Here’s a Pin-up I just finished last night for John Hoffman‘s NUN WITH TWO GUNS comic book, which is the culmination of several years of doodling on his part. A while back, John co-created this character with his buddy Warwick J Caldwell, and now, after a few years of random drawings by both of them, she finally has her own story, completely written and drawn by John this time around. It will debut at the APE indie comics show here in San Francisco, two weeks from now on October 1st-2nd. I will be exhibiting there myself, and it just so happens that my table, #108, will be next to John’s, at #107. Fun!

Having been asked to draw my version of a no-nonsense gun-nun, naturally I got into the mood by remembering my own beat-downs at the hands of the bad-assed old nuns at my Catholic primary school (none had any guns, thankfully, or I might not be here today). I began by thumb-nailing poses of a gun-toting nun; either blazing away, or crouched atop a cathedral gargoyle. THE DARK KNIGHT in a habit.

Then, realising that such action stuff would surely be covered in either the story itself or the OTHER pin-ups, I started thinking less GUN and more NUN. What would the inner-life of a vampire-hunter nun be like? Maybe she prays with the guns, which have been consecrated and each named for a warrior angel from the bible. Being Catholic, no matter how much she hates those VAMPIRES, there’ll be GUILT about killing them. She wraps THORNS around the hand grips (seen in bottom panel) and when she shoots the demons, she is punished for her sins too.

I thumb-nailed more ideas, and had a hard time deciding which to finalise. Then, researching online, I saw photos of stained glass windows, which were medieval Catholic COMICS if you think about it; telling stories in a visual (and multi-panelled) way, and I decided to use as many of the thumbnails as I could, in one pin-up. I wanted to draw the guns covered in Catholic charms, like those MILAGRO CRUCIFIXES you see in Mexico, and should have added some blood dripping from her hands, but I ran out of time. With all my fiddling, I just got the pin-up to John in the nick of time. Given to him last night, the book is at the printers today!

Many years ago my friend GORDON CLARK hatched an animated project about a bio-dome of cattle lost in outer space. It was called CATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

While the Sci-fi set-up is a cross between “LOST IN SPACE”, “SILENT RUNNING” and “SPACE 1999″, this story would have been largely a musical, with the bufoonish space cowboy singing lots of goofy songs to his sidekicks (a robot and a lost Russian cosmonaut Dog) as they all sat around an electronic camp fire, between whacky adventures in space. And, having been conceived by Gordon, it was bound to be a very funny show, coz he is a very funny man.

Sadly, it was long ago consigned to that ever-growing pile of “would have been great” but “never got made” projects that I’ve been involved with over the years. This marker sketch is some of the pitch art (and character designs) I did for it.

I am the proud owner of this kooky drawing by an equally whacky pal; that weird and wonderful cosmic clown known in this dimension as mister MIKE MURNANE:

I recently found the drawing that got me my first job here in the USA. These rough character designs of Marty McFly & Doc Brown ultimately landed me an art director job at Colossal Pictures; my favourite company of the many I have worked at.

When I faxed this from France 20 years ago, I was working for the Paris Disney Studio (on direct to video movies and TV series) and I’d spent the previous 5 years essentially living out of a backpack; following animation jobs (on crummy Saturday Morning shows) from outsourced-country to outsourced-country, with the occasional side adventure to interesting parts of the world. It was a very fun period that I look back on with great fondness, but by the end of it, I was looking for any chance to stay for a LONG stretch someplace, preferably a nice town where I could understand the language and hopefully settle down a bit and make some FWENDS.

Which is exactly what DID happen.

My good friend Tony Stacchi (another veteran of the Porkchop Hill of overseas Saturday morning animation) recommended me to Colossal Pictures’ directors John Hays & Phil Robinson at around the time Colossal was getting into animated TV series. The original plan was for me to work in San Francisco for a few months alongside the “animated BACK TO THE FUTURE TV series” pre-production team and then go to Taiwan to supervise production of the show (an area I had some experience in by that time). However that plan was revised, happily, and I became one of the two Art Director/Character Designers on the series (John Stevenson being the other) then stayed at Colossal for many more fantastic years (working on all kinds of fun projects) made a ton of lifelong friends and made San Francisco my home.

