220 - the continuation of stuff

Just a quick update. For those wanting to really follow what I'm up to on a more steady basis the best places are Twitter and Instagram:

 https://instagram.com/bachmananthony/ is where all my art post go now a days
and
 https://twitter.com/anthonybachman is where that art goes as well as my musings and crazy podcastingness

G.E.E.K. has not only wrapped and been printed but Matt Cohen is now shipping so i hope to be able to show you guys my copy very soon. Super excited to hold a book that I colored half of in my grubby little mitts.

I took some time off from all things at the end of G.E.E.K. which also coincided with me working through all the craziness of finishing off my divorce and selling my house. Much stress. Lead to much video gaming and not a lot of art.

As I started to get back into things I was lucky enough to have my name brought up in conversation to a fledgling game company and got interviewed to work on their project with them. The meeting went well and I've been working on sketches and card ideas for the Pass-A-Fist game for the past little bit and will be working on that for the foreseeable future. The plan is for the game to be ready to go to print and live on Kickstarter as of early 2016 so I've got a lot of art to work on. In the mean time you can right now go download FOR FREE a beta version of the game at PassAFist.net. 

Along with that I'm still working through Christopher Hart's Figure It Out which makes for great daily warm up as I'm doing cards for the game. People are going to love the game, it's a fucking blast to play.

Other than that I'm trying to get ahead on everything so I can participate in Mr Jake Parker's fantastic annual event known as Inktober. Didn't quite finish it last year but I got close, planning on doing all 31 this year and I've got a fun theme and a database of reference ready to go so we'll see how I do.

Here's a bunch of what I've been working on:

  

211 - Who dem guys?

More of the standardized male body types from Christopher Hart's spectacular book Simplified Anatomy for the Comic Book Artist. I'm thinking of going back through these and practicing my digital inking right over the top of them for practice and because in the book Hart gives the under anatomy and a finished version.

Working my sketches in between coloring pages of GEEK which is finally starting to speed up as I am finding new faster ways to get the same results I was getting at the beginning so fingers crossed I can start really turning out pages to ease the minds of the GEEK guys.

ECCC is less than 2 weeks away now and I am getting really excited! Got my tattoos prepped and ready to go. Got a nice New Warriors convention sketchbook ready to get it's first sketch in it! I'm SO ready to go!

And if I didn't have enough other things going on I am now prepping to start a new pod cast. If you have listened to Tom vs The Flash by Tom Katers or Tales From the Attic by the always hilarous Donny Salvo on the PKD podcast you have an idea of what I want to do, roughly. If I tell you that I am going to name it the Crash Pad Podcast and you are a fan of a certain book then you now have a really good idea of what I'm going to be doing. I think it's going to be fun. Planning on recording the first test pod in the next couple of days and I have a couple guys ready to review it for me and hit me with some feedback. Fingers crossed.

210 - Raising Cain!

During my color breaks today I did a Cain from Robocop 2 sketch for the oh so lovely Weekly Sketch Group over on the so so special PencilJack.

Enjoy.

209 - Whose's that guy?

Standardized male body types. More of the awesome Simplified Anatomy for the Comic Book Artist by Christopher Hart. Still enjoying my way through this book in between bouts of coloring.
Hope you are all enjoying your year so far.

207 - Jump Jump PencilJack will make ya Jump Jump

This mornings warm up was once again the lovely 10 minute speed drawing challenge for the PencilJack Weekly Sketch Group. Fun was had. That is all.

205 - 4 my eyes only

With the fan dying on my power supply I've been running my computer for only 4 hours at a time with the window open and a fan blowing the cold air at the tower. This has keep my computer from crashing so that is nice but man it is getting kinda frigid in my office. I'm coloring with a hoodie on all zipped just to keep warm. But here's the important part. It's so worth it because GEEK is coming along and the colored pages I think are looking great. I believe we will be showing then to the world soon so I'll be able to share them here soon, I don't think you guys will be disappointed. 

In the meantime while my comp is down for the hour I give it to cool off completely I've been doing a little sketching. I've finished one piece and almost the second in a set that will be winging off to the far north to my favorite podbrothers. So for now I can't share pics as I want them to be a surprise. Soon as the package I will soon send off is received I'll put the sketches up here, they are turning out nice. 

Hope you are all enjoying your 2013 so far.

204 - Fast, Bolt Fast!

Another week and another 10 min sketch for the fabulous PencilJack weekly sketch crew fun times. I need to work on my speed and get more of the full overall impression of the image on the page before I try to get details. Gotta get fast, Usain Bolt fast baby!

202 - Irish Batman for dinner

Had a fun evening out with the mother-in-law the other night. Stephanie and David took Danielle and I out to celebrate our birthdays. They get off easy as our birthdays are only a week apart. I was flipping through Twitter and saw a post of a cool Batman Beyond toy and thought it would make for a cool sketch so I tossed done some lines and the above is the result. Terry McGinnis from Batman Beyond, still one of my favorite cartoons of all time.

201 - Mutant backside for your viewing pleasure!

Never give up!

Yep, that's right still not giving up on working my way through the entire Simplified Anatomy for the Comic Book Artist by Christopher Hart. It's a fun book and I'm still enjoying it everyone once in awhile in between my other projects. There is much rejoicing in my mind as posters are finishing up and comic pages are being colored. But here we have the Mutant fellow for his final appearance as you get the muscle groups in the rear view. Good stuff, enjoy.

Tomorrow I turn 35.
I'm rocking a mohawk while still working a government job. I'm on 2 different podcasts and I am currently coloring a 130 page OGN with an amazing group of guys.
This is definitely not things I would think that I would have been able to say a couple years ago.
Things are good.

Hope you are all enjoying your new year so far.

200 - here comes 2013! Everyone run!

Just a quick little hello to start the year. Noodle, the noodle armed boy says hi! Hope you like his hat.

2012 was really great for me.

I started a pod cast - The Next Element Podcast - and put up over 20 episodes on podbean and iTunes which has gotten some great feedback and very few death threats. Colin Addington and I had some great fun and the pod continues on in earnest. Sharing and chatting on the twitters about and with other podacsts made me a huge fan of An Elegant Weapon which lead to some great episodes, meeting a ton of other podcasters and becoming part of the super cool and all powerful Junk Food Podcast Network.

I showed much interest in an amazing Kickstarter called G.E.E.K. by the man himself Matt Cohen of Bagged and Boarded fame. This unbelievably lead to me getting the coloring job on that book, which I will go back to once I'm done typing this. The story is great, the art is epic, and I can only hope to get the colors up to the standards of the amazing guys I am working with on the book. Matt Cohen, Shawn DePasquale and Axel Ortiz are now some of my favorite people in the world. To stay updated check out this sexy little website: www.geekcomicbook.com.

Plenty of other happenings but I'm not going to get into all of them. The only real goals I set for myself last year were to make more art and by way of that post up more blog posts. According to my little tracker here I put up 59 posts in 2011 and upped that to a nice 71 in 2012. Other than 2009 I have increased blog posts each year since I started this thing in 2008. As far as I am concerned this is a trend I am proud of and plan on continuing. So for 2013 I will have 2 goals, increase the number of posts to this blog - aiming for 80 plus with almost all of them having art if possible, and finish coloring GEEK. That is all. 2 things to focus on and now it is time to start. If you are one of the people reading these things each and everytime they go up I just want to say thank you and you are awesome. We will continue to be awesome together.

Have a great year peoples!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.