Post-it Party

Hey. Yeah, I'm still alive, just pottering around with various personal projects as well as complete Vol. 2 of Divalicious.
I've decided to do the cool blog endeavour of self-publishing a sketchbook. I'm not sure what theme(s) it will take yet, but obviously it'll need new art. I wanted to try something inspired by the doodlings of Chris Battle and Kristen McCabe and have post-it notes on-hand to do little things on. I kinda got carried away because I now have a couple dozen of the things done. Here's just one page of them.
Some of the pics are just created off the top of my head, but most of them are inspired by old ads or a kistchy piece of wrapping paper.


Another thing I wanted to get under my belt - sculpting! I had a heap of old SuperSculpy lying around but it was hard as a rock from poor storage. A few drops of softener and a lot of gentle kneading(with a claw hammer) and it was usable again.

She's been in the oven - her pigtails and ribbons got a little toasty, there, but paint will cover those up. I think she came out rather well, just as I think Rosie'd look in 3D.

A pic done for a new dA comm I was invited to. The theme was 'heart accessories'

Swag and Saddleshoes

I didn't get as much drawing done at San Diego Con as I would have liked. The sheer crowds made sketch-meets a bit difficult - plus I hardly knew anyone outside of my posse of Tokyopop editors and they don't draw :/


Steven Cummings: *grunt*
Paul Benjamin: heh, issa GIRL!
Amy: I hear a gin and tonic...

Suffering low blood sugar, Amy starts dining on Steven's shoulder while T Campbell scares the straights with his sportin' new Amish fuzz...

Shilling is an ART, dammit.

Bryce Coleman, Best Editor Ever. You can't have him, he's mine...

As for stuff I picked up, I got Clio Chiang's Sketchbook, Kristen McCabe's 'Morsels', Chris Sanders' sketchbook, Flight 4, Johane Matte's 'Horus'(plus her bonus Potter fan comic), Rik Maki's two sketchbooks and whatever the hell one gets from Joshua Elder when you share a Corona with him at 2am and all the hotel bars are closed. ;)


Faces at the airport plus randomly doodling faces because Rik Maki is the MAN.


I call this one 'SUCK it, Harmonians!'


Rosie doing some final warmup exercises.

The overture has begun, and as you'll see over above the Divalicious! cover in the margin there, Thorn is now live!
Monday, Wednesday and Friday, fresh strips. Yum.

Comic Con, the Warm-up

I'm not going to write up my entire Comic Con experience right now, as it's late and I'm tired. But yes, I got through it, did my panels and talked to some really neat artists - especially a big wave to Clio for being so nice and putting up with my fangirly presence at the Flight table ;)

I'll do a proper post with Con doodles and a list of my swag later.

In an amusing side-note, T got this email from the Library of Congress, where they're in the process of cataloguing Divalicious!
Mostly it's about them needing more information to store T on the database, but I found it amusing that there's only one other Mebberson in their catalog, and he's a second cousin I've never met in my life.

I KNEW there was a damn good reason to work under my maiden name.

San Diego Con - SCHEDULE!

Just getting all my bits and pieces together for SDCC.

I'm doing two panels for Tokyopop on Friday:
Drawing for Manga 12.30-1.30
Fashion in Manga 2-3pm

Then a Creator's signing on Sunday at 11am

Saturday, I have nothing scheduled, so if anyone else wants to get the hell out of the massive crowd crush and go cafe-sketching, I'm up!

So if you're drifting past the Tokyopop booth and hear a loud blonde Australian hogging the mic, that's me*wave*. At some point, I'll make my way to Small Press and find as MANY of my favourite bloggers as possible and buy lots of sketchbooks and Flight 4.
The only event I'm hell-bent on attending is Jerry Beck's Worst Cartoons Ever on Fri night, so Brew fans, see you there!

The rest of the time I shall spend reeling at the sheer size of this thing.

