From the Vault - Weekly Reader Bowling Clown 2005

I know this piece was done for one of the Weekly Reader plays that kids read while in class at school. But, as far as what the story was about, I really have no idea. And it's not like this image gives me any clues.

But, from what I remember, it was a blast to draw. With as many boring, everyday things that an artist is asked to draw sometimes a job comes along that has you drawing a clown on steroids who is enjoy a round of bowling while chickens parachute in from the ceiling.

I can't imagine there's that many people in the world who can say they had to do something like this for their paying day job. It's pieces like this that remind me why I love doing art for a living!

Thanks Weekly Reader!

Fwuump!

OilCan Drive continues to get the digital treatment.

Zip-a-tone, toothbrush spatter, and inking galore are all over this page and I'm still loving it.

In this page, Nicole and Vince run into a bit of trouble and have to ditch their air-speeder in a hurry. The only problem is, there's only a hard desert of sand, rocks and cacti below. My fingers are crossed that our heroes survive this one.

Did I tell you yet that I'm loving doing this stuff?

Working on this project brings to mind something I've been reading in Hugh MacLeod's book, "Ignore Everybody" about ideas and how you're wondering when you've finally found your Big Idea. He says:

"So, naturally you ask yourself, if and when you finally come up with the Big Idea, after years of toil, struggle, and doubt, how do you know whether or not it is "The One"?

Answer: You don't.

There is no swelling of existential triumph. That is not what happens.

All you get is this rather quiet, kvetchy voice inside you that seems to say, "This is totally stupid. This is utterly moronic. This is a complete waste of time. And I'm going to do it anyway."

And you go do it anyway."

That's kind of how I feel with OilCan Drive. Success or no success, I'm going to keep doing it anyway.

Because I'm just having too much fun with it NOT to do it.

Oops...and double Oops!

After putting up yesterday's blog post I realized one of the words in the word balloons was spelled "traffice" not "traffic". I am going to go with the explanation that "traffice" is, in fact, spelled correctly and it's neuvo-french, something they speak in the future world of OilCan Drive. Of course, if you kids are still spelling it "traffic" then, whatevs...I guess I'll change it to appease the masses.

So, yeah...I'll be changing that.

I use Google Analytics to track the web traffic on both this blog and my main site, seantiffany.com. Over the last week I've noticed the traffic on seantiffany.com has flat lined. Once in a while a day goes by and no one visits but, looking at the graph Google Analytics supplies, it looks like the site has died with no hope of resurrection. It actually scared me for a little bit.

Then I realized what had happened.

A week or so ago a client contacted me and wanted me to take down a few pieces I had done for them. One of their clients had found some stuff I had done for my client and didn't think it was representative of their product (it was new character designs for one of their mascots). They asked me to pull it and, while I was at it, to pull the Chester Cheetos work I had done as well.

So, without a fuss, I went back into the files I had to build my site, pulled off the images, and put up some new ones. It does make me wonder what might have happened if I had said "no", but not knowing the legalities of such a thing and liking my client, I was happy to make them happy.

The problem is that one of the images was on my main index page. So I had to pull that down and put a new one up and revise the page. When I did that, I essentially took out the code I had installed that let's Google Analytics track my web site traffic.

So, the site is alive, it's just that the little wires stuck into my site's arm to make it go beep beep beep fell out and the EKG machine now thinks it's dead.

So, that's another problem to figure out.

But, go check seantiffany.com and see the few new images I put up to replace the pulled pieces. It's nothing new you haven't seen on the blog before but it's helped to freshen up my portfolio site.

Of course, the problem is, I won't be able to track your visit.

Yet...

Going Digital

All the OilCan Drive pages I featured a few days ago on the blog have now been scanned into the computer and are getting a digital makeover.

I've added lettering digitally and have also been adding gray tones and special effects.

One of the things I decided when I started doing these pages was to try and mimic all the old school comic book effects I used to do by hand but do it with a bit less work in the computer. I love using gray tones to make certain things pop on page but I've never really been a fan of just using simple grays on a printed page. It just never looks quite right to me. And, usually, I find artists use it so much, simply because they can, that the whole page just looks like a big pile of gray sludge where nothing pops.

I used to have two tones of zip-a-tone dots when I was doing Exit 6. One was a 60% gray and another was 30%. They were just sheets of black dots that represented gray by the amount of dots on each sheet. I used to have to put this tone of black dots onto the original page and then hand cut around each section I wanted used. It was a long process and I had more than a few little cuts on my fingers from the x-acto blade.

