Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth

I hope you all had a good Christmas. Mine was pretty great.

I constantly mention the Christmas Eve event at my house which is, by far, my favorite part of the season. It's the one time of the year that Zahlerdu is full of people and kids and food and Santa (who does stop by because Uncle Thom is all kinds of connected).I know my neices and nephews*love coming here, seeing and playing with all the toys and learning to color on my computer.

Well, that last one is just enlightened self-interest. I need some workers to help me speed up my Love and Capes process.

And yes, giving is much better than getting. It's great to find the right present, something special or unexpected to give to someone equally as special.

But the getting can be pretty awesome, too.

Over the years I've received the amazing gifts, from custom action figure "dollhouses" from my aunts, to a DVD of my television appearances on local news and Who Wants to be a Millionaire, to a Star Trek voice activated-light switch. And, of course, the Mighty Men and Monster Maker Kit, which may be the most awesome toy ever and featured art by Dave Stevens.

This year, I recieved a copy of Love and Capes.

I was understandably surprised when I saw it. I mean, I have dozens of copies here in the house, plus I created the darn thing. But my cousin Jamie, the gift-giver in question, saw my John Crichton-esque confused expression and said "It'll make sense when you open it."

Yes, Jamie had gotten Chris Sims of The Invincible Super Blog to annotate the collection the way that he does with so many other things, including Anita Blake. Except, that LnC is much better because, you know, stuff happens.

Chris marked the book up with such witty bon mots as writing "Who Watches the Watchmen" on brick walls in the background, demanding both more Fearleader appearances and an Elvis Bear spin-off, and predicting that Mark will sell his marriage in a bargain with Mephisto in #25.

Like with most humor, the retelling loses something. It's great! I can say two things with absolute certainty: Chris Sims is a very funny man and he has the handwriting of a serial killer.

I don't know how much Jamie paid for this service, but I can only guess it's in the low four-figures. It's certainly worth it, though. So, if you're the significant other or good friend of some comic creator, I can't recommend it highly enough.

And I'll take my ten percent commission, then, Chris.

Thank you so much, Jamie. This was great!

So, I hope you and yours had a great Christmas, and here's hoping your New Year is everything you want it to be.

* Okay, in this case it's second cousins and Goddaughter and her brother, but nieces and nephews is just easier to type.

What Says "Christmas" More Than Decapitated Elves?

I've been working with The Institute for Justice, a civil rights organization, for over five years now. The saw an illustration I did for Scene Magazine and they wanted to buy the art for republiciation. Because of that, I wound up doing other illustrations for them including two different Christmas cards. Three, now.

This was a cool job for more than just the normal reasons. This time I got to try out a new process. At the recommendation of some fellow artists, I purchased a Brother MFC-6490CW scanner/printer/fax combo. The new machine solved the problems I had with my Apple USB modem receiving faxes. Apple makes a great product, but the modem/fax combo is one of the places they've completely dropped the ball. I loved going to digital faxes, so I could only print out the ones I wanted, but the fax kept glitching.

But the scanner aspect was the big draw. The Holy Grail of scanners for comic book artists is an 11x17 scanner. On that, you can scan a complete comics page without stitching it at all. Every page of my three Raider graphic novels were scanned in two pieces and digitally combined to form the 11x17 final image. Most 11x17 scanners are scary expensive, but this one was under $300! Under $200 after the rebate that was being offered at the time. (Amazon now has it at $279.99.)

It can even print on 11x17 bristol board. You're probably wondering why that's so cool. That'll take even more explaining.

Most issues of Love and Capes are drawn on tracing paper, then lightboxed onto Layout Paper (also called Vellum). That's a very translucent paper that takes ink much better than tracing paper. Then, I'd cut it up into pieces and scan it, and put together evey page in Photoshop, one panel at a time.

But now, I could print onto bristol, which is a paper with a very ink-friendly surface and one on which I can get more effects than I can on vellum. So, I can print my pencils in non-reproducable light blue onto a piece of bristol, and then ink right on the bristol without having to erase, since the light blue lines disappear when scanned, or with exceedingly little tweaking.

That was a godsend on the IJ job. They needed 60 elves or so holding a giant piece of parchment, upon which they'd put their Christmas poem. I could work at a manageable size, scan in the pencils, and then print out a final piece on bristol where I could ink with no issues, and then rescan it at full size and not have to try to line up two sides, which is usually problematic at best.

Then I colored my headless elves in Photoshop. Headless because the Institute was going to put photos of their employees on those elves. And then I sent the final file to IJ, where they composited the heads and had it printed.

The cards just came out this week, and they look great! It was a fun and challenging job, especially trying to make 60 distinct elves, all doing something individual. It kind of reminded me of my famous Where's Slider job. And it came out just as well.

Thumpety-thump-thump

In case you missed it in the papers and on TV, it's Christmas Season again. It means that it's also time for me to do my annual Christmas card. Waaaaaay back in 1993, I decided to design my own Christmas cards with a little cartoon on them. They were just simple photocopied and cut cards that went out to fifty people or so. Since that time, they've changed to become full-color cards and go out to much more than just those original fifty people. They're an advertising piece as well as a Holiday wish.

The hardest part as usual is coming up with the joke. My first cartoon card was a Politically Correct Christmas where the carollers were singing "And in the winter we can build a snowperson, and pretend that he's a non-denominational minister…" That's set the standard both in the format (joke on front, bonus joke on back) and in how funny I want the card to be.

This year's? Well, they haven't gone out yet, so you don't get to see them until they do. Here's a preview of the art for the card, though, featuring a certain snowman who's been the subject of a song and a couple Rankin-Bass specials.