That terrible claw...

I was going to give the old bones a rest today and show off some nice, new finished pages from Zeus, but Blogger's uploading the colors of the jpegs all strangely and I didn't have the time to figure what was up. Later for that, I guess...

Feast your eyes instead on some sketches of deinonychus, the Jurassic Park stand-in of the cooler-sounding-named velociraptor, and its famous vicious foot claw.

Allosaurus

Another sketch from the AMNH. The kids may love velociraptor, and tyrannosaurus gets all the chicks, but my favorite predatory dinosaur is allosaurus. It wasn't the biggest, or the fastest, but to my mind, it was the most balanced and, frankly, cool carnivore. Not some lumbering, scavenging behemoth, but no glorified chicken either. This thing would take down huge freakin' sauropods for its dinner. Hardcore.

Old three-horned face...

A few weeks back I had a fierce hunkering to draw some old bones come over me. I made a trek to the American Museum of Natural History with the lovely and talented Artamis, as well as fellow dino-phile Mr. Simon Fraser to ease the gnawing at my soul.

Below you'll find one of the pieces of fruit from this expedition. Triceratops horridus, surely the coolest dino ever to exist. Anyone who disagrees is simply mistaken.

Zeus and Typhon

Yet another sketch for The Olympians. This particular design is still a ways off--the story of Typhon's battle against the Olympian gods isn't going to be told until Hermes' volume, Trickster Tales, currently scheduled to be book ten in The Olympians. This piece originated as a sketch idea for the desktop wallpaper of my computer-- before I decide that I probably didn't want to (A) stare at a hundred scary screaming faces for a long time and (B) draw a finished version of those hundred scary faces until I absolutely had to.

mystery post

Haven't scanned anything new for a bit, so here's a secret surprise from the vault:



What is it? What does it all mean?

patience, grasshoppers. Good things come to those who wait.

Hephaistos

This was a nice little sketch I banged out of the Blacksmith of the Gods. Sometimes these quick little drawings will really capture a certain something that a more finished sketch could miss. Half of this drawing is so gestural it verges on unreadable, but I really like the expression I caught on his face.

Perseus

Of all the heroes of Greek Myth, I don't think any of them got so much of a helping hand as did our man Perseus here. He doesn't do boo without some sort of divine intervention. You have to kill Medusa? Here, take Hermes' winged shoes and sword, and Athena's mirrored shield so you don't have to look at her directly. That's not enough? How about we lend you Hades cap of invisibility, too, so Medusa won't even know you're there. You fly down, all invisible and cut off the monster's head. How's that?

Geez, with all that help, even I could kill a monster. In Grey-Eyed Goddess, I've decided to omit the invisibility helmet 'cause, man, that just ain't fair, but I have let the fact that Perseus gets an inordinate amount of immortal assistance affect my character design of him. Not quite a tower of muscle and sinew, instead he's got a little bit of the laid back surfer vibe going on, like he's a dude who doesn't have to sweat it too much because he's got friends in (very) high places.

Hermes

Aside from Athena herself, the rest of the "second generation" Olympians get their full introductions in Grey-Eyed Goddess. Hermes, the trickster god, was often paired up with Athena as a benefactor to heroes in myth, so it should be no surprise he will feature pretty heavily in Goddess as well.

Athena, again

Another quick sketch of everyone's favorite goddess of wisdom. I probably spent all of three minutes on it. That being said, I really like the way this one came out, especially her feet.

Triceratops

Before I delve deeper into the world of Greek mythology I thought I'd share with you this pretty nifty little drawing I did of a Triceratops. Triceratops are teh awesome.

The words in the upper right corner are the intersection my sister lives at in San Diego, by the way. Say hi if you're in the 'hood.

Athena sketch.

So now that I've wrapped Ball-Peen Hammer, it's on to work on The Olympians. Plans are for the first two volumes, Zeus, King of the Gods and Athena, The Grey-Eyed Goddess to launch the line simultaneously. I've had the story of Zeus, (essentially an origin of the world story) and the characters therein, nailed down for a while now. In Athena, however, I introduce a whole crop of new characters, including the second generation of Olympians, i.e. the children of Zeus.

Athena, of course, will be the driving force of this book, and here is a preview of how she will appear in The Grey-Eyed Goddess. Athena was both the goddess of war and the goddess of weaving. This drawing is all about the hard, sharp lines of her armor and helmet contrasting with the billowing soft folds of her cape and dress.

Ring The Bells! Ring The Bells!

Well, it took a while, but I finally finished Ball-Peen Hammer!! Hooray!

Ball-Peen Hammer is my new graphic novel, written by the talented Mr. Adam Rapp, and due to be published by First Second in Fall 2009. It's a dark, complex story, and I was working on it through some dark and complex real-world times, but I finally wrapped it up a week and change ago.

People will notice that my blog has been all sad and ignored lately, and the reason why is that I was finishing up this 130 page bad boy. Now that I'm done, it's time to start updating this site on a regular basis. I made a bunch of scans today to further that purpose, so enjoy the coming deluge.