Another way I used to achieve a gray effect when all I had were my hands and a bottle of ink was to use a toothbrush to splatter ink over sections of the page. Using both black ink and white out splattered with a toothbrush you get some interesting effects.

I also just drew fine lines with a ruler to get some sort of gray feel to a page. All of these things, using black lines to achieve grays, were things I learned while doing Exit 6 over ten years ago. I recently pulled some of those original pages and some of the tools I used out of the closest to see what I had at my disposal at that time.

So, because I love them and love the way they look, I am recreating all of those fabulous tones using the computer. There is not a gray on the entire page. It's all hard black and white. It may be dots, lines, or toothbrush splatter representing a gray tone, but it's all black and white.

It's graphic, it's fun, any client I have would probably hate me for doing it, but I am absolutely loving it and loving the way it's looking.

Rock and roll, baby! Rock and roll!

Ignore Everybody

I'm a regular reader of Derek Siver's blog. He's the founder of the very successful CDbaby who, a few years ago, sold the company and now travels the world having adventures and offering his advice to anyone who will listen. He always has great advice, words of encouragement, and interesting ideas on how to keep and use your creativity in entrepreneurial ways.

So, when his latest post mentioned a book that he called his "highest book reading recommendation" it caught my attention.

The books is called "Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity." by writer and cartoonist Hugh MacLeod.

As for what the book is about, Derek has already summed it up much better than I ever could have. So, I'll let his words have the floor for a minute:

"He really gets and speaks to that dark struggle that artists go through: wanting to quit your day job, selling out to get successful and having it fail, or having it succeed, or not-selling-out and having it fail, or having it succeed.

But this is not a self-help book! He's slightly cranky, very realistic, and can describe your situation exactly since he's been there himself, then say, “But here's what I've noticed...” - and give you an insight you'll find useful for your own career or art.

It's a short lean book. Perfect for those who rarely find the time to read a whole book."

What I was really impressed by was, if you go to Hugh's website and read an excerpt from his book, he puts over a THIRD of the book on his blog for FREE. At first what I thought was giving away milk from the cow for free (or some other colorful metaphor) actually turned out to be a brilliant marketing strategy. Because, after I had read that free section, I really wanted more.

So much so that I ran right down to the closest Barnes and Noble and picked up a copy.

I've already read through it once and am getting ready to read through it a second time. It's a great book and just what I needed right now.

To check out Hugh's website and read a good chunk of the book hit the link and enjoy the fun!
Hugh MacLeod's website

From the Vault - Alan Davis Phoenix 1995

In 1995 I was working for Marvel Comics doing airbrush coloring over a variety of different artists and images. I would do covers for advertising, trading cards for marketing, and even Pizza Hut drinking glasses for merchandising.

I was painting a lot of stuff for Marvel Comics.

This is a piece that I painted over one of my hero's, Alan Davis', art. It's Phoenix, a Marvel character, done by a Marvel artist, and painted by me, a Marvel painter.

But, this piece was not a piece I did for Marvel Comics. This is a piece I did all on my own.

How do you know you love your work? When, at the end of the day and the paying work is done, what do you do? Well, the same thing.

But this time, for fun.

Another Step Out of the Way

Thanks again to Dan O'Connor and all his great work that I've been featuring on the blog over the last week or so. I hope you all enjoyed the adventures from the "Back to the Kubert" strips as much as I did.

And, as I said before, it gave me some much needed time to get some work done on a few other projects.

One of which was finally getting all the inks done on the OilCan Drive project. This one seems like it took forever. Maybe it's because I was on fire with the project during the early summer. I was penciling and inking away like a fiend. When the Fourth of July hit I only had a mere three pages left to ink and this stage of the project would be done.

So, what took so long to finish those three pages?

Well, throw in doing three children's books back to back, a few other various freelance projects for clients, a two week trip to the East coast, my parents coming to visit me here in Colorado from the east coast, and just getting back into the groove of art again and the time just got away from me. But, I finally kicked time's ass and sat down and knocked those last three pages out.

So now every interior page is inked and scanned into the computer. I spent the last few days scripting the dialogue and laying in the rough lettering on each page. My goal is to have the full interior finished, lettered, and gray toned by Sunday night. So far so good. We'll see how it goes from here.

Then it's just a matter of doing the fun covers and group shots to round the book out. Oh, and do an entire album's worth of music by myself...shheesh...it makes me tired even thinking about it. But I am having fun and things are rolling along.

And, hockey starts back up again tonight. The Colorado Avalanche are back on the ice after a ceremony to celebrate the retiring Joe Sakic's career. It'll be a sad sight to see Joe retire but hockey is back on.

And that always makes life seem a little bit better.