The Work Journal of Artist John Amor

Just the Tip

Got a fair amount of work sorted out this week, schedule-wise, which (and you gotta give me this, at least) is no small feat, given that it’s Christmas time.  I may not be the most disciplined guy around when it comes to sticking to time tables, but god damn it I can juggle like you wouldn’t believe.

Also, I’m a douche.

But anyway…

Promised myself I’d put a real effort into getting more indies in 2008, and I think I’ve pretty much succeeded, on the most part.  Tail end of 2007 saw me get that Cebulski project, my first gig, through a ridiculously coincidental series of events — one of those right-place-right-time type deals — so ridiculous in fact that it involves my quitting law school, my working in a call center, and even a messy break-up some two-three years ago.  Shit you not.  It’s a Bendis plot, is what it is.  But you only get lucky once, right?  So this year had me working for it.  And well… I like to think I tried hard enough.

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Didn’t make it into Marvel just yet, but they know my name… that’s as good a start as any, I suppose.

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To my three returning readers, here’s some stuff to watch out for: My first solo book, The MASK of MANOLO, from Patchwork comics should be hitting the stands within the next month or so.  Alveraz and the gang are cranking out the proofs and working through the Christmas season to make sure Slominski and I start polluting the scene early next year.

First issue of OVERTHROW! is just about wrapped up; As I’m writing this, I’m finalizing the inks for the last page… with my feet.  Took longer than I care to admit, but Justin’s been a real sport about it.  Of course, he’s probably just lulling me into a false sense of security before he strikes.  The book goes to pitch early next year, so we’re both holding on to our skirts about that.

First few pages of the yet unnamable horror project are beginning to zygotize in my thought-peach.  It’s a bit of a departure from my super hero and modern fantasy stuff, so it’s taking a bit of doing.  I’m to expect a box of reference material in the mail, a cheery package of crime scene photos from Victorian London (hint, hint), but it’s Christmas… so yeah, that’ll have to wait I guess.  The script is in though, and it’s a mean mother.  Like OVERTHROW!, this will probably go to pitch early next year as well.

It's a metaphor.

These are all collabs though.  Should devote some real time to properly scripting my solo OGNs this year as well.  INSTRUMENTS is chugging along nicely with Matt being sober most of the time these days, so that’s cool.  Speaking of personal projects though…

The Horror Classics series is on hold until I get a proper foot-hold on the books i’m whored out to, timeframe-wise.  Though I really should get back to that soon, coz the scary faces in the noggin aren’t exactly helping me relax much on my downtime.

I quit my office job precisely so I wouldn’t have to deal with scary faces anymore, right?

Zing.

So yeah, it’s been more or less a pretty good year.  Dark Knight kicked ass, Obama won the election, and I drew a gutted elephant.

Here’s to 2009.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

OVERTHROW!

Justin said it was cool to post some pages here, so I figured I’d do that and avoid having to talk too much.  Been hitting the sack at four in the morning lately.  Brain is mush.  Need Spider’s jumpstart pills and intelligence enhancers.  And maybe some hot wings.

Me brain are anymore not smart.

Enjoy.

Playlist Meme

Kinda old this, but I feel like avoiding the work desk just a bit longer, so hey!  Why the fuck not???

Here are the instructions:
1. Open up the music player on your computer.
2. Set it to play your entire music collection.
3. Hit the “shuffle” button.
4. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. No skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. It’s time for total musical honesty.

1.)  That’s Just the Way It Is (Bruce Hornsby)
2.)  Enchanted (Patrick Wolf)
3.)  Man on the Moon (R.E.M.)
4.)  Last Letter (One Day as a Lion)
5.)  Tired of Saving Souls (Neverending White Lights)
6.)  Please Don’t Tell Her (Jason Mraz)
7.)  The Fastest Guitar Alive (Roy Orbison)
8.)  Shopping (Duncan Sheik)
9.)  Faust Arp (Radiohead)
10.) Burning Man (Third Eye Blind)

So yeah, that tharr list is a peek at my work soundtrack.  Needs more Britney.

Tagging Justin Jordan, Gerry Alanguilan, Alex Cipriano, Heather Harris, and Massacre Mike to do the same in their blogs.  Leave a link in the comments if you feel like wasting time and doing this as well, fuckers.  That is… if you haven’t already done this.  I’ve a feeling Justin has.  At work no less.

Marriage

Hah! Made you look.  No, I’m not getting married yet.  I hear the first step to doing that is getting a girlfriend, but I haven’t had one in years.  Comics and art (the mean mistress!!!) have been eating up a lot of my time lately, so the social life has gone out the window.  This entry’s title isn’t totally inaccurate though, coz I’ve been spending a lot of time technically marrying my two stylistic influences into something I can call my own.  Or trying, at least.

