On to the next....

Now that I finished up “Stronger Faster Young” I am working on another story for book II. I actually started this story first but dropped it to work on the “Young” story. I am enjoying this one because it is more comic style. BUT that is also what makes it more difficult for me. I am not too familiar with paneling. However, for the most part this has been pretty enjoyable to work on.
I don’t have a working title for this one yet but it involves some of my favorite characters from the first book, the Condyle (my favorite being the Krite). The Condyle warriors are the savages of the land. They suppress there blood lust through their hunts. This is the story of one of those hunts. I have to admit that when I started out wanting to do a Condyle story, I wanted it to be more of a action filled hunt. However, it did not turn out that way at all. I was struggling with it for awhile and then a friend got a hold of it. Opie Cooper had a little fun with the story and took it in a whole new direction. I ended up liking his take on it WAY more than mine. So that’s what I went with. I added a little bit to it here and there but for the most part…its his story.
I will post a little bit more later on the layout of one of the pages but until then, Here it the cover picture to the story.
-Jesse

Stronger Faster YOUNG

Ok, so as we’ve mentioned before, Berona’s War, Book II will be a compilation of short stories and moments from the first book. The first story I started working on was inspired by a pictue I saw years ago by Skottie Young. At the time I didn’t realize that it was Skottie’s picture but I knew I loved it.

After getting waist deep in the project, I showed him some of the pictures and told him a little bit about it. I wanted to get his approval before I got too far into the story…why you ask? Because the main character is based after Mr. Young himself. He had no problem with it what so ever. In fact I even think he liked it!!! Woo-Whoo!!!

The story is about a character who is inspired by stories he hears about a group of Ele-Alta slayers. These stories inspire him to return to his overrun village to seek revenge. His story in turn inspires others to follow in his footsteps as well.

I enjoyed working on it and wanted to post a piece of it for you to see. Here it is in no particular order. As usual, Anthony did all the Ele-Alta characters and I did all of the Cropones. Enjoy “STRONGER FASTER YOUNG!”
-Jesse

DEAD @ 17 Pin-up

Ok, as you can see below, Anthony and I were asked to do a Pin-up for Image and Josh Howard’s Dead @ 17 comic. It was a nice little break from Berona’s War "Book II". Its been so long, I was starting to think I forgot how to draw girls. This should have been easier than it was….Geez, I almost gave up. Not really Josh…I wouldn’t let you down! But it did give me some problems. What made things even worse is I was at Anthony’s place when he started his piece.
All I remember is he started doing a rough sketch and then the pizza man knocked on the door…by the time I paid him and went back inside….Anthony was done!!! REALLY ANTHONY??? God, I hate him sometimes.
Some how he manages to come up with the concept, do the rough, clean it up, add color and do the background…all in the time it took me to walk four feet to the door and back. I just don’t get it. But what makes things even worse is that I had a sketch that I really liked I had done the night before. But after seeing his picture, I had to throw mine away. Oh well, I guess that’s the price we pay for working with greatness.
So anyway. I had a few ideas in my head of what I wanted the outcome to look like. After playing with some sketches for awhile, I came up with the pictures you see now. I was very close to going with the first one with just the two girls. I was worried that the third girl in the foreground would be too much and cover up a lot of the detail of the other two girls. But by the time it was all said and done, I think the composition ended up working out just fine. I'm actually happy with the way it turned out. From our understanding, Josh likes them and frankly….that’s all we needed to know!
-Jesse

Pinup Art

Well this doesn't have anything to do with our next book, but while we are working hard on book 2 we still enjoy getting to whip out a nice piece of fan art every now and then. We were honored to be asked to contribute to Josh Howard's Dead@17 pinup section. Josh is working on his next compilation of books with Image Comics and he asked if we would like to draw up some hot girls. Honestly, who could resist? Thanks again, Josh.

Storyboards

Here is an idea for a short animated piece we were wanting to do. Jesse mentioned wanting to do some short simple animated pieces and as he was explaining his idea to me this is what I was envisioning. I went ahead and drew up a rough storyboard. It still needs some adjustments, but here is the first pass. Its definitely longer than what Jesse was thinking, but I think it would still be cool to do once we have the time.

Borders Signing Texas

Ok...so it wasnt REALLY this bad but what a great photo huh? haha




After the 3 Alarm signing, I ended up traveling home with Anthony and stayed with him for the week. We had another Borders book signing the following weekend and it just kind of work out for us with the traveling. I got to visit with my buddy Brian Thompson britown.com and we had a pretty good time hanging out. He helped me develop the Berona’s War Game. The idea was semi developed but Brian really helped me hit it home. If things go well I can say we have a pretty good chance of getting a solid board game out. It will have a nostalgic D&D feel with good old school board game fun. The trick was making it so it was fun and versatile enough to want to play again and again but at the same time not making it SO complex that it was a headache trying to figure out how to play...and though we are at the beginning stages, I really think we might have figured out how to do that. More on that to come :)
So on to the Book signing…You know its weird, if you actually ADVERTISE a book signing, it goes over a lot more successful. When we showed up it was almost like they didn’t have any idea we were coming. Not to mention that they didn’t put ANYTHING on their website. When I asked them about it they said, “We sent the information to corporate…I don’t know why they didn’t post it.” REALLY??? God forbid we DORVE 6 HOURS to get there!!!! HOWEVER, having said that, we tried to make the best of it (we usually do) and figured “screw it!” we’re here so lets do this!

I'm glad we stuck with it because it actually ended up turning out pretty good. We sold WAY more than we thought we would. We can thank the crowd that showed up towards the end of the signing. I kid you not, when we got there…there was like four people in the store and three of them were about 90 years old! Fortunately we had a D&D crowd show up as well. Yes, you heard me correctly…a Dungeons and Dragons Roll playing group showed up! I guess they have a scheduled game night or something. Anyway, it worked out for us. Come to find out, they seem to be a target audience! HA!
So to wrap things up, again, we had a pretty good time and got a good bit done on Book II.

-Jesse

3 Alarm Signing

Book Signing on the Coast!

the 3 Alarm Exclusive Sketch Poster

the Hard Rock

Sorry for the stupid amount of time away from the ole Blog…been a bit busy. Don’t be too hard on me because Anthony has already smacked me around!
We are still working on Book II and are pretty happy with what we got so far. We had our book signing at 3 Alarm comics the other weekend and had a pretty good time. Got to hand out with the owner Scott as well as Mitch Byrd…two really cool cats we enjoyed hanging out with!!! We not only had a good time but also got to sell a few more books as well as some posters. We put out a 3 Alarm exclusive poster and sold quite a few. We only had 100 so we didn’t think they would last too long. After the signing we headed out to the Hard Rock and got our grub on! All in all we had a good day…Thanks 3 Alarm!

-Jesse