My time of year.

As Todd Dezago pointed out, Halloween is fast approaching and I'm already in that frame of mind. I started feeling the first ticklings back in August because of an unexpected but pleasant cold snap that ended the month but now that it's September, I'm in full horror movie mode. (I just finished watching AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON and can't believe how incredibly hot Jenny Agutter was in that.) I absolutely love this time of year. Despite the exasperation I usually feel at having to get up the endless mounds of leaves our trees produce, there's not much that can sour my mood right now. Well, I guess I really shouldn't tempt fate. So, let me just say that, recent events notwithstanding, life feels pretty good right now.

Though I haven't had much to show lately, I have, in fact, been drawing quite a bit. After a couple of months of being on the road for one reason or another or working a crushing amount of hours, it suddenly dawned on me how close I am to missing my deadline on part two of the Perhapanauts story Todd, Christian and I are doing. So I've been trying to focus on that for a while and have made some decent progress. (Expect a page in your email tomorrow, Todd and Craig.) It hasn't hurt that Christian emails me every day asking for the next page to ink. Since part one hasn't come out yet, I really can't share any of the pages. Which is too bad because I'm not stressing over it so much anymore and, now that I'm starting to get a feel for how to draw these characters, I'm actually having fun. My versions don't really look much like Craig's but at least they're starting to look consistent. Craig makes it look so effortless and simple but Choopie's goggles will drive a dude crazy, man.

I've also spent some time working with Rod Hannah on a project he's been developing. (Though Rod would probably debate the word "work" at this point. :) ) It's pretty much amounted to the three sketches seen up above. I've been trying to design a character for his story and, while it was fun, I haven't been able to give it the time Rod deserves. But he has graciously given me the okay to post these. I can't give you any story details, as he's not ready to announce anything yet, but it's a really cool story idea and I wish I could contribute more. These sketches represent some back and forth we had as Rod refined what he wanted the character to look like. To be honest, I've never spent much time drawing women so this was a new frontier for me and I really enjoyed it. I loosened up a lot to try and get a more gestural quality. I'm doing such rigid pencilling on the Perhapanauts story that this was a nice break. I hope you like them.

I'm also hoping to post more character designs for my horror comic that I've mentioned from time to time. The plot is done and I'm currently writing the first draft of the script and I'm very excited about it. As I've mentioned to a few folks, I plotted out a scene during one of my daily walks that even scared the hell out of me and I can't wait to script it out. As much as I love horror movies, I've never been able to invent the kind of stuff that would freak people out. I'm a pretty non-violent, non-confrontational guy so this kind of stuff never occurs to me unprompted. So I tasked myself with coming up with something that would creep readers out within the context of the story and, by the time my walk was over, my skin was crawling.

Anyway, that's all I've got for now. Later.