Catching up

Been swamped with deadlines and conventions, so here's a quick update with some handy bullet points.

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• Wizard Austin Comic-Con was fantastic—easily my best show ever. Sold tons of SWEETS and a dozen or so original art pages including all 6 covers (5 issues, and 1 variant). I highly recommend attending next year, it was an amazing show in a great city. Just for good measure, here's a commission of Curt Delatte I did this past weekend on the right.
• Wizard New Orleans is right around the corner, so mark your calendar for January 29th and 30th. I'll be there, and I'm also helping to organize a live art show after the convention on Saturday the 29th. Should be a blast.
• This coming week end, November  20 (at 10:30am) I'm doing a panel at the Miami Book Fair International with Josh Fialkov (Tumor) and Mat Johnson (Dark Rain). If you're in and around south Florida, please drop by and say hi! 
• I sent out an email newsletter recently, if you missed it, you can find that here.
• Amazing reviews for SWEETS continue to stack up.
• SWEETS issues 1 and 2 are available for digital reading in your web browser, iPad, and iPhone.
• As always, you can find regular updates on Twitter and Facebook.

New interview at Comic Book Resources!

I just did a GIANT interview over at ComicBookResources.com. I go into detail about SWEETS and discuss some of the characters, story origin, my working process, and a whole lot more. I've also given them an exclusive sneak peek at the cover for issue #2, so give it a read!  Big thanks to Josh Wigler for throwing me some great questions. After reading the interview, head over to the CBR forum and post some feedback!

Issue #2 Cover Sketches

Cover sketches for issue 2 of SWEETS. Just wrapped up the inks, and I'm nearly done coloring. I'll upload a peek soon. Enjoy!

Help KICKSTART this project!

Pencil

Here's a peek at a panel from Sweets. I darkened it a bit in Photoshop to make it a little more visible online. I usually keep my pencil lines soft and light to make them easier to erase after inking. Click image to enlarge.

Cartooning

I'm working on a cartoon-style flashback sequence in the first issue of SWEETS. I use a similar style quite a bit in my sketchbooks, but I think this is the first time I do it in a comic.

Lettered thumbnails

In order to help eliminate storytelling problems, I decided to letter my thumbnails, all 22 pages. These aren't top notch letters, just placement letters to help me spot things that need to be changed before drawing the pages. So far, I've found several pages and panels that don't quite work as expected and I'm making small  tweaks to the thumbnails before jumping into the final pencil stage. I've always found it easier to spot problems in print rather than on screen, so I tack these up on my giant cork wall and look at them for a few days. Sorry for the distant photo, but I'm doing my best to avoid story spoilers. 

Cover sketches

I'm in the early stages of thinking about cover art. Nothing specific at this point, just playing with vague ideas pulled from the story and hints of things to come in that particular issue. I try not to overthink the brainstorm sketches, it's just getting ideas down on paper to eliminate bad ideas and flesh out the good ones. Here's a peek at a sketchbook spread where I'm playing around with the geometry of a man in a window. No idea where it's going but it's an image that came into my head while writing one of the scenes in issue one.