All in large part due to this silly, simple drawing.

Here’s a BIRTHDAY (21st of April!) CARD for Mr Derek Thompson, honoring the fellow who introduced us many years ago; good old FRANKENSTEIN’s monster.

It seems appropriate that my friendship with DEREKMONSTER should have begun on a MONSTER MOVIE. Though that project was never finished, I made many great friends on that crew, Derek being one of them.

This charming gouache painting was just given to me by my pal MATT JONES.

It may be a GOODBYE present for my departing the story crew we both worked on together, or perhaps it is a SORRY present, to make amends for the incredibly funny good-bye CARD he also did, depicting me in the depths of tawdriness, which was signed by the entire crew to great hilarity. While part of me would love to share Matt’s awesome caricature powers with you all, The bigger part of me thinks it is waaay too GRAPHIC to be posted in this here family-friendly blog and definitely an image I would prefer NOT to show up in Google searches of my name! Either way, I am the winner becasue I end-up with not one but TWO drawings from the incredibly talented Mister Jones. One to be hung on the wall and the other to be taken out from hiding and chuckled at once in a while.

I’ve spent the past 6 months working on a very fun project at the world-famous factory of feel-good over there in Emeryville. This particular crew was staffed exclusively with an utterly lovely group of people and I look forward to working with all of them again sometime in the not too distant future.

Always awesome artist PATRICK AWA has just busted out yet another wonderful piece and this one was done specifically to raise money for the QUAKE in Japan.

It is called “ANONYMOUS HUG” In his own words:

“In the aftermath of the ongoing tragedy in Japan, I was so anxious that I had a hard time focusing on painting. Although I originally would have liked to make something more uplifting or encouraging, the event was simply too devastating, with the death toll of tens of thousands and millions suffering right now.
This piece is dedicated to all of the survivors and to those that have lost their lives.”

LIMITED EDITION PRINTS (all signed, gold embellished and
numbered) are available NOW at 1xRUN. The original will be sold at the MAVERIX STUDIOS AUCTION next week at the SUPERFROG GALLERY.

100% of the proceeds from the sale will go to Give2Asia.

If you have around 50 minutes to spare, please watch this wonderful, wise, profanity-laden presentation, as JOHN STEVENSON gives his perspective on the creative process, and how to keep the spark alive as a working commercial artist.

My current pocket sketchbook has a long history; it was purchased in 2002, drawn in sporadically until 2004, then lost and only just found again late last year.

Consequently, there are OLD sketches amongst the new, such as these from a trip in 2004, when Bosco, myself and Chris (pictured below) went driving south along highway #1 (along the coast) and wound-up at beautiful Big Sur.

It was a purely spontaneous trip and by the time we got all the way down there it was dark and we didn’t want to drive all the way back. Of course, travellers without accommodation reservations are often punished by fate when there’s no place to stay the night (today is the one day in the year when a ball-bearing convention is in town; who knew?!) and, given that there are not many hotels down there, we were prepared to sleep in the car. As luck would have it however, we DID manage to find a decent, affordable place to stay; a lovely inn overlooking the sea.

We had a very pleasant evening and did some exploring and sketching the following day and then drove back to SF. Sometimes, Spontaneity is rewarded.

More from the pocket sketch-book, this time from a sketch-outing few weekends back, when Matt and I went on a walk-and-draw around Fisherman’s Wharf and North Beach. Honestly, probably more time was spent in sitting outside at a cafe, drinking coffee and nattering but ah, what the heck…

One detail that the sketch of Matt (drawing the seals, above) doesn’t show is the eccentric gentleman standing next to Matt, repeatedly bellowing and honking at the seals in what was presumably an attempt to speak to them in their own language.

Ah, the joys of living in San Francisco….