WonderCon 2008

This was my first con of the year and it was one of the best conventions I have ever attended. This was in large part due to the fact that I got to share a table with two other ASP creators: Marvin Mann and Patrick McEvoy. Apart from being way talented, these two are the nicest guys and were a fun bunch to hang out with.

It was also a blast to met some folks who read Robotika and to sell the book to a few new potential readers. In fact I sold out of the hardcover collection of the first mini-series...wow!

I spent most of the time at the table, which kept me from walking around and spending money (good), but also limited my ability to pick up new art (bad). However, I did manage to re-introduce myself to Alex Nino and again express my appreciation for his past and current work. I was very excited to hear that he will have a new art book out for San Diego, and a new illustrated Graphic Novel in March. Also by accident (and kind of rudely) I introduced myself to Timothy Green II whose work I have followed from Aeon Flux (Dark Horse) to Starlord (Marvel). He was great to talk to and we chatted about old school illustrators and different rendering techniques. Timothy showed me a few of the pages from his upcoming Image project "Robota", based on a Doug Chiang art book. The pages look absolutely beautiful, and it was great to see someone else draw robots other than myself!

Richard Becker (the artist on anything and everything that has to do with pirates) and Joshua Dysart (the talented writer of many excellent books like: Violent Messiahs, Swamp Thing, 1946), as well as my old friends whom I met at signings around the area, stopped by and were super supportive of my current efforts. I want to thank everyone who took a few minutes to chat and encourage me. Thank you!

Here are a few images from the convention:

Marvin and Patrick on Friday before the start of the show.

"Robotika" in full force!

Working...

Working harder...

Marv doing a sketch for one of the fans.

This is Patrick using the time to pencil one of the panels from the upcoming Starkweather issues.

A late dinner with Ryan, Nick, and Chris.

Issue #3 is done!

I am now done with issue #3 and I feel it is the best art I have ever done. Here is the inside front cover:


And here are a few other pages:

Robotika #2 Available for Pre-Order

Issue #2 of "Robotika: For A Few Rubles More" is now available for pre-order through Diamond Previews. Order Code: DEC07 3393

So now, all of you who did not order #1 and felt guilty about it, have a second chance to make good :)

Issue #3...moving along

Robotika #1 Pre-Reviews

I have sent out a number of copies of Robotika#1 PDF for review purposes and there has been three reviews so far...very positive reviews :)

Broken Frontier

Jazma Online

Comics-And-More

Robotika #3, Page 13, Panel 5--Romper Stomper

I am getting into the whole "drawing fight scenes" thing.

Color Preview Pages

Colored and lettered pages from the first issue are just up on Newsarama. I am hoping that will help raise the awareness about the book.

Newsarama

Leif turned me on to "The Ultimates" and I am enjoying it a lot...I am spending more time reading instead of drawing.

Issue #3...my first 2 page splash!

Working on Robotika continues to broaden my horizons. Here is my attempt at a 2 page splash...I hope it will print alright.

Robotika #1 "For A Few Rubles More"

Robotika #1 is listed in Previews Magazine for pre-order. It is featured on page 226 along with other great titles from Archaia Studios Press.

The pre-order # is OCT07 3263 and I hope you will take a chance on ordering the book.

A new review

I just got an e-mail about a review that was done in current Rain Taxi journal:

9.25.07 – Robotika reviewed in Rain Taxi.
This quarterly review journal said in its Spring 2007 issue, “Like the organic machine technology of its future world, Robotika fuses disparate elements into a quirky, but surprisingly catchy concoction…. Sheikman’s characters face their world with an energy that mirrors the eye-catching layouts that depict them, giving the comic its engaging personality.”

I am very much looking forward to hearing what sort of responce there will be to the second series in December!

the REAL job

When I am not drawing (or hanging out with my family, or working on the house, or...) I work building up test stands. Here is my current project, a UH-60 Blackhawk rotor.

Robotika X

Since San Diego I have been focusing on pin-ups, covers, and illustrations. Here is the latest Niko idea.

Archaia Panel at San Diego Comic Con

There are two short reports of the the panel that I attended at San Diego.

The Pulse

Post San Diego

I saw lots of art at the San Diego Con and one of the realizations was that I might have been limiting myself to only working in ink for a long time. I am going to attempt more pencil/marker sort of projects and see if I can learn something.

