199 - Front Desk Man!

Had a bit of fun this week doing a farewell piece for one of the workers that is leaving us this week. Our man David is having his last day at Health & Welfare tomorrow and is off to continue helping people with his new position at the Boise VA. As a way to show him how much we all appreciate him and will miss him the idea was brought up to do a kinda super hero caricature of David.
Being the artsy type guy in our office the task was given to me. I think it turned out well. Breaking out the Copics for the first time in to long was a lot of fun. The final result looks pretty good in the frame co-worker Amy snagged for the picture. Should go over well tomorrow.
If anyone is wondering David is portrayed as Front Desk Man which is the hardest position in Child Support Services. I know, it's a position I held off and on for about a year. No one seems to want to come in and talk to Child Support when they are happy so you spend 8 hours a day doing your best to help people understand their position and what you can and can't do for them while trying to be as helpful and understanding as you can be, it is a damn tough job. David's been doing it for a while and it seems he was pretty dang good at it. He will be missed around our office and the VA is lucky to have him.

Small note:  Tonight we did the first ever MEGAPOD with almost all the members of the Media Junk Food Podcast Network, it was epic and a blast to do. If you want to give it a listen it will be up soon on my podcast which can be found HERE. 

Hope you all have a great recovery weekend after the stress of Xmas.

198 - is this the Electro Foxx you're looking for?

Are one of these the expectations you have of Jamie Foxx playing Electro? If the new news is to be believed then Jamie Foxx has indeed confirmed he will be playing Max Dillon in Amazing Spider-Man 2 which I think could be great. I'm hoping that we get the first picture above and don't fall prey to a possible script that doesn't bring us the Max from the comics that I know and love. Wanda with electric powers scares the shit out of me!
With all of Jamie Foxx's turns in great flicks and putting out amazing performances like Ray, The Soloist and Ali I'm hoping we get the bad ass actor that we all know Foxx can be. And come on, Dean 'MF' Jonesin Horrible Bosses was frickin epic! I guess we will just see what we see.

197 - Getting my Nova on! And a new do again...?

A little try out with some of the wife's markers. Did my best rendition of the cover of The Man Called NOVA #3 by the incredible Sal Buscema. If you are one of the people who have only met "Nova" as a punk ass named Sam on The Ultimate Spider-Man Disney XD don't hold that against the REAL Nova which is a bad ass named Richard Rider who has been kicking ass in the Marvel Universe since the 70's.

We also have a new picture that I took the opportunity of my Halloween haircut to get done. Art supplies along with my 2nd degree black belt. That's right, just cause a guy reads and makes comics doesn't mean he can't start some shit!

196 - the Halloween do's

Wanted to share with you guys the fun I had at Halloween this year. Picture 'A' shows the final results of me not cutting my hair for about 8 months and not shaving for the 3 or 4 months prior to Halloween this year. I had an idea that I thought would be fun for work and starting growing the hair out with the idea that it would shock everyone when my hair changed so drastically for one day. It was really fun as the days drew closer and all my friends at work kept guessing what I was going to be. The crazy thing was the last day when someone mentioned a possible character with short hair and someone else said "No way he would grow his hair out all this time just to cut it off." I almost did a spit take right then but I held my composure and no one seemed to actually guess that that was my idea.

So after work the day before Halloween I headed off to Sports Clips and they proceeded to make my head look like 'B'. It was a blast, the girls at the shop had a blast looking at the Mr. T pictures on my phone. And we all had some good laughs when they hit me with the clippers and all that hair started hitting the ground.

Which all lead to 'C'. I showed up at work on Halloween in full mma gear with finger tape that said PITY and FOOL. It was a fun day. All my work colleagues seemed to be impressed and I had some fun.

Now, what the hell am I going to do next year...?

195 - Happy Holidays!!!!!

Happy Holidays Peoples!

Here's hoping you are all having a fine holiday season. Mine has been full of ups and downs. Life is strange sometimes. I have been unable to get on my desktop computer since Saturday morning so I have been unable to get any coloring down which has left me very unhappy. I have a stack of pages and all I want to do is work on them and right now I can't. It's so annoying. My partners in GEEK have been kicking ass lately. Axel is kicking out pages drawn and inked, Shawn is dropping letters like crazy and each day I am falling behind. Matt's going to be unhappy if I don't get caught up. The good news is a that I have a virus scan running off of a thumb drive right now that might fix everything, and if it doesn't I have found my Windows 7 disk and will have the fun of doing a full re-install. The wife has been really helpful with this whole thing which is good, because I was pissed. And really just wanted to punch my computer. It wouldn't have helped but it would have made me feel better.

