Yikes.

I've been letting this thing slip lately. Scratch Pad Tales as well. I'll try to do better.

Goodness, there are a lot of small projects (and a couple larger ones) in the works and it's keeping me busy. Some of them I can't post any work on due to sensitivities of copyrighted material and all that... That makes it sound top secret..it's not really. I may be illustrating a book with someone for the Salvation Army, which is one of the bigger projects and I'm really looking forward to it. I did a comp image recently for show-and-tell:

It doesn't really give any of the story away, so I figure it's ok to show you.

This is different for me in that it's 90% digital.

I'm also talking with a friend about (slowly) producing a graphic novel of a script he's written called "The Deep Shores". So for a test and for fun I did a quickie comp cover for that as well:

I'm really excited to be working on this. I think

it's going to be a lot of fun, even if it is a larger

project to produce.

So that's the story: busy, busy. But it's good to be working on multiple projects and the Lord is good for providing so many opportunities. Until next time, buckos...

The end of some and the beginning of more

Merry Christmas!

It was the first with the missus and it was a good one. We were both right busy up until the holidays doing different projects for gifts and I squeezed a little project in for a friend too. The gifts went over well.. I have to say that my personal favorite is this:

(me and my beautiful bride)

The project that I did for a friend was a short children's book that she wrote for her family for Christmas. It's neat - she wrote the story and has a different illustrator illustrate it each year. I guess this was my year! I didn't have time to fully color the illustrations, but they turned out nice anyway, especially for the quick turnaround (about 3-4 days). The characters in particular. Here's a sample:

All in all, a very good and productive end to the year!

MIA a little bit...

I haven't posted in a few days due to some more-than-usual business, but I'll be updating soon. Been doing a lot of creating with the wife for Christmas gifts and some good stuff has come out of it, and I've gotten a bit of a stomach bug for the past couple of days, so that's been nice too.

But I'll be back (hopefully before Christmas) with updates both here and over at SratchPadTales.

If not, enjoy the holidays and Merry Christmas and you'll see something new very soon after!

The Buzz about Christmas

When my mom, aunt and uncle were younger and in their teenage years, apparently my uncle was an aggravation machine and frequently harassed my mom and aunt. And during one such time, he was calling her Buzzard Breath, to which she responded "You just wait - I'm going to teach all of your nephews and nieces to call you Buzzard." And that's what she did. And now I have an Uncle Buzz.

So I took it upon myself to make for him a personalized Christmas gift this year:

A closer look:

I get a lot of kicks out of Christmas gift giving.

I won't say I told you so.

Sketch of a buddy.

You keepin' posted?

I'm about to make history.

This is my first blog post in well over a year. Just to make sure you guys are paying attention. Good things are in the works and well on the way. Like 8-month old pre-babies. Animations (in coordination with this guy), new illustration work, a new WEBSITE (hallelujah), and a new blog atScratchPadTales.blogspot.com, which you would be a doing yourself a disservice if you didn't check it out.

Good things are coming down the tube/pipe/railway/waterslide/laundry shute.

Check back soon.