Reposting this from the con scene...



some highlights of Saturday's studio con with pics of a lot of our books.

The studio was celebrating it's 5th anniversary, I have been with them for about a year and a half now.

I currently edit Cygann and chip in editing stuff for the anthology, and am writing and drawing stuff for our flagship anthology (Tales from the Field), writing other stuff (if I had my way I would just write but pencillers and inkers are at a premium so I chip in), lettering other stuff, working on launching my own book and editing/coordinating the coloring book project we are doing. Amy, y wife, is our primary cover colorist, the lead artist on the coloring book and doing some interior art/co-plotting here and there.

We just put out the art book in Oct., Cygann 4 is currently getting lettering corrections done and when that is finished (and I write the Previously in... inside cover blurb and get it formatted ) it will go to the printer, 5 is written and drawn, waiting on George to have time to letter it, and the script for 6 is sitting on my desk waiting to get edited and a lettering guide done, but the art is mostly done for it (Stacey is the writer/artist for the book and he plots and draws first then hand writes the dialogue and captions, which I then edit and type up for the letterer-#5 was the first issue that wasn't already written, drawn and lettered when I joined the studio, but 3 and 4 needed a lot of edits and relettering before they were released into the wild.

Tales 7 is in the works, waiting on stuff to get inked and lettered (hoping to have it and the coloring book out for Independent Creators Expo in January, not sure if that will pan out yet, and Tales 8 has stories in process for it too, but they are in the writing/pencilling stages.

Currently books can be found in a handful of shops in the Miami Valley of Ohio (looking to expand into some shops in the Columbus area and have some possible inroads along those lines in the works) or from us at cons, but we are looking at a few possible digital distribution providers and may have something to announce along those lines soon. However my to do list for the studio is about 30 bullet points long right now between the creative, editorial, production and business sides of it, most of which I want/need to be done by the end of the year, so not sure if all of it will get done or what gets prioritized.

Links in the signature ot the facebook page of the studio (take a look and like us if you do like what you see) and to Amy's deviantart page (Karma Goblin Studios is her (our) personal studio identity, working with but separate from TSS.

So thanks to Shaxper for the space to plug things (honestly I was surprised to see the thread, didn't know it was coming but glad it's here).

-M

Here's a character turnaround for the lead character in that prologue. The initial concept sketch was done by a studio-mate, based on my script and descriptions I gave him, and then I took that and fleshed it out...



This was Kevin's initial character sketch...



The following two are quick scans of the pencils (they'll be inked digitally) for the coloring book we are doing for release early next year. Because it is a coloring book, I am intentionally doing no shading and keeping the lines simpler to allow them to be colored by the consumer, so it's not quite my "normal" style but not far off. These were the first two pages I had done in a looooong time (it had been more than 5 years since I had done anything more than thumbnail breakdowns or quick sketches that I inteded someone else to see).

This is from a sci-fi concept I am working on for release next year but did one of the characters-I need to go back and darken the lines as some of it didn't scan well, but it gives you an idea of the page..



and this is a cosmic entity/demi-goddess who is a reoccurring character in the fantasy strip I am doing the prologue for...I will touch up the throne during inking (or my wife will if she finds time to ink instead of me when she finishes her own pages...




I don't have scans/photos of the story page I finished last night yet, nor the coloring book page I finished tonight yet...

This is an example of the thumbnail breakdowns I do sometimes, this strip was conceived for an artist who wanted to do something with the studio, then went on the wind after only doing a concept sketch. My wife liked it and wanted to do the interiors for it, but hates breaking down pages (she's more an illustrator than a comic artist) so asked me to do the grunt work to break down the pages and she would scan it in and build the pages from that...



unfortunately, this got back burnered for the coloring book, and I may end up having to do more of a full pencil with her inking on it because of deadlines on the anthology issue it was slated for, but we'll see, we need ot hit the coloring book dealdine first (art due Dec 15 for any of my studio-mates checking this out)

These were concept sketches for a rogue gallery for a project that never got off the ground, but I may salvage them and use them somewhere else...



so yeah, there's a sampling of stuff but no actual comic pages, I'll see what I can do about scanning some in next time I am at studio hq (our art director has the large bed scanner, mine is too small to scan full art boards on).

-M

And here's a coupe of pics of the actual comic page I finished the other night...

the full page...





A little closer look at the top half of the page...



and the bottom half...




again I still need to scan the full page in using the large bed scanner to get a better reproduction, then get the page inked and lettered, but that's a look at the pencils for it....

-M

Wow. I'd love to get a closer look at those intricate borders.

When I actually scan the pic on the large flatbed I will post a better pic. It's essentially Tragedy crying tears that form the Styx with Charon ferrying souls to a devil that is belching those souls back up to the world of the living as they latch on to Comedy...an allegory and hint of the main character was was an infamous wizard and thief who died and was sent back to the world of the living by the Queen of Ravens for some purpose known only to her, but he tries to atone a bit by becoming a thief-taker in the city he was once essentially a Prince of Thieves in, but is now working the other side...

-M

Illuminated manuscript is exactly the look I was going for, or I should say was the look that inspired me to do the borders like that (the goal was to make the pages stand out in an anthology book, which is where it will appear). I will thank you for the lettering comment, but cop to cheating on it, it is done with stencils from a calligraphy stencil set I picked up at an art store a billion years ago.

-M

Naturally, there's plenty of one- and two-pagers in my files, like this Christmas tale (appropriate for the season):








For the past two years, my output has mostly consisted of cartoons for the People in white coats blog. I managed a daily cartoon for two years before health issues and a heavier work schedule slowed production down a little. Most of the cartoons are science-related, but there are quite a few on other subjects… Including movies!