Cheshire Cat Art

Please Reblog! Running a Kickstarter campaign for my current comic, Neverender: http://bit.ly/neverender2 In the future, accelerants are powerful enough to not only lift any material off of a planet, but interstellar travel is reasonably viable. An authoritarian regime unites a spread out mankind through a mix of military control, nationalism, and entertainment.

Merrick, an earthborn punk finds himself in the middle of a complicated political game as he joins the Universal Defense League - an entertainment program about a one on one fight to the death, where astronauts must simply get one good shot in on their opponents suit to win.

The rules are simple:

Growing up the slums of an earthlike planet have given him exceptional reflexes, but can he compete in zero gravity?

From the creator of Dragon Slayer and Silence comes a 50+ page black and white comic about surviving space's grand expanse.

After several years of planning and execution, Neverender Issue One is available for pre-order from Kickstarter.

The year is 2̶͎͍̤̮͈͕̃̓͌̊̄͘X̶̢̻͔͎͍͈̽̏̃1̵̭̑̚9̸̧̙͇͕̣̅̆͌̂ͅ and due to breakthroughs in artificial accelerants, mankind has taken to the stars. At the edge of civilization, the dominant sport is a civilized sword duel to the death.

The rules are simple:

In the city of riots, Merrick, a disaffected terrestrial youth fights for his survival. If you enjoyed Dragon Slayer, Silence, or dig my art in general, you'll definitely enjoy this book. Neverender is 40+ pages of pure black and white action. The Kickstarter campaign will run for one month and ship shortly afterward. A mockup of the book as well as the rewards are below.

This is my last chance before the launch Monday (6PM, CST/Texas time) but here's the final cover for Neverender: Issue One. One of the central themes is mankind raging against the darkness of the infinite expanse of space, and I felt like the best way to do that was by representing mankind as this colorful unpredictable liquid in an otherwise solid black space. The logo is reminiscent of space training manuals, while still having it's own flare. Each issue title will be a short meaningful quote, with the first issue being "Neither Violence Nor Peace". I've spent the last month designing some really fun ancillary rewards for the Kickstarter, and I'll be posting about them, the process, and the story over time, so thanks in advance for checking out the project, backing, and or sharing. God bless the ring.

Here's the timelapse for the flower livestream. I was terrified I'd mess up the pose going into the live stream, but I kept my head above water. My vague idea going in was a girl sitting on a flower since my previous picture was katana arm guy fighting a robot, and I just went from there. I'm dumb, and know very little about flowers, so I just kind of riffed off of roses and whatever other shapes my brain deemed as 'flower-y'.

I received a request to incorporate butterflies in the image, so I pivoted and found ways to fit that idea in. I'm trying to incorporate feedback and ideas at the beginning of a picture while livestreaming before I get too settled on where I'm going, and that's been keeping me on my toes.

I decided on a yellow/pink/blue palette, then tried to jump as far from that for the flowers as I could without losing sight of the overall color composition. I switched the background up to a dark green, and really liked how that contrasted with the red, and I ultimately tried to find the middleground and incorporate both. By going dark down bottom and light up top, I got to keep the flower lines as a bright pink before switching to a dark red for the upper half of the picture.

I used a pink to purple gradient to keep the color palette in that range, but ended up toning it back and abandoning it after adjusting the colors over time. In the end, I used some gradients to focus the eye a bit, as well as some watercolor paper texture for the deep bg.

Total drawing time was six and a half hours or so.

So yeah, timelapse! The song is by Nick Zammuto, the mastermind behind the brilliant band "The Books", and the song is My Dog's Eyes. Check the Books and Zammuto out.

Print for this piece available on request, and I have some really nice Matte paper that this would look great on too, so hit me up if you need this on your wall!

Here’s how the piece I live-streamed last week turned out! I pushed myself to try to draw something new, and I think the end result is playful and colorful. I’ve been having a blast designing and improvising on these feeds based on everyone’s feedback!

I have a timelapse of the entire piece I’ll post up tomorrow. If anyone is interested in a print version of this let me know! I just got some high quality paper in that this would look incredible on.

Using A-fest's mascot, I drew an homage to Bubblegum Crisis, Akira, and Eva, set in a dystopian Shibuya in the future. I'll post how the badge came out in the comments.

Thanks Mike for commissioning me, and I'm really proud of the result! This was a super fun project!