Realistic vs Abstract/Cartoony.  Which is better?  Which sells?  Which makes for better storytelling?  It’s taken me this long to realize that the answer is neither.  Realistic adds a lot of believabilty to a scene, that’s a given, but the abstract style can pull off fantastic exaggerations in mood.  Mignola plays a delicate balance between the two and it works exquistely in Hellboy.  Realistic allows for your characters to be more relatable in whatever outlandish situation you put them in, but being able to rubberize their expressions and gestures makes for an incredibly broad spectrum of emotion and dynamism.  Stuart Immonen plays with this and kicks serious ass every time a new issue of Ultimate Spidey hits the stands.  Then I read it, cry in my bath tub, then slash my penis with a razorblade.

These are just two of the points as to why a stylistic marriage would come out awesome, and I’m pretty sure there are countless others.

Having said that, I’ve been trying my best two fuse the two sentimentalities into something I can call my own.  I’ve talked about this in a previous entry, Shapes, and I doubt I’ll stop talking about it anytime soon.  Been re-reading a lot of old MAD magazines to study Mort Drucker’s great caricature work.  Good stuff.

Anyway… here are last week’s dailies:

MONDAY: Kicked off Marvel week with my favorite X-Man, Nightcrawler.  He’s always been visually interesting and there’s never a shortage of cool poses to use on him.  Spooky and athletic, in my head he’s like Batman and Spidey combined.

TUESDAY: Nothing special to say about this piece.  I don’t read Captain America, and I’m not a WWII buff.  I just wanted to do a villain portrait.  Call it an M.O.

WEDNESDAY: Well I had to do something to counter Power Girl from last week, right? And Spider Woman is hands down the hottest superlady in Marvel right now.  Never mind that she’s a Skrull Queen bent on enslaving us, still teh hawt. I might’ve oversized her boobies though — complaints?

THURSDAY: Loki.  As a woman.  I know, I know.

FRIDAY: Fridays are always hectic for me coz that’s when I tend to fill my page quotas for the week, plus I do the podcast with my buddies.  So from now on, I’ll devote Fridays to pose studies and the like.  I’m sure you all can tell from looking at the logan sketch that my anatomy in the arm area could use a bit of work.  but yeah, doing things like this every once in a while will definitely help make my poses more dynamic and shit.

::: ::: ::: Tres Komikeros episode 11 ::: ::: :::

Lastly, any Zuda lovers in the house?  Even if you’re not, it’ll be good for you to head on over to their site and vote for my buddy Justin Jordan’s comic, Rumors of War.

He died on the battlefield, giving his life for God and Country. Johnny died a hero, but he didn’t stay dead. He’s been taken from his dying place to another world, another place, where a war has raged since the beginning of time. Resurrected for a fight that he can barely understand, much less hope to survive. Here, even death is no end to a soldier’s fight, the dead and dying returned to fight again and again. The Enemy is monstrous and the Ally is worse.

Housed

Getting caught up on House episodes. I was relatively late to the whole TV-series thing, and so I’ve got a whole zoo of stuff I’m yet to watch.  The Shield, CSI, The Wire, The Sopranos — you name it, I haven’t seen it.  Unless it’s Entourage, which is the shit.  My brother collects DVDs as opposed to my comics, so I sure don’t have a problem getting new flicks and shows.  I should do a “things I watch(ed)” journal entry or whatever.  Currently on season two of House. The Leonard-Laurie bromance is always fun.  Doc Cameron is hot.  And the soundtrack is flawless.  Good show.  Apparently a coupla years’ worth of Emmys can’t be wrong.

Woof!

In one episode, Hugh Laurie goes, “I don’t work hard.  I work smart.”

Ouch.

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Internet did it’s job perfectly and very efficiently distracted me from work this week.  And that’s not even counting the hours I spent Wednesday morning glued to CNN for the election coverage.  So… no, not a very productive week, work-wise.  Only got a total of two (maybe three, if I tighten this WWII scene tonight) inked pages of OVERTHROW! out the door, though I did get to do revisions on some old pages.  I’m quite happy with how those turned out, so it ain’t all bad.  I’ve apparently arrived at some action scenes in the issue (finally!), and I work fairly quickly through those.  For some reason though, I always hit a slump after every action page.  I don’t quite know why that is yet, but the pre-work warm ups are definitely helping me not to cool too far down. More on those later.

