A Change is Coming

Hi Everyone,

I know the posts have been far and few in between this year. It's amazing how disruptive a change in the routine can be even when you want to do something.

The good news is I believe I've found a way to incorporate this into my daily pattern again and hopefully take my little doodles to a wider, larger audience. As of the New Year, you'll be seeing a weekday sketch from me on the Top Cow Blog under some clever heading. I'm going to try and continue to aggregate it through this blog as well, but you may need to sign up for the Top Cow blog if I can't get that to work. 

I'm very excited to start drawing again!

Happy Holidays and a Merry New Year to one and all! 

Filip

Daily Sketch #230

Quantum of Solace

Did anyone else find Quantum of Solace a bit disappointing? 

Don't get me wrong it wasn't bad per say. But compared to the revolutionary Casino Royale, it just wasn't as strong. One of my biggest problem with it was that it was a direct sequel to Casino Royale. What I mean by that is I don't think you could watch Quantum of Solace without first having watched Casino Royale. When I was a kid and first discovered James Bond, it was on ABC Saturday Night Movies. They aired out of order and I never knew or cared. I was just excited to see a new Bond movie. That was missing for me in Quantum of Solace. 

Anyway, here's a random sketch from the honeymoon.

Daily Sketch #229

Playing with Foreshortening

It's unfinished, but I thought this was a fun quick sketch I did on the long plane ride home from Europe playing around with foreshortening a hand close to the viewer. 

Been a busy, somewhat crazy week but I feel like it ended up on a positive note for both myself and D. Looking forward to a weekend combining some relaxation and productive. Now if only I can find a cheap ticket back East to see family for the holidays...

Daily Sketch #228

More Views from Spain

This was one of our favorite spots in Spain - Old Town Marbella. It has ridiculously quaint, cute little houses and tiny streets that wind up and down a big hill. We sat one evening and had one of the least expensive and tasty meals of our entire trip at a local tapas bar. Twenty euro for a ton of meats, cheeses, bread, and a pitcher of sangria. Yum! 

We people watched and I did a sketch of one of the nearby buildings.

Daily Sketch #227

Last Mortal update

Here's a sketch of Alec King, The Last Mortal. You may remember Alec from previous posts when the title was called "Forever Man". We settled on "The Last Mortal" and the project is moving along at a very nice clip. We have 2 issues completely written and the 2nd issue is halfway drawn. We're tightening up the third issue script and hope to have that ready to draw as soon as the artist is finished with issue #2. 

Check out the artist's website if you have a second for some behind the scenes sneak peeks - Thomas Nachlik.

Daily Sketch #226

More Visions of Spain

Here's a sketch of the buildings at the Marriott Marbella Resort in Spain. This was from our balcony.

Daily Sketch #225

Another Day Another Post

I try not to rant too much on this blog and I really try not to rant about politics. Mostly because I don't think anyone cares to hear my opinion on the big topics. But something really got under my skin today. Here in California there was a Proposition on the election day ballot called "Prop 8". Prop 8 basically would amend the California constitution to remove the rights of gay couples to marry. And it looks like it narrowly passed. Passed?!

Honestly, I just don't get it. Why would one couples marriage hurt or invalidate yours? In an era where a black man was just elected President of the United States how can we justify "separate but equal"? 

The African American pastor of the largest mega-church in California was on NPR this morning saying that this was a good thing because we had to support the sanctity of marriage. His argument was that the Bible defined marriage as between a man and a woman and that's why it should be law in California. 

1. Marriage predates the Bible and Christianity. It's origin is a legal contract, not a religious one. 
2. The Bible is a set of religious beliefs and those beliefs are not shared by everyone in the country. When you hear about a Middle Eastern country restricting the rights of women based on their religious beliefs, you think that's wrong don't you? 

And the killer thing for me is that according to polls both African Americans and Latinos voted overwhelmingly in favor Prop 8. How can two minority groups who had their rights restricted for decades now restrict the rights of another group? 

Anyway, enough of my ranting. Here's a sketch I did on the train from Madrid to Malaga in Spain. 

Daily Sketch #224

Quickie Sketch... and Late

Slipped my mind to post anything until just now. So here's a quickie sketch from the honeymoon done with a blue Sharpie. Just a dude's face. Don't read too much into it:)

Daily Sketch #223

Vote, Vote, Vote!

It's Election Day. D and I spent two and a half hours this morning voting because they mis-entered our address into the computer when we registered. But both of us felt it was incredibly important to vote this year. Maybe it's because we both realized we'll likely have at least 1 kid while this next president and representatives are in office. Or maybe it's because we're scared by what we see happening around us with the economy, foreign relations, and other big topics. In any case, we encourage everyone to go out and made their voice heard. 

