Oi! So about this time last week I started my week-and-a-half “VacationCon” experience. I drove up to Indianapolis, Indiana to attend GenCon, which was as awesome and exhausting as always, came back last Sunday with a ton of schwag (paid-for schwag, the Good Stuff), and immediately got attacked by some supercold or superflu or something.

Yeah, at 8pm I was fine. By 10pm I was sneezing and coughing like no tomorrow. I’ve been down and out ever since…

And to top it off, tomorrow I fly out to Anaheim, California for BlizzCon! Yay? Indeed, yay. Although I fear how the flight will go with my sinuses treating me like they are. Regardless, this is BlizzCon, folks: a new potential World of Warcraft expansion, another chance to speak directly with the Blizzard recruiters, and another attempt to get my iPhone signed by Chris Metzen himself this time (last year I successfully snagged Samise’s sig).

For those interested in BlizzCon, but can’t make it out to Anaheim, there’s always TwizzCon! TwizzCon is the virtual convention I set up for the World of Warcraft Twitter community. It’s a way for many of us to connect virtually, over Ventrilo, webchat, and Twitter to chat up the events of BlizzCon and the like. I’ll be live blogging the show as much as I can, but I need to rely on the community members to keep up the basic activity as well. So if you’re interested, feel free to stop by the site!

Speaking of Warcraft (since that’s currently where my focus remains at this point in time), a new lore speculation article will go up on LoreCrafted in a few hours of this posting. It covers the “leaks” about Expansion 3, and has some simple justification for the potential choices made.

I’m keeping Rusted rolling, although I fear that BlizzCon may interfere with Page 4’s release next week, but we’ll see. I’ll also be developing some characters and a short story framework for BattleCorps, since I spoke with some of the Catalyst Game Labs crew at GenCon and discovered that one of my most favorite settings is in dire need of short fiction authors. That potential opportunity has me truly excited!

As it stands, though, there hasn’t been too much new on the artwork front outside of my web comics (Rusted and Madness and Insanity). Hopefully I can slide back into the groove once again when these conventions (and a move from an apartment to a house) are all settled and done.

Until then, folks, be well!

Tags: battlecorps, battletech, blizzcon, comic, gencon, lorecrafted, madness and insanity, rusted, twitter, twizzcon, warcraft

It’s with great pride (and a small bit of exhaustion) that I announce the official launch of the Rusted webcomic. Yes, Rusted is the project formerly known as the Super Secret Project, and I’m glad to finally see it get its own home. Check it out at:

http://www.rustedcomic.com

“But, Richard, what happened to the other comic ideas? What happened to T-Minus and HEAVIKROME?”

While I liked T-Minus as a concept, I realized pretty early that the story for that still needed some serious development. I didn’t want to commit myself to a comic before I knew where I wanted to take it. Rusted’s story is much further developed, and so each new piece of the story should come readily. As to HEAVIKROME, that’s also still incubating. I’d like to bring that back someday in the future, but not before I find the proper art style to do it justice. As it stands, the smooth, bright-colored style I had used for the concept work no longer fit the concept in my head.

Regardless, Rusted is now official! I intend to keep it updated weekly, but of course such things can be wholly dependent upon the whims of real life. The good news? I have all pages for August drawn, so I’m about a month ahead right now.

Please feel free to leave comments! I welcome anything constructive.

Tags: Heavy Chrome, rusted, super secret project, t-minus

This is another Twitter-originated drawing. @Rilgon from Stabilized Effort Scope requested a chibi-version of the XT-002 Deconstructor for a custom Error page, so I decided to give such a thing a whirl since “cartoony WoW characters” have been my primary subject these days. Below is the result.

Tags: rilgon, warcraft

PEW PEW PEW!

*ahem*

Sorry, got caught up in the moment there…

Yeah, so this one requires a short bit of explanation. So a few days ago I was doodling some 1950’s styled pulp sci-fi rocketships. It was purely experimental, you see—me just having some fun drawing something that didn’t have  a deadline or didn’t need to convey a story. When I do this, I keep Twitter around for company while also having some television on in the background. In essence, I just try to immerse myself in bits of inspiration. It just so happened that Futurama was on at this moment, so it helped me maintain the retro design style. Albeit, it kind of heavily influenced my sketches towards the cartoony.

Go figure.

It was around this time I noticed a Twitter friend’s tweet (it was @omgitsafox, previously mentioned in her birthday post earlier this month). She said something about “zapping some s’mores.” Now, my logical mind assumes she meant she had them in the microwave. But my creative mind, due to the over saturation of rocketships and silliness, decided to conjure an image in my head.

This picture is the ultimate result of that spark of inspiration:

To Stephanie: This one’s for you! May your adventures through the depths of space be void of … s’more monsters … and stuff. Or something. *shrugs* I dunno, it sounded better in my head than it reads on screen…

Tags: omgitsafox, s'mores, sci fi, twitter

I’ve posted a short, ten stage walkthrough of my technique for creating a page for the Rusted comic (which is, ironically, still in early development at the time of this post). And because such a thing is a little too long for a standard blog post, I created a new section on this site specifically for such Articles.

So, if you’re at all interested in how an amateur, no name starting artist does his work, please give it a read!

A Step-by-Step Walkthrough of My Art Process for Rusted
In this article I walk you through the various stages (roughly ten in all) of a page from my webcomic, Rusted (still in early development at the time of this writing). This is not a “how-to” so much as an exploration of the process I use for this particular style.

Tags: comic, rusted, super secret project, walkthrough