Museum Duty

Here is one of the pages that suffered a coffee spill. This was the final inking for panel one page one of the Scholastic story. Grumble. Well, actually, it's really an opportunity to do it better. Things have been starting and stopping with the Scholastic story but it looks like things are picking up again. I'll be working hard on this for the next while, I want to have it done in August.
I managed to get two pages done of the Robot Museum graphic novel, which I'll post this week but I won't be able to go full out on it for a while. Also, after getting some very nice emails from people at Marvel comics i think I'll submit a portfolio to do painted covers. I'd like to get a couple of paintings of Marvel characters done to send them though...

Revolving Blog

As a bit of a stop-gap measure I've started a new blog that will act as a temporary portfolio site. I can't really afford a designer right now and I want a nice site but the one I have now is full of older pieces and stuff that probably shouldn't be on there. So for the time being you can find a small collection of my stuff at :www.ericorchardportfolio.blogspot.com
On an unrelated note, I saw Wall-e last night and it was fantastic, I think it's Pixar's best film. The story was great and it looked fantastic.

How To Borrow Things.....

Here's the robot who features on page two of the robot museum. I didn't know which robot was going on page two, all I knew was that he had to be big . I wasn't satisfied with any of the existing designs so I went back to the drawing board. And I flipped through other people's work because that helps gets things going to. Anyway I came across a number of bird drawings by the amazing artist Michael Knapp, an owl picture in particular. The robot in question suddenly became clear. He's a sort of Owlbot, or Knapbot?Anyway, you should certainly check out his work, especially Out Of Picture, the best comics anthology I've seen.

Shake It Baby........

I was painting page two of the Robot Museum late last night and Julie came into my studio on her way to bed. I was painting a panel of Quentin levitating a bunch of robot parts while smoke billows out of the robot. I was listening to Tom Waits album Real Gone and Julie says " Tom Waits really suits Quentin." and she went to bed. Hmm... I wonder what the other characters theme music is? I think I've been listening to music as I work that is appropriate to the characters or the scenes without even being fully conscious of it.

First two Panels, And Colour Notes

These are the first two panels in the Robot Museum graphic novel, unless I rewrite it at some later point. The first page is all done and I'm well into the second. After I'm done page two I have to get back to the Scholastic story, so there will be a long pause before I post finished pages again. I would like to wait until I have a few pages done and then post them a page at a time, I was thinking of starting a second blog for just the finished pages. When I sat down to do this I realized that I didn't know what I was doing. I had spent so much time working out the story and the drawings that I found I hadn't given the colour scheme sufficient thought. And this is extremely important. I only had a vague idea, I had thought: I'll just colour it how I paint.That didn't work, it ended up looking confusing and lacking in clarity. So I spent time working it out and researching colour scemes in other peples work. The colourists I was really influenced by were Steve Hamaker who was one of the main Colourists on the Bone books, Dave Stewart who does the Hellboy books. I also looked at films that have colouring I really love, The Corpse Bride, The Iron Giant, Pixar Films, Blue Sky Studios films. I realized how important emotional colours are, that colour must serve the drama in comics. The hardest part was stopping myself from painting the foliage green.

Robot Museum Pencil Roughs Page Two

Museum Pencil Roughs

I am not going to tell you all about how I inked the first two pages of the Robot Museum on high quality water colour paper only to find I was working on the wrong side and how the paint smeared and bubbled on the paper. I won't confide in you how I spent a nine hour day struggling with said paper in the mistaken belief that if I applied enough paint to the wrong surface somehow it would become the right surface. I won't say these things because I think I already sound like a negative person....Anyway these are the pencils for page one of the Robot Museum. It's Feebot coming in from a rain storm and flying through the basement of the museum. I'll post the next page of pencils on Monday. I'm really excited about this because I'm suprised and delighted by the feel of these pages, like things about this world are only being revealed to me as I put pencil to paper. So, more to come soon.

My Dinosaur Summer

And here's a slightly blurry photo of the other painting I sold. The painting in the last post was for a little girl and this one was for a little boy. this was actually a book cover for Orca books. I have the book, Feather Brain by Maureen Bush and it's brilliant. I love dinosaurs and this book is the perfect book for the dinosaur lover. I really struggled with this painting. It was my first book cover and I felt enormous pressure from myself to make it special.I didn't like it at all when I first finished it but I love it now.
Still no scanner. I'm feeling cranky because I can't seem to make a decision there. Should I wait for someone to come to my house and maybe save this scanner or should I just buy a new one?
Museum work has slowed down as ?I wait for word from the publisher, although I have lots more stuff to draw.

Clouds

Sorry for reposting an old picture but I still don't have a scanner and this painting just sold.. I find it so hard to sell originals and I have no idea why. Maybe I paint and tell stories for myself? And have a bit of a shock when I have to let something go.
The Robot Museum is going really well. I'm trying to do the kind of book I've always wanted to read.
Also, I wanted to share this site with you:
http://www.toonpool.com/
This is a great image sharing site with a ton of talented people from all over the world. I met the guy who runs it, Bernd Pohlenz on line just yesterday and now I'm addicted to Toon Pool.
And I recently got Out Of Picture 2, the amazing comic book anthology put out by people who have worked at Bluesky Studios( Ice Age, Robots) I really recommend this book. It is, I think, the most beautiful anthology of comics I've ever seen.

Best Seller!

I recently found out the book I illustrated The Terrible, Horrible, Smelly Pirate is a best seller here in Canada! Thanks everyone! You can still order signed and doodled copies direct from me from using the pay now button on my blog.