I've been working on this piece on and off for a few months and I'm proud to have this wrapped up just in time for A-kon. Ghost in the Shell is often cited as one of animation's crowning achievements, and in studying the film for this piece I can see why. Pioneer AIC's attention to detail is incredible, and to watch the film is to watch poetry in motion. The story is tight and gripping, urgent and basic while simultaneously being heavily existential. Mamoru Oshii transposed Masamune Shirow's semi-comedical buddy cop manga into a cutting narrative about the human condition. I wanted to capture the beautiful android birth scene, while also incorporating the whodunnit cop elements in my piece. I also wanted to capture some of the digital glitches and artifacts of old stuttering displays in the 90s, so distressing this piece proved to be a lot of fun as well. Print is available in the shop! https://www.etsy.com/listing/605049266/ghost-in-the-shell-print?ref=shop_home_active_1

This is an upcoming cover for IDW's relaunch of Sonic the Hedgehog that I drew for More Fun Comics and Games' which will be available Wednesday (April 4th!). This cover represents so much to me - this is my first formally published cover with signoff from both IDW and Sega. But more importantly than that it's Sonic. I never really talk about it, but Sonic is probably one of the most integral franchises to me drawing by far. When I was a kid, my parents got me Sonic the Hedgehog Issue 3, probably because I played the Genesis game so much. The comic started out as a gag comic, but quickly evolved into more serious themes around the time the ABC cartoon came out. I loved it. I particularly loved Pat Spaziante's portrayal of Sonic, and I used to make my own full length Sonic comics and make flipbook animations using my Dad's old yellow pads. In Roswell we made a time capsule for our house and I put in Sonic #39 and Mecha Madness, because they were the two coolest issues I had. It was one of the few comics I ever followed month to month as a kid. I had a subscription-I remember checking the mail every day for like, a month when the Knuckles miniseries came out. When Tim hit me up about doing a Sonic cover, I freaked out. This was sort of a bucket list pie-in-the-sky sort of thing, and I can't believe we made it happen. These will be on sale this Wednesday for $7.99 and I'd be honored to sign copies for anyone who picks one up. And yeah, that's the Sonic 2 boss. My original concept was a retread of the European Sonic 1 Release, which is the one I had as a kid due to a shortage of normal copies, but this version is way more dynamic.

Here's the result of the Keita Amemiya marathon a week or so ago. I just imagined an astronaut hunter, and started kind of building in the wires and shapes that would make his ship. Some of these sketches might be used in a future project, some of them might just go into an artbook or something. Either way, good to stretch my imagination!

First post for 2018! Here's how this piece finished up. I wanted to experiment on drawing something in pencil on Procreate, then moving it over to Clip Studio on the PC and coloring that up to see how fills would play with 'porous' linework. Happy to say it worked pretty well.

I wanted to draw some cyberpunk elements while flexing some character design chops, and this was the result. Just kinda' fun to noodle!

Perfect Blue has been one of my top five anime films since high school, and as of yet it hasn't been unseated. Satoshi Kon plays with editing so effortlessly he head fakes the viewer into accepting what is on screen as reality before quickly pulling the rug out from under our feet to reveal that our heroine is just shooting a scene in a film, and not actually in real danger. But then she is.

I've been looking for films that are more personal to me to do some alternate posters for, and this was one that was super high on my list. I tried to tuck different versions of Mima in various spots in the background.

Poster available here, for those few Perfect Blue fans out there: https://www.etsy.com/listing/579714489/perfect-blue-print?ref=shop_home_active_1https://www.etsy.com/listing/579714489/perfect-blue-print?ref=shop_home_active_1

Work in progress. Playing with Procreate a bit more for funnies. Deep space samurai action! #samurai #dragon #procreate #manga #illustration #art

Another time lapse! I’m trying to draw random faces and styles as warm up sketches! #art #process #timelapse #illustration #pencils

More iPad Pro noodling. I’m just testing my character design chops and practicing with Procreate’d brush sets. #procreate #art #illustration #process #timelapse #desertplanet #design #ig

Here's one last sneak peak before I post the full colors. I learned a few new techniques on this one, and it took the better part of last month to finish. I'm torn on what the final product for this should be-it's setup to be as large as 24x36, but without any cons on the horizon I don't have a good feel for how many to pre-order. I can also adjust it for 18x24 and 13x19, but I wanted to make it a bit larger than my usual work.

If anyone's interested in the final version of this, let me know, because I need a headcount to help figure out how this guy will end up.

Three hours to go, and $100 away from the first stretch goal. Get in now while the gettin is good! #kickstarter #kickstartercampaign #kickstagram #comic #illustration #art #crowdfunding #finalcountdown

40 hours and $1300 left to go on the Kickstarter campaign for Silence! http://kck.st/2xCtMEA #kickstarter #comics #indiecomics #illustration #art #clipstudio