As it is I will be getting all GEEKy colorful as soon as possible and plan on spending all weekend coloring watching Netflix and listening to podcasts minus the time I will be watching Ryan Stegman do a live ustream for the people that backed his Kickstarter and sketching live, should be a blast.

That next blog will include a pic I've been working on to show the fun I had at Halloween this year and I do have a couple of things I have been working on that I can share so good stuff is coming.

Enjoy your holidays! Don't let your families ruin it for you!

194 - the last photo

Here it is. The last picture of me with all the months growth of hair and beard in preparation for Halloween tomorrow. Right now I look a lot different, and tomorrow it will be more so. It's going to be a fun day.

The Next Element Podcast is rocking along and kicking down doors, give it a listen.

Coloring different pieces and I keep having opportunities thrown at me and I keep doing everything that I can fit into my schedule. I'm learning and I keep getting these great opportunities and I will happily share them with you guys once I am able to. Really great news coming in the next couple of weeks.

193 - more complex shapes = more complex characters

Crazy day yesterday. If you have questions refer back to  the nice short and simple blog # 192. Trying to get some work done today and had this ready to post so here it is. 2nd post from the Creating Characters with Personality by Tom Bancroft. Simple shapes make for simple characters so naturally what follows is more complex shapes make more complex characters. You must find you balance.

192 - What a GEEK of a day!

Okay so. Work day. Payday. Comics day. Got my Avengers Blu-ray day. Work out day. GEEK funded day. Hot damn it has been one hell of a day! Think I'm gonna go eat dinner. This day has left me exhausted. Love you all! 

191 - with 5 days left, you better get him to the GEEK!

So here it is in all of its glory. This is the piece that I sent off to the guys, Shawn DePasquale, Matt Cohen, Axel Ortiz, showing what I would do with Axel's amazing pencils. Going in I had no reference for what any of the color scheme was suppose to be so I was informed that there would be some color notes as certain choices have been made but the important part is that I have gotten nothing but positive feedback from the guys and I'm really hoping that the G.E.E.K. fundraiser does well enough that they can afford to bring a colorist onto the book. 

Speaking of which, go click here ----> G.E.E.K. Kickstarter Page!

The first step is still to get the book funded. There's not much chance of anyone getting to color this bucket of awesome if the kickstarter itself is not first successful. So go take a look, watch the 2 great videos, 1 main page, 1 an update. Give if you can, and if you can't but still think it is a worthwhile project share it with your friends, and family, and pets, and facebook acquaintances, and Twitter followers, and MMO guild mates. You know, that whole big social media thing you have built up, put it to some good use and spread the love of G.E.E.K.! 

190 - what lifts and separates?

The lovely and talented mister Martheus Wade shared his Power Girl line work and asked for color entries as his next tutorial over at his sweet ass blog - http://mawproductions.blogspot.com/ is going to be about coloring. So I done did my best and sent it on its way ti him and thought I might share it with you all. Have a lovely evening.

This as well as some other stuff has been added to my growing color portfolio over at http://bach2099.deviantart.com/ stop by and leave me some stars and comments! Thansk peoples!

189 - Trying to get my G.E.E.K. on in a big bad way.

Don't want to be sharing out of school so all you get is a little snippet of the coloring I have done this week for the G.E.E.K. Kickstarter project. Which can be found HERE! The genius that is behind the podcast Bagged and Boarded Mr. Matt Cohen of SMOD Castle fame got an idea for a comic and put together a great team of Axel @pecks13 and Shawn @shawnwrites to help bring his dream of a comic to life. If you haven't checked out the Kickstarter click on that link above as of right now there is still 11 days to go and the project is about $2500 from funding. Being that close I'm really hoping it funds firstly because I want my copy of the book and the other great rewards I have pledged for, and secondly because it just looks like a great fun book. Seriously check out the pledge levels, Matt Cohen has some crazy cool and fun rewards on this super cool kickstarter.
The other reason that I am super excited to see this project not only fund but go above it's funding goal is the guys talked about getting a colorist to work on the book if the funding gets high enough. So I did the one thing I needed to do and hit the guys up on the twitters and facebooks and offered up my services as a colorist. I was sent a promo image that Axel had penciled and inked, to color, along with the other people that had shown interest in coloring the book. I finished my versions, yes versions, hopefully I didn't go overboard. I sent 3 different versions off to Shawns email this evening. Fingers crossed, at this point it is out of my hands.  Here's hoping they liked what I did and offer me the position. I'll be waiting nervously by the email box.

