This 'n That ...

Hey ... Happy New Year! Here are some illustrations that got published during the tail end of last year. What's different about these, is that they are all completely digital. I've been moving myself away from paper and doing everything lately on the computer. It just saves me time. So check 'em out.





These four were for "French Homework" a textbook by Scholastic.

And this one was for The Canadian Sportsman. The article was about how horses that harness race have to retire after a couple of years.

Also remember to check out my webcomic "Corporate Life" with writer Apollo. A new strip is released every Wednesday, check it out: http://ninjacat.ca/Corporate_Life.html

CanAgitprop!

It's been a while since I've tried my hand at anything overtly political, but with the recent proroguing of Parliament (the second time in as many years), I really felt the need to make an illustration encapsulating (most) Canadians' disappointment with the guy at the top. Something really simple and easy ... that would make a good T-shirt or whatever.



Obviously, this explicitly references Shepard Fairey's iconic Obama illustration. And after I whipped it up this weekend, I realized someone had beaten me to the punch: Darrin White made this 'Nope' poster over a year ago.

While I think White's illustration is great (and probably a better representation of the Prime Minister than my drawing), I think my one's a bit harsher (and more T-shirt-worthy). And I like that I stuck to the colours of the Canadian flag.

Supervillains get me hot

Another project I've been working while taking a brief Quarter-Life Crisis hiatus is supervillain erotica. That's right. You heard me.

I'm working with poet Natalie Zina Walschots, who is composing a collection of poems – romantic/erotic odes to various comic book supervillains. As with Elyse Friedman's project, I offered to do some sample illustrations to include with her manuscript submission. Some of the results are below.





I'm not sure how I feel about the results. The finished illustrations look more comical than actually sexy. But maybe that's what I wanted? It's hard to say. The Darkseid one isn't even sexy. More creepy. (Clearly I need to do more research in the world of male erotica.)

The Laws of Motion

I've been taking a break from working on the second book of Quarter-Life Crisis to work on a couple other projects. One of those projects is collaborating with author Elyse Friedman on a graphic novel project called The Laws of Motion.

Friedman wrote a screenplay called 'The Laws of Motion,' and it did get made into a film (starring Matthew Perry, even!) with a different title. But the final project deviates pretty widely from the original script. She got in touch with me about working on making the screenplay into a graphic novel. So I did thirteen sample pages that Elyse will be submitting with the script to publishers.







It's interesting working on someone else's script. I think it exercises different drawing muscles (for lack of a better term) than drawing your own work. Most notably, it doesn't allow you to 'cheat'. Working on my own stuff, I'll plan layouts and scripts in ways that work with my drawing strengths, but I don't have the same luxury when working on someone else's script. Does anyone else feel the same way?