Blue Moon Blog

Len with “Big Mike”, awaiting the bride.

I didn’t end up taking many photos at the recent Minnesota comic book convention, but at least snagged a few from the off-the-wall and poignant wedding that took place that Saturday night after the first day of the show. It was held at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds main grandstand. My long-time pal, writer and professor Len Strazewski officiated, having overseen a good handful of weddings over the years, and I’m sure this one was the most…different.

Folks and family were encouraged to dress in costume (some already decked out from the show), and the “flower girl” role was filled by our own Terrance Griep (alias wrestler Tommy “The Spider-Baby” Saturday).

Father Len, Big Mike, and Spider-Baby Flower Girl

Leaving the show Sunday, my buddy, Alex Grecian’s son, Graham gave us a Spider-Graham pose!

Continuing to get in the mood for Halloween, these three pieces complete the set of Pixilated Monster postcards I published in 1992.

The Muckety-Mucks are some of my favorites from the postcard set, having been developed in my sketchbooks in the mid-’80s. Glancing at the date, I’m reminded I produced this piece for the 2nd annual Halloween mini-comic (same as for Mummy Gumbo). I’ve a couple scripts written for Mucks children’s book, but it never fully developed, and it would have to wait now anyways, getting in line behind a few other projects. I’ll try and dig out some of those early Mucks sketches and post ‘em here before the Big Scary Day.

Similar to the Screamin’ Meemies (posted yesterday) these guys are all shook up, riffing off another old term. “Heebies Jeebies” is the name of one of Louis Armstrong’s earliest hits, and a historic and superb jazz recording to boot.

Easily the most violent of the ten cards, I was able to cut loose and get gross with these Zombies. Eew.

Rounding out the set are three cards I’ve posted previously on this blog: Funrunts, Husks and Space Waster. I’ve a few of these sets left, I think, and may make them available at our Blue Moon Shop here at this very site.

I’ll have a couple new Bedbugs tees available at the Minnesota FallCon this weekend, like so:

You can also preview pages of the PROOF short story that looks now to appear in issue 16. Issue 12 was just released, marking the first anniversary of the on-time, monthly comic by Alex Grecian and Riley Rossmo. Meet the fabulous Mr. Grecian at the con, and grab the trade paperback which collects the first five issues, so you can catch up and hop aboard as a regular reader.

See you there!

It was such a gorgeous day out Saturday, the Blue Moon Crew stopped by the local Plymouth Autumn Art Fair. Lotsa folks were displaying their wares: paintings, hand-made jewelry, woodwork, etc. With fun food, live music on a nice little lake, it was a pleasant time. We’re thinking we might try and get a spot next year to display and sell paintings, books, figurines and cookies. Our girls and their friend had their faces painted:

Friend Ashley, and our daughters, Laura and Emily

Oh, yeah, and Emily got a balloon hat, too. Laura’s butterfly was really beautifully done:

If you want to jazz up an event you’re planning near the Twin Cities, give the nice ladies at Fantastic Faces a call at 952-368-4488. They’ll even paint on grizzled, unshaven adult faces:

I’ve been making good progress when time allows the last few weeks on a seven-page story to appear in the Image comic, Proof. Here’s the first panel of the story, featuring an old man and his monkey, in glorious color:

For the past several years, I’ve been coloring most of my illustrations and comics in Adobe Illustrator, but on this story I’m trying a different look and method using Photoshop. Still employing a simple, mostly flat-color look, I’m also using a chalk Photoshop brush for backgrounds to add texture and depth, separating the characters from their environment a bit, similar to the approach used in much animation.

This is the last preview of any art for the story that I’ll post before it appears, which may be sooner than later since I may finish it earlier than I expected. I’ll keep you posted here.

I’ve loved Lilo & Stitch since it was released, so was pleased earlier this year to stumble upon the web site and blog the creator of those splendid characters, Chris Sanders. Here’s a guy that’s written and directed his original concept for Disney, and is now directing his next movie at Dreamworks, and somehow he finds time to do a weekly web comic. Sanders has been at it since late last year, and kept it up ’til he had enough to collect in a little book he’s recently published.