Return to Labyrinth bonus

Return to Labyrinth is Tokyopop's licensed sequel series to Labyrinth. I discovered that other creators had been invited to contribute bonus 'fanart' for Vol.2. I hadn't heard about this so I emailed and asked my editor. They said sure and sorry I hadn't been told sooner, but the deadline is Friday. I looked at the other submissions - pretty standard manga splash-page stuff, so I decided to be different in media AND presentation and made it a full-page gag in pencil.
It's a little rough around the edges, but that's just trim area.

In other news... T and I need help. We were informed on Fri 13th that Tokyopop are not optioning future Divalicious! volumes for 'fiscal' reasons. There's nothing wrong with the series itself or T and my work, but in a nutshell, they're citing poor sales as a reason to pull the plug.
Bear in mind, Diva has only been out for FOUR MONTHS and got very little publicity, but that's a whole 'nother rant which I shall not go into here.


So let the word go out - if you haven't already, please consider dropping by your local Borders/comic store, checking Divalicious! out and buying a copy. We'll both be at San Diego with bells on and the book will also be available at the Tokyopop booth.

This whole situation utterly sucks and it's taken me most of the week to emotionally claw back up. We worked our arses off on Divalicious!, we are fiercely proud of it and believe in its potential.

Tina deserves a better chance than this to shine.

Mmmm... con special....

Phew, ALMOST finished all the DIVA stuff for SDCC. This is the new cover for the con special. There'll only be 150 of these, given away as a free gift with any purchase of Divalicious 1. The gift will also include a free button (one of 3 designs) and the postcard below.



If I run into anyone, I'll likely be hauling a stack of these cards and if you mention my blog, I'll throw in a badge as well as swapsies with any MOO cards you may have on your person!

For the comic cover and Tina's bed of TP graphic novels, I deliberately picked ones that TP Marketing never seem to give any attention to. Case in point - if they DID give Diva proper attention, I wouldn't have to make all this free stuff (unpaid, I might add).

Hm.

Platform, San Fran & ROOOCHESTER!!!

Okay, lots to update, time to bulletise!

* PLATFORM: Second of Amid's 'Design Daze' sessions was fantastic - a lecture on Tom Oreb. His slides were great and demonstrated the tried-and-true principles of good, striking character design that is stylised, but still flexible and animatable.
I got all inspired and have been watching 'Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom' over and over again just taking it all in. I'm determined to utilise a good old-school stylised look for Rosie. My biggest weakness is layouts - I don't think I'm very good at it. I'm sure there's some basic fundamental rule of perspective that I'm missing and the penny just hasn't dropped yet.
But I ADORE the 50's Oreb/Blair/Noble style and it means I can blow off the perspective a bit ;)

(I was listening to old Jack Benny shows when I did this. Amazing those are still funny after 60+ years)



I'm totally anti-child, but I saw this ad in an old mag and just went 'awwwwwww' :)

* Went to San Fran for a week to visit the sister-in-law and chill(as much as one CAN chill in 90+ degree heat). We unfortunately had to miss the Tezuka exhibition because of lack of time, but when I discovered the exhibition originated in Melbourne, I have a SNEAKING hunch I've already seen it.
But the highlight was undoubtedly our pilgrimage to the scorching fields of Santa Rosa and the Charles Schulz museum.

Oh wow. MECCA!


The Warm Puppy Cafe, Sparky's desk, Meredith's bedroom mural, Christo's wrapped doghouse. The store was a LITTLE disappointing - no good pins or posters, I only found one women's babydoll tee of snoopy(I REALLY wanted a crabby Lucy one) and not many nice collectables or objets. The Mall of America had MUCH better stuff.
We did a bit of a drive around the ice arena looking for 1 Snoopy Place (Sparky's actual home and Peanuts world HQ), but it was blistering hot and we had one more stop. We'd come this far... and Sebastopol was only 6 miles away...

Sorry I missed meeting you properly, Sparky.
To be fair, his grave is NOT hard to miss. The Pleasant Hills Cemetary isn't exactly signposted well, but when you drive in, WHAM, there he is, marked with a stone bench engraved with Snoopy, Sharlie Brown, Lucy and Linus.

