Okay I have been thinking about biting the bullet and doing some silk screened Thickets shirts, so that the fans can finally get some black shirts. Here is my first pass at a design, very rough. Basically the idea is a nightgaunt trailing a tattered banner. The design could be chest, or could be on the bottom of the shirt, which seems to be the style of the time, along with wearing an onion on your belt.
Thoughts?
Here’s the first look at art from the upcoming return of Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew
CAPTAIN CARROT AND THE FINAL ARK #1
Written by Bill Morrison
Art by Scott Shaw! & Al Gordon
Cover by Shaw! & MorrisonThe Zoo Crew is back in a 3-issue COUNTDOWN tie-in miniseries! Captain Carrot reunites the team to face a threat that begins at the “Sandy Eggo Comic-Con” and quickly menaces the entire world ! The gang’s all here: Fastback, Pig-Iron, Yankee Poodle, American Eagle, Alley-Kat-Abra, and the Captain himself, taking on the Salamandroid!
On sale October 10 o 1 of 3 o 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US
Every month there is a “Vancouver Comic Jam.” Robin, Brian, Ed, and many others get together to draw comics and drink beer at the Jolly Alderman. This month will be the last one at the JA as it’s shutting down – I feel bad for all of the businesses along Cambie Street who are struggling due to RAV construction. And they said the Olympics would be GOOD for business. Only if you can survive 4 years of barely any. So next month we’re trying to find another good place – let me know if you have a suggestion.
Anyway, what happens at these jams, typically, is collective comic creation. One person will do the first panel of a comic and then pass it along to somebody else. Last night Robin brought photocopied pages where the panel sizes and captions were already laid out. It is interesting to see how everyone interpreted these parameters [see link here]. Here’s mine:
Tonight I went to the Vancouver Comic Jam at the Jolly Alderman and practiced my funny animals. At the last ComiCon I bought a small stack of comics like Supergoof and Donald Duck, and in the stack was Disney’s Robin Hood – you know like the movie with the fox as Robin Hood. Of all the comics in this vein that I picked up, this one is the best, clearly. Lots of different animal characters and well drawn. I’ll have to try to track down some more of these. The first two characters are a couple of unsavory scoundrel types, a hyena and a croc, and the last is the lion, Prince John, who I totally missed when I was trying to think about lion characters (see http://www.thickets.net/toren/2007/04/16/ant-lion/ and http://www.thickets.net/toren/2007/05/01/world-wildlife-federation-of-justice-studies/. I modified the design to give him some top mane instead of the crown, and gave him a jacket instead of the robe. I think the design is a winner and my final will probably be closer to this than anything previous.
Today I was doing some studies of established cartoon lions in preparation of issue #1 of WWFJ. A free peanut if you know who this is:
First, review the old HPL covers here [link]
This is the practically untouched scan. The finished will be cleaner and the colours will be different. And then there will be other pleasures courtesy of Stewie and Taytay – just you wait and see! Oh well I guess I already spoiled that by posting this [link]
In case there’s any confusion, inside the head of the man is the head of a Yithian [link]
Other pics of Yithians for reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Race_of_Yith
I’m guest-arting the back cover of issue #5 of Outnumbered [link], a local comic about super-powered teenage punks versus drug-dealing wererats. Today I went to the semi-regular Vancouver Comicon and hung out at the Critical Hit Comics table trying to finish the pencil art. I got it mostly done, and now present for critique. At the top you can see I’ve erased the helmet that one of the wererats is pulling off the head of the character Ruckus, I’ll come back to that later. Other than that, is there anything that sticks out at you as requiring a fix?
Initial character designs for Ant Lion. What cartoon lions are there? Well there’s all the lions in Lion King, which are quite Disneyish, then there’s the lion from the WB cartoon “Hold the Lion” and “The Lion’s Busy” and probably others. Then there’s also apparently a Hanna Barbara character called Lippy the Lion. 
Can anyone think of anyone else?
Addendum:
I’m not going to say much about this, except that see also http://www.thickets.net/toren/2007/02/18/rockonomics-mission-accomplished/