San Diego-2007

The convention at San Diego is the biggest
convention I have ever been to and it seems to get bigger every year.
This year was pretty amazing for me because I could show off a
collected edition of the firstRobotika mini-series and also preview the first 2 issues from the second Robotika mini-series coming out in December.

The huge news from the convention was that David Petersen, the creator of Mouse Guard, has received
the Russ Manning award. David has had an amazing year and it is
wonderful to see him being recognized for all of his hard work. I had a
great timetalking to David and Julia AND I got to read the first issue of David's second series, which is simply awesome.

I got to met and talk to Ted McKeever and Ron Marz
who have been super supportive of my efforts and were kind enough to
write introductions for the collected edition. I got to spend a few
minutes talking with friends who live too far to see on regular basis.
I did not catch everyone, but I had a great time talking to Ryan, Leif,
and David Moran.

I also got a chance to connect with some folks whom I have only known through e-mail up to his point: Brian Churilla, Jeremy Shephard and his wife Julia, Joe Suitor, Joe Illridge and the whole new ASP crew...it was pretty sweet.

And
the "wow, can this really be" moment of the convention was when I
bumped into David Williams. I met David 12-15 years ago when he was
living in Oakland, since than he has worked for every major comic book
company and every animation studio in US. He also worked as a designer
on a bunch of movies, including the Harry Potter franchise. David is back working at Marvel and he has a sweet sketchbook out.

I sound silly

I got interviewed at Indie Comic News by Miguel Rodrigues. This was sort of different because instead of doing it by e-mail, Miguel interviewed me over the phone. It is odd to hear my own voice...I sure say "you know" and "well.." a lot. I am not sure if I always made sense, but I tried to give honest answers.

Indie Comic News

BA-BooM!

Backgrounds

I am trying something different for some of the backgrounds in the series. Since my figures are inked pretty tight, I decided to loosen up on the backgrounds that are not establishing shots and hopefully create a nice contrast in the artwork...sometimes it works...sometimes it does not.

Page 6, Panel 3

I got an award (!)

This is pretty cool...I have never won anything before, so this is pretty awesome. I think everyone knows what it feels like to put-in work everyday, week after week...not even knowing if anyone outside your circle of friends is even aware of your efforts. It is such a gift to hear that there is an audience out there looking at my work!

ForeWord Book Awards

BasketHead

As silly as it looks, I am actually pretty happy with the straw basket on teh guys head. After 10 inked pages I am feeling like I am getting my "inking feet" back and moving along through tha pages.

Had a great visit with Ryan who shared some of his work with me and inspired me to no end...after he left Barbara and I started pulling the kitchen floor apart. We are getting ready to install the same floor as in the living and family rooms, before you know it we will have the same flooring through-out the house (what a concept!).

Wanted

I have been struggling with the back cover for issue #1. Did I want to print a guest artist? Should I do the cover by myself? What image should I use?

In the end I decided that I was going to do the back cover by myself, and I was going to feature Bronski since he was the main character in the back-up story for that issue. My next question was..how can I do something new and cool that I have not done before?

After a few sketches, this idea of putting Bronski in front of a "wanted: dead or alive" poster worked itself out and I was pretty happy about it. When I was all done I showed it to Norman when he was visiting. I was all jazzed because I thought this was very clever and has never been done before...Norman pointed out that he has seen something similar when he was 9 years old watching "Tom and Jerry" cartoons...oh well. Off it goes to the colorist :)

San Diego Dreaming....

I have started inking the next issue and if all works out as planned I hope to have the next 30 pages done (inked/lettered/scanned) by San Diego Comic Convention...

I finished....and reviews

...penciling another issue and just started inking again. I hope to post a few inked pages in the next week or so. In the mean time, here are two recent reviews for the hardcover collection of the first series:

PopMatters

Legion of Doom

Anatomy of a fight...scene.

I have always had a tough time with fight scenes. I am not talking about a shot of two opponents squaring off against each other; I am talking about a panel-to-panel sequence that lasts longer than a few frames.

Partially this is due to the fact that I do not practice any martial arts and that I have not been in a fight since 5th grade...maybe 4th. This really became a problem recently when I got my main character, Niko, involved in a fight that was going to last most of the issue (interwoven with other events in the storyline), I wanted something that made sense and not just a collection of shots of two toughs. I was not even sure how to begin.