The 11-12 hour drive down and back was spent doodling trees with my Copics and brainstorming future Divalicious story ideas.

For some reason, one day a few weeks back, I couldn't get 'Hairspray' out of my head.

Platform Tuesday

America's first International Animation Festival and it's right here in my town, whoo!
There are only a few panels I wanted to go to (and I couldn't afford the $50-a-day passes), the first two were yesterday.
Renegade Animators, with Bill Plympton, Danny Antonucci and David Wachtenheim.
They had some interesting comments, although I really didn't see the 'renegade' part. Danny and David work for major networks and Bill outright said he's sick of being called 'renegade' and would happily whore himself to the next big studio who asked. Not that I'd blame him in the least, I know I'D like to have a huge money-marketing-distribution machine behind me if I wanted to make a feature film or tv show.

Then came a simply corking 90 minutes of 50's toons, Design Daze, delivered by the lovely Amid Amidi. It was fantastic, although the aircon in there was a LITTLE chilly ;)
Those 50's designers and directors STILL leave modern stuff in the dust in terms of sheer whimsical/insane design. More than Meets the Eye had figures that were almost Miro-ish and fantastically inventive depictions of sound, especially radio waves and a disembodied suitcase making its way to a business pitch for CBS radio.
My other favourite was Energetically Yours, an ESSO film praising fossil fuels and EXPERTLY aping Ronald Searle's style.

Ah, 50's propanda, how I love you.
What would have made it perfect would be allowing the audience to catcall it, MST3K-style :)
Mocking with LOVE, of course!

This afternoon is Amid's panel on Tom Oreb, where I intend to go and be a great big fangirl.

Dear Sharon Morill...

Karma's a bitch, innit? >:)

Signed,

staff of Disneytoons Sydney, Tokyo, Vancouver & Toronto, WDFA Paris & Orlando

Meanderings...

Just some stuff from the past few weeks.

Don't ask. Just freeforming.


What's on my mind lately...


The obligatory Rosie sketch.

Beat.. and begin.

Boy. Been a long time since I flexed my tiny little animation muscle. Just started sketching Rosie dancing and next thing I knew it was a set of key poses.

I just noticed something. With her bobble pigtails and little red shorts, Rosie looks uncannily and entirely unintentionally like a certain Mouse.
Looks like she needs a different colour for her shorts. Pity, red suits her.

Speaking of animation, anyone know anywhere where you can get an animation peghole-punch and/or pre-punched 13-15 field paper that DOESN'T cost a fortune??
I just about died when I saw an $800 pricetag on a hole-puncher O_o
And ebay is drawing a blank...

Faces and memes a-gogo

More raiding of magazines. The 70's were a wonderful decade for fugly men.


Unlike the 50's, when EVERYONE was starch-pressed and Orlonated.


There is no music too kitschy for my iPod.


Pet project of mine - This is potentially page 1 of 200-odd 'mood memes' turned into little Rosie gags. I wonder if this is the sort of thing Image would be interested in?

i like ponies (and hate thinking up subjects)

I ordered my Moo cards tonight! JOY! I think I picked 20-odd pictures for them :)


Personify The Tacky Food Picture. Works every time.


The redhead was a girl sitting near me. She looked like she belonged on an early 60's magazine cover, wearing a buttercup yellow sunfrock and matching poodle.



Molly decided today that she is a British shorthair tabby and if she knew what cat macros were, she would NOT be impressed.

I'm looking at the man in the mirror...

Another raid-the-old-periodicals night.
I can't believe I was born in this decade. How EMBARASSING!


And brats these days say we looked ridiculous in the 80's...
OUR PARENTS WERE WORSE!



I write half the captions myself, others are actual copy from the ads in question.

Joyeux Anniversaire, M. Remi

Tintin and Asterix were the most borrowed library books of my childhood (to the chagrin of my mother, who wanted me to read books WITHOUT pictures!). The world needs Tintin again. The US MIGHT be a lot nicer to Europe if our plucky Belgian boy reporter took on the terrorists. Picture Osama running screaming from a foxhole with Milou tenaciously hanging onto his butt.