Quentin Sculpture By Anthony VanArsdale

Look what I got in my inbox yesterday! This beautiful sculpture of Quentin from the Robot Museum is by the amazing illustrator Anthony VanArsdale http://www.anthonyvanarsdale.blogspot.com/ Anthony and his brothers have been watching the progress of the Robot Museum and that's been so encouraging. I know If I ever feel I like the Robot Museum is taking to long or I get down about it in any way i just have to look at this sculpture and I'll be instantly cheered up. And Anthony's sending it to me, so I get to use it as a model to draw from a la James Gurney...
Anyway, I had to share this with everyone because it's pretty much the best thing ever. Thank you so much Anthony.

Thanks!

Thanks for the award Terry! Terry Rafferty : http://terryrafferty.blogspot.com/

More Roughs

Here are some more early roughs from the Scholastic story. It's changed a lot since this stage. I've got a deadline by Tuesday so this will be a working weekend. Most are but this one more so.
My scanner is still not working. I went through all the steps to get it running and it just isn't working. I have a ton of new work to post so this is most frustrating. I just downloaded the Neil Gaiman audio-story A Study In Emerald from the Harper Collins web site, its free!!! And quite long, so I can listen to it while I work today. There's a link from Neil Gaiman's blog here:
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/

Spilling Coffee In Hyper Space

Ugh. I put down a cup of coffee on the table beside my drawing desk and it unbalanced the table and my coffee went flying. I didn't know something with four legs could become unbalanced. coffee splashed all over my roughs and sketches for the past two weeks. For about an hour I was the most unreasonable person alive. But it turned out to be not that bad. I lost my first penciled page for the Scholastic story but I can do that again. Ah well.
This is a sketch of a hyper space pilot. I'm not certain what role deep space will have in the Robot Museum but this was a pretty insistent image. I like the idea that there are further uses for the Faraday Spheres.
Yesterday I worked out the first two pages of the graphic novel. I'm really happy with the opening sequence. I'll be posting a few pages at a time here. I'm with out a scanner though. I can never figure out which software to download. I have piles of coffee stained sketches I'd love to show you.

Nora

Here's a new look for the main character in the Robot Museum, Nora,
(and a couple of Feebots, too) . The original design was a lot more Victorian, lots of layers of clothing. The critics (my wife) said she looks like she can't run around in a long, stiff Victorian costume. Argh! Why is she always right?! So, I had to go back to the drawing board and work out something new. I like this look way better. She looks like a kid. I love the Steampunk aesthetic, but I think it almost looks better with little bit of anachronistic irony, like Converse sneakers. There's a scene in the Scholastic story where she's in an anti-gravity room, hanging upside-down, legs akimbo and it looks hilarious in this costume. And her hair sort of echoes Quentin's tentacles.

What's Going On With The Museum

Well, I explained this in my comments but I haven't yet posted exactly what is going on with the Robot museum. I wanted the ink to dry on m last contract first. Here's what's going on: last year I did a book signing for a Forest For Christmas in Toronto. It was fun, I was signing across from Clive Barker..That's when my life started to seem really wacky. Anyway, through a strange fluke I ended up meeting one of the editors at Scholastic Education division. It was a funny fluke, I was standing around the Trade Centers floor waiting to meet a designer when we realized we were in line for another book signing. Someone handed us a book. It was for Brett Alexander Savory, whom I chatted with briefly as he signed my book. I really got a good vibe from him. And his book was great, when of the best horror books I've read, In And Down.
So, later on I was in Montreal when I get an email from Brett saying he liked my stuff and they'd like to work with me. I was pretty excited about the idea.
And then soon after that they saw the Robot Museum on this blog and asked if I would be interested in developing the idea.
I did. And soon I started to panic. Robot Museum is one of my oldest ideas. I found one sketch that is seven years old. So it goes back a while for me. Someday I'll post some of those really old sketches...So, I was worried about losing all my rights to Museum first and then I became worried about doing a story no one could read, only people in Elementary school who have book fairs. I want everyone to have access to my work! So I contacted people in the industry for advice. James Gurney( Dionotopia) thought it would be a good start for the Museum and it can't hurt to have a nice finished piece to show people, and Patrick O'Brien ( Captain Raptor) told me he thought it would be a good idea to take this assignment and just do an amazing job and see if it led to something with Scholastic Trade.
I contacted Scholastic and said I wanted to retain all rights to the ideas and characters and, surprisingly that wasn't a problem. They will retain the rights to that particular story. And right now, I'm working on a twelve page story for Scholastic Education and at the same time developing a proposal for a one hundred plus page story....

Pirate Launch

Last week was the book launch for the Terrible, Horrible, Smelly Pirate and it was amazing. the weird thing about book launches and the thing I'll never be comfortable with is how you feel like a celebrity for a couple of hours, very strange. You sit there while people line up to have you sign their books! This was the best book launch I've been to. There were a ton of kids which is great and they were all having a great time. There was singing and food and the authors did a reading. i had to give a speech and as usual I wasn't prepared but it went fine. It was at the Alderny Gate Library and everyone was amazing there, their experience in giving puppet shows and telling stories really comes in handy on occasions like this! Thanks to everyone there. I'm really proud of this goofy book. And I still have copies available to sell myself, so if you want a copy signed by me just click on the Buy One button on my blog, I'll even draw you a pirate....

Roughs

I got a new computer! After my laptop kept freezing and getting unbearably slow and finally decided it wouldn't connect to the internet I went down to the shop and got something newer. It's not state of the art but it's better than what I was using. These are some roughs for the Robot Museum short piece.