This little guy is Ogo the cat, one of the main characters from Kiskaloo, which contains the first two stories and a bunch of extras.  The stories and characters are charming and quirky. Sanders’ line is supple and gorgeous. In his work, one can see glimpses of Charles Schultz, Bill Watterson, Walt Kelly, Al Capp and Carl Barks, but these influences show up as just echoes, and what emerges is a style all Sanders’ own. The format he’s chosen is square (the format to which I seem to gravitate for my own projects), somewhere between the traditional, small daily strip format and a larger Sunday funnies format. In this middle ground, he’s able to do strips that are short and sweet one-joke strips, but also has room to let characters and concepts breathe and to tell larger, longer stories.

For cute bunnies, vampires, scuba girls, tigers, babies, and a quest (not a quest — a mission!), pick up this fine first volume at Bud Plant books.

I always wait several months to upgrade on software to allow plenty of time for everyone to work out the bugs. But after having waited about nine months to take the leap to Apple’s Leopard OS, I was eager to make the move. Before doing so, I’ve learned by being burned it’s best to check that other software or hardware companies support their prodcuts in a timely fashion for a new OS. I ran into trouble with my Microtek scanner last time I tried this when upgrading to Tiger. It took Microtek 18-24 months to make available a driver that would work with OSX 10.4. Yikes! Unfortunately, I discovered this fact after the upgrade, and was forced for a year or two to keep my ScanMaker 9800XL hooked up to my old computer in another room. What a pain!  Not efficient and a waste of time. This kind of problem has driven other artists to give up on Microtek completely.

Well, they’re more on the ball this time, as the driver was made available about eight months after Apple released Leopard. That’s not super-fast, but an improvement, and if you’re going to wait some months for the new OS, it’s probably worth it; at least, it is for me.  The Scanmaker 9800XL is a large scanner that accommodates the large comic book art I do (no more splitting apart pages with multiple scans and piecing them back together digitally), and is less expensive (now about $900.00; I paid $1100.00 five years back) than other comparable scanners (at least 2-3 times the price). It does a nice job on scans, saves tons of time given its image space. As long as they continue to improve on support, I’m going to stick with Microtek, and can recommend it.

After a couple really busy months with my regular jobs, I’m happy to have the chance to get back at work on a couple more personal projects, including a short back-up story to appear in the Image comic book, Proof. I’ve written here before about the early stages of the creative process, but here’s the first glimpse of a finished color panel.

I’m reminded just how much work comics can be, and while untold hours are spent fashioning what readers will absorb in seconds, there’s nothing else I enjoy doing more. In this story, I get to draw a bunch of weird creatures, a couple of whom remind me a small bit of my earliest comic book work on the creator owned and self published Trollords (with Scott Beaderstadt). In a handful of months, you’ll see what I mean.

We’ve completed another few installments of the comics stories we do for a Jewish kids magazine, a series which we’ve heard recently will continue for the foreseeable future, which is good news. Each story centers on certain Jewish holidays and the culture. One story focuses on the Four Sons of the Passover, which gave us a chance to go all super-heroic, thanks to the fun script by writer/editor Ella Broh. And another story features the star, Joey traveling the world for Shavuot to ask folks of other creeds and countries about the Torah.

It’s funny, as I work on these comics, what gets me most jazzed is not always the large splash panels and big action, but the smalls ways in which I can employ storytelling strategies that work only in comics. For this quick series of three panels (above) a tiny superhero transports Joey from a magical time-travel land back to his grandparents’ attic. Their return trip need to be treated differently than their way there, and while using as little space as possible. In a long horizontal strip and three tiny frames, I got Joey back where he belonged with simple, iconic images.

It’s also a treat to do these kids comics in the simple, bold fashion I prefer, rather than in a style that’s over-rendered in ink or color. To compliment the line art and for a look easy-on-the-eye, Mary and I stick with essentially flat color in this case. For other comics stories, I may use another look and approach entirely.

To read these latest editions, visit our Major Works section, open the Blue Moon Viewer, and click forward to “The Awesome Foursome!” Of course, you’re welcome to read the earlier stories, if you haven’t seen them before. Enjoy!

Work on my children’s book, Night of the Bedbugs has kicked into high gear recently, and I’m glad to be able to devote some time to it for a change. It feels great to check off more and more pages as finished. I’m still planning for the book to be a deluxe multi-media package, and began writing today another tune for the CD that will be included with the hardcover book. Below is another snippet of preview art.