I was kind of stuck until I remembered that at the fitness center, where I work out at lunch, there is a jujitsu class that is being taught every Tuesday and Thursday. I came up and introduced my self to the instructor, John Nguyen, and asked for help.

John graciously agreed and after we talked for a bit about the set-up, he started introducing some very cool ideas. Thanks to him, the fight is starting to take shape and is much more involved than just two guys duking it out. There are now different phases to the action, each involving a different element (fire, water) and it has it's own rhythm that is echoing the beats in the rest of the story.

Below is the opening sequence:

Review

Since the trade collection came-out a while back, there is not much in the way of reviews anymore, but someone sent me this link of a recent (and very nice) review:

RPG.NET

Storytelling

When Robotika was being published I did a few internet interviews about the series. It seemed like every interview ended (or begun) with a question about influences. The truth is that I am influenced by just about everything that I came into contact with: all the comics, books, movies, paintings, animation...

Sure, I get excited about some particular techniques that I see in comics and illustration, but it does not motivate me to sit down and draw for 8-10 hours. I file stuff like that away in my mind and look for an opportunity to use it some day...most of the time with mixed results :(

What really inspires me to continue doing pages is talking to people like Jim Williams III, Ryan Sook, Norman Felchle, Brian Apthorp, and Frank Cirocco who are always thinking about experimenting with storytelling and are always pushing themselves to continue studying all aspects of drawing. These guys are amazing and it is my privilage to know them, but there are also other very talented storytellers whom I never got to met who challenge me to think about my work. Folks like Rodolfo Damaggio, Frank Miller, Mike Mignola, Marshall Rogers, Alex Toth, Sergio Toppi, Claire Wendling, Will Eisner, Damion Scott...the list is never ending :)

Talking about storytelling here is a cool bit from a recent Ryan Sook story in Worldstorm #2:


Believe it or not, I did the layouts for the bit below before I saw Ryan's page, but I must admit that by the time I executed the actual drawng I was well aware of the Worldstorm story and I am sure it influenced my approach:

Friday the 13th

Ever since I got to buy a Swamp Thing reprint back in the late 80's I have been a huge Wrightson fan. Wrightson was somehow able to take the ugly and the scary and draw it in a way that made it look fun and playful...with an edge to it. I still spend hours looking through the "Look Back", "Swamp Thing", and "Frankenstein". It's beautiful stuff.

Recently Ryan did a cover for Friday the 13th series from Wildstorm that had the same effect on me. The subject matter is crazy, but the picture is executed with perfect lines and beautiful anatomy, mixing the innocent with the horrific and flowless technique with the unthinkable subject... everything in perfect balance. I am simply fascinated by this...work like that doesn't just inspire me to try to do better, it makes me understand things about drawing that always seem to elude me.

David Petersen

A cool interview with David about his work on Mouse Guard, movies, and artists who have influenced his art. David is so enthusiastic about his work and the medium that it is hard not to be excited about making comics after reading his answers:

David Petersen

And it is now official:

Nominations

New Pencils

ForeWord- Book Of The Year Award (!!)

Robotika has been selected as one of the finalist for the ForeWord Book Of The Year Awards! I am not sure what the chances of winning are (check out the other finalists!), but it is an honor for me to be included:

ForeWord

Random Panels

I am penciling on this smaller size boards and the pages seem to be moving much faster...a coincidence?
Some random panels from the last few pages:

New Links

I just wanted to take a moment to mention that I have added a few more links.

I was introduced to Brian Churilla via Leif when Leif moved to Portland. I have already mentioned Brian in an earlier post. Brian is not only a very talented artist, but is also a very charming individual. He has contributed a short Robotika story and a pin-up that will appear in the second series. Brian is also working on a creator owned series titled "The Engineer". I was so impressed with the artwork and the storyline that I recommended the property to Archaia Studios Press and I hope to see "The Engineer" as part of their line-up some time soon.

