjoy!

New Toys and Comics for November, part 1, DC and Warcraft

New Toys from November, part one, DC and WoW.

My first World of Warcraft figure, finally. I've been eying these ever since the line began, but I have finally taken the plunge. The rest of the figures are now on my want list, most with a high priority.

Tamurra, the Draenei Mage

Finally completed Giganta with the acquisition of Gentleman Ghost. And since I can't find the DCUC Hawkgirl, but bought the DC Direct Justice League of America Hawkgirl. Which I like better anyway.

November's MattyCollector.com DCUC 2 Pack Exclusive, the Color of Fear arrived, with two members of the Sinestro Corps. Also got the last wave 9 figure I needed, Mantis.

Had a good experience at a Target with an employee going a good ways out of her way to find Banshee for me, so I bought all four of the Public Enemeies figures so far released. I'm mostly trying to get the Build-A-Figure Brimstone, but who knows if we'll get Icicle and Banshee in DCUC. Also, the DVD is awesome, go get it!

I recently started following the Action Figure Blues blog, which is yet another blog that has a monthly givaway to commenters. I don't know if they just wanted me to join the forums, or if I really won the luck of the draw, but I won for October. I had my choice of the Salt Vampire from Star Trek The Original Series (by Diamond Select Toys), and Fire from Justice League International series 2 (by DC Direct). I've never actually been crazy about the aliens in Star Trek, other than Klingons and Romulans, and since that figure has been delayed and delayed and might never come out, and because I wanted Fire, I chose Fire. This of course prompted me to try harder to get the other two figures from JLI that I was interestd in, Black Canary in her 80's outfit, and Ice. And I managed to get both for $10 or $11 shipped. As you might imagine, my wife takes issues with the fleshy features of Fire's and Ice's costumes, so they'll be relegated to the back of any displays, but I'm glad to have them, who knows if or when Mattel will get around to releasing them.

Finally picked up Toyman and Supergirl from the penultimate wave of Alex Ross Justice figures. From all reports Toyman is one of the best figures DC Direct has ever done, and Supergirl's just in an odd costume. And I want to eventually acquire the entire Justice line.

I've been wanting to get Crisis on Infinite Earths Supergirl and Harbinger for a while, and I found a good deal on them, and as a bonus, got two other figures free, only one of which (Monitor) was interesting to me. Also, apparently I moved the camera while taking this picture. Despite the tripod.

DC Comics.

Got a really good deal on a Wonder Woman statue. It's not the one I really want (the Cover Girls of DC Wonder Woman statue), so I'll probably try to sell it to get money to buy the other one, though it's roughly 3 times the price.

In a couple of days I'll hopefully continue with with Marvel toys and a new line I got suckered into buying.

Edit: I just realized that every toy picture above has at least one female figure in it, and in most of them she was the focus in my comments about it.

Eurotour 2009 - iPhone Paintings

To avoid weighing myself down with too much stuff I didn't bring a sketchbook along with me on the trip, but I did try to do some quick paintings on my iPhone with the Brushes app. Here are some of the better ones. They're not terribly complicated, mostly they were quick sketches of things I had in front of me when sitting down for an extended period of time, but I like that they immediately conjure up very vivid memories of the exact time and place where I did them.

Eurotour 2009 - Sketches!

I'm back from my big European tour with my friends Karl Kerschl and Ramón Pérez! I'll post some photos from the trip shortly but for now, here are a few of the sketches I did for people at the various festivals and comic shop events:

(Yes, they are all quite similar headshots, but these were free and so I was doing them quickly)