Here's a quick sketch from a pub in London where D and I had lunch.

Daily Sketch #222

Back from the Honeymoon

I did some sketching while D and I were on our honeymoon and thought I'd get back in the swing of posting things. Here's a quickie marker sketch of D napping at one of the many airports we hung out in during our travels to Europe. 

(as a side note, the little portable pocket sketchbook I had with me had a dot pattern on the paper so you'll be seeing a lot of that)

 

Blog Sketch #221

Another Quickie Sketch 

Another quick sketch from my trip to Las Vegas. Who is this guy? I don't know. But he's checking something out in the upper right hand side of your computer screen. Is it your porno files? Be honest now...

Blog Sketch #220

Sketches from Vegas

I was in Las Vegas at the beginning of last week for the Diamond Retailer Summit and did some sketching on a hotel notepad while I was at some panels. Look for a couple of random sketches over the next couple of days.

Daily Sketch #219

Okay At Sketching, Crappy At Updating

I'm getting pretty bad about updating this blog I know. I have actually been sketching, which is good and the entire reason I started this blog, but I should be better about updating for you fine folks who check it out. Here's a sketch on a napkin done during a the inaugural poker night at Top Cow a couple of Fridays ago. I would wri

te more but problems with large corporations seemingly in the business of providing me with services have me pretty depressed today. Sigh...

p.s. my vague description is not a ploy to get you to ask what's wrong:)

Blog Sketch #218

While The Lady Is Away

I play video games. So this week's distraction has been "Mass Effect", which is a sprawling space saga of a game. Here's a sketch of my character, Commander Filip Shepard.

Blog Sketch #217

I Go For Mine, I Gots To Shine

I ran in the Nike Human Race 10K in Los Angeles this weekend and had a blast. It was the final leg of the largest worldwide running event in history and over 12,000 people showed up. It was incredibly crowded, but very cool to be part of something that large. At the end of the race, Kanye West and Common performed a free one hour concert. Kanye's stage presence and craft in his performance was impressive. He's not necessarily the best hip hop artist or musician but he definitely knows how to sell a show. I was blown away and had a fantastic time. Here's a little sketch to commemorate the memory.

Blog Sketch #126

Back in Time

I thought I'd posted this image last week, but apparently I just scanned it and never put it up on the blog. Here's the other half of my Ballai Llama dodgeball team image. We'll be putting them on on a team t-shirt. 

Through the magic of the internets and Blogger, I'm posting this in the past:)

Blog Sketch #215

Yay! I'm a Llama!

I've started playing dodgeball once a week here in LA for fun. The seasons are pretty short and the game is a ton more fun than I remember from junior high. It might be because I'm over 4 feet tall now and have some coordination. Anyway, with the new team in Westwood we chose the name the Ballai Llamas and I volunteered to draw up a logo for some t-shirts we're having made up. I think it came out pretty fierce. 

Blog Sketch #214

Monkeys

So this weekend was spent with my lovely future wife working on some wedding related details. It's the nitty gritty details time, so I'm not sure I'd call it "fun" but it was nice to spend the entire weekend with her. Plus I picked out some kickass groomsmen gifts which I'm really happy about. 

I also designed up our wedding cake topper which my buddy Joe will be sculpting for us. D and I have a thing for monkeys - they're cute, funny, and mischievous - just like us. Here's what I came up with. Pretty darn cool, I think.

Daily Sketch #213

Velocity

We've been planning out a Velocity series here at work (one of the winners of the 2007 Pilot Season event), so my faithful readers, you get a Velocity sketch.

Blog Sketch #212

Looking Up and Out on Friday

Just a quickie sketch for Friday afternoon of a guy looking up and out to the future. Like me this week:)

Now that I look at this... where are his eyeballs?

Daily Sketch #211

Pretty Girl

Nothing in particular going on with this sketch, just a random doodle I decided to flesh out with some ink. I wasn't happy with the precision of the line I was getting with a pencil so to ink it went. Maybe this is because D started wearing her hair curly again from time to time for the first time in about a year:)

Daily Sketch #210

The Goon

One of my favorite comics on the market now is "The Goon" by Eric Powell. I think it's a truly unique voice in the world of comics these days, combining horror, humor, and elements of classic cartooning. In short it rocks. When I was at Diamond I was proud to be one of the first guys to champion the series when Eric was self-publishing through Albatross Exploding Press. Anyway, I think "The Goon" is well worth your time to check out. Here's a sketch inspired by issue #25 which I recently got around to reading.

