Long time.
Posted on August 23, 2010
The last few months have flown by in a sort of whirlwind.
First and foremost, my daughter - Beatrice Pearl Mohler - was born on July 15th at 11:44am. She was 9lbs 1oz and 22in long.
Since, she's gained several inches, several pounds, and the complete infatuation of her mother and father. I cannot count the number of diapers we've changed or the number of hours she's kept us up at night. But, what amazes me the most is how quickly she has insinuated herself into our lives - to the point where I can hardly fathom life without her now. You hear people say stuff like that and it's easy to pass it off as complete silliness - at least until you are in a similar situation.
The new quarter at the Art Institutes International Kansas City started and I've been teaching two Fundamentals of Drawing classes. So far, it's been a great deal of fun and most of the students are genuinely interested in being there and working. Plus, it's been good for me as well - I've been out of school long enough now that it seems so much of the fundamental stuff that I learned in school has sort of faded and become more intuitive. So, I've had to go back and do a variety of research and really think about how to explain things. You might think that would be easy - it's not. I've had successful moments and, as my students can probably verify, some unsuccessful moments. Either way, I'll keep pushing it and trying to do my best.
Next quarter, it looks like I might also get a Storyboarding class. I can't wait.
Among all this, I've had a pretty involved project fall into my lap which I will be managing and contributing some artwork too. I am really optimistic about this and I'm really quite excited about it. It's a very cool project and I'm looking forward to getting to talk about it at length down the line a bit.
Emily and I are also working on a project of our own - it's something we created together, she's writing and I'm doing the layouts, color, and letters. We've contracted an artist to handle the pencils/inks and so far, it's looking quite good. I'm looking forward to showing it off and talking a little more about it soon.
Then there is always Baeg Tobar and Outland Entertainment. A lot is happening behind the scenes right now with both. I will be talking more about this in the next few months.
Ah yes - and Star Craft 2: Wings of Liberty came out.
So, everything is pretty busy at the moment. I'm going to be working on posting more regularly from here on out - I've still got a bundle of artwork to put up that I'd like to share, so expect some more artwork this week.
Jer
SIKU – Inuit Comic Character Concepts
Posted on June 25, 2010
Sometime in early 2008 I was doing a ton of work for Inhabit Media illustrating a variety of Inuit based folklore. I had already done a ton of story illustration and creature concepts when I was approached to color an actual Inuit comic for a gentleman who worked with Inhabit Media on occasion. I agreed, but the project never fully manifested and I continued to do some work for Inhabit Media.
Due to some unforeseen circumstances, the original illustrator for the comic eventually decided to leave the project and I was offered the full gig. I agreed with some trepidation.
You see, I love comics. I've tried unsuccessfully a number of times to do comics. What I have found is that I am just too damn slow to maintain any kind of regular pace doing the pencils/inks for a comic. It just doesn't work - I start out strong and as I progress, find myself more and more distracted and overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work involved in actually illustrating a comic. I've found I enjoy doing illustration work much more.
But, considering I was so familiar with the material and that there wasn't an overwhelming amount of characters that I would be expected to deal with, I thought I could could probably handle the project. So, I took it on. And to date, it's the biggest comic project I've ever penciled in full - I think we ended up with around 22 pages when all was said and done. And while there are some pages/panels I'd totally do differently now, I'm still pretty proud of the project as a whole.
I was also supposed to color the project, but the deadline snuck up on me and I was forced to find a bit of help from a friend of mine, Chris Summers. Chris was a huge help and I did end up tweaking all the pages a bit, adding some textures and overlays to the pages, but Chris did the majority of it.
This project was also where I cut my teeth on lettering. I ended up lettering the project in both Inuit and English and to date, the English version has never been released, which I'll most likely post here for everybody to see since the book itself has been published.
Anyway, I'll start with the character concepts and then we'll move on to the pages. I started these concepts while I was staying down in Austin with my good friend Kennon James. The characters are Idlout (the main character), his wife, the goddess Sedna, and the creature Qallupiluk. Hope you dig it!
Jer
Baeg Tobar: The Torn God Page 12-13 Colors
Posted on April 7, 2010
I know I'm a bit behind - I meant to get this piece up last week, but I just didn't have time to get the post done. So, my apologies!