188 - An Oracle for You. But Ya Ahh, Barbara, Ya Aaaah In That Chair!

The 2nd sketch battle over at the lovely Read Comic Books.net that I took part in is complete and I luckily did not come in last place! Do to a flood of 3 votes right on the last morning my pretty little sketch seen here above jumped up to tied for 2nd to last place along with sketch "A". So it was fun and it could have been worse. The next sketch battle is the Rob Leifeld "Like-feld" contest, should be a blast!

Hope ya'll had a great weekend. I'm a Denver Broncos fan so my Sunday night ended in spectacular fashion. GO PEYTON!

187 - on a mutha funkin Mutant!

Back again with some more of that Simplified Anatomy for the Comic Book Artist by Christopher Hart because I just can't be stopped! This one turned out really well I think especially as the image on the right was done while racing the clock trying to finish it before the wife hollered that dinner was ready. I actually finished it about 4 minutes after she hollered but it was a really close race, fun was had.

Bonus! As of this post #187 on a mutha fuckin blog I have tied last year for 59 posts so far in 2012. There have been a few posts that did not have a sketch attached but I still am very happy that I'm getting more posts up and I hope everyone following and reading is enjoying.

186 - Simple shapes = simple characters

Just a fun simple sketch. During tonight's recording of The Next Element Podcast I talked about starting some character design work for a character in a short story I wrote which Colin is turning into a script for a 4/5 page comic. The character is a little bad ass barbarian girl named Camilla the Hun. I think she is going to be a blast to work with but what I don't have yet is the design of the character. So in comes Creating Characters with Personality by Tom Bancroft.

So after we were done with the podcast I started flipping through the book and after a couple of minutes had the very simple urge to sketch something. One of the best feelings in the world for me is having that feeling of wanting, almost needing to draw something and being able to feed that need. Lucky for me I was sitting in front of my computer with a nice Intous tablet and a book. One of the first sections in the book goes over simple shapes and has the great line that simple shapes make simple characters, hence the sketches above. Simple shapes make simple characters, more varied shapes create more varied characters. Sketching in Sketchbook Pro is getting to be more fun every time I use it.

185 - getting Super with RCB forums!

This was my entry for the last Read Comic Books forum sketch battle a couple of weeks ago. Posting now as we were working on keeping who did what somewhat anonymous. I liked the idea of a classic pose that is cropped in a way that you can imagine "your Superman" is the one in the sketch. Thought it turned out pretty well though I did not win the sketch battle. =-(

There is always next time and indeed there is a new sketch battle going on right now that is open for public vote. So head on over to the Bird's of Prey Sketch Battle and toss in your vote for best sketch.

Bonus - Molly Danger did indeed fund and I can't wait until this awesome book arrives!
2nd - How do you guys like the new banner? Let me know.

184 - Molly Danger is in DANGER!

I'm super proud of that first picture there at the top as I am a backer of Molly Danger by the amazing Jamal Igle. A book based around a super powered 10 year old with a story that's all heart that people can hand to ANYONE to enjoy is just a great project all around.

I got my pledge in and all I want is my copy of the book but sadly with only 4 days left to make the pledge drive Molly is in fact in Danger of coming up short or cutting it very close.

Take a look at the Kickstarter right HERE. 

Give it a once over and I'm sure you will want a copy for yourself or that awesome kid in your life that you would love to be able too hand a great story to. And if you can't afford to order your own copy donate a $1 and I'll add you to a list of people that will want to borrow mine. This book looks great and is being created for all the right reasons. To those that read this thing I didn't lead you astray with Princeless and I'm telling you Molly Danger is the next spectacular little girl that you want to support. Plus beautiful art along with a great story what more could you ask for!

If you take the time to go take a look and maybe send a couple dollars their way I say thankee sai. And if not, best not to meet me between here and the clearing at the end of the path.

183 - the rats continue

More rats. They continue. This was a take on a royal guard looking rat soldier. Ended up with something that looks a bit to formal and clean for the comic but it was still fun to draw.

Currently working on an 8 page super hero coloring project that is taken up my week. Gotta get back to it. Hopefully I'll be able to share it soon, for right now it's hush hush.

