New Stuff

Here at last is the second of the pieces I created for the Nelson Education's illustrated dictionary. I won't walk you through the whole process on this one, because it really changed very little from concept to rough to final art. They seemed to feel like I got it pretty much right the first time. Enjoy.

NWP on Attack of the Show

I'm on TV again! Well, not me, personally. But Northwest Passage got a nice mention/review last night in Blair Butler's "Fresh Ink" segment on G4's Attack of the Show. Click the image for the video (though you'll have to listen to a minute and a half of stuff about Secret Invasion first):


Thanks for the coverage, Attack of the Show people!

Northwest Passage Nominated for an Eisner Award!

On the heels of last week's announcement about being nominated for a Joe Shuster Award, comes this week's news that The Annotated Northwest Passage has been nominated for a Will Eisner Comic Industry Award in the new category of Best Publication for Teens. This is the big one, the "Oscars" for cartoonists. And Mr. Eisner himself was a hero of mine, so it's a most surprising honour to be among the many exceptional nominees.

The Beat has a full list of the nominated books and creators, which are an impressively diverse bunch this year. The winners are announced at a ceremony on July 25th in San Diego. Again, wish me luck!

Joe Shuster Award Nominations Announced

The 2008 nominees for the Joe Shuster Awards were announced today...and, well, I wouldn't be mentioning it if I hadn't been nominated for one, now would I? I've been nominated in the new category of Outstanding Cover, for my work on The Annotated Northwest Passage, an honour I really ought to share with designer Keith Wood, who really nailed the "Robert Louis Stevenson" look that I wanted. As in previous years, I'm up against some amazing competition. But win or lose, the Shusters are always a good time, so I'm looking forward to the big ceremony on June 14th. Wish me luck!

I Sure Wouldn't Want Anything Nailed Through MY Five-Hole

It's been a few weeks since I last updated with new illustration work. Mostly it's because there hasn't been any. I've been up to my neck in researching and scripting Two Generals, which is coming along nicely (thank you for asking) but which hasn't really given me much to show as of late.

That changed in the last couple of weeks, though, as I briefly changed gears to participate in a project that the fine folks at Nelson Education have been putting together, an illustrated dictionary for kids that features comics by a virtual who's-who of Toronto-area comics artists.

The page I was asked to do illustrates the word "jargon". Here's each stage of the process:

First, a quick rough based on Nelson's script:

You'll note that I showed all the players on the ice in the first panel. This was because the script made clear that it was important to demonstrate that one of the teams was short-handed (down a player). They liked the rough, but felt that panel one was too crowded with so many characters in it. I suggested that we show the scoring team as being short-handed by putting one of the players in a penalty box, which they agreed was a good solution. I made the change in the tight pencil version:

That got approved, so it was on to inks:

Then, finally, colours and lettering:

I'd always intended to put some kind of brand name on the goalie's stick in panel 2, but when it came down to it the client found it distracted from the dialogue in that panel. I agreed, and replaced it with stripes that don't draw the eye as much.

The client was happy enough with this one that they asked me to a second one for the same project. I'll save that for later in the week, just so that it won't be another month and a half between posts!