I have to admit to feeling a bit unhappy with the last two pages. Trying to recover from the failed hard drive earlier this year made it really difficult to get back into the swing of coloring these pages. I'm also really picky about my work and for these pages to not turn out quite as good as I wanted them is difficult. That's not to say I'm really unhappy with them, I just wish I had the original files to make sure my colors were lining up exactly.
That being said, on page 13 I felt I hit my stride a little more. I was much happier with the way it turned out than pages 11 and 12. Part of it is getting back into working on these pages again, I think. I'm getting more comfortable with the colors and the scenes and it's started to come back. Here's hoping that the next page turns out even better!
Oh, and figure out how to make the pages go faster, heh.
If you want to actually read the story, you can head here - http://baegtobar.outlandworlds.com/torngod/. I, as always, welcome critique and feedback. Let me know what you think!
Thanks!
Jer
Baeg Tobar: The Torn God Page 11 Colors
Posted on March 22, 2010
Some of you may have noticed that The Torn God, our primary storyline for Baeg Tobar (by Scott Colby, Daniel Tyler Gooden, Alan Gallo, and myself), has been on hiatus while we ran the short comic story A Gift of Life, by William Ward, Shannon Potratz, and Gene Kelly. Well, we're finally getting back to business on The Torn God. I'm going to be posting some of my process stuff here as I work on these pages for everybody to see. I'm sure I'll have comments sometimes and other times I'll just be posting the artwork.
It was good to get back to this! But it was also a bit tricky.
I mentioned earlier this year that I, unfortunately, lost years worth of work due to a hard drive failure (and ironically enough, I was just notified yesterday that my current hard drive is now completely backed up on Mozy, cheer). I'm realizing more and more what a pain this is since one of the things I lost was pretty much ALL my personal Baeg Tobar work. So, I had to go back and figure out my entire color scheme for this page so as to make it match the color scheme of the previous pages. The next pages should go a little better, I expect.
Seriously, if you haven't backed up your work lately, GO DO IT NOW.
I also wanted to mention that I do have all my pages flatted. A fellow by the name of Alex Petretich is pretty much the primary flatter for not only my personal work, but also the Baeg Tobar project. You can also check out his flatting work here - www.flatened.blogspot.com. I would highly recommend him if you need something flatted.
Thanks!
Jer
Projects: WMD
Posted on March 12, 2010
I've been friends with Jeff Wamester for quite a while now.
I believe it was in 2008 when we actually met in person out at Wizard World Chicago. At the time, I had him doing a few things for my project Baeg Tobar and was totally blown away by the work he was doing. I think it's fair to say that I could tell Jeff was on his way to big things (and from all indications, this is indeed true).
Anyway, I introduced Jeff to Matt Jacobs (my business partner with Outland Entertainment) and we started talking about how we could all work together. It just so happened that Jeff had a personal project that he'd been working on for literally years (which is something I can totally relate too, heh) called WMD. Matt and I took a look at several of the pages he had with him, listened to the concept behind the story, and were blown away! We immediately sat down with Jeff and worked out a deal to produce WMD through Outland.
We agreed that Jeff would pencil and ink the project and I would color and letter the pages. Matt would assist with any editing or plot help. I also designed the website and Matt built it using our webcomic CMS Panel Flow. We completed 12 pages + a cover which would function as a sort of intro/prelude to the actual full epic story.
You can read all of those pages right here.
COLORS
(Pencils and inks by Jeff Wamester. Colors by me.)
Right now, the project is on hold due to other obligations that Jeff, Matt, and I have. We're actually kind of shopping around for a publisher, but either way I definitely believe we'll get back to WMD in the not too distant future. This is one of those stories that just has to be told.
Unfortunately, with the loss of my hard drive earlier this year, I lost all the high resolution copies of these pages, which really stinks. I may eventually put the pages up that I lettered, but I'm not sure. I kind of feel you should head over to the actual WMD website to read the comic rather than reading it here.
Jer
Recent Work
Personal Sites
Friends
- Alana Joli Abbott
- Alex Petretich
- Allan Chow
- Daniel Tyler Gooden
- Jeff Wamester
- Kennon James
- Rick Hershey
- Sam Mooney