The winners are...

...Jim McClain and Blaze Rocket who correctly identified the original inspirations for the character designs for three of the X-Men: Evolution characters. Jim correctly guessed Rogue was inspired by Xenia Seeberg from Lexx and Wanda was inspired by Fairuza Balk of the Craft and Return to Oz. Blaze Rocket correctly identified BoomBoom's original inspiration as singer Gwen Stefani of No Doubt fame


For all their effort I promised to do a drawing of a character of their choosing. Blaze Rocket chose Wanda and Jim asked for a drawing of Jean in her normal uniform and what she would look like if she had ever turned into Phoenix on X-Men: Evolution. Before the questions or misunderstandings start I want to make clear that this design is just something I came up with to respond to Jim's request and was not something that was ever considered all those years ago on XME

So congratulations and thank you to Jim and Blaze Rocket for playing along. I might try this again sometime in the future since there were many more characters that were inspired by celebrities in XME as well as on The Ultimate Avengers.

Who's that girl....

This is a commission I'm working on of the XME bad girls. This is the first rough drawing for it and the tight rough that I transferred to an 11x17 board. I'll also post the next steps as I finish them.

I posted this on Facebook the other day and it received a lot of attention and a few curious people asking who they were. I'm sure everyone coming to this blog recognizes them so that's not an issue. I'm also sure many of you have heard me discuss the fact that many of the XME characters were based on actual people - celebrities to one degree or another. I then asked if anyone could guess what celebrities these were based on ...and I was surprised no one really tried to guess. So I even offered up a clue: One's from an old Sci-Fi show (I think BBC), one was an actress in 2 iconic movies and the other was based on a popular singer.
Of course, you need to keep in mind when XME was on TV, but at least one of the celebrities is still somewhat in the public eye.
Anyone willing to venture a guess?

Just to sweeten the pot I'll do a sketch for the winner of any XME character they choose and post it on this Blog. 


And just for fun here's another commission I'm working on as well of Rogue and Gambit.

Take 2....

At the suggestion of my Art Director, Michael R. Hudson, I did a little tweaking to the colors of the promo piece for The Eternal Savage and added some more fauna and such. Definitely looks better, eh?
THE ETERNAL SAVAGE will be a Graphic Novel Adapted by Martin Powell and illustrated by me. Authorized by Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. Coming your way soon from Sequential Pulp/Dark Horse Comics

What do you think?

And here it is with the appropriate log and credits.

Color my world....

First I want everyone to know that my Holiday sale will continue until the end of the year, so if you're interested in any of the pieces still listed in my FaceBook gallery let me know. For those of you that don't do FB, you can look around on this blog (or my web-site's sketchbook page) and feel free to ask about any of the art you see there - though I can't guarantee they're all available for one reason or another. The FB page gives an accurate listing of what's still available for sale, but feel free to ask anyway.
Also I want everyone (that haven't already discovered it on their own) to go check out the latest incarnation of my web-site/portfolio . The old one was great (created by my good friend Francesco Francavilla) and did what I needed it to do, but it was getting old and dated looking so I finally found someone to give the site a fresh new look. Even though it's not complete yet I think he's succeeded wonderfully and I'm very happy with the results.

Okay, now that I've finished with business (more or less) I'll get onto something a little more fun. I've already posted this in several spots, but I wanted to make sure all of you got a good look at this as well. I finally finished the color for the promo piece for The Eternal Savage based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ THE ETERNAL SAVAGE as adapted by Martin Powell and illustrated by me (authorized by ERB, Inc. and published by Sequential Pulp/Dark Horse Comics). 
And so I continue my quest to be the oldest person to start a career in comics.

And here;s the black and white for that art.

Holiday sale...

For the first time I'm selling a lot of my original pencil (and some ink) sketches for the Holidays. Many of these were the drawings I did for Fan Request Friday.
You can view all of them on FaceBook on my "Art of..." page (just click on the link) and just message me to see if a piece you'd like is available and to arrange payment (through PayPal), The range from $45 to $100 +postage.

Sideswiped....

Yesterday I was alerted by Wren Price that one of my commissions had been copied and posted on Deviant art.

I don't have a problem with anyone copying my art for their own enjoyment, as fanart, or for educational purposes or does not acknowledge where the original came from. When someone seeks to profit from the copied art and /or denies it's a swipe is when I react.

At first I just posted a comment on his page asking if he had used reference for his drawing. The he removed my message and blocked me so I contacted DA and filed a greivance sending them the drawings I've posted below.

It evidently worked because a few hours later I received an e-mail from him telling me that he removed the art, but still denied that he had copied it.

So, thank you Wren.

The top drawing is mine (obviously), the next drawing is the swipe and the third drawing is the mine laid on top of his - after I flopped it (the one change he made to the art other than changing the characters)

We don't need no steenking free time...

Oddly enough I've found myself with a little more free-time than usual and I'm not sure why.
I just finished a quick turnaround on a HarperCollins Batman book and I'm starting the next one (can anyone say Man-Bat?) and I'm still working on a Young Justice storyboard assignment as well as all my normal day to day duties on Voltron Force.
But I still manged to create a banner for CTNX (and probably other Cons afterwards - if I can get a table),...

...finish a long overdue commission  based on a Fan Request Friday drawing of Spike and Buffy (Spuffy)...

...and do these 2 drawings for the FOCer's SketchBlog. Well, actually one of the drawings (pterodactyl) was done for the graphic novel I'm gearing up for and seemed like a good reason to use as a entry in the dinosaur theme week.

And this other drawing for the FOCer's Sketchblog was done for the Golden Age of Comics theme week. My choice was Miss Masque and as many of you know from reading this blog I have a soft spot for these Golden Age Heroines.

So overall I've filled in the free-time voids pretty decently I'd say. This coming week looks like I'll be able to wrap a couple of other projects I've been working on as well. I hope.
And remember to come to CTNX and say "hi". If you haven't already gotten your tickets you can still get them at a discount by using my discount code: GORANIX11

   

Lon time no see...

I actually have a few minutes (something that doesn't seem to happen too often these days) so I thought I'd toss down a post and give everyone an update.
This last weekend I went to the Long Beach Comic-Con and had a great time (Saturday was much nicer then Sunday, but that's not too unusual from what I hear) and I did several sketches and sold some books - and best of all I was able to see some old friends as well as meet some new ones.

These are the sketches I did at LBCC.

  

This month I'll be at CTNX, The Creative Talent Network Exposition, doing more of the same I hope. So if you'd like to come to this one-of-a-kind Animation Con Nov 18-20 you can still use my discount code GORANIX11 to purchase tickets. If you're into animation and the people that make it then this is the Con for you.

 

Also, in case you haven't already seen it on FB of the FOCer's Blog, I thought I'd share with you my latest drawing for the FOCer's Blog. The theme was Universal Monsters and I chose the first Universal Monster: Lon Chaney as the Phantom of the Opera

 
 

Go and do my bidding...

Lots of great artwork is being auctioned for a worthy cause. So go to New Jersey Comic Fusion web-site and make a bid! Online Bidding ends at Midnight Saturday Night! Comic Book Pages, Original Artwork, Signed Items and more! Please share so they can raise a ton of money for SAFE in Hunterdon! Domestic Violence destroys families and leaves a scar on those it touches! Healing starts at shelters like SAFE! 

And head over to the Portland site to bid on the art they have available there as well.

These are the pieces I made specifically for the event:

Just a quickie...

...and hopefully more later this week. But in the meanwhile I wanted to make sure everyone knew:

This weekend I'll be at Long Beach Comic-Con in Artist's Alley [Booth #1409A] come by and say "hi". I'll be selling sketchbooks and doing Con -Sketches.