Blog Sketch #209

I Left My Real Drawing At Home

So I did a couple of cool sketches at home last night, but of course I left them at the apartment. Sigh. I'd probably leave my head behind too if it wasn't attached. 

In any case, here's a quickie sketch to illustrate how I feel (I'm also on day 5 of fighting off a cold/post-San Diego Comic-Con SARS). 

Daily Sketch #208

For My Guy Thomas

Who's been hard at work on The Last Mortal, our project together, which will hopefully be out soon. He's been plowing through pages and making massive improvements. It's awesome to be continually impressed by an artist you are working with. Anywhoo, here's a shot of Alec not obeying gun safety tips.

Daily Sketch #207

I Tried to Upload Earlier... Really I Did

I actually had two sketches in the can and ready to go, but Blogger was being tempermental and wouldn't upload them the couple of times I tried earlier this week. This week has been damn hectic despite D being on the East Coast for training for her new job. So I've been living like a bachelor, which apparently for me means I work 10-12 hour days, heat up pre-made meals, and watch the occasional crap movie or frustrate myself with a video game. Yeah, I'm a wild and crazy guy...

Here's a random sketch of a dude in a baseball cap.

Daily Sketch #206

Darkness Design

Just messing around with a random design for The Darkness. And you are the first to see it! 

Sorry about the delay in posting lately, San Diego Comic-Con is an evil, brutal mistress. It's over now and we had a fantastic show. There's plenty of news across the net, but the highlights included the casting announcements for The Magdalena film, the director announcement for the Witchblade film, and the announcement that we're doing a comic with Heroes' Milo Ventimiglia and his production partner, Russ Cundiff called Berserker. Personal highlights included seeing old friends, meeting Randy Couture and separately meeting Megan Fox, dinner at Ruth's Chris with the best editorial crew in comics, and tacos at Fred's. 

Check out my national televised debut on G4's coverage of Comic-Con. I think it came out really well.

Daily Sketch #205

Ah, San Diego

The two to three weeks before San Diego Comic-Con are the most stressful and jam-packed of the year for me. It's pretty much non-stop work and wondering what you've forgotten to get taken care of. Is it any wonder we binge drink for a week while down there for that particular con?

Anyway, that's my excuse for the infrequency of blog updates lately. San Diego.

Speaking of stress, my sketches today (I included a couple to make up for my infrequency) are drawings of grape vines and leaves I did for our wedding invitations. I really have to start designing these ASAP.

Despite this I did take some time out last night to play video games. Take that responsibility!

Daily Sketch #204

Samurai

Some times you just want to draw a badass samurai. This was a fun and loose drawing to do. Hope you dig it.

Blog Sketch #203

Tomb Raider

The other night I caught "Tomb Raider" or "Tomb Raider 2" on TV. I think it was the latter, but honestly who can tell. It's still a cheesy movie, but the perfect movie to air late at night on cable. The thing that struck me was how different Angelina Jolie's face looked just a few years ago. It was so much rounder and full. 

VERSUS

Anyway, Tomb Raider inspired the following African Warrior drawing in a weird way. Don't know why, but that's how my head works.

Daily Sketch #202

Wine Country

This weekend, for D's birthday, we went down to Temecula which is a Southern California wine country area for a wine tour. We toured 5 different wineries and had a blast. We ended up buying quite a few bottles and enjoying some good food, good company and relaxing quite a bit.

Here's a quick sketch of the guy at the Wilson Family Vineyard demonstrating the slurping technique to get the wine to hit all of your taste buds and opening the flavor of the wine. Silly but effective:)

Daily Sketch #201

Another Day, Another Sketch

Interestingly enough from the way my computer sits on my desk at work, the beach actually is "that way". Results may vary on your screen.

G4 is coming in today to film a segment for their San Diego Comic-Con coverage this year, so we're all a titter here at the office to show off our company in the best possible light. I'll update here if it looks like I'll be on TV sometime soon.

Daily Sketch #200

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

Okay, that's probably BS, but I had to

 explain the delay in getting sketch #200 up, right? It might even make sense that I didn't have the sketch ready and was pulling my hair out over getting the best sketch together for the landmark #200. But no, that's not it. I had the sketch ready. I've just been doing so much traveling and work has been so hectic I haven't had time to post the entry. Sigh... I know, it's a lame excuse but it's the truth. 

So without further ado, here's #200. For those of you that get this, it'll be pretty hilarious. For the rest of you, probably kind of silly. Enjoy.

As a bonus, here's probably the funniest damn bit of viral marketing I've seen in a long ass time.

Blog Sketch #199

Dead Inspector ideas...

Started sketching some ideas for Dead Inspector cover ideas. These aren't very big or detailed but it gives you a little idea of ideas I'm coming up with. Still haven't come back to drawing the actual pages yet...