-----
In other news, I've decided to end my current run of Pinup Disney Girls (see last entry). Time for a break, I think ;)
For those of you who missed it, the series starred:
Ariel, Jasmine, Belle, Briar Rose, Cinderella, Pocahontas, Mulan, Snow White, Jane Porter, Megara, Esmeralda, Malificent, Kidagakash and Capt. Amelia.
Whew.

Happy Sketch Crawl

My contribution is.. kinda tiny, but I didn't forget!
Husband had to work yesterday, so I took myself out for coffee. The cafe was nice and full, so I ended up with a pretty okay batch of faces.

We went bowling last night with friends, of which my best friend Nikki makes two appearences on the sketches I made there.
I look at other artists with their cool sketchbooks of people-watching and when I do it, I invariably end up with just heads. I guess I just think faces are interesting :)


(she didn't REALLY do a voodoo dance, I just wanted someone to blame because I missed several easy spares ;p)


The weather has been fining up and aren't I LOVING IT!!!!


Over on dA, I've been keeping the masses happy with my Retro Disneygirls series. Ah well, they're enjoying themselves, even if their grammar makes me despair /_\.
This is probably my favourite one I've done so far. Making Cinderella into a pinup girl was TOO easy and TOO fun.

Oh, and I now have my own Myspace now, so if you have one too, fellow artists, I'd love to friend :)

Why Disney Heroines suck

Because they WON'T LEAVE ME ALONE!!! Just when I think I've GOT all the Disney fanart out of my system, I find all this stuff in my old books that I never finished but which still look okay and I want to finish them and argh.
My sketchbook collection dates back to May 1984. That was when I was in hospital for an operation and my mother bought me a sketchbook to pass the time. That's where the dynasty started.
Yesterday I did a spine count and as of now, I have no fewer than EIGHT sketchbooks all in various stages of being filled. Oy, damn me and my fetish for nice new blank books...
Some of them are new, some of them have been in action since last year. Not only that, but I discovered that I hadn't numbered and chronicled any completed sketchbooks since around 2000.
So that killed half an hour. THAT'S where I found a whole bunch of sketches or scribbled notes for other Disney gal fanart I wanted to try.

Yeah, I'm one of those freaks who actually ENJOYED working at Disney and loves the characters. Yes, I like drawing Disney girls. Pretty toon girls rock.

So last night I whipped up a couple more 'retro pinup'-style pics of Ariel and Jasmine (they're over on my dA account) which made my message box explode with fangirl squee. Tonight I felt like going even simpler and did this little Mary Blair-inspired piece:

Kick off your Sunday Shoes

It's 80's day!!
Time to grab an old issue of Glamour and the squeakers...


Every decade has its silly model poses. In the 80's, it was 'airborne'.


touch of Photoshop for the skin - the paper didn't blend very well.
Funny thing about tooning 80's fashion - it's IMPOSSIBLE to make the hair too big.

Vrrrm.

Dodge Dart in my cafe's parking lot. Possibly a 1963.
Portlanders luvs them awesome old cars.
(yeah the front wheel is meant to be distorted. I started out trying to caricature the car...)


Hunter in the grass is a gas, baby. Can you dig it?


Just felt like sketching a real-life Tink. Better description over here

New face

There's a final piece in Rosie's world that still had to be added.
With every Master must come... an apprentice.


Meet Joe. As average as his name, all Joe wants is someone to show him the way. To let him know he's not ENTIRELY useless and worthy of a purpose in this world.
Rosie has found her True Minion.


Could these three take over the world? Possibly.


Burns and Allen, Gleason and Carney, Savage and Hyneman....


Another rejected design for Joe, done to set proportions with Edie and Rosie. Scott and I decided he looked a bit too Schroeder and not enough Charlie Brown.


Sketch from the pocket book - I dunno why Tina came out decked like a Rainbow Brite Christmas Tree, she just DID.


Mucking around with brush pens.