November 1st marked the launch of Azeroth United’s Hearts, Hands, and Voices charity drive for the Child’s Play charity organization. Because I enjoy being a part of the Warcraft community, I’m announcing this on my personal blog in hopes of getting as much exposure as possible. Over the next couple of weeks you’ll see me mention this drive across my other sites as well.

It should be noted that I’ll be contributing a special art print from MADNESS AND INSANITY (one of my two web comics) as well as a handcrafted Cuddle Me Yoggy plush toy. If you’d like to contribute something, please visit Azeroth United for more information. Or head on over to Lorecrafted and use the Chip In widget to … well, chip in!

Oh yeah, the Halloween / Hallow’s End comic for MADNESS AND INSANITY was posted yesterday. A higher resolution version of that picture will be posted here later this week for anyone who may want a wallpaper.

Finally, I fixed the DNS issue that was pointed RustedComic.com to the old LoreCrafted site. That comic will be relaunched shortly, as well. I just wanted to get the domain issue fixed first. Rusted’s not dead by a long shot. I just needed to re-evaluate my workload and adjust some things. With that done, I can lay the foundation for the future of that story.

Tags: azeroth united, child's play, comic, madness and insanity, rusted, yoggy

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

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

The second comic test page, which should hopefully be up sometime next week, will be called “Heavy Chrome” (working title). This is the my concept art for the primary character’s combat mecha, the Hawk Engineering / Advanced Vehicle Industries (HEAVI) Unit 01. Code-named “Chrome.”

The purpose was to achieve a balance between old school superhero mecha anime like Voltron, Mazinger Z, and Big O and modern-style futuristic mecha.

Comments and critiques regarding whether I achieved this balance are more than welcome. Thanks in advance.

Tags: comic, Heavy Chrome, super secret project

I have a few stories that I’d love to tell visually. Some of these are World of Warcraft stories and some aren’t. Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting “test pages” to this site for as many of these ideas as I can get done. After I get enough feedback, I’ll choose which one(s) I’ll pursue further.

This first one is called “T-Minus.”  The idea came to me when I thought whether a web comic could support a structure similar to the television series “24.” Instead of each episode being one hour of real-time, however, each comic page would be roughly two seconds off the countdown clock. Hence, the title “T-Minus.” The plot? Well, the first page should give a little teaser…

Note: The tonal patterns are done to emulate a black and white manga page.

Please leave feedback. I know my manga style is definitely rough and amateurish, but part of the purpose of this project is practice. I seek to improve.

Tags: comic, super secret project, t-minus