Brigid Alverson over at Robot 6 has posted up a two part interview all about webcomic projects I’ve been working on. This first half covers 1 month of Skullkickers online and how that’s going so far. The second is all about the work UDON and I are doing on the Namco-Bandai project called ShiftyLook.

Click on through and give them a read:

Talking With Jim Zub Part 1 – Skullkickers Breaks a Half Million Pageviews in 1 Month

Talking With Jim Zub Part 2 – What’s Up With Shifty Look

Tomorrow morning I’m on a plane to Oakland, California to get set up for this weekend’s Image Expo. The convention season starts earlier than ever and it’s a bit exhausting, but I am really looking forward to hanging with Edwin at our booth, seeing friends, fans and engaging new readers.

Weirdly enough, I’m also kind of looking forward to 4 hours of uninterrupted writing time each way on the flight. The barrage of emails and phone calls lately has made it hard to concentrate.

You can read all the con details here if you’d like.

If you’re coming to the show, swing by TABLE 51 and say “hi”!

The world of Image Comics’ action-comedy fantasy series SKULLKICKERS has never been defined… until now!

Professional Cartographer/Illustrator Mike Schley, working with comic series creator Jim Zub has created a stunning 18″ x 24″ fantasy map of the world of Skullkickers and the first place you’ll be able to purchase this convention-exclusive poster is at this weekend’s Image Comics Expo.

Whether you’re a SKULLKICKERS fan, a fantasy reader, an RPGer or just love incredibly detailed worlds of fiction, this high quality poster is going to knock you out.

The new project I’ve been working on for Namco-Bandai is starting to emerge… Keep your eyes on the Shifty Look website for teasers and, eventually, content aplenty.

EONS ago, in a time when glorious rivers of quarters flowed from pizza parlors aplenty, the great arcade characters of old ruled the universe. But as the times changed with the rise of the cartridge, the disc, and finally telepathy, and the people stopped paying lifeblood tribute of sweat and metal, all but a handful of these characters were forgotten, many thought lost the ages. ShiftyLook, through the unlimited power of the web, exists to excavate the buried treasures of the NAMCO BANDAI Group, bringing back to life characters once thought consigned to a lonely oblivion.

Other details starting to emerge at news sites including Bleeding Cool, IGN, ICV2, Destructoid and About.com.

Makeshift Miracle is now on Keenspot!

If you’ve been enjoying Makeshift over on the UDON website, you’ll be happy to know that nothing has changed. You’ll be able to read each new update online, browse the archives and enjoy the slowly widening mystery of Colby and Iris.

Having our story up on Keenspot gives us access to a much wider audience of potential fans and a new community of avid webcomic readers. We’re excited about working with Keenspot to make Makeshift bigger than ever. After the success we’ve already seen with Skullkickers online, it seemed a natural fit to bring Makeshift Miracle over there as well to help expand our audience in time for the book pre-order.

It’s also a bit of a karmic full circle for me. Back in 2001 when I was serializing the original Makeshift story, finding web hosting was tough. Keenspot was the biggest webcomic group site on the web and they had a free hosting sub-site called Keenspace (now known as Comic Genesis) where they’d encourage new webcomic creators to post their stories, picking the best and most consistent ones to be ‘Spotted’ (moved up to the big leagues of Keenspot).

The original Makeshift Miracle webpage was a little Keenspace site, much of it hand coded as I figured out how html tags worked and how to post comic pages online. The thought of graduating my series up to Keenspot was a bit of a motivator, a way to legitimize the work I was putting into it. Now, 10 years later, it’s kind of cool to say that I finally got there. 🙂

I’ll let you all know how it goes.

Gary Tyrrell over at Fleen, the blog all about webcomics, has a new interview with me all about serializing Skullkickers online. Click on through to give it a read.

The Academy Award nominations were announced on Tuesday and every film up for the Visual Effects category features the work of Seneca Animation Arts grads (two also from instructors). My students and co-workers rock! Our college rocks!

Read more here: Seneca grads and professors work on Oscar-nominated films

and check out footage from our recent students here:
Seneca Animation Arts YouTube Channel