182 - Sweet sweet backside - female back muscle groups

Again. Again Again. Again again again. Back to the Simplified Anatomy for the Comic Book Artist by Christopher Hart. I am still working my way through this fun little book as a learning tool and as a path to follow as I try to just simply increase my output. Of all the artists out there whose work I love I have seen them say constantly that the only way to really improve is to just keep drawing, so that's the goal. So I keep going. I keep sketching. I'm stubborn. I'm pig and bullheaded. It seems to help with my work outs and hopefully will keep improving my art. It just doesn't always make me popular.

Okay. Back to work.

P.S. The blog is creeping up on 10,000 views and I just wanted to say thanks to everyone that has stopped by to check things out. A little bigger thanks for those that have dropped in comments and +'s. And a huge thanks for those that are subscribed to the blog and hopefully are liking what they see and that's why you are hanging around. It will keep going. Hope you enjoy the ride.

181 - Look at the body on that babe!

Whilst working on other projects I keep kicking around an idea in my head for a webcomic. The webcomic arena is huge and extremely diverse but as this idea just keeps coming back to me multiple times it might just see the light of day at some point. And if it does I will make sure I have myself a stack of already finished pages so that I can hit the ground running and not slip as from what I have seen the very first thing that real hardcore webcomic fans want is regular updates with no excuses.

So as I was happily working towards another fine fine first place finish of @GeeksWhoDrink over at the lovely @Brewforia I sketched the little lad above to further work on the idea for my webcomic. It  might be an all ages idea, I'm not sure yet. Though the sketch above isn't really representative of any of the characters that will be in the story he's more of a starting point.

Kickstarter News!
I am slowing working towards just giving all of my money to Kickstarter. I find way to many cool projects on that thing. Including this one: G.E.E.K. by Matt Cohen and Axel Ortiz.  
This looks like it is going to be a blast to read and all of Axel's art so far looks amazing! If you get a chance before Friday Sept 28th 2012 check it out and maybe throw them a couple bucks. You'll get some great swag in return.

180 - turn that shit around! Ha! Pod and Rats for ya!

The podcast and the ideas and sketches for the comic are rolling along. This is the almost finished version of the base for the rats I will be drawing in the book. If you'd like to take a look at more of the prelim sketches and or give the podcast a listen just click HERE!

179 - a couple of toughs

This is the piece I did for one of my fellow penciljackers over on the PencilJack forums for X-Mas 2011. Totally forgot to post it. I think it turned out pretty well as this is the first time I had drawn either Concrete or the Goon and it was also the first time I had really went into a piece with the whole pack of pencils using various lead levels.

178 - Happy Friday the 13th!

HAPPY FRIDAY THE 13TH!

That is all. 

177 - who you calling a HOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Lion-O vs Mumm-Ra! It's like I'm a kid again, I love it! Still trying to get a handle on digital colors and finding awesome line work like this to work with makes it even more fun. Had a blast coloring this one, sweet sweet line work by Grant Perkins that you can follow over @theGrantPerkins.

Finished this one up in between all the other projects I am working on and finally took the time to update my digital coloring portfolio which is simply my Deviant Art account, if interest it's here: My Digital Color Portfolio.

Everyone one have an explosive but somewhat safe 4th of July!

176 - Drobot for you!

Another bit of fun with the Copics. Did this Drobot for the daughter of a friend at work. Hope she likes it.

175 - a sheepish good time

This here is the first sketch of an anthropomorphic character contest that I started on my podcast The Next Element. This character was designed after listening to the wonderful An Elegant Weapon podcast and hearing what they had to say about out contest.  Both of these fine pieces of auditory inspiration are filled with hours of fun, give em a listen.

174 - My favorite Martian, my 2nd favorite Marvin

Always fun to be had with the weekly sketch group over at PencilJack. Had the option of drawing my favorite alien as one of the choices this week. There was only one choice. My favorite Martian and he's my 2nd favorite Marvin. Enjoy.

173 - Brewathlon again!

Fun times! Gonna get your beer on! Playing around with some colors and texts for this years Brewathlon flyer. Anyone got any critiques? Criticisms? Colloquialisms? Crumpets?

172 - a quick Quick Kick upside Cobra's head

A quick sketch from my version of Drink and Draw night that I've been doing @Brewforia every Monday night for the awesomeness that is @GeeksWhoDrink over in Meridian. Come by, it's a blast.

This is another one for the PencilJack weekly sketch group. Favorite G.I.Joe, which for me was Quick Kick who is basically the Joe version of Bruce Lee/Shang Chi. Pure sweetness. How you gonna mess with a Joe that  doesn't wear shoes!

171 - check out the side view

Another day another sketch from the Simplified Anatomy for the Comic Book Artist by Christopher Hart. The female form simplified into muscle groups from the side view. Not a bad view indeed. 

