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catch & release

October 29, 2014 craig Space Dumplings, Space Dumplins, Upcoming

Thanks for your patience, Blog-friends, and my apologies for the lag since the last post. The end-of-the-year deadline is looming, work-weeks have shifted to seven days, and in classic form, I’m tossing finished pages and rewriting the ending. So speaking of tossing finished pages, here’s a glimpse of what used to be the first two panels of the book, before I scrapped the first chapter and started from scratch.

The second image here is a space ship concept design drawn back in 2012, long before I began drawing actual pages.

chapter five complete

September 9, 2014 craig Space Dumplings, Space Dumplins, Upcoming

As of today, chapter FIVE of SPACE DUMPLINS is complete. Two more chapters until the finale of the book
— approximately 80 pages to draw before the year’s end. Gonna get hectic.

Above is a sample from chapter four. On the right, the final panel with Dave Stewart’s colors.
On the left, an onion skin effect: orange = thumbnail; pink = background pencils; gray = character pencils.

And here’s an example from the just-finished-not-yet-colored chapter five. Teal = thumbnail; red = pencils; black = inks.
Thanks to all of you for your patience and support!

pile of trash in fine art & folk art

July 20, 2014 craig Friends, Misc, Space Dumplings, Space Dumplins, Upcoming

For those of you asking about Dave Stewart’s process coloring SPACE DUMPLINS, there’s a great interview up at FROM THE GUTTERS.

Dave is tackling some ridiculously detailed panels. Here’s one I just drew of an outer space landfill.

As ever, the reference is hodgepodged from both low brow & high brow sources. A) The FOLK ART side hails from the graveyard of cars rusting in the forest behind my parents’ rural Wisconsin home. (See page 533 of BLANKETS for more wooded trash heaps.) B) The FINE ART side is Nancy Rubin’s “Airplane Parts” sculpture at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

drawing brothers

July 3, 2014 craig Friends, Misc, Sketchbook, Travel, Upcoming

Just returned from one month in France where I began a collaborative book with 72 year old French comics master Edmond BAUDOIN.

(A – Edmond with Cambodian cartoonist Tian, left. Amiens Cathedral, right.)

(B – Signing at the Palais du Commerce, left. Little Prince statue in Place Bellecour, right.)

After book signings at the A) Amiens BD festival and B) Lyon BD festival, Edmond & I retreated to his childhood haunts of Villars-sur-Var –
a mountaintop village near Nice to churn out drawings and write thumbails for our book.

Our timing aligned with village festival of their patron St. Jean – documented in Baudoin’s book LE CHEMIN DE SAINT JEAN.
Edmond has over 60 books in his bibliography, though zero are translated in English at this point.

Our collaborative project has just begun… the next step is Edmond visiting my stomping grounds in Portland & Wisconsin… BUT for the rest of the year, I plunge back into SPACE DUMPLINS to hit that deadline for a FALL 2015 release – the tenth anniversary of Scholastic’s GRAPHIX line.

digital pencil & analog ink

May 1, 2014 craig Carnet de Voyage, Misc, Space Dumplings, Space Dumplins, Upcoming

Thanks for the reminder about the Cintiq post, Dan. As mentioned back in August 2013, I’ve been experimenting with the Wacom Cintiq as a way to shake up & expand my working methods. The 13″ felt too cramped & claustrophobic, so early this year I upgraded to a 22″ Cintiq on an Ergotron arm – inspired by Fiona Staples, whose work on SAGA I admire.

For the past couple of months, I wrestled with the machine & have settled on a compromise common among comics pros – I pencil the pages digitally, then print out blue lines and ink on actual paper.

The advantage of digital penciling is I can see a chapter all at once (top right photo), cut&paste, zoom in close, edit on the fly, and work standing up (top left photo, avec Momo). But digital inking still looks too slick to me — I prefer the flawed & tangible qualities of fussy sable brushes on paper. Foot in both worlds!

Finally, my advice to young cartoonists is to keep it organic & raw and not get bogged down by plug-in devices. In a month, I’ll be starting a direct-to-sketchbook project like CARNET DE VOYAGE to relearn working on the fly outside the studio.

kazim ali & jens harder

April 10, 2014 craig Friends, Habibi, Misc, Space Dumplings, Space Dumplins, Upcoming

This morning’s clutter on the drafting table – inking several SPACE DUMPLINS pages simultaneously. Also my friend Kazim Ali is in town for a reading from his new book SKY WARD at Reed College TONIGHT (6:30 Elliot Hall Chapel) for those of you in Portland. Here he’s writing Arabic on my new Cintiq (more on that in some future post… As evidenced above, I’m still inking with actual India ink & brush.).