Daily Sketch #198

Buddha's Belly

Here's a quick sketch of some ladies that were eating at Buddha's Belly in Santa Monica last Saturday night. It was done on a napkin while we were waiting for our food to arrive. Quite tasty Thai influenced Asian noodles and rice too. Recommended (the food, not the ladies).

Daily Sketch #197

Rock On

This is just one of those random drawings that springs forth from the ether of the mind. I have no idea who this guy is, why he's throwing up a rock/gang sign, or where he came from. But it ended up being a pretty cool drawing. 

Daily Sketch #196

Hold Up

Here's a quick sketch of a guy holding a gun. I really ended up happy with the pose and motion. The foreshortening actually worked out really well which is a rare thing for me.

D and I watched "Sicko" last night. I'm not a Michael Moore fan, but it was definitely a compelling editorial about what's wrong with the US healthcare industry. I'm not sure I buy into letting the government take over completely, I've seen how our government runs other agencies and it doesn't inspire me. That being said, it seems pretty obvious that the current system is broken.

The French get 5 weeks vacation and a 35 hour work week? What is that?!

Daily Sketch #195

Dodgeball Hangover

I went and played dodgeball up in Hollywood last night and it was a ton of fun (despite my arriving late). I even got home at a relatively decent hour and headed to bed. For reasons beyond my comprehension, I could not fall asleep last night. I was tired, I was in bed, but my brain would not shut down. Perhaps I was running dodgeball plays in my head... who knows.

In any case, it's a good thing I did a bunch of sketching this weekend, because I'm far too tired to generate anything of any quality this morning. Instead enjoy this rather solid Darkness sketch!

Daily Sketch #194

Bevy of Sketches

I spent the weekend in Hollywood at the Gnomen Live event at the Gnomen School. The Gnomen School is a technical school focusing on training artists for movie production, story-boarding, special effects and animation, and video game production. Rob and I sat in the recruiting room and checked out portfolios and talked to attendees about Top Cow. It was good fun and one of our artists, Kenneth Rocafort, was a guest of the event and did a presentation and live art demo. He brought the awesome. All of this coupled with some quiet moments during the seminars let me whip up quite a few sketches. Here's the first of a week's worth I got done at the event.

It's Joe Davis from one of my projects coming soon. I owe my penciler a script, which I've been working on this weekend. Probably would help if I didn't keep re-writing it...

Daily Sketch #193

Baby, Baby

Here's a little sketch of D's niece, Morgan from a photo we have in the living room. She's a cheeky monkey, but a darn cute one. She'll break some hearts before too long...

Daily Sketch #192

I Miss Karate

Started drawing this last night and realized how much on a subconscious level I've been missing my karate outlet from Maryland. I need to start making time to practice it a little bit even if it's just by myself for a little bit a couple of times a week. So much I want to do, so little time. What happened to my time, California?

Blog Sketch #191

In Darkest Night

Just listened to a podcast reviewing Final Crisis #1 and it made me think about the Green Lantern cover and what a cool costume design it is. So you're getting a super quickie sketch done post-work, pre-dinner and then I'm off to go try Dodgeball on. There's a league in Hollywood that my co-worker Rob plays in and swears it's the greatest thing in the world. Heck, I'm game.

Daily Sketch #190

Secret Scribbles

I did a super fast thumbnail sketch for work this week to flesh out an idea for a cover. It's top secret, so I've cropped out my little notes. But you get to enjoy the scribblings anyway. Shuusshh, don't tell;)

Daily Sketch #189

More Project in Progress

Another sketch inspired by one of the projects I'm working on right now. Not bad:)

Spent the past couple of days working and hanging out with my old roomie and one of my best buds, Lee who was in LA for business. It also gave me a chance to make it up to the Griffith Observatory which was a really cool LA site. I'll hopefully have some photos in the near future to show off.

Daily Sketch #188

Lost Inspired

D and I were watching the season finale of "Lost" the other night and I was struck with how stunning the actress who plays Sun is (in the flash forward sequences). That thought ended up inspiring me to try and draw a beautiful asian lady. Not sure I was entirely successful, but it was a fun sketch nonetheless. 

And yes, we thought the season finale of "Lost" was rock-tastic. 

Daily Sketch #187

Workin' on projects

I'm really trying to barrel down and finish up scripts for a pair of projects you'll be seeing shortly. They're both properties I've mentioned on the blog before, but this is the closest they've been to actually coming to fruition and both I and the artists are mucho, mucho excited. Now if I can only find time to write the damn things...

Here's a sketch I sent one of my artists as a jumping off point for a new character. I rather like the way the face came out.