Anyway. Yeah.

Pencils for Multiplex #647 

There 48 hours to go in the Multiplex: There and Back Again Lightning Round Kickstarter drive.

In celebration of this, and to promote one final push upwards, I will be giving TWO page of original sheets* of pencils or inks (signed by me) from the current zombie storyline away to a random Kickstarter backers. If you’ve already pledged, you are already entered! You can pledge $1 (although I’ll only get like 65¢ from that, you know that right?), or you can pledge $3,333. You have the same chance of winning. Only Kickstarter backers — of any amount — are eligible. Sorry, people waiting for the PayPal option to open up.

But wait! There’s more! If we get to the secondary funding goal of $17,500 — less than $700 away — by the end of the Kickstarter project at MIDNIGHT, Thursday, April 12th, I will increase that to FOUR sheets.

This is in addition to the super awesome bookmark that will be added to the Basic Sponsor Pack (and Super Sponsor Pack) rewards.

AND THAT’S NOT ALL. If we get to the next funding goal of $20,000 by the end of the Kickstarter project, I will increase that to SIX sheets.

* I say “sheets” because I draw them on 11×14 sheets of Bristol paper. Some strips/pages of the finished comic are broken up across two sheets. And some sheets only have one panel on them. Which page you get is random. But they’re all awesome, man. All of them.

(Please don’t laugh at my complete ignorance of actual swordfighting technique.)

Another commission, this time for Chris Riley, who asked for Ichigo Kurosaki (in his Bankai fighting mode) vs. Samurai Jack. I’ve never seen Bleach, so I don’t know who would win here. Any of you guys have an opinion about this?

Want a sketch from me? You can always get one through the Multiplex Store — or, for the next few days, pledge for the Draw Something Pack in the Book 2 Kickstarter Project.

Here are a couple of drawings commissioned by one music-loving reader, Tom Spendlove — of Jeff Tweedy (of Wilco, top) and Wayne Coyne (of the Flaming Lips, bottom). I liked how they turned out, so I thought I’d share them with you.

These sketches are in line with the kind of detail you’ll get with the Draw Something Pack in the Book 2 Kickstarter Project, incidentally. Just sayin’. :)

Okay, so I made my “reasonable guesses” as to how Emerald City Comicon went in the Notes from the Manager for today’s strip, and surprisingly enough I wasn’t all that far off. No Summer Glau or George Takei. Spike didn’t attend, so I didn’t get to see her, and I missed out on any Joel Watson karaoke, if there was any. I had awakened on Thursday with a sore throat, though, which had progressed to a full-blown cold by Friday morning. Sadly, I can’t even blame it on airports or the usual confluenza, since I had it before I even left for the airport.

I got into Seattle on Thursday and was quickly whisked off to a gala affair at Phil Foglio’s house with David Willis, which involved a handful of webcomickers sitting and standing around talking shop (as these things do) and some friends of Phil’s and Bill Barnes’s.

Alas, because of my progressively worse cold, I didn’t get to play that much with my fellow webcomickers, but on Saturday night, I did get to have a deliciously hilarious (and inevitably foul) dinner with Tom Brazelton, Danielle Corsetto, Randy Milholland, Lar De Souza and Ryan Sohmer, Joel Watson, and David again before I crapped out. (I shared a hotel room with Dave and Joel, too — after I split Sunday night, this situation ended exactly as you would expect it would.)

Illness notwithstanding, it was great meeting a lot of familiar faces from last year’s ECCC as well as From The Internet, including several backers from the Book 1 Kickstarter project and a few from the new one for Book 2, which even ended up passing $10,000 on Sunday afternoon, before my prediction posted with Monday’s.

Sorry if I got any of you sick by shaking your hand. (As if you’d know it was me specifically.) For what it’s worth, I was Purelling the shit out of my hands every day. Usually I do it to keep from getting sick, but this time, it was to keep anyone else from getting sick.

I had a great time doing a ton of sketches at the show. The Mega Man vs. Cthulhu one above was one of my favorites. If anybody else wants to share sketches I did for them, either in books or on a sheet of Bristol, tweet a photo of it at me! I forgot to take photos of some really fun ones, unfortunately.

I remember experimenting with pupils in the characters’ eyes when I first designed them (seven years ago, for the oldest cast members) but at that point, the strip was so undetailed that it looks bizarre to have this small area of heightened detail. Now, I pack a bit more into each panel, so it doesn’t seem so out of place. Or maybe I just changed my mind. I dunno.

(This will, of course, also be the second chapter in Multiplex Book 2, currently/tentatively titled Multiplex: There and Back Again.)

Chapter 7 has two more strips left before I can publish it, but I probably won’t have time to get to those until after I’m back from Emerald City Comic Con, unfortunately!

If you’d like a high-res version of this flier to print out and post anywhere and everywhere you’d like, you can download this PDF (non-commercial uses only!).

Monday’s strip may be late, because I’ll be out of town most of the weekend, unfortunately, but I’ll let you know.

Anyway, here’s a sketch of my favorite super-hero ever, which I did in a few idle minutes at the Indianapolis Comic Book Show the other weekend:

Most actually don’t have this much black on them, because it actually starts to make the paper curl a little bit. Also, since I’m left-handed and the paper (although it’s a matte stock) has a bit of gloss to it, I have a tendency to smudge the marker, so I need to avoid very detailed sketches in the books. That’s why they’re only $5 more than the regular edition, not $10, like most Artist’s Editions of webcomics collections.

If you’d like something extra complicated, I’d really recommend getting one of the sketches from the store instead. I ink those with a brush or crow quill on Bristol, so I can get much more detailed with them.

Oh, whoops, and I just noticed I missed a line along the left side of Kurt’s face. I’ll fix that before I mail it. Anyway, I’m sure most of you aren’t expecting too incredibly much; I mean, it’s not like I’m known for my hand-drawing skills. :)

Oh, sorry. Were you expecting one of the girls? :)

I don’t really know what this is, but that’s the line of cliché-ass dialogue that was running through my head the whole time.

And yet, I love the Green Lantern comic right now, because Doug Mahnke and Christian Alamy are freakin’ brilliant.

(Originally posted on the Multiplex Facebook page a while back.)

(Originally posted at LiveJournal when Disney bought Marvel. I forget when that was.)