Finally, this just arrived in the post – BETA (…civilizations volume 1) by German cartoonist Jens Harder. In this intricate, mind-boggling, coolest possible coffee table book, Jens catalogues the history of human evolution & civilization. Every image in the 365 page tome (apparently the first in a trilogy) is sampled from existing media – cave paintings, etchings, pottery, photographs, film, comics, etc. then redrawn in Jens’ meticulous brush lines. For those of you who thought HABIBI was nuts, this takes it to the next level. Speaking of which, here’s a page that references HABIBI in the development of written language.

A favorite page of mine groups CHRIS WARE alongside Caravaggio, Courbet, and Magritte to name a few.

color tweaks & carnet’s tenth

March 5, 2014 craig Carnet de Voyage, Friends, Misc, Sketchbook, Space Dumplings, Space Dumplins, Travel, Upcoming

Just wanted to share some of the incredible work Dave Stewart’s pouring into the SPACE DUMPLINS colors.

We decided the palette was getting too muted & subdued, so he’s tweaking the pages just enough to infuse the grimy dinginess of outer space clutter with a burst of cartoony, kid-friendly levity. Previous incarnations on the left – updated versions on the right.

In other news, I realized that today is the exact ten year anniversary of my CARNET DE VOYAGE travel & book. To celebrate, I dug around for a photo or two, but they were sparse, because as noted in the back of the book, zero cameras were used in the creation of it. It is my unaltered travel diary begun March 5th, 2004 and ended May 14th, 2004. The week following, my buddy Frédéric and I scanned the three sketchbooks and layed out the book in Lyon, France – no edits other than a proofread from my non-native English speaking friends.

After spending 6-7 years on HABIBI, I can’t fathom that I created a book in less than three months. It helps to not make anything up, not edit, not use any photo reference, and avoid penciling as much as possible. First scruffy photo is in Morocco on the journey to Merzouga.

The second photo was provided by Lewis Trondheim – me drawing on the beach in Montpellier, France: young, naïve, skinny & shirtless.

the sakai project

February 9, 2014 craig Blankets, Friends, Misc, Upcoming

One of my favorite comics growing up was USAGI YOJIMBO. Its creator Stan Sakai is humble, hardworking, and perhaps the kindest person I’ve met in this industry. His wife has been suffering serious health issues, so an art auction fundraiser has been organized to aid the family with medical expenses.

Here’s my tribute – crafted this snowbound weekend in Portland. The inspiration was 1) the unrequited romance of Usagi & Mariko from the earliest 1987 issues of the book, along with 2) the tradition of Ukiyo-e woodblock prints (specifically “Two ladies conversing in the snow” & “A village in the snow” by Hiroshige), and finally 3) the snow-dappled tree framed by my studio window as the neighbor kids sled down their front yard.

To learn more about the fundraiser and the other artists involved, please check out the Cartoon Art Professional Society’s Paypal.
The work will also be colored by the amazing Dave Stewart and see print in THE SAKAI PROJECT book to be published by Dark Horse and Bongo Comics (July 23rd release).

spacebikes 1983

January 17, 2014 craig Misc, Space Dumplings, Space Dumplins, Upcoming

Unearthed some more childhood art that wasn’t lost in the BLANKETS burn barrel. This one’s another scroll (see slumgutso
and scrambled seaweed) drawn circa 1983 in Mrs. Kamenick’s third grade classroom at Marathon Elementary – Wisconsin.

I was nine years old and all fired up about RETURN OF THE JEDI (note the belt buckle matches the jersey).
This is exactly the sort of nerd-ball enthusiasm I’m trying to channel for the upcoming SPACE DUMPLINS.

year of the momo

December 30, 2013 craig Misc, Space Dumplings, Space Dumplins, Upcoming

HAPPY NEW YEAR, BLOG-FRIENDS!

After HABIBI promotional travel, 2013 was the year of hunkering down to craft the new book – SPACE DUMPLINS. It began with an injured hand, tossing the first batch of inks, revising the script, then drawing 135 pages of final art to be colored by Dave Stewart.
Just this week, CHAPTER THREE saw completion.

154 more pages to go to finish SPACE DUMPLINS – the big goal for 2014. Thanks to all of you for your continual support & sticking with the Doot Doot Blog. Here’s a reminder of previous New Years on this forum: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012. A toast to a cozy & productive year for us all!

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