170 - May the 4th be with you!

Little ink sketch for a happy Star Wars day!

169 - weird boy and the little robot

Sketchy little things I made during the work meeting the other day. Swear I was paying attention just letting my mind focus as I multi-tasked. I have NO IDEA where these little guys came from. But I like them.

168 - Stump Smash!

For fun tonight did a sketch of a Skylander named Stump Smash for my favorite little guy Mr. Wilson. Skylander's are a really fun way to waste a couple hours with a little person.

167 - little robot guy

Finally installed the O so cool Autodesk SketchBook Pro 2011 to my pc. I so love this program. Nothing else feels as close to pencil on paper as this program does. Just a little robot guy for fun.

166 - A Gully of a time!

Sneaking in under the wire again on a Sunday evening with my sketch for the PencilJack weekly sketch group. Gully from Joe Mad's Battle Chasers. This is not the little girl you want to mess with. With her daddy's power gauntlents she is more then a match for almost anyone.

165 - look at them hips

Back with more of the Christopher Hart Simplified Anatomy for the Comic Book Artist. The simplified female front view muscle groups, enjoy.

164 - Bucktooth Noodlearm Boy...I don't know why...

Bucktooth Noodlearm Boy my first creation on my nice new touchscreen laptop. These little suckers aren't bad. This one is a little old but I like it. Downloaded Sketchbook Pro to see if I could get any kind of positive result with the active digitizer stylus and I have to say the combination is nice, no where near what I had with my Wacom on my PC but workable. Using the pencil tool you can get nice sketchy lines that build up even with a stylus and touchscreen that have about 6 layers of sensitivity at most. So here we have the first sketch with my new set up. More to come...

163 - getting deviant

Finally started using my deviantART profile. Figured it would be a great place to keep all my finished colored art in one place. If you want to go take a look the link is below.

Bach2099 on deviantART

162 - 5 colored pages finally done

Finally got them all done. 5 pages of colored art off to the guy that requested them in the first place. There is a rumor that these might even see print, keep your fingers crossed for me! 

Now that this one is done I can focus on finishing up some other work. Always more to do, but that's a good thing.

Line work by Jose Manuel Marin Moreno.


Colors by Anthony Bachman

161 - Prize pictures

Pictures of my super cool Super Dinosaur prize pack. If I wasn't a Robert Kirkman/Image/Skybound/Super Dinosaur/Jason Howard fan for life already, I am now!

160 - I just keep on winning!

It has been a crazy couple of days. But in a good way. Last night after picking up AvX #1 which turned out to be really good Colin and I set down and recorded the 5th episode of our little podcast. The Next Element Podcast is chugging right along. The night before, on Monday we the proud members of Jack's Useless Knowledge took 2nd place in Geeks Who Drink over at the lovely Brewforia in Meridian, ID. A fine evening.

With just that it has been a full couple of days. Now add to that the Action Labs "I want Double Jumpers" contest over on the Twitter pages. I sadly didn't win that. However I did receive a rocking runner up prize compliments of Shawn Pryor and the fine fine folks over at Action Labs.

But the big one. The thing that really got all this started and put me in a dancing little glee. In Super Dinosaur # 7 my very first letter to a comic was published. I tossed in a couple of names for a standard old Name the Letters Page Contest. Well being the lucky guy I am I thought they would go with anyone else's idea but mine so I read issue # 8 the next month and issue #9 this weekend not expecting much. Surprise to me as I started reading the letters page and had to take a double take when I saw that the letter's page was title Mailasaurus Text. The name I had sent in for the contest. WHAT?

Read the intro by the awesome Sina Grace and the following congrats from Robert Kirkman and realized I had not only won the contest but I had some awesome stuff coming my way. A few emails later I now know that I have a t-shirt, I'm sure it's the Super Dino one, a page of Jason Howard's oh so sweet original art from Super Dinosaur, and as Sina put it random other things that Robert wanted to send. I am so looking forward to seeing a package arrive in the mail. You there will be a nice pic on here of all the goodies, especially my very first page of original comic art. Such a good couple of days.

Long days and pleasant nights all...

159 - a Diabolical idea...

Working through an idea I've had about what I am calling the Diabolical Daycare. Copyright Anthony Bachman bitches, it's mine. Here are some character roughs I did tonight at Brewforia during our Geeks Who Drink trivia night.

158 - Deadshot got ya!

A little Mr. Layton, Deadshot, for the PencilJack weekly sketch group. The guys got a great costume.