Brian in turn exposed me to the work of Joe Suitor and Joseph Cross. Mr. Suitor is working on a series "Monoluminant" that will be published by APE Entertainment and Mr. Cross is developing a storyline titled "Kyogen". I am very excited to see both of these series develop and if everything works out to be able to feature some of their work in Robotika :)

Old School

Archaia Studios has been getting lots of nice press lately. Here is a sample of what folks are writing:

ComicReaders

ForeWordMagazine

A few weeks ago I got together with Ryan for lunch. We showed each other the pages we were working on and just had a great time talking and hanging out. At one point during the art "show and tell", Ryan casually mentioned that my originals are "giant". I was kind of surprised at that, "I work in standard size" I replied. Ryan gave me a sidelong glance and said, "Standard in the 70's maybe." I looked at his originals for the Wildstorm story he is working on and sure enough they were smaller...I went home and looked at the Dark Horse pages that Brian sent me...sure enough the space is only about 9x13.25 (as compared to 10x15 that I have been using), that is a huge (!) difference.

I just finished cutting a new batch of bristol to the new specifications...I am really looking forward to trying this new format.

A review of HC at IGN.com

A very thorough review by Dan Wrobel at IGN.com:

IGN.com

Here are also the pencils for the newest Robotika pin-up. It is a reworking of a pose from an older page (the opening of "The World of Robotika" from issue #1) that I have always wanted to re-draw.

JPKComics and PopCultureShock reviews

A very nice review by of the hardcover collection by Jonathan Kuehlein (scroll down to January 15th reviews):

JPK Comics

and another review of ASP as a publisher with a nice Robotika write-up:

PopCultureShock

Page 1

This is page one of the first issue in the new mini series. I wanted to do something to pay tribute to Robert Altman and thus I am starting out with 3 panels (that I feel go together compositionally) and even though they appear totally unrelated, fit into each other like puzzle's pieces as the story progresses.

The captions are taken from a speech by one of the main characters from the middle of the book and I think fits in nicely with the images.

Script is by David Moran.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly....

A very cool review:

Fist Full of Comics

Robotika Hardcover Review

Monday, Robotika hardcover got reviewed over at Loadpoet.com and I wanted to share the write-up:

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

I have also just completed my first pin-up for a Dark Horse book (!) called "Samurai: Heaven & Earth". I wanted to design the illustration keeping the title of the book in mind. The woman represent "heaven" and thus is placed in a vertical shaft of light and the graveyard/shrines represent "earth". My hope is that the woman's face is the focal point and her robes lead the eye down to the sword, across the samurai's back and down into the ground. Then the eye comes across from left to right and goes up the shaft of light back-up to the face.

Best Of 2006...the rest :)

It is so cool that Robotika got mentioned in the wrap-up of the year over at Comic BooK Resource website. ASP got nominated for the Best Publisher of comics and I got the "The Nuke Laloosh Award" (by the way it is very much an honor for me to be associated with anything that relates to "Bull Durham"!).

ComicBookResources

Also I wanteded to share a Robotika piece recently completed by Mahmud Asrar:

How cool is that?!

I was very pleased to learn that Leif Jones, a friend of many years and an awesome artist, will be illustrating an issue of a comic book published by Zenescope Entertainment based on David Fincher's SE7EN.

Leif's issue will be part of a seven issue series, each issue being devoted to one of the deadly sins (with each issue done by a different creative team), and although it covers the same events as the movie, the comics will show the events from John Doe's point of view. The issue Leif will be illustrating is the sixth and most tantalizing: ENVY.

The writer on that issue is David Mack, who is known as the creator of Kabuki and who recently did a successful run on Marvel's Daredevil.

I am very excited about seeing how Leif is going to approach this project and as a fan of his artwork I can't wait to see a full book of Mr. Jone's "goodness". I know I will be checking Leif's blog (and so should everybody) frequently for any updates he might post.

Infuze Magazine Review

A new review of Robotika #1-4:

Infuze Magazine

Norman Felchle, Brian Churilla and Mahmud Asrar

I have always dreamed of being an editor. Not the kind of an editor who worries about the deadlines, or about what will sell and what won't sell, but the kind of an editor who matches up cool stories to talented artists with awesome comics being the result.

Working on Robotika gave me a chance to do that a little bit. In the first series I was fortunate enough to recruite Leif Jones and Travis Sengaus to do 6 page back-ups and I also was very pleased to offer pin-ups by Frank Cirocco, Jeremy Mohler, Benoit Springer, Norman Felchle, Jim Williams III, Ryan Sook, and Tony Salmons.

Working on the second Robotika series is proving to be an even better experience. In part this is due to the fact that I am now working with David Moran, who is a real writer and who has been delivering excellent scripts. I have already mentioned that Brian Churilla is working on a 6 page back-up called "Once Upon The Time..." and I am now very pleased to announce that Norman Felchle has agreed to illustrate a 6 page Dr. Agon origin story called "Dr. Agon or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Cyber-Robotic Enchancements".

Norman started out working in comics on such titles as "The Griffin", "S.T.A.R Corps", "Legends of the Dark Night" and "Spider-Man". Recently he has been applying his talents designing video games and in fact gained a following for his work on the "Alice" game for Electronic Arts. He has a great Sketchbook available that showcases his abilities and features lots of unpublished design artwork. I am very pleased that Norman has agreed to make a "return" to comics with Robotika and I am very much looking forward to seeing his interpretation of David's script.

I am also working with Mahmud Asrar, a very talented artist from Turkey. I was first introduced to Mahmud's work at Digital Webbing and have been following his postings on his website. Mahmud just recently got signed-up to draw "Dynamo 5", a new series from Image. I hope to be able to feature a few pin-up and maybe a short Robotika back-up story by him in the upcomming Robotika sequel.

Hardcover review

Here are some very kind words of support for the hardcover edition from Randy Lander over at his Inside Joke Theater.

Randy Lander

Library Journal Review (!)

Robotika collection was just reviewed in the Library Journal...and there is no mention of vertical text anywhere to be found! It is a very kind review and I am excited that someone is already wondering what the second series will be like.

The review is in the "Graphic Novel" section and you will need to scroll down a bit to find it:

Library Journal

Year-end awards at Pop Thought and new pages

Alex Ness, over at Pop Thought, just paid me a huge compliment by putting my name in the same sentence as Tim Truman's. I have been a fan of Mr. Truman's work ever since I picked up the first issue of his "Scout" series. He was one of the first guys to focus on building a career with creator owned series (Grim Jack, Scout, Killer...) instead of working for the "big two" and I have always respected that (and was always delighted when he tried his hand at Hawkman and Conan). Below is the link for the full article.

Year-End Awards 2006

Also I just finished penciling a whole batch of new pages and now it is time...to start inking again! I hope to have some fully finished pages to share soon :)

Publishers Weekly and Amazon.com

The hardcover Robotika collection is not only listed at Amazon.com, but it also has a great editorial review printed from Publishers Weekly. At the moment it is occupying 280,000 ranking in popularity/sales...I am sure that is a good start.

Robotika at Amazon.com

Fight!

I was never very good at drawing fight scenes with a bunch of people in them. I like to focus on a little part of a scene and exaggerate that, instead of focusing on everything. However, with the second series I am trying to push myself a bit so I am trying some different things...and it's turning out to be lots of fun. Here is a sketch of the background for one of the panels (Niko will be calmly sitting and eating his lunch in the foreground).

I think this is pretty primative depiction of a bar brawl: there is not much depth to the scene, all the figures are on the same plane, and there is not much interaction between the fighters (everybody is pretty much split up into pairs), but this was fun and I am looking forward to expanding on this idea.

Random Pages

Progress on the second Robotika mini continues...

Working, working, working....

Last week I got a proof copy of the first Robotika collection. Mark and Aki put a lot of thought and work into this project and the result is a beautiful hardcover book that showcases my first mini-series. It is very inspiring for me to think that next year I will be able to add volume 2 to this series!

The work on the addition continues...and continues!



Jason Copland, a fellow artist and an all around nice guy, has a new book out from Silent Devil called "Empty Chambers". I have seen some material from it and I think it is great, everybody should go out and get a copy (or two)!

Brian Churilla

A few months ago Leif introduced me to Brian Churilla who is a talented young artist. Brian has an awesome style, it is very animated and has a lot of "Pop" to it. When I saw his panel-to-panel pages, I was blown away by his storytelling abilities.

Originally, I planned to do all the Robotika back-ups in the new series by myself, but after seeing his work...I changed my mind. I am very happy to say that Brian will be contributing artwork to a 6 page story written by David Moran titled "Once Upon a Time...". It is a very cool little vignette focusing on The Queen. Here is a sample of good things to come :)


For more of Brian Churilla goodness go to his wesite

Remodel

Work on Robotika is progressing right along, but I have also added another project to my commitments...adding a family room to our house. My wife and I started working on it September 18th. Here is what it looked like after one week:

and here is what it looks like now: