Up until now you’ve only been able to get our FREE Skullkickers preview issue on comiXology, but we’re happy to report that issue #1 and 2 are now available digitally to read on iPhone, iPad and any internet browser.

Click away to check them out and get caught up on the series, then head to your local comic shop and purchase issue #3:

For the past 5 days UDON has been teasing a Mega Man-centric announcement that will be revealed tomorrow. All I can say is that gamers, comic fans and artists should keep their eyes peeled for this one:

Something MEGA this way comes…

Tell your friends!

Click for a larger version

Another drawing from my youth I dug up. This one is from about a year after the previous pic. This time I drew up Spider-Man (obviously heavily McFarlane influenced) and some of his many foes.

Some weird stuff:

– C-Lister The Human Fly gets a big spot while major foes the Lizard, Scorpion and Rhino get shifted to the very bottom. No idea why.
– The Ox from the Enforcers is there, but none of the other members are.
– The Hobgoblin is there, but no Green Goblin.
– I don’t think Electro ever rode lightning in the comics, but I could be wrong.
– That half a guy on the left hand side is the Black Fox. No idea why I cropped him like that.
– Molten Man, Venom and Jackal float in mid-air while Punisher gets a rope to swing on.

Comic Buzz has an extensive 2 part interview with Edwin, Misty and myself all about Skullkickers, including some new teaser info on the second story arc that begins in issue #7, new characters and a great look at some of Edwin’s line art.

Image comics that shipped in November had a Q&A-style interview with me on the editorial page.

What are you working on right now?
Final preparations for my impending nuptials (which will be a done deal by the time this sees print) and writing Skullkickers #5+

What’s the best part of your job?
Figuring out which sound effects best exemplify excessive violence.

What’s the worst part of your job?
Convincing family, friends and strangers that working in comics/art/creative stuff isn’t easy.

How did you first discover comics?
Probably reading Spidey Super Stories in the old Electric Company magazine, graduating up to superhero comic obsession through my teens.

If you weren’t working in comics what would you be doing?
I actually teach at Seneca College in Toronto as part of their Animation faculty, so I’d be doing more of that while daydreaming about working in comics.

What’s the strangest thing a fan has ever said to you?
A fan asked me for my professional opinion on the sexual habits of two popular video game characters, hoping I could settle an argument he was having with his friends.

What are you most likely to complain to an editor about?
Why don’t the printed comics glow with vibrant color like the jpegs do on my monitor?

Who is the biggest influence on your work?
You wouldn’t know it by reading Skullkickers, but the early films of Hayao Miyazaki brought me immense joy. I hope something I do excites people even a fraction of that.

What is the single work of which you’re most proud?
I created a graphic novel called ‘The Makeshift Miracle’ back in 2001 and even though it’s raw and unprofessional in spots, it taught me to follow my passions and finish what I start.

Own up to one of your guilty pleasures.
There’s a website called ‘Fandom Secrets’ where hardcore fans discuss how TV, comic, anime or video game characters have affected their lives/turned them on. Reading it brings on a strange mixture of amazement and schadenfreude.

What was the last comic book you bought?
Morning Glories #3. Gotta support my fellow Image-ites.

Who would play you in a movie about your life?
A muppet.

Pick three things you couldn’t live without.
Breathable air, food/water, dreams.

What’s the strangest thing you have in your house?
A jar with my four extracted wisdom teeth in it.

When was the last time you laughed out loud?
This morning’s Fail Blog entry. Injury footage shouldn’t be so funny, but it is.

What music are you listening to these days?
Orchestral soundtracks to help fill my head with epic ideas and to drown out the sound of renovations happening next door.

What is your favourite film of all time?
Hard to nail down, just one… but right now I’ll say ‘My Neighbour Totoro’. In a couple days it could be ‘Army of Darkness’ or ‘Fight Club’.

Who is your best friend?
My fiancée, Stacy. She’s helped me through thick and thin over the past few years, supported the work I do and patiently let comic stuff worm its way into every aspect of our lives.

What is the worst advice you’ve ever received?
“You need to make a choice between responsibility and creativity. There’s no room for both.”

When was the last time you were truly frightened?
Weeks ago I lied awake at night wondering whether anyone would buy and enjoy Skullkickers. Months and months of work was distilled down in to that a night of pure neurotic fear that it would fail.

Name someone you really admire and explain why.
My friend Ray Fawkes has an uncompromising vision of how he wants to develop as a writer and the type of work he wants to be associated with. I deeply respect that.

What would you like to see happen in comics in the next 12 months?
Even more diversity, less immature sexist bull$%^& from every publisher and, most of all, more joy in the content. Comics are pure fun and people should embrace that.

What the world needs now is…
A good book and a well poured pint of cider.

Skullkickers #3 snags the coveted #2 spot on Ryan Schrodt’s Comic Review Power Rankings. Calling the book a ‘Must Read’, Ryan is smitten by our mix of sass and sorcery.

“This comic is big and bold in every single way—from its over-the-top concepts to its lush art to its ridiculously high entertainment value. Skullkickers has been incredibly fun thus far, but the creative team turns it up to eleven here in every single way. You cannot go wrong with this comic.”

Stacy and I are in the midst of a big clean up, slowly going through room by room and reorganizing/purging stuff. It’s unbelievable to me that we’ve only been in the house a couple years but have already accumulated so much stuff.

Anyways, as I was going through old artwork and portfolio cases I came across this crazy piece of obsessiveness:

Click for larger version

On the back it’s dated April 9th, 1989 so I was 12 years old. Obviously I was also a complete comic nut for the Marvel Universe. I recall working my ass off on this, trying to fit in as many characters as possible.

Some funny details:
– Cloak and Dagger are in there, but Cloak is just a corner of his, uh, cloak.
– Apparently I thought Archangel was cool because he’s way bigger than a lot of other well known Marvel characters.
– All the characters are their late 80’s versions, including Dr. Strange with his eye patch and Clea as Mistress of the Dark Dimension.
– Nightcrawler has 2 ‘BAMF’ teleport poofs in addition to his full appearance.
– My favourite character, Spider-Man, weirdly gets the shaft in terms of importance on the page.
– It doesn’t look right but Ant-Man is actually standing in Captain America’s hand.
– Not sure if that’s Goliath, the Falcon or someone else behind Archangel.
– The Fantastic Four is, uh, three. No Thing in the pic. No idea why.
– Professor X is just an astrally projected head to save space.
– Behind Thor is the Rainbow Bridge.
– Obscure characters like Boom-Boom, Lockheed, Impossible Man/Woman and Widget are in there instead of far more important ones.

I’ll be keeping this somewhere safe. 🙂

Here’s a step-by-step walk through of the illustration I put together for Emerald City Comicon’s Monsters & Dames art book coming out in March.

The initial concept I had in mind was a huge lumbering creature protecting a child. Starting with swooping sketched out shapes I started doodling, looking for forms and silhouette that would look interesting and give the impression of size that I wanted.

Once those larger forms started to take shape as something with a massive upper body and ape-like arms, I quickly defined them a bit more with some rough contour shapes to get a sense of the perspective for the piece. All this was done in Photoshop on my Cintiq, but it could just as easily have been pencil and paper.

Starting a new layer, I went in with a darker blue and made some decisions about forms, trying to nail down the general anatomy of the creature and to get a sense of proportion. I like where it’s going, so I threw in some really rough light and shadow to help me visualize it more solidly.

There’s an intimacy in this stage that I still really like. The girl’s expression is more comforting and I think it’s actually bit more emotional than the final version.

Gathering some reference material of monsters and taking a bit of a break, I came back to the piece and decided to do another sketch over, adjusted the stance and making it even larger. I wanted the creature to look bigger and more menacing. The creature’s skull is now more bestial and its eyes are more inhuman.

The girl’s proportion changes too and now I’m visualizing something Egyptian for her outfit and jewelery.

This is the final line art scanned in. At first I was thinking of inking this digitally, but the whim struck me to go back to traditional for the line art, so I penciled this out on Bienfang Rag Marker Paper (which I really like using because it’s nearly see though but has more substance than tracing paper). Most of it’s done with an F pencil, though added the thicker outline with a B.

After it’s scanned in I use Image> Adjustments> Levels in Photoshop to darken up the line art and push the paper base tone to white.

Here are the Colour Flats. These are the tones I start with, kept on their own layer so I can easily select certain portions of the illustration and isolate them for colour adjustments later on. It also lets me see what the base colours are before any rendering so I can decide if it’s all working well together.

The first rendering step is adding the main shadows and deciding the direction of light. I opt for light coming from the upper right and then imagine it striking down on the figure.

Which parts are facing the light?
Which parts are facing away from light?
Which parts overlap to create shadows as they block another area from light?

As I put down each shadow that stuff becomes more clear.

Now I do the opposite with the highlights, isolating anatomy that’s facing the light and enhancing those with a lighter colour. I also add in a blue/purple bounce light on the left side to help bring out some extra details in the shadow areas.

I soften the look of the black line art by colouring some of those lines to give it a bit of an animation cel feel. This also helps to pop out the hair detail by the monster’s face. The horns were looking pretty bland so I add a dark to light gradient transition of colour. It’s starting to come together.

The last chunk involves a lot of finicky stuff – enhancing the contrast and saturation, adding smaller details to the skin, pushing highlights on the horns and jewelry and adding a blue-purple haze to the base of the piece to enhance the feeling of size and make it look more creepy.

Rendering light and shadow can be confusing with complex shapes, but in reality the formula for light in this piece is pretty straight forward:

All surfaces of the creature facing ‘up’ get the highlight tone.
All surfaces of the creature facing ‘right’ get the base tone.
All surfaces of the creature facing ‘left’ or ‘down’ get the shadow tone.
Then the whole piece gets an extra blue-purple base light kick.

Here’s the final again, with minor tweaks and background/text added:

I hope you found this walk through of the process useful.

Skullkickers #3 came out yesterday. I can’t believe it’s already been two months since the first issue popped on to store shelves.

A round-up of reviews and related links:

• Comic mega-site Newsarama has a 9 page preview of the issue.

• The issue sold out at distribution before release, which is extremely uncommon for the third issue of a series.

• Great reviews for the issue so far from The Angry Zen Master, Comic Vine, Comic Buzz, MTV Geek and Multiversity Comics.

• Comic Buzz has just posted the first part of a two part interview about Skullkickers with the creative team that includes behind the scenes art and info on the second story arc.

• I interviewed our colorist Misty Coats to put the spotlight on the awesome work she’s doing on the pages.

• The latest issue of the free digital comic magazine The Frontiersman has a special article on Skullkickers’ origins.

Hopefully more cool stuff to come. 🙂

The latest free issue of ‘The Frontiersman’ online magazine is out and I have a very special article inside all about Skullkickers’ tabletop gaming roots, with some silly anecdotes about playing D&D and the source of SK’s humour.