Taking my sweet time with the concept sketches for the horror project. I’ve stumbled upon an approach that has somehow allowed me to maintain my style but adopt a whole new aesthetic to it. It’s subtle, but it’s there.  Been studying the little differences in Humberto Ramos’ work between Crimson and X-men, that sorta thing.  Buncha Hellboy trades are helping too.

::: Tres Komikeros Episode 10 :::

I said I’d do a  sketch a day this week, and so far it has helped a lot in getting me in the groove in the mornings (read 2 pm… heh…), so here they are, along with some commentary.  They each took about an hour tops, that being the time limit I gave myself, me being great with deadlines and all:

MONDAY: I read a Red Lanterns book for last week’s podcast and I just suddenly found Sinestro cool, despite me never having been a fan.  This is a shot of him inviting you to be part of his corps.  My foreshortening needs work.

TUESDAY: Again, inspired by a previous episode of the podcast, I couldn’t resist doing a Darkseid piece after seeing the last page of Final Crisis #4.  Nothing special to say about this though, it was just fun.

WEDNESDAY: Michael Crichton’s books and resultant films played a pivotal role in me getting serious about art — this was for him.

THURSDAY: Election day, so I couldn’t resist writing a little something extra on PG’s cape… clasp… thing.  She’s actually a bit tough to draw without making her look top-heavy.  i might’ve fucked this up.

FRIDAY: Took a suggestion from Viking Alex so I wouldn’t end up choosing easy characters to draw.  Having lotsa blacks on a character is always fun… and speedy!

Marvel stuff next week.

Don’t Miss Deadlines

FYI #1: I’m currently drawing a comic called OVERTHROW!, a superhero/political thriller written by Zuda veteran Justin Jordan.

FYI #2: One of my favorite things about using Wordpress is getting to see my blog stats in the dashboard. Among other things, I get to see search terms people put into engines to find their way to my site.

Y’all tryin’ ta tell me something?

Week Five

Holy shitcocks! We’re closing in on the deadline week! I haven’t exactly been slacking or anything, but I think it’s safe to say I’m not gonna make the October 15 deadline unless I make some serious sacrifices in quality. No one’s been sending angry emails or anything… yet… so I’ll just carry on at this steady pace. Not too happy about missing my first professional deadline, but I am juggling two books. Looking back, overcommitting might not have been the smartest, most responsible course of action possible… but fuck it but I gotta focus on making these pages the best they can possibly be.

Still in talks about doing that horror book with the horror guy, but I haven’t had time to do the concept sketches yet. Watched From Hell for reference though. Hint. Also, Heather Graham as a redhead prostitute? Win. I’ve had to make the horror guy wait, though he does know I have books on my plate. Oh well, he’ll drop me if he drops me.

Cut to image of a battered Luke Skywalker from Empire, “Don’t drop me, horror guuuuuuy!!!”

Yeah, that was in the special extended edition.

Also had to turn down a potentially fun project with a published writer this week on account of the fact that the logistics of it weren’t quite… desirable. Wow. Welcome to Vagueville. The split-ownership deal was sweet though, so it’s definitely worth revisiting. Cool guy too, so we may yet get to do something in the future. Hope hope.

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Sully’s finally piecing together a mini to pitch. Whether or not I’m the guy to draw it still remains to be seen, but I’m just glad he’s actually moving on it already. Guy’s got some good ideas. Short attention span? Sure. Gaming addiction? Definitely. But I’ll bet my Pope John Paul II comics (really) that whatever he’s got up his sleeve is just gonna melt everyone’s balls off. Chunkily.

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A buncha friends from town are returning to their roots and stepping up their sequentials as well. Fantastic, that. Couldn’t be more glad. Coz when you’re the only one ever doing it, the feeling that it’s all self-indulgence honestly can’t be avoided. Being in a group lends it a semblance of legitimacy at least. Viking and Mike are whipping up Hellboy five-pagers based on a plot I hacked out while Santini’s doing Spidey. I can’t be more excited.

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Sifting through Suicide Girl photos with co-genius Matt.

Research.

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BEAST BOY JOE (yes, yes, I know) will be scrapped, reconceptualized, and rebooted. The tentative new title is JOHNNY BEASTLING since JOE EVOLVER just sounds too much like… vulva. No yeah really, that is the only real smidgen of real thought that went into that. I don’t know. I’m dumb. Traded brainfarts with Derrick Fish via magical clicky machine about how to make the main character not seem like too much of a furry. God help me.

Overthrow! Page 3

Pretty much the first time we get a look at the hero of this series written by Justin Jordan. I made a conscious decision not to show the main character’s face. I’m just weird like that.

I still don’t love inking. But there’s definitely something to be said about a high-contrast image.

Seedling of Wisdom for the Day